The Stars My Destination: Soyuz 11

Among all those who have died in the course of human spaceflight, the Soyuz 11 heroes remain the only men to have died in space, above the Kármán line (one hundred kilometers/sixty-two miles above mean sea level, the commonly accepted distinction 'twixt the Earth atmosphere & outer space). The Challenger disaster happened during liftoff, well within the atmosphere; the Columbia disaster happened during re-entry, well within the atmosphere; & the Apollo 1 disaster happened during a ground test, at the bottom of the atmosphere. (We'll discuss the Soyuz 1 disaster on its fifty-fifth anniversary in 2022.)

Dobrovolsky, Volkov, & Patsayev died because they weren't wearing pressure suits, just cloth flight suits. The Soviet space program had first eschewed pressure suits during Voskhod 1, when it was necessary to forego pressure suits in order to cram three cosmonauts into the capsule to one-up the Americans, who were preparing to launch the two-man Gemini spacecraft. Had the Soyuz 11 trio been wearing pressure suits, they would have survived the depressurization of their capsule; had the Soyuz 10 trio been wearing pressure suits, cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov would not have been overcome by toxic fumes during re-entry. The American Space Shuttle program would similarly forego pressure suits from the first "operational" flight, S.T.S.-5, through the Challenger disaster, S.T.S.-51-L. In the immediate aftermath of Soyuz 11, the crews of Apollo 15, Apollo 16, & Apollo 17 wore their pressure suits for more phases of their missions than had the preceeding Apollo crews.

At the time, though, the Soviets did not disclose the cause of the death of the cosmonauts & there was speculation, especially among the press, that the cosmonauts had exceeded the human body's ability to perdure in the microgravity of outer space. This cast doubt on N.A.S.A.'s ambitions for the upcoming Skylab space station, though N.A.S.A.'s flight surgeons were convinced that spending too much time in microgravity was not the cause of death. They were proven right, as the Skylab missions & subsequent experience with Mir & the Intenational Space Station have demonstrated. The Soviets eventually revealed asphyxiation as the cause of death & spent two years redesigning the Soyuz capsule to accommodate two cosmonauts in pressure suits instead of three cosmonauts in flight suits. Too late to save Dobrovolsky, Volkov, & Patsayev, but at least learning the lesson of their deaths means they had not died in vain.

Requiescat in pace.

The Explorers' Club, № DCCLXXV

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 56th Anniversary of Voskhod 1
12-13 October 1964: Voskhod 1 lifted off from the Kazakh S.S.R.'s Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying Command Pilot Vladimir Komarov, Engineer Konstantin Feoktistov, & Medical Doctor Boris Yegorov aboard a Voskhod 3KV capsule atop a Voskhod 11A57 rocket; the first flight with multiple crew, the cosmonauts went on a diet & launched without pressure suits in order to squeeze into the capsule.

Commentary: This concludes our coverage of the Voskhod program, which flew only two manned flights, in October 1964 & March 1965. After Voskhod 2, the Soviets would not launch another manned flight for over two years, 'til Soyuz 1 in April 1967. During that lull, we Americans flew ten manned Gemini missions. Voskhod 1 was the only manned spaceflight of 1964.

Bonus! Space Race Song o' Voskhod 1
The Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Three to Get Ready" from Time Out: 50th Anniversary Legacy Edition (Space Cadet Mike Papa Whiskey)

Semper exploro.

The Stars My Destination: The Opposition

The Space Race
I've devised a schema by which we will be chronicalling the Soviet side of the Space Race. It will follow two major tracks, with a few exceptions. First, though, the Americans.

In the summer of 2019, as the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 & the first Moon landing approached, I decided to dedicate a trio of episodes of "The Explorers' Club" to the conquest of the Moon: one each for the launch, the "one small step," & the triumphant return to Earth, plus a bonus fourth episode about the worldwide publicity tour/victory lap. As the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 12 approached in the fall of 2019, I decided to treat all the Moon landings equally, giving the lesser known Apollo 12 as much coverage as the most famous Apollo 11. Having decided this, I was then convicted by the realization that I'd neglected utterly to mark the fiftieth anniversaries of the first four Apollo missions, the flights that made Apollo 11 possible. Starting last Christmas with the fifty-first anniversary of Apollo 8, I've been playing catching up, chronicling the fifty-first anniversaries of Apollo 9 & Apollo 10, & I look forward to next month chronicling the fifty-second anniversary of Apollo 7. There was a lull in the Apollo program in 1970 after the near loss of Apollo 13, a lull that has afforded us a little more room to catch up, but I look forward in 2021 & 2022 to chronicling the last four Apollo missions from 1971 & 1972. After that, we'll chronicle the fiftieth anniversaries of Skylab (1973-1974) & the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (1975).

In the winter of 2020, I was alerted to & surprised by the fifty-eight anniversary of John Glenn's 1962 flight aboard the Friendship 7. I made the snap decision to dedicate an "Explorers' Club" episode to Glenn's triumph, without working out what to do about the rest of Mercury. In short order, though, I decided what to do about the Mercury & Gemini programs that made Apollo possible. My harebrained scheme: 2020-2021 marks the fifty-fifth anniversaries of the ten Gemini flights, & I decided it was better to mark the fifty-fifth anniversaries rather than wait for the sixtieth anniversaries in 2025-2026. After all, who can say if I'll still be alive in 2025-2026. Mercury was a thornier problem, since I'd already jumped Glenn over his Mercury colleagues Alan Sheppard & Gus Grissom, whose suborbital flights preceded Glenn's orbital flight. I've decided to commemorate the remaining five Mercury flights in order: Sheppard, Grissom, & Glenn: check; Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, & Gordon Cooper: waiting in the wings.

Second, the Soviets. The Soviet Union set the early pace in the Space Race, launching the first manmade satellite in 1957 & the first man in space in 1961. As an American, valuing America's achievements in both manned & robotic spaceflight, I have absolutely no scruples about putting the American space program ahead of the Soviet space program. But the Soviets' achievements were real, though due to the inherent evil & corruption of Commmunism, many of those achievements are not as laudable as they first appeared. A very real difficulty we will face is the secrecy with which the Soviets conducted their space program; whereas N.A.S.A., as a civilian agency, experienced both its failures & its triumphs in the bright—sometimes blinding—glare of publicity, the Soviets rarely announced their intentions ahead of time & went so far as to make their crews communicate with ground controlers in code. Accurate information will be harder to come by, as will photographs & other imagery. The two tracks we're going to follow: fiftieth anniversaries & sixtieth anniversaries. Starting with yesterday's belated half-centenary of Soyuz 9, we'll chronicle the fiftieth anniversaries of Soviet spaceflight in the 1970s, keeping pace with America's Apollo, Skylab, & Apollo-Soyuz missions. Starting in the spring of 2021, we'll circle back to the sixtieth anniversaries of Soviet spacelight in the 1960s, starting with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

Exceptions to this two-track schema include the two Voskhod flights from 1964 & 1965 & the two failures of the N1 rocket from 1969. We covered the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Voskhod 2 this year because it flew just days before the fifty-fifth anniversary of Gemini 3 & we'll cover the fifty-sixth anniversary of Voskhod 1 later this year, just to put a bow on the two-flight Voskhod program. I missed the fiftieth anniversary of the failure of the second N1 launch just days before the triumphant launch of Apollo 11 in 1969, but we chronicled the fifty-first anniversary this past summer. We'll cover the fifty-second anniversary of the first N1 launch failure next winter & then catch the fiftieth anniversaries of the third & fourth failures as they come up on the 1970s track. We'll also make exceptions to cover any spaceflight fatalities, to add them to our annual roll of honor, the yearly commemorations of the Apollo 1, Challenger, & Columbia disasters.

So, that's the road ahead, as I currently see it. Thank you for reading, for accompanying me on this ongoing adventure.

The Stars My Destination: Gemini V

The Space Race: That's NumberWang!
The Soviet Union had sparked the Space Race with the 4 October 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, & the Soviets maintained their lead for the next eight years, with the first manned spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961), also the first manned orbit of the Earth; the first flight of multiple spacecraft (Vostok 3 & Vostok 4 on 12 August 1962); the first flight of a spacecraft with a crew of more than one (Voskhod 1 on 12 October 1964); & the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov aboard the Voskhod 2 on 18 March 1965: Wayback Machine—"The Explorers' Club, № DCCXXXVIII").

The United States was playing catch-up, but from the jump showed signs that the Soviets' lead was evaporating & doomed to disappear. The American astronauts were pilots, able to maneuver their Mercury capsules, whereas the Soviet cosmonauts aboard their Vostok capsules were passengers. Soviet formation flight was achieved through meticulously timed launches, whereas the Americans were able to pilot to true orbital rendezvous (Gemini VI-A & Gemini VII on 15-16 December 1965, as we shall soon see—stay tuned!). With the triumph of Gemini V in August 1965, the United States took an insurmountable lead that endured 'til the Space Race was definitively won with the first Moon landing by Apollo 11 (Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin aboard the Eagle on 20 July 1969: Wayback Machine—"№ DCXCVIII", Wayback Machine—"№ DCXCIX", & Wayback Machine—"№ DCC").

Manned missions
United States: 9
Soviet Union: 8

Manned hours in space
United States: 642
Soviet Union: 607

Single-mission orbits
United States: 120
Soviet Union: 81

Capcom: "How does it feel the United States to be a new record holder?"
Cooper: "At last, huh?"

The Explorers' Club, № DCCXXXVIII

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 55th Anniversary of Voskhod 2
18-19 March 1965: Voskhod 2 launched from the Kazakh S.S.R.'s Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying Commander Pavel Belyayev & Pilot Alexei Leonov aboard a Voskhod 3KD capsule atop a Voskhod rocket; Leonov became the first man to conduct an extravehicular activity (E.V.A., or "spacewalk"), through an inflatable airlock; he barely survived—his space suit ballooned, stiffened, & overheated.

Bonus! Space Race Song o' Voskhod 2
Public Service Broadcasting "E.V.A." from The Race for Space (Space Cadet St. Mike Papa Whiskey)

Commentary: Voskhod is Russian for "sunrise."

The Undiscovered Country
Spare a prayer, dear reader, for the repose of the soul of Al Worden (1932-2020), U.S.A.F., Command Module Pilot of Apollo 15 (26 July-7 August 1971) & a Michigan Man. Requiescat in pace, & Go Blue!