MISSIONS LAUNCH
VOSHKHOD III, OCTOBER 1964
Engineers worked night and day to remove the problems with Voshkhod and its launch vehicle, the radical new design of a boosted A-Series rocket.
Throughout endless late-night meetings, prototyping sessions and systems analysis, they have prepared for the upcoming test launch as best they could.
And the result was most encouraging. Comrade Pavylyvych congratulated the program heads as they began to leave the mission control bunker ; They would now go out onto the field, recover the capsule and make last modifications before the manned flight this December.
But between now and then, the Murcans had another flight planned, and comrade Pavylyvych couldn't help but wonder how it would go for them. He wished all the best to the astronaut, even if he couldn't say this out loud.
***
MERCURY XVI, NOVEMBER 1964
"Okay, gentlemen. Let's get this mother off the pad!", Common Carter Connoway said to his crew. His boys. His little nerds. Since coming here, he has come to...know...all of them, very intimately. Especially that last night's pillow fight bolstered team morale excellently and...oh, yeah. He had a flight to run.
"All checks out? We're oiled up, pumped and ready to go? Awesome! Resume the countdown!", he yelled. Some of the engineers winced, since his mike was hot and they got the full load of his oral enthusiasm right into their ears.
"Right", Barn Est The First said to himself, before putting his headset back on. He'd serve as Bob's CAPCOM this mission, "Bob, we have resumed countdown. The mission is a go. How are you feelin', buddy?"
"Like a million dollars, Barn! Can't wait to get this party started."
Est held out his raised thumb for CCC's benefit. The flight controllers reported readiness, and with a well-practiced ritual, once the countdown ended, the rocket lit off - exactly as planned.
"We have good liftoff Sixteen, reading you right down the line."
The controllers observed the liftoff with practiced professoinal detachment, reporting on its performance. It didn't fail to deliver - staging went perfectly, then it was burn to orbit time.
"And...MECO!", FIDO barked out, "Good flight, good flight. Orbital insertion complete."
"Flight controller,stand by. I want a go/no go for orbital stay."
The controllers began checking out their stations. High above, Bob held up a pencil and let it go, then watched it stay in place, maybe drift off to the side just a little bit. He pushed on one end and it spun.
I'm IN SPACE., he thought.
It was the greatest thing ever.
He did his checklists and his tests, ate the horrible food they had provided for him (Though it was no worse than many things he'd had in the navy and still much better than a few things he had in college...), and began to daydream.
Bob staggered out of his thermodynamics final and stumbled his way back to the dining hall. After the all-nighter, he just wanted something to eat before he went to bed.
There were exactly two food selections: soggy mushy peas and soggy mushy waffles. The peas were brown. The waffles were green. He was exhausted, but his eyes glazed over the scene and knew that he was in a no-win scenario.
"Sixteen, do you read?"
Startled, Bob fumbled a bit with his radio switches before replying, "Uh, yeah, I read. This is great! I'm IN SPACE!"
"Copy that Sixteen. Uh, we might be having a minor problem here, could you give a reading on main bus A voltage?"
"Uh, stand by...reading is...right down the middle."
"Copy that. Stand by."
Bob sighed. Glitches. It could be a while before mission control gave him the go-ahead for orbital stay, so he decided to make himself a bit more comfortable. He twisted around in his very limited room, but it was all okay, because he was IN SPACE. It made up for everything. No matter what mundane thing it was, it was IN SPACE and that made it precious and special. Bob allowed himself a single manly tear at the thought; the tear pooled up on his eye and blurred his vision so he had to wipe it away, noting all the ways that being IN SPACE was different. They took so many things for granted with the gravitational pull.
"Sixteen, could you give me a rundown of your status lights?", his daydream was interrupted again.
"Uh, sure...lights are...CPC green, Retro green, chute deploy no light, backup chute no light, landing bag deploy no light, life support green, main bus a green, main bus b green, periscope green. Are you having trouble with telemetry, Cape?"
"No, we just need to confirm something. Stand by."
Bob sighed again and glanced back at his pencil.
No downwards pull...which meant...
And then Robert “Bob” Johnson had an epiphany, a vision of the possibilities of the future most glorious, magnificent, beautiful beyond all the wildest dreams he had ever had before. But now, now in the most rarefied airs of the highest atmosphere, with a sunrise and sunset every ninety minutes, above all the concerns of the cloud-swirled globe below, he could envision things truly great, his mind freed of former shackles and left to rise above as he had. He felt as if he stood on the threshold of the sublime.
As he thoughts unfolded, Bob knew one thing, beyond all doubt:
They needed titties in space.
No more sagging, so no more need for constraining 'support,' liberated from the tyranny of gravity! The aether whispered in his ear, and so saith it: breasts bobbing beautifully and quivering delightfully in response to every weightless movement. He wanted to step through that shining threshold and embrace that wonderful, exquisite, jiggly goodness to his own bosom.
But then the slightly-more-mundane world returned to him as his radio squawked at him, "Sixteen, we have a problem."
-------------------------------------------
While up above Bob was dreaming about titties, down at THE CAPE, the mission control room was full of people who didn't usually come in. They were poring over capsule schematics and telemetry printoffs.
There was a problem with the retropack.
"This thing is absolutely foolproof!", the engineer who designed the pack was screaming, "There's nothing to break in there! Nothing! It lighted before, just fine, no problems!"
"Listen, the diagnostics showed a problem indicator", Connoway was explaining to the engineer a third time what they wanted to do, "I need to know if it's an instrumentation problem, or something real?"
"In my opinion, we have nothing to fear.", the engineer didn't sound very sure. He was staring intently at his schematics while talking, "...unless...huh..."
"Unless WHAT?"
"...uh, there might a slight possibility that...maybe vibration could..."
"Oh, screw this. This is a critical system, I am not taking the risk it will not fire.", the Flight Director leapt to his console, "Flight controllers, we are initiating an abort. Let him know of that. I want to bring him down at site C."
"Copy that, flight", Barn Est nodded and flipped the switch, "Sixteen, we have a problem."
"Uh...", Bob's voice seemed more confused than scared, "Elaborate?"
"There might a problem with the retros, we fear they might not fire. We are initiating an abort."
"Copy that, abort."
"Run program 21, we're bringing you down at Site C."
The large mission clock reset, and began counting down to the deorbit burn. Silence fell across the room as the seconds counted down.
Then it went to zero. FIDO glared intently at his screen.
"Flight...we...no ignition...Jeebus..."
"I need answers, people! We are not losing this man! Wake everyone who ever worked on that capsule: WE ARE BRINGING THIS MAN DOWN, you hear me?!"
The control room erupted with activity.
Bob looked out through the periscope, at the brilliant blue ball below. He knew by now the retros didn't fire - Mission Control kept reassuring him they were working on the problem...but he had nothing to do, and so he watched the Earth below. He had plenty of supplies.
He could see continents move, blue reflections off the oceans glistening in the sun. Sunrise and sundown, two per hour...clouds, swirling in the wind, brilliant and white. He could stare at it forever.
And two days later, he learned that this would indeed be the case. There was a procedure for that, in fact. The controllers could do nothing, they tried six dozen possible solutions and none worked. The retropack would remain silent - so they were now silent, and let him transmit freely. And so the entire world could hear Bob Johnson's last words, as his capsule completed his revolutions around the Earth.
"I...really don't know what to say to the people down there, listening to me. You could say I am a bit disappointed, really...I know I am going to die. There is no escaping this: the orbit is too high, it will not decay before I run out of oxygen.
But I figure that, you know...there are worse ways to die, right? It was a day when I went INTO SPACE. Really, it was a good day, and I suppose one had to meet his end at some time. You could say that a day in which you have seen dozens of beautiful sunsets is a fine last day.”
The flight controllers couldn't listen anymore. They began to leave the flight control center.
Only Common Carter Connoway stayed. Alone in the dark room, he was in contact with Bob Johnson up until the last moment, when his oxygen ran out, and the astronaut slowly slipped into a peaceful slumber.
Forever.
***
VOSHKHOD IV, DECEMBER 1964
Someone, nobody knew who or when, painted a small epiphamy to Bob Johnson on the side of the Voshkhod capsule. It read:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air;
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark nor even eagle flew;
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The Comissar launched an investigation, of course, but could not uncover the perpetrator: and it was too late to remove the poem, as it was discovered right before the launch, after both cosmonauts were already securely inside their capsule, and all preparations were finished.
It was a flight full of trepidatin from all involved. They all remembered listening to the last words of that Murcan astronaut, Johnson, as he passed over Zenobia. And nobody at Baikonurek could not notice that comrade Pavylyvych was more than a little worried about the Voshkhod's technical reliability.
Still, the Motherland demanded a duty of them. And thus, comrade cosmonauts Nikov and Mametov strapped in and awaited the launch.
With little ceremony, Syrgy Pavylyvych turned the launch key, and the rocket's engines ignited with a thunderous roar.
As it rose to the heavens, people inside the control center could hear Nikov's voice on the radio, yelling one word:
"Poyekhali!"
"Comrades, inform comrade Chief Designer the rocket performed perfectly! We are in orbit, and are preparing the spacecraft for our spacewalk.", Niko reported. The spacecraft has separated from the last booster stage. Cosmonauts would now go over all the systems, and immediately begin suiting up: no extended orbital stay was planned for this mission.
In less than two hours, everything was ready. The Voshkhod possessed a feature unlike any other spacecraft in the world: a compact, inflatable airlock attached to the hatch. Such a solution would allow cosmonauts to leave and enter the ship without depressurizing the cabin.
It was also crucial for the Voshkhod, as its electronics were air-cooled, and thus depressurization of the capsule would destroy them.
Syrgy listened intently as the cosmonauts reported on their progress.
An engineer was summarizing them, "Comrade Mametov is inside the airlock now...he is reports space is limited, and he had some difficulty operating the device's systems. The airlock is depressurizing...comrade niov has activated the outer camera, we should be seeing images...now."
Everyone watched the clear images of a son of the Motherland, floating freely in space now. He provided a steady stream of reports about his situation.
"There is no disorientation at all. I can move without any problems, any problems at all. It is best to move slowly and deliberately...it is beautiful, comrades. Absolutely beautiful."
After twenty minues, cosmonaut Mametov was back inside, and the crew prepared to land their spacecraft.
The most dangeorus part of the flight went splendidly. The heat shield held, and soon the capsule landed...softly.
"I am telling you, comrades, it was quite the ride!", Mametov joked as the doctors administered a battery of tests. Both cosmonauts were not allowed to leave their couches, which were removed from the capsule after landing, before the doctors gave the all-clear.
A day later, comrade cosmonauts Nikov and Mametov were both safely back at Baikonurek, giving their mission report to the Chief Designer.
I'll let you know if I hear back from him.
