Out of Orbit (16 page)

Like all thaws, the melt that finally pooled the American and Soviet
space programs was a slow one. Its first trickles, surprisingly enough, came in the days before the space race kicked off in earnest. During his inaugural address in 1961, President John F. Kennedy advocated a shared journey into space: “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars.” Come the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Tet Offensive, and 100-megaton nuclear tests, terror became the lead horse. Mercury and Vostok became stunt doubles for Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev; Gemini and Voskhod stood in for Lyndon B. Johnson and Leonid Brezhnev.

Victory ended the battle. It helped that the winner was gracious. Along with the flag and a patch to commemorate the lives of the
Apollo 1
astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind a pair of medallions in tribute to Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin in the moon dust. Komarov died in April 1967, when the first Soviet
Apollo, Soyuz 1
, hurtled to earth, its parachute lines tangled. Gagarin, the first man in space, had died in a mysterious jet fighter crash in March 1968. In such tragedy, there was unity. The patch and medallions were like the finishing touches on a sad song for which both sides had written verses.

Three years later, they were brought that much closer together by a thin document held in a plain blue binder. Signed by Brezhnev and Richard Nixon during the first American-Soviet summit in May 1972, the agreement spelled out the shared desire to witness astronauts and cosmonauts shaking hands in space within thirty-six months.

Only slightly behind schedule, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project saw a once impossible dream come true. On July 15, 1975,
Soyuz 19
, carrying Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov, blasted off from the formerly invisible Baikonur Cosmodrome. A little more than seven hours later, Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand lifted off in their
Apollo
capsule. The two ships would soon become one, albeit in an ungainly embrace, looking a little like two insects joined at the head.

As unpretty as it would look, that union represented more than a feel-good photo opportunity. It was more than a moment. To see
it happen, each side was forced to share technical information about their docking mechanisms, their communications and guidance systems, their flight control procedures … A long list of top secrets would open wide along with that hatch.

On July 17 came the historic announcement from ground control: “
Apollo
, Houston. I’ve got two messages for you. Moscow is a go for docking. Houston is a go for docking. It’s up to you guys. Have fun.”

The two vessels joined 140 miles above the earth.
Soyuz
’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere mixed with
Apollo
’s pure oxygen, and Stafford met the Soviets with a handshake. His was the first word between them:
tovarich
, the Russian word for
friend
. After more pleasantries, including an exchange of flags and plaques, the five men circled the earth for forty-seven hours. They ate together, worked together, dreamed together. And then it was time to say goodbye.

Soyuz 19
returned two days later. The last
Apollo
remained in orbit for three more days, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1975. With the space shuttle’s development under way, the plan called for Americans never to fly in a capsule again. It was the end of an era.

That fall, the world seemed at the end of another. The astronauts and cosmonauts toured each other’s countries, warm and friendly, smiling for cameras and waving at crowds. Wonder had made its comeback down the stretch.

·   ·   ·

In June 1976, almost a year after rivals had become temporary friends, the Soviets launched Salyut 5. It marked the start of their steepest learning curve yet. Through successes and failures, they began to get a feel for the rhythms of long-duration missions, both in their men and in their machines. After Salyut 5 had run its course—longer than expected, because cosmonauts were getting better and better at maintaining a ship in orbit—Salyut 6 went up, and in that barrel-shaped home, the Soviets saw the benefits of their new wisdom fully realized.

The first assigned crew failed to link up, but the second crew, Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko, made it aboard, the start of a planned ninety-six days in space. That record duration required the men to assume the role of living, breathing experiments. It also necessitated a number of technological developments, such as a
Soyuz
exchange program, because their capsule wouldn’t survive as long in space as the crew might. Also, another docking port had been added to host the new
Progress
, the unmanned supply freighter still in use today.

The
Progress
, in both its design and length of service, is a prototypically Russian vessel. Essentially, it is a hollowed-out
Soyuz
capsule, fired into space on top of the same booster rocket used by its manned cousin. Where the crew normally sits, there is instead room for more than 3,700 pounds of supplies. In a separate compartment, spare tanks can be filled with propellant and water and pumped into another vessel or, today, into the International Space Station’s own stores. A third module contains the ship’s electronic equipment and sensors, the operation of which is entirely automated, including a radar system called Kurs that guides the
Progress
into its designated docking port. Once in place, the ship’s hatch can be cracked open by a joyous crew, hopeful that at least a few of those 3,700 pounds consist of fresh fruit, chocolate, and spices. (Once it has been emptied, the
Progress
is filled with trash and returned to expire in the earth’s atmosphere, burning up somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.)

Romanenko and Grechko were especially thrilled to see their own chunky
Progress
appear outside their window. Trying to get some flavor to penetrate their packed sinuses, they had burned through their entire condiment supply in the first five weeks of their mission. Happily, they accepted a special delivery of mustard and horseradish, bushels of scurvy-preventing apples and oranges, and beef tongue in jelly, a Russian delicacy, washed down with apricot juice.

A “psychological support group” on the ground oversaw the care packages, adding mail from home, newspapers, and even a guitar
to the mix, giving the men something to listen to other than the chattering of instruments. The shrinks also encouraged the crew to keep tending their onboard garden, not because anything edible was coming out of it but because the pair seemed bolstered by the presence of green and sprouting things. (To make them feel even more at home, hardwood paneling had been installed inside their quarters.)

Keeping Romanenko and Grechko up physically was trickier. Strenuous workouts were made part of their routine, including running on an improved treadmill, which, like
Progress
, remains part of the program today. Their relationship was also strictly supervised. They had been told to monitor each other’s moods, to try to help each other with difficult tasks, to learn when the other man was sending out signals that he needed a shoulder to lean on or, more often, to be left alone. Given their living and working sometimes literally on top of each other, they did remarkably well. Their only suggestion to the ground was that separate sleeping compartments might be a nice touch in future stations. The ground agreed, and in the meantime, colorful partitions were sent up along with more spices and fruit. Each new lesson was layered on top of the last until, come the end of their mission, Romanenko and Grechko had virtually mastered the hard art of isolation.

Subsequent crews lasted longer on Salyut 6—Vladimir Kovalenok and Sasha Ivanchenkov stayed for 140 days in 1978, and Valery Ryumin and Vladimir Lyakhov spent 175 days up there the following year, breaking any previous endurance record and finally doubling the best effort of the Americans—but in some ways, new ground would never again be broken. By the time Ryumin went up for a second mission, spending another 185 days in orbit, just about every important hypothesis had been proved. Men could live and work in space, in harmony, for a seemingly infinite amount of time, without turning to dust or going insane; they could refurbish their homes on the fly and extend their life spans, if not indefinitely, then well enough to make their space stations track more like stars than meteors; and they established, once and for all, that men were not
limited to exploring space like skin divers holding their breath. They could
inhabit
it. In that way, they forever raised our ceilings. They made even Mars seem possible.

·   ·   ·

All that good was undone when the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, leaving the 1980s almost as cold on earth as it was in space. The Soviets pushed on with their Salyut program, sending six long-duration crews to the seventh and largest version of the ever-evolving station, moving steadily toward a continuous manned presence in space. (The three-man crew of Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov, and Oleg Atkov set the latest endurance record, spending two-thirds of 1984—an astonishing 236 days—in orbit.) The Americans, meanwhile, launched their gleaming new space shuttle
Columbia
in April 1981, ignoring for the moment that it had nowhere to shuttle to. The twin efforts, in many ways, mirrored the steep ideological divide between the two countries. The Americans darted into space like fresh-faced tourists and looked good doing it. The Soviets kept pumping old, ugly technology and their army of unsmiling cosmonauts into orbit, firm in the belief that one of these days, they would figure out a way to make them stick.

They did. While the shuttle was essentially relegated to the role of satellite delivery service, the Soviets unveiled plans for Mir, the world’s first permanent multiple-module space station. It was more than just an outpost; it was a home.

The first module was launched successfully on February 20, 1986. Seeing as the Russians have never gone in for change, its design was identical to the trusted Salyut capsule, with the notable addition of several more docking ports for subsequent modules or pit-stopping spaceships. The base block, as the original module was known, was soon joined by Kvant, a full-fledged astrophysics laboratory, stuffed with telescopes and instruments. Its docking was delayed by a bag of trash that had somehow found its way outside and into the designated port. In their no-nonsense fashion, two cosmonauts suited up, went outside, fumbled around in the dark, and pulled the bag free.

Kvant 2 went up in November 1989. Most important, it contained a new toilet, allowing the cosmonauts to all but abandon the original crapper, which sat two feet from their dinner table. The fourth and final planned module, Kristall, was tied to the end of the train six months later. With its solar panels and unflashy architecture, the completed station looked like a dragonfly, large enough to swallow six men whole.

Its size and scope allowed for grand new visions. In 1991, succumbing to the spirit of glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush agreed to a ceremonial swap of spacemen. A NASA astronaut would visit Mir; a Russian cosmonaut would take a spin on the space shuttle. August’s coup attempt and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in December put those plans on hold. The chaos also left a boy-faced flight engineer named Sergei Krikalev stranded on Mir.

·   ·   ·

In May, he had waved to his family one last time through the window of a white-and-yellow bus and been driven away, along with his commander, Anatoli Artsebarski, and a British researcher named Helen Sharman. That night, in the sleepless hours before launch, they had climbed to the roof of their quarantine hotel and raised Mir with a handheld radio, pointing an antenna at the sky. Voices had crackled through a wash of static.

The following morning, already suited up, they had boarded another bus, this one white with blue trim. Their rocket had already been pulled to the launchpad on top of a giant train car, where it waited for them, gray and shining, its white nose cap glowing in the sun. On their short drive over to it, they had watched final farewell videos from their families on small monitors. They had also been given bundles of fragrant wormwood twigs, a goodbye tradition, which they had pressed to their noses. Krikalev had lingered over them for an especially long time, breathing deep.

Their liftoff had been perfect. A little more than two days later, they had docked with Mir. Watching film of it, with the right soundtrack, an audience might have confused the maneuver with ballet.
The two cosmonauts inside, Viktor Afanasiev and Musa Manarov, had greeted their visitors with bread and salt. Krikalev had seemed overwhelmed during the changeover period, those hectic days when all five cosmonauts had remained on Mir. He was often lost in thought and quiet, staring out the window. Earth looked bright and breathtaking from such great heights. All of the planet’s small erosions and scars were invisible. There were only continents and oceans, wrapped in clouds.

Afanasiev, Manarov, and Sharman had returned home, leaving Krikalev and Artsebarski alone in their new world. They had worked in increasing clutter, repairing aerials and docking systems. They had also conducted a long list of experiments. In the downtime, they had listened out for word from home and occasionally spoken with their families. Krikalev had learned that his wife had bought new furniture for their apartment. His boy had gone swimming one day, fishing the next.

Then came the coup attempt. They heard about it on their amateur radio, the same one they’d raised from their hotel, but the short bursts of news did little to convey the reality on the ground. They couldn’t see the violence that came on the heels of darkness, the tanks smashing through roadblocks and over trolley cars, and they couldn’t hear the sirens and the screams, the bottles breaking on the rain-slicked pavement. Even through night’s prism, they couldn’t make out the fires. Suddenly they felt very far away.