It was becoming clear to von Braun that Soviet capability was growing. Reports from US bases in Iran showed Soviet missiles reaching speeds of 5000 mph, which almost certainly meant that they could launch a satellite. It looked as though the Soviets had caught up with the Americans. Von Braun confided to a friend that he ‘was convinced the man behind the Soviet programme just had to press a button and he’s supplied with all he wants’. By contrast, his team faced further budget cuts – which he saw as punishment for his leaks to the press that his team was better placed to launch a satellite than the navy. With the support of Brigadier General John Medaris, the newly appointed Commander of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone, army officials appealed once again for permission to launch a satellite on a Jupiter C. They could be ready by September – early in International Geophysical Year – and hopefully before the Soviets. Yet again, von Braun’s team was refused. America, it seemed, was throwing its chance away.
In the Soviet Union, during the final preparations for the first test launch of the R-7, Korolev received some good news. In April he was notified that he was now rehabilitated and that he had been wrongly and unjustly imprisoned. He was also now allocated a modest cabin at the launch site comprising three small rooms, a bedroom, kitchen and office. It was bleak and sparsely equipped. ‘The walls were decorated with dark wallpaper,’ his daughter recalled. ‘There was no stove in the kitchen. No way to warm up food or make tea or coffee in the morning.’ Wild pigeons nested in the porch. But Korolev liked simplicity – it left him free to devote himself exclusively to his work. There was nothing to disturb his concentration. Pre-flight checks for the first R-7 launch were due to start on 5 May and he supervised every last detail.
Many of the men, including Korolev, had been away from home for five months, often working for fifteen hours a day. Yet Korolev’s demands for high standards were relentless. He was totally consumed by his vision; he pushed himself to the limits of his tough physique to achieve his goal. His temper and harsh words for the lesser vision of a colleague or the betrayal of his dream by shoddy workmanship were well known. ‘His diatribes were the stuff of legend,’ recalled one engineer, Anatoly Abramov. ‘He was a master at it. His eyes would flash, his words would destroy yours, he would threaten to send you home walking between the railway tracks …’ But he was so respected that ‘no one took offence’. Behind his back he was called the ‘Iron King’.
Once installed at the launch site, suspended by Mishin’s ‘petals’, the R-7 looked like something from science fiction. Towering 108 feet, the central core was surrounded by the four strap-ons, each 62 feet long. On 15 May, liftoff began with the usual fearsome noise, the ground and buildings reverberating to a volcanic eruption of white-hot flames. Everyone sheltered in the bunkers. Mishin’s ‘petals’ opened perfectly and the rocket rose slowly with a faultless liftoff – total thrust nearly 400 tons. It gained height steadily. A full minute passed. Korolev could see it in the periscope moving fast through a luminous blue sky, trailing flame. He dared to hope. Then a sheet of fire tore down its length, encasing it as he watched. It disappeared, leaving a long trail of white cloud, hit the ground and exploded in flames. One of the four strap-ons had torn away from the core less than two minutes after liftoff. The many months of work and preparation had ended so quickly in a defeat that it was hard to bear. Nedelin, standing near him, was clearly shaken. When Khrushchev heard the news, he was disappointed but held fire on criticism. Korolev refused to show his frustration. ‘This rocket will fly,’ he said.
Over the following weeks, the strain of the long hours and the responsibility for the success of the R-7 was beginning to take a toll on Korolev’s health. He had a sore throat and, unable to shake off the infection in spite of the summer heat, was taking penicillin. It was a stifling 55 degrees C. He worked at night to avoid the worst of the heat. Tempers were short. There seemed to be no end to the grinding workload. Nedelin’s staff were always looking over his shoulder. Glushko was angry about the destruction of his engines. ‘We are working under a great strain both physical and emotional,’ Korolev told Nina. ‘The temperature is 35 degrees in the shade … everyone feels a bit sick … I am getting ready with some slight misgivings to have a cholera shot … we work till the middle of the night … If only I could be with you. I wouldn’t leave you for a minute. I want to hug you and forget all about this stress.’
There were three more failures on 9, 10 and 11 June as launches had to be aborted. This reduced Korolev to a new low. Nedelin was in an ugly mood and endless autopsies apportioned blame. Tempers were heated. The causes of the failure were often due to small, careless mistakes. On one occasion a valve was installed the wrong way round; on another a different valve was stuck in a closed position. There was plenty of criticism for Korolev. Feelings were painfully raw. ‘Glushko arrived today, and to everyone’s amazement – including mine – began to tell us all that our work was utterly worthless, using the dirtiest language and the crudest phrases,’ Korolev confided to Nina. ‘This created a terrible impression on everyone … His tirade unfortunately could not be considered criticism but simply mindless malice …’ Doubts about the next launch were expressed.
Korolev tried to conceal his own worries and keep up everyone’s spirits. He called an informal meeting but despite his efforts to keep things calm it was not long before tempers erupted. Forcing a change of mood on the gloomy scene, Korolev produced a big parcel and declared: ‘I’ve another problem for you here.’ He rummaged in the box and pulled out a large chocolate rabbit. It was a present from Nina that was much appreciated. It disappeared very quickly as sweet things were a luxury rarely seen at Tyura-Tam.
Every day the sun rose in a sky drained of colour. The heat was like an oven, the ground too hot to walk on with bare feet. Sandstorms covered everything with dust. Through it all everyone worked for the next launch, scheduled for 11 July. Korolev wrote to Nina on 15 June: ‘It probably won’t be a success … the truth is that our goal has never been reached before in all the history of technology.’ Preparations for the launch were triple checked. The rocket lifted off perfectly into a clear sky. It looked good, but then it started moving erratically to the left as though it was knocking against an unseen barrier. The failure was spectacular as it exploded like a giant firework leaving a cloudy trail of vaporized fuel.
The launch site was steeped in gloom. It was discovered that someone had made yet another small mistake. A worker had connected a battery wrongly to the control system with the disastrous result that all four strap-on boosters broke away from the core just thirty-three seconds into the flight. No one had the heart or the energy to be angry with the man. At a meeting to discuss results, it was clear that Nedelin had finally had enough. He wasn’t interested in who was to blame. He wanted immediate results. ‘The army needs just one thing,’ he declared, ‘a rocket that will work!’ He threatened to stop the tests at once, suggesting Korolev go back and rework the missile in OKB-1. This would almost certainly cost him his chance to launch a satellite before the Americans. And Korolev’s relationship with Glushko seemed irreparable. The latter agreed with Nedelin that there was no point in carrying on. ‘Forty of my wonderfully designed engines have been broken during the tests,’ he complained. ‘If things keep going the way they are, the production line will collapse.’ Korolev confided in Nina: ‘Things are very, very bad.’
As the summer wore on and the desert shimmered in the unrelenting heat, an infection of hopelessness spread insidiously through the workforce. There had been five attempted launches, each one a calamity. Korolev refused to admit defeat; there was one more rocket available to launch. He persuaded the military to give him one more chance. The launch was set for 21 August. If it ended in the usual fireworks display, he knew he would have to give up hope of launching a satellite before the Americans. He was well aware of talk behind his back which questioned the design of the R-7, sceptical that such a massive complex of engines would be able to synchronize as
one. He wrote to his wife: ‘We have such a short period of our life for creating something and every step to something new and unexplored is achieved by a narrow margin with a high price to pay.’
The launch on 21 August began with the usual roar and thunder and terrifying flames. The rocket seemed to balance undecidedly on the fire and fury beneath it, then slowly lifted, straining to take its great weight improbably up into the heavens. Those on the ground looked, waiting in silence, wondering if it would soar without faltering into the distant blue. They watched until it was out of sight. It flew towards its target at Kamchatka: an almost perfect flight. Disbelief turned into euphoria with much celebration. Korolev was the man of the moment, so happy there was no chance of sleep. He talked and partied all night, drunk on dreams of the future.
On the 27 August 1957, the Soviet news agency TASS reported the successful flight. To von Braun, this could only mean one thing: the Soviet Union was on the brink of launching their satellite for the International Geophysical Year and America was just sitting back watching them do it. General John Medaris ordered that two Jupiter C rockets be maintained and kept in a state of readiness. In desperation, von Braun and several members of his team actually hid ‘Missile 29’ – Jupiter C components and a specially modified upper-stage rocket – in a shed at Cape Canaveral. The team would be ready as and when a change of policy came.
That same month, von Braun’s team was the first successfully to recover an object from space. In heat-shield testing with the Jupiter C, for the first time they recovered a nose cone that had returned through the atmosphere having reached three hundred miles into space and travelled more than a thousand miles from where it was launched. ‘Everything went exactly as planned,’ said John Medaris. ‘Each step of the complex operation in the nose cone was precisely on time … It was a little over an hour until the signal was flashed: CONE ON BOARD. APPARENTLY UNDAMAGED. We were jubilant.’ It was for von Braun a crucial first step on the way towards launching and returning a craft from space.
Korolev thought the KGB far too cavalier when they informed him that there was no hurry to get a satellite into orbit. He did not believe it and began to call in every day at the workshop where the new satellite was taking shape, urging everyone involved to hurry, insisting that the ‘Americans are ahead, we could lose face’. When the simple Sputnik was completed he was invited to inspect it. It was a perfect silver ball, 23 inches in diameter, weighing only 184 pounds and sprouting four elegant radio antennae. But Korolev was not satisfied. The join of the two half-spheres ‘looked rough’. He demanded that the satellite itself take pride of place on a special stand and that the working conditions around the satellite be improved. ‘Coats, gloves, it’s a must! It must be extremely clean everywhere.’ For Korolev the metal sphere was the physical embodiment of his dream. He loved it; and everyone else connected with it was expected to revere it. ‘Don’t forget, this is the Earth’s satellite,’ he told the engineers, ‘and it is the first one, the very first one. It must also be beautiful.’ As he left, he turned with one more instruction: ‘Place a velvet spread under the satellite …’
In the weeks before the launch, Korolev was uncharacteristically reserved, ‘rarely smiling’. There were so many unknowns. He wasn’t quite sure where the atmosphere ended and space began: would micrometeorites damage the surface of his satellite, transforming the shining silver ball into a pockmarked mess? And it seemed almost impossible to expect the radio transmitter to send signals when in the ionosphere – the part of the upper atmosphere that has been ionized by solar radiation. Would the seal be affected by the blistering array of effects to which it would be subjected, the extremes of temperature and speed? The satellite was such a small, fragile object; soon it would be on top of the massive R-7 rocket. If it exploded on the launch pad, as the majority of them had, the rocket, the satellite, his hopes, everything would be smashed. The race would be lost. On one occasion as testing continued on a mock-up of the satellite, a problem arose when joining the two halves together. They would not fit and the satellite was not airtight. It was taken apart and a piece of thread was found, wedged under the rubber padding. Korolev was incandescent. ‘Do you realize what you are creating, what you have been entrusted with? If you can’t do better, then turn in your pass,’ he exploded.
The complex calculations needed to work out the trajectory of the rocket and satellite were virtually complete. Each calculation was a balance between the rocket’s speed and its weight, which rapidly reduced due to consumption of its fuel, the thrust of the engine, which depended on the pressure in the combustion chamber, and the outside atmosphere, which in turn depended on altitude, and so on. The aim was to devise the correct trajectory that would get the final stage and its satellite payload coasting perpendicular to the earth’s surface at the desired altitude and a speed of 18,000 mph. To accomplish this feat, Korolev’s engineers used one of the first computers in the Soviet Union, at Moscow State University.
‘It was based on lamps,’ recalled engineer Georgi Grechko, ‘and took up the space of an entire room. The programme was written on a paper roll. Holes were made in the paper according to the programme and I had a hole puncher in one pocket – to punch the necessary holes which were missing in the programme – and glue in the other pocket to get rid of any extra holes in the paper.’ Nonetheless, this ‘computer’ could perform ten thousand calculations per second.
When Korolev could not sleep, he sometimes visited the laboratory in the middle of the night where the engineer in charge of the radio transmitter, Vyacheslav Lappo, was still at work. Huddled over the equipment, they would listen to the beep, beep of the satellite as it circled the world. They heard the dull, insistent note echo in the darkness. The sound would be slightly different just before it died, Lappo explained. This dull, repetitive note was magic for Korolev. He confided to Nina: ‘Dreams, dreams, without dreams man is a bird without wings. And now I’m very close to the greatest dream of mankind. In every century men were looking at the dark blue sky and dreaming.’
One day while Korolev was working on the launch site, one of the technicians heard a radio report which confirmed the Americans were planning to give a talk entitled ‘Satellite over the Planet’ on 6 October at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington at a conference held as part of International Geophysical Year. ‘We ran to Korolev saying that maybe the Americans were planning to launch their satellite on 4th October and tell everyone about their success on the 5th,’ recalled Georgi Grechko. ‘Could we be one day too late?’
Korolev turned to the KGB to find out what they knew. But their answer was as mysterious as they were: ‘We have no information that the Americans plan to launch on the 4th October but we have no information that the launch is not planned for that dated either.’ This was no time for hesitation. Korolev decided to act. After urgent enquiries, he found that his next R-7 could be rushed to the site and launched by 4 October.
A few days before the launch, Korolev was ‘almost flying’ between the different operations at the launch site. ‘You could see him everywhere; he checked, dispensed advice, got anxious and swore.’ He allowed himself no rest. He followed an absolute rule: ‘It is better to check ten times than to forget once!’ It had become an established tradition for senior members of the team to escort the rocket on foot to the launch site. With great solemnity, early on 3 October, the massive rocket was slowly taken to the pad. Korolev led the procession, his hat in his hand.
An hour before the launch, a final meeting was called. It was a distinguished gathering; the chief designers had arrived from Moscow as well as members of the State Commission, including the head of NII-1, Mstislav Keldysh, the influential mathematician who had provided critical support for Korolev’s plans. All eyes were on Korolev as the company waited for his precise and detailed deliberations on the imminent launch. Slowly he rose from his chair and looked around. For once, he could not speak. So many eyes were staring up at him, offering encouragement – even
Glushko’s. At last he began, sparingly, as though his words were rationed. The rocket and satellite had passed their pre-launch tests, he said simply. ‘We will launch today at 22 hours and 28 minutes.’
The countdown began. All those involved were concentrating on their part in the drama. On the brilliantly lit launch pad, the massive rocket was wreathed in misty shafts of liquid oxygen. The familiar thunderous roar of its power was even more terrifying in the darkness. On the observation deck, people watched it lift imperceptibly from its bed of flames. Smoke, dust and vapour swirled at its base as it slowly rose, bathing the launch pad in white brilliance, robbing the world it left behind of colour. It looked like a perfect liftoff evolving into the perfect flight until the missile suddenly seemed to fall. For a second, people cried out that the rocket was falling, but then realized that the rocket, because of its satellite, was taking a different trajectory to the earlier R-7 test launches. The rocket was aiming for the earth’s orbit.
When the satellite was due to pass overhead – assuming it had successfully achieved its first orbit – everyone crowded into the radio station situated in a van, some way from the pad, waiting to hear the little voice from space. Slava Lappo sat attentively by the receivers, straining for sound. Finally he heard it – a faint sound growing steadily louder and clearer until it could not be mistaken; an insistent ‘beep, beep, beep …’
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