Category The Story of Manned Space Stations

Salyut 6 represented the major step forward in space station operations that the Soviets had been planning for some time. Launched on 29 September 1977, it featured a second docking port, as well as an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) hatch. The second docking port was a significant addition because it allowed the station to be resupplied by Progress cargo spacecraft, an essential capability for long-term habitation. It would also allow for the possibility of visiting crews who would dock with the station, stay for about a week, and then return in the older Soyuz leaving the new one for the long-duration crew.

The concept behind the Progress spacecraft was a simple one, and solved the problem that all previous space stations, including Skylab, had encountered. How do you keep a long-duration crew in orbit, when they are eventually going to run out of supplies of food, clothes, and of course, oxygen? The Soyuz spacecraft could only carry so much cargo in addition to its crew, but if the crew, and all of their life support systems were removed, this released a lot more room for cargo. The result was to become the Progress, essentially a leaned down Soyuz meant only for cargo and fuel, and designed only to make a one-way trip. The heat shield was also removed; it was unnecessary because the idea was that once the resident space station crew had unloaded all of the fresh cargo, they would load the craft with all of their unnecessary equipment, and rubbish, and it would then undock and be remotely commanded to re-enter and burn up. This also made the separate descent module unnecessary, and it was instead used as a fuel tank to allow the Progress to replenish the propellant tanks of the space station. In truth, it would become apparent in later years that the Progress did not solve all of a space station supply problems. It could not return anything to Earth obviously, which meant that crews returning to Earth would continue to need to bring back experiment results with them in the Soyuz, which had a limited return weight. It also turned out that not all of a stations unwanted material could be disposed of in a Progress, and that long-lived space stations would accumulate more and more clutter.

The new ability for crews to make short visits to an accupied station opened up the prospect for the first time of visits by cosmonauts from other countries. In a response to the NASA selection, in 1976, of non-pilot mission specialist astronauts for upcoming space shuttle missions, the Soviets launched the Inter-Kosmos pro­gram, with the participation of fraternal communist states, initially Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, and Romania in joint space flights with the Soviet Union. In 1979 three non-communist nations were added to this list, France, Vietnam, and India, and all of these flights would be carried out between 1978 and 1983. This agreement led in 1985 to an expansion of the program to all countries, communist or not, organized by GlavKosmos. This led to countries such as Afghanistan, Austria, Japan, and the United Kingdom agreeing to manned space flights with the Soviet Union. All of this, however, lay in the future, for now the first guest cosmonauts were training to fly on board Salyut 6.

Operations did not start well with the launch of Soyuz 25, which unfortunately could not dock with Salyut 6, probably due to a fault in the Soyuz docking system, and had to return to Earth. This resulted in an upheaval in the schedule, as this first crew had been due to occupy the station for about two months, during which time they would receive the first on-orbit visitors, and also oversee the docking of the first Progress cargo vehicle. This failure forced mission planners to attempt a winter launch, which, for safety reasons, they were not generally keen on. However, Soyuz 26 was launched on 10 December 1977 and docked, this time with the rear port, successfully a day later. This mission would set the pattern for all future space station operations to follow. The crew of Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko remained on the station for a record breaking 96 days. In view of the failure of Soyuz 25 to dock, they carried out an EVA to check the front docking port, during which they found nothing out of the ordinary. They received their first visitors when the crew of Soyuz 27, Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Oleg Makarov, docked to the front port and formed the first four-man crew in history. Dzhanibekov and Makarov departed on 16 January 1978 after a six-day visit, taking the older Soyuz 26 home and leaving the rear docking port available for the first Progress cargo spacecraft. The final com­ponent of modern space station operations was completed with the launch, on 20 January, of the first Progress cargo spacecraft. This docked at the rear port of Salyut 6 two days later. It was relieved of its cargo and loaded with unneeded equipment, rubbish etc., and then pumped fuel into the Salyut’s propulsion tanks. It undocked from the station on 6 February, tested its back-up rendezvous system, and re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere two days later. Again, this would become a standard proce­dure for future space station operations, continuing today with the ISS. This procedure will not change until the ESA’s ATV cargo craft starts operations in 2007.

The second crew of visiting cosmonauts on board Soyuz 28 docked with the rear port on 3 March. Alexei Gubarev was accompanied by the first international Inter – Kosmos cosmonaut, Vladimir Remek from Czechoslovakia. The visitors undocked from the rear port after a flight of nearly eight days, this time in the same Soyuz they had launched in, and landed safely. Soyuz 27 undocked from the front port on 16 March with Romanenko and Grechko aboard. Their flight, which had surpassed the record set by the final U. S. Skylab crew of 84 days, had been a tremendous success;

they had proved every aspect of space station operations and set the path for all future long-duration expeditions.

The second main expedition to Salyut 6 was undertaken by the Soyuz 29 crew of Vladimir Kovalyonok and Alexandr Ivanchenkov. They launched on 15 June 1978, and docked with the front port the next day. They were to receive two Inter-Kosmos crews, one with a cosmonaut from Poland and the other from East Germany, unload and repack three Progress cargo craft, make an EVA to retrieve material samples from the hull of Salyut 6, and swap the newer Soyuz 31 from the rear port to the front port in order to clear the rear for future Progress dockings. They returned to Earth on 2 November after further extending the duration record to 140 days.

Unfortunately, things would not go quite as smoothly for the third expedition. Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin on board Soyuz 32 launched successfully on 25 February 1979, and docked with the front port the next day as per normal. They were expecting to stay for about six and a half months, and apart from working to try

and fix a small leak in one of Salyut’s propellant tanks the mission was preceding as planned. Their first visitors were not so lucky. Soyuz 33 as usual contained an international crew with the guest cosmonaut from Bulgaria, but when they got within range of the station the main engine on their Soyuz misfired, and the docking was aborted. The bitterly disappointed crew made a manual re-entry the next day. This had implications for the long-duration crew. What would happen if their ferry was similarly afflicted? Even if it were not, it would need to be replaced before they could come home; the crew of Soyuz 34 had been due to bring them a new ferry and go home in the older one, but this was now in doubt. In the end it was decided to launch Soyuz 34 unmanned, and use the docked Soyuz 32 to return some samples and experiment results to Earth, also unmanned. The crew then swapped Soyuz 34 to the front port to again allow Progress dockings. The dramas for the resident crew were not yet over. The 10 m diameter KRT-10 radio telescope antenna, which had been deployed from the rear port, became entangled with a fixture on the hull when the crew attempted to jettison it. Therefore, on 15 August, the crew ventured outside to cut the antenna free, doing so with little difficulty. While outside, they and also retrieved sample cassettes from the hull of the station. On 19 August 1979, the crew climbed aboard Soyuz 34 and came home having spent 175 days on board Salyut 6.

Remarkably, the crew for the fourth expedition consisted of Leonid Popov and, making two flights in a row, Valery Ryumin. Ryumin was a last minute replacement for Valentin Lebedev, who had injured a knee shortly before launch. So it was that Ryumin found himself back on board Salyut 6 on 10 April 1980 reading the note that he had left for the next long-duration crew! In contrast to the previous mission, this crew entertained four visiting crews, three Inter-Kosmos and one carrying out the first manned test of the new Soyuz-T spacecraft. On 11 October the main expedition landed safely back on Earth after a mission lasting a record breaking 185 days. This meant that Ryumin had spent 360 days in space, making him the most traveled cosmonaut or astronaut at that time. He would fly again, but not until 1998, and on board a U. S. space shuttle to visit a Russian space station, a joint mission that would never have been predicted in the cold war days of 1980.

The final expedition to Salyut 6 began on 12 March 1981 when Soyuz-T 4 was launched with the crew of Vladimir Kovalyonok and Viktor Savinikh. This was after Soyuz-T 3 had flown a short three-man mission to the vacant station, both to replace some of the systems of Salyut 6, and to verify the three-man capability of the new Soyuz-T. The main expedition was to last for 74 days and receive two visiting Interkosmos crews, both using the older Soyuz spacecraft. The main expedition undocked and landed on 26 May 1981, closing the chapter on the fantastically

successful Salyut 6 station. Later that same year, Cosmos 1267, which had been in orbit since April, docked with the forward port. This helped to prove to engineers the concept of expanding future stations with separately launched modules. Cosmos 1267 was, in fact, a remnant of the Almaz program, as it was one of Vladimir Chelomei’s TKS designs that had been launched on an autonomous mission lasting 57 days before it docked with Salyut 6.

Salyut 6 had been occupied by five long-duration crews for a total of 684 days; it had also been visited 11 times by short-duration crews, 9 of which carried inter­national crewmembers. Salyut 6 was finally de-orbited on 29 July 1982 after four years and ten months in Earth orbit.

Sergei Korolev was the Chief Designer for the Soviet space program, although his identity did not become public until after his death in 1966. He was head of the OKB-1 design bureau that is now known as RKK Energia. In I960 he made the first of many attempts to get the Soviet government to fund a manned space station as a logical progression of the fledgling manned spaceflight program.

On 23 June 1960 Korolev wrote to the Ministry of Defense in an effort to obtain support for a military Orbital Station (OS), on which a decision had been deferred to the end of the year. The station would have a crew of 3-5 and orbit at 350-400 km altitude. Its role would be to conduct military reconnaissance, control other space­craft in orbit, and undertake basic space research. The first version of the station would have a mass of 25-30 tonnes and the second version 60-70 tonnes. Korolev pointed out that his design bureau had already completed a draft project in which 14 work brigades had participated, and so had a detailed plan.

Salyut 6 had been an impressive step forward in space station technology and operations. Salyut 7 was the back-up to Salyut 6 and, therefore, similar in design, but it did have improved systems, and extra comforts for the crews that were likely to be aboard for much longer periods than previously. Personal selection of food items was allowed for the first time, and there was a small refrigerator for the fresh food delivered by Progress. Extra storage was provided, but it would prove to be still not enough as the life of the station lengthened.

Launched on 19 April 1982, Salyut 7 was to have a long life and more resident crews than Salyut 6. The introduction of the updated Soyuz-T spacecraft would allow more flexibility in crew visits owing to its ability to spend more time in space. It was also hoped to achieve the first operational rotation of crews, with a new crew arriving and having the station handed over to them before the old resident crew left. This would save considerable time and resources, as it meant that the station would not have to be powered down and up again by subsequent crews.

Soyuz-T 5 was launched on 13 May 1982 with the first resident crew of Valentin Lebedev and Anatoli Berezovoi—this was defined as the EO-1 crew. They were initially given light duties for their first few days in orbit as they worked their way through the tasks required to commission the new station. New experiments were set up, and the crew slowly settled into a daily routine as they awaited their first visitors. Soyuz-T 6 was launched just over a month later, and carried the first crewmember from outside the Inter-Kosmos organization, Frenchman Jean-Loup Chretien, who was to carry out a series of medical experiments. As did short-term visitors, he wore himself out, shortening his sleep periods to maximize his time in orbit, and by the time Soyuz-T 6 undocked from Salyut 7 to return to Earth, he was exhausted. However, the resident crew of Lebedev and Berezovoi were just as tired, because hosting visitors was hard work, as previous crews had found, and ground controllers gave them a few days off to allow them time to recover. In addition, the two men did not really get on that well; they had not bonded during training for the mission, but for some reason

they had not been reassigned to separate missions. Two men aboard a small space station is never going to be an easy period of time to get through, particularly when it is for such a long period of time, but this pair seemed to exploit every excuse for arguing with one another, even over trivial things. The only break for the crew came

when visitors arrived, and the next set of visitors would be more welcome than most, because it included a woman.

Soyuz-T 7 established another space triumph of sorts for the Soviets. Svetlana Savitskaya was the second woman in space after Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. It was obviously no coincidence that NASA had announced earlier in 1982 that Sally Ride would fly on board the space shuttle’s seventh mission. The Soviets wished to trump NASA’s latest public relations scoop, and assigned Savitskaya to the flight at relatively short notice. However, it is unlikely that the more liberal American Sally Ride would have accepted the flowers and floral apron that were presented to Savitskaya by her male colleagues. Her flight was relatively short, lasting only seven days before the visitors returned to Earth in the older Soyuz-T 5, leaving Soyuz-T 7 for the long-duration crew.

Alone again, the two men struggled to get along; there was a momentary panic when Berezovoi felt unwell one day during an exercise period. His illness threatened the length of the mission, and both men felt angry that having put up with each other for all this time, they might have to come home early. Ground controllers recom­mended that Berezovoi be given an injection of atropine to ease the pain, and this helped, causing him to feel much better by the next day; the mission could continue. Finally the crew had reached their personal limits, and they were allowed to return home. They had set a new endurance record of 211 days, but their landing and recovery did not go completely smoothly, as they had to spend the night on board a disabled, and cold, helicopter. This was the last straw for the two men, and in the twenty odd years since their joint flight, they have barely spoken to each other.

The launch of Soyuz-T 8 on the 20 April 1983 did not go entirely to plan. The crew of Aleksandr Serebrov, Gennady Strekalov, and Vladimir Titov were unable to dock with Salyut 7 because one of the spacecraft’s rendezvous antennas was damaged at launch; they returned to Earth on the 22 April. Soyuz-T 9 docked with the station on the 28 June carrying Vladimir Lyakhov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov. As the next long-duration crew, EO-2, they were due to receive visitors, but unfortunately the launch of Soyuz-T 10-A, again crewed by Strekalov and Titov, was aborted and the launch escape system used when the booster caught fire during the last moments of the countdown. Thus, Strekalov and Titov failed for the second time that year to get to Salyut 7, where they were supposed to add solar arrays to the station. This task would now fall to the resident crew. Following on from the success of Cosmos 1267 with Salyut 6, Cosmos 1443 had docked with the station prior to the arrival of the Soyuz-T 9 crew, and was loaded with 3.5 tonnes of supplies. During its stay, Cosmos 1443 was used to provide attitude control for the station, and to boost Salyut 7’s orbit. The re-entry module would later turn up at a Southerby’s auction in 1993. The crew set about unloading just after they arrived; they then loaded the TKS’ re-entry module with experiment results, which returned to Earth in August. They carried out the spacewalks to install the solar panels (which were cargo in the large module) just a few weeks before their return to Earth on 23 November, after 150 days in space, having received no visitors. At around this time it was noticed by the resident crew, and ground controllers, that Salyut 7 was leaking fuel from its propellant tanks, severely limiting the station’s maneuvrability. Plans were made for the next crew to attempt to fix the problem, rather than abandon Salyut 7 at this early stage.

The TOSZ—Heavy Orbital Station of the Earth—was Korolev’s 1961 project for a large military space station. The draft project was completed on 3 May 1961, and marked the beginning of a long struggle throughout the 1960s to get such a station built and launched. Such a station required, of course, the N-1 rocket, the only rocket with anything like the payload lifting capacity required for such a large and heavy object.

1961— THE OS-1—SERGEI KOROLEV

Work on the OS-1 began on 25 September 1962. Following a meeting between President Nikita Khrushchev and the chief designers at Pitsunda, Khrushchev ordered that a 75-tonne manned platform with nuclear weapons be placed into low-Earth orbit (dubbed elsewhere as “Battlestar Khrushchev’’). Korolev was authorized to proceed immediately to upgrade the three-stage N-1 vehicle to a maximum 75-tonne payload in order to launch the station. By 1965 the mock-up of the huge station had been completed. By 1969 the OS-1 had evolved to this configuration, as described in the official RKK Energia history. In 1991 engineers from Energia and other design bureaus taught a course on “Russian Manned Space” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Vladimir Karrask, the first chief designer for the UR-500 (Proton), told of a shroud that he designed for the N-1. The shroud was cylindrical—6 m diameter x 30 m long—with a very “Proton-like” blunt conical top. He indicated that it had flown on the N-1. Another engineer, S. K. Shaevich, stated that flight hardware (including a back-up) was ready for the N-1 flights. There are those who believe that the last two N-1 flights had the Karrask shroud, and possibly the OS-1 station. It is not known if any OS-1 stations actually reached any stage of completion. Although plans for the OS-1 had to be constantly deferred until the N-1 booster proved itself, this did not prevent the design team from undertaking an even more grandiose study—the MKBS—in which OS-1 derived modules would form mere subunits of a huge space complex. At any rate the termination of the N-1 launch vehicle program ended any possibility of launching the station—unless it was reincarnated as the “Mir 2” jumbo space station that was planned for launch by the Energia booster in the 1990s.

Having deciding to concentrate on the space shuttle program after the three visits to Skylab NASA lacked a space station of its own. However, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA developed the Spacelab. This made available a pick and mix of a pressurized module and open pallets that sat in the shuttle payload bay to allow scientific experiments for the duration of a shuttle mission. It was obviously nowhere near as good as the long-duration experiments that could be carried out aboard the Salyut stations, but it was the closest thing possible with the space shuttle. Critics pointed out that it was impossible to make the shuttle a com­pletely gravity-free environment, as the movements of the relatively large crew, plus thrusters firings, would interfere with the results of many experiments. The project began in 1973 when NASA and ESA signed an agreement that outlined the com­ponents and responsibilities of the Spacelab project. The first engineering model of a pallet arrived at NASA in 1980, and went on to be used on the shuttle’s second flight in 1981. Most Spacelab missions could only last up to 10 days, but NASA added the Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) pallet to the shuttle and in 1992 STS-50, a Space – lab mission on Columbia, flew a 13-day mission. The longest shuttle mission, STS-80

lasted for almost 18 days, and this represented the limit of the shuttle’s duration. In total twenty-four Spacelab missions would be flown on the shuttle, seventeen of them with the pressurized lab module, the first of which, STS-9, was launched on 28 November 1983 and lasted for 10 days.

Whilst not strictly speaking a space station component, Spacelab did shape the way NASA planned and undertook its science based missions. The crew’s schedule for these missions was extremely tight, with not a minute wasted; of course on a short mission with around the clock shifts of crew members it is acceptable and sensible to plan this way, but it would do nothing to help NASA plan for future space station operations, when it simply would not be possible to plan every last minute of the day.

The Soviets made maximum use of their new ferry craft capabilities on the 8 February 1984 with the launch of Soyuz-T 10. This time the crew numbered three due to the inclusion of a physician, Dr. Oleg Atkov, who would monitor the long – duration crew (EO-3) of Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov during their record attempt. Kizim and Solovyov had been trained for several EVAs to attempt to fix the leaking fuel tanks. Eventually they would carry out a record six spacewalks in their efforts to fix the leaks and add solar arrays to the station. Salyut 7’s future had been assured by the skillful efforts of the cosmonauts and wisdom of the planners on the ground. Two crews of visiting cosmonauts included the first Indian in space Rakesh Sharma, and the return of Svetlana Savitskaya who would make a spacewalk this

time. Savitskaya was accompanied by Buran chief test pilot Igor Volk, who was using this flight to test a home coming Buran pilot’s ability to land his craft on a runway at the end of a long flight. Upon landing on 29 July, Volk immediately flew a MiG fighter to 21 km before landing with dead engines to simulate a Buran landing. The three-man EO-3 crew landed on the 2 October having set a new duration record of 237 days in space, which would be the longest single-crew stay aboard Salyut 7. Vladimir Dzhanibekov, who had commanded the Soyuz-T 12 mission with Savits­kaya and Volk, could not have had any idea that he would be returning to the station in less than a year, or why.

The year 1985 was to be a somewhat more complicated and dramatic year for Salyut 7 and its crews. It began when Mission Control lost all contact with the station on 11 February; it had lost all attitude control and had gone into free drift mode, making it impossible for a Soyuz ferry to automatically dock with the station. The crew of Soyuz-T 13 were dispatched on 6 June with Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh to try and determine what had gone wrong. When they rendez­voused, the station appeared to be undamaged, although it was clearly without power, there being no lights, and the solar arrays pointing in differing directions. The station was slowly rolling around its long axis, but Dzhanibekov was able to line up the Soyuz with the aid of docking controls that had been installed in the orbital module for just such a purpose. They managed to dock, and entered the dead station; it was dark and cold as it had been completely powered off. By the crews own crude estimate, the interior temperature was about — 10°C, an estimate reached by spitting on the bulkhead and timing how long it took to freeze! Clearly, they would have to wrap up to work in these conditions, and return intermittently to the Soyuz to warm up. To attempt to bring the station back to life, the crew fitted spare batteries, replacing the existing ones that would not charge back up. In the process of this work they discovered a faulty charge sensor. This sensor determined if a battery was full or in need of charging, and it had failed in such a way that the computer thought that all of the batteries were fully charged and stopped trying to charge them; as a result all of the batteries went flat, and the station died. If a crew had been on board, the faulty sensor would have been immediately detected, and replaced well before the station lost all power. Once this sensor was replaced, the task of recharging the batteries began, and the station slowly came back to life. The crew had saved the station, once again proving the value of humans in space, and proving that the Soviets were now very comfortable with repairing their spacecraft, rather than just launching new ones when something went wrong. A fact that they would be keen to underline when failures began to undermine the fledgling partnership with NASA.

Soyuz-T 14 arrived on 18 September with Georgi Grechko, Vladimir Vasyutin, and Aleksandr Volkov aboard. Vasyutin and Volkov had trained with Savinykh as the original long-duration (EO-4) crew, so when Soyuz-T 13 landed on 26 September it left behind the EO-4 crew to begin their mission. Unfortunately, during October Vasyutin became very ill; his temperature was very high (about 40°C), and the ground advised him to rest in the hope that the fever would pass. It did not get any better; in fact he seemed to get worse, and Valeriy Ryumin ordered an immediate end to the mission. In actual fact, it took the crew about a week to prepare the station for autonomous flight and return to Earth, by which time Vasyutin had become very ill indeed. Upon his return he was immediately taken to hospital, where he took a month to recover from what turned out to be a prostate infection. It was an unfortunate end to a promising long-duration mission by Savinykh, who was very disappointed to have missed the duration record. It was also unfortunate for the future of Salyut 7, which had clearly reached the end of its useful life. The rescue mission had also used a Soyuz that was to have been utilized by an all female crew commanded by Svetlana Savitskaya with two flight engineers Yekaterina Ivanova and Yelena Dobrokvashina. After the cancelation of their flight it was hoped that they might fly to Mir, but Savitskaya became pregnant in 1986, and the idea was abandoned. Ivanova and Dobrokvashina were never assigned to another mission, and both left the cosmonaut corps in 1993.

The EO-4 mission was to be the last planned long-duration flight to Salyut 7; its successor Mir had been launched on the 19 February 1986, and it seemed as if Salyut 7’s operational life was over. However, a unique mission was planned that would see the crew of Soyuz-T 15, Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov, activating the new Mir station, and then flying their Soyuz to dock with Salyut 7 to complete and collect the work not finished by the EO-4 crew. So on 5 May they undocked from Mir after six weeks aboard and transferred to Salyut 7 the next day. After 50 days aboard Salyut 7 they returned to Mir for a further 25 days before returning to Earth on the 16 July after a truly unique mission.

Salyut 7 stayed in orbit until 7 February 1991 when it re-entered the atmosphere and was destroyed. The stage, however, had been set, for Mir was now operational and offered much more flexibility than the previous Salyut stations. The best was yet to come.

The Soviets had long realised that in order to put many of their space projects into production they would require a heavy lift launch vehicle. Design studies had begun a few years earlier, but in September 1962 the official go ahead was given by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to begin the program in earnest.

The original design requirements for this giant rocket called for it to be capable of launching 75 tonnes of payload to orbit, and this dictated that the dimensions of the rocket were huge. It stood 344 feet tall, its first stage comprised 30 engines producing 43,000,000 kN of thrust, and it weighed 2,735 tonnes. The requirements were initially formed by the needs of the OS-1, but these requirements grew in the years before its first test launch in 1969. Building work began in March 1963 to create a complex of two launch pads for the giant rocket, and they were completed in 1967. The growing requirements of the Soviet lunar missions put continuous pressure on the already over-burdened N-1 design, and Korolev, and as of 1966 his successor Vasily Mishin, were forced to ask more and more of the stages and the engines that powered them. The N-1 was eventually to be capable of launching 95 tonnes; 20 more than originally specified.

The very name Mir seems to conjure images of disaster, and words like beleaguered and trouble-torn were usually associated with it, for this was the only way that this outstanding space station was ever mentioned in the popular news programs and newspapers. This image was reinforced in popular culture by Mir’s depiction in movies such as “Armageddon”. The truth, of course, was somewhat different; the facts are simple, Mir was in orbit for 15 years, and played host to over 100 cosmo­nauts and astronauts. It is true that in later years it required more maintenance than in its earlier years, most things do, but its legacy will stand for many years to come. The incidents that led to Mir’s unfortunate reputation are described in Chapter 10.

The name Mir is variously translated, but can mean “peace’’, “community”, or “new world’’; but perhaps most significant was the fact that it had a name at all, as opposed to being referred to as “Salyut 8’’. However, it soon became clear that this station was meant to be a new beginning for Soviet space stations, with a long life planned for it. Mir would embody everything that had been learned previously, and hence with a new beginning came a new name. It did not hurt that the new name would strike a welcome cord with the new General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Unusually, Mir was launched whilst its predecessor Salyut 7 was still in orbit, raising speculation that some kind of joint operations were intended, and maybe even a docking between the two. Its launch in February 1986, barely a month after the hammer blow of the Challenger launch disaster, highlighted the Soviet Union’s relentless presence in space, and seemed to press home, cruelly, its continued progress in long-term space flight.

Mir was different from the earlier Salyut stations in an important way. Its most important addition was the four docking ports arranged around the radial axis of the front end. These would allow the station to be expanded with science modules. This, in turn, meant that the core module or base block, as it was known, had more space; it was primarily a habitat module for the two or three permanent crew. The stations

solar panels were larger than those on Salyut 7, and more panels were to be fitted shortly by spacewalking cosmonauts. The computers on board Mir were sufficiently advanced as to allow the crew more time for scientific activities; in fact, the whole station’s design reflected the fact that this station was meant to last longer than any of its predecessors.

Mir was to be activated by the crew of Soyuz-T 15, who were launched just a month after Mir was established in orbit. Two experienced cosmonauts, commander Leonid Kizim and engineer Vladimir Solovyov, were selected to not only carry out the first mission on Mir, but also to visit Salyut 7 and finish the outstanding experi­ments on that station. Once they had rendezvoused and docked with Mir, the crew found a much roomier cabin than the previous Salyut stations, which both crew­members had spent considerable time aboard. Although the physical dimensions of Mir’s base block were about the same as previous stations, the interior was much less cluttered—a reflection of the plan to add modules later for scientific research. For the first time the crew had their own individual cabins, with sleeping bag, window, and storage for personal items. The bathroom offered some privacy, and a kind of wash basin, and the table at which the crew would eat was a great improvement over earlier facilities. In all, Mir was designed with long-duration space flight in mind, and offered a level of comfort not seen on a space station since Skylab. The lessons learnt from previous station operations was also evident in the plan for the working day; it would follow a more usual five days a week schedule—with a normal working day’s dura­tion and with time of in the evening for the crew to relax or pursue their own interests. The crews were also left free to determine their own schedules for the day; a marked difference from NASA’s “plan every minute’’ approach to space flight. The Russians

seemed to understand that long-duration missions were like running a marathon; the crew had to pace themselves to keep their efficiency levels up as well as their spirits.

Kizim and Solovyov spent the next several days preparing Mir for its mission; they unpacked an already docked Progress, and generally readied Mir for long-term space flight. One Progress left and another arrived to continue the process of activation, and to ensure that Mir’s propellant supplies were topped up. As the beginning of May approached, the crew put Mir back into an autonomous operating mode; they were leaving, but not for good, they were going to Salyut 7. Transfer between two orbiting space stations had never been achieved before, or since. On 5 May 1986 Soyuz-T 15 undocked from Mir to begin the one-day transfer to Salyut 7, docking with the veteran station was easily achieved, and in fact the whole process was made to look routine. The plan was to activate Salyut 7 once more, and finish off the remaining experiments on board the station. Toward the end of the month, the crew ventured outside Salyut 7 for the first of two spacewalks to retrieve a number of external experiments and to test the deployment mechanism for a structure that would eventually be built on Mir. By the end of June the crew was ready to return Salyut 7 to solo flight, and take as much equipment back to Mir as they could pack into the orbital module of their Soyuz; they had been on board Salyut 7 for 50 days. After a trouble-free return trip to Mir, the crew settled into a routine once more, concentrating on installing the equipment transferred from Salyut 7, and on their exercise regimes in preparation for the return to Earth. It had been assumed that the crew would hand over in orbit to the next, but apparently the next crew were not yet ready, and in truth Kizim and Solovyov had run out of things to do. On 16 July they landed after an historic and successful mission that had seen them occupy two space stations for a total of 125 days.

In fact it was some time before Mir was to be occupied again. The first expansion module for Mir, called Kvant, had suffered a few delays as it was modified from its original design as an adjunct to Salyut 7. There had also been delays with the crew, originally scheduled to consist of Vladimir Titov and Aleksandr Serebrov, when Serebrov failed a medical exam they had to be replaced by their back-ups Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveikin. Titov did not seem to be a lucky man; so far his career had consisted of a failed docking attempt with Salyut 7, and the launch pad abort, and, now he had been removed from a mission through no fault of his own. Many of his cosmonaut colleagues wondered if he was cursed.

When the crew did launch on 6 February 1987, it did so on board an upgraded Soyuz design with features specifically designed for the new orbital outpost. The Soyuz-TM was a necessary upgrade to the existing Soyuz-T craft because of the new rendezvous system used by Mir called Kurs. This new system basically allowed the Soyuz to dock automatically without Mir having to change its own orientation; a great saving of the limited maneuvring fuel available on the station. In addition a new window had been added to the orbital module to allow a crewmember to directly view the upcoming docking, and the interior of both modules had been slimmed down to save weight and give the crew more space.

Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveikin arrived at the station on 7 February 1987, docking with Mir’s front port because a Progress cargo craft was already at the

rear port. It took some time for Laveikin to adapt to life in space; it was his first flight, and he said that it took the best part of a month to feel comfortable in orbit. Romanenko had no such difficulties, he had flown before, spending three months on Salyut 6, and adapted readily to the new station. Once the new crew had settled in they waited for the new module to be launched.

The first laboratory module, Kvant, was launched on 31 March 1987. As it had no propulsion system of its own, it was mated to a modified TKS serving as a tug. The tug was to deliver Kvant to its automatic docking with the rear port of Mir, its permanent home. Kvant made its first docking attempt on 5 April, but something went wrong and the module sailed past the station, with a somewhat concerned crew watching it pass Mir’s portholes. A second attempt a few days later achieved only a soft docking; when the docking probe was retracted the latches failed to lock. It was decided to get the crew to go outside and have a look. So on 11 April they ventured out and found a cloth bag full of hygiene towels that had somehow escaped from the previous Progress craft—it had blocked the hard docking, which was achieved successfully once this object was removed. The crew entered Kvant for the first time on 12 April for an initial inspection. The interior consisted mainly of equipment for an electrophoresis system for processing biological materials, and there was also substantial equipment for carrying out astrophysics observations. In addition to the experimentation equipment, there were additional devices to help with the opera­tion of the station in general. Elektron took water (whether reclaimed vapor, waste water, or urine) and electrolyzed it into oxygen and hydrogen—the oxygen for the life support system and the hydrogen vented into space. Another very important piece of operational equipment were the stations gyrodynes; these spinning flywheels were used to rotate the station as required, rather than using valuable propellant via the thrusters. The future expansion of Mir had originally been planned around the use of more Kvant sized modules, but at some point it had been decided to concentrate on modules more than twice the size at around 20 tonnes each, based on the TKS design.

At first glance, the method for getting a man on the moon would not appear to have much relevance to the future of manned space stations, but in fact the method that was eventually chosen had a profound effect. The choices were simple enough, and there were three methods to be chosen from: Direct Ascent, Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR), or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). There were others, but they were mostly far too risky/crazy to even be considered, the most ludicrous being the proposal that one man be launched to the moon where he would wait until such time that NASA figured out how to get him back!

Direct Ascent seemed the simplest of all: launch a giant rocket straight at the moon, without pausing in Earth orbit, land on the moon, and launch straight back to Earth. However, there were drawbacks, first, the rocket would be massive, far larger than the Saturn V that was eventually selected, and its launch facilities would be equally large and demanding. Second, the crew would launch at the top of this massive stack on their backs, as had been the case with Mercury and Gemini, which would mean that they would have to land on the moon in the same way; in other words they would not be able to see where they were landing. Various contraptions were devised to allow the crew (and their instrument panels) to swivel to an upright position for the lunar landing, but none seemed very practical, and of course the instrument panels would have to carry all of the information for lift-off, translunar coast, and landing, which would pose a daunting challenge to design and to operate. Third, imagine backing a vehicle of the size of an Atlas rocket down to the lunar surface; even if you managed it, you would be faced with a trek down a very long ladder to get to the surface.

The most supported mode initially was that of EOR; certainly it was supported strongly by the Marshall Space Flight Center under the directorship of von Braun. Cynics suggested that they supported this mode because it would need several rocket launches, and rockets were, of course, the responsibility of Marshall. This mode basically consisted of two or more launches into Earth orbit, where the moon bound vehicle would be assembled and fueled before setting off for the moon. It had the benefit that all rendezvous operations would take place in Earth orbit, allowing an immediate abort option. The downside was that it was more complicated due to its reliance on multiple launches, orbital rendezvous, dockings, assembly, and refuelling. However, EOR naturally included the option of building a staging post or space station to act as an assembly point for the moon ship; certainly this was favored by von Braun himself. Had this happened, our space station story may have had a very different beginning for NASA.

The third mode option, LOR, was a late comer, being first proposed in I960 by a man named John Houbolt from the Langley Research Center to almost anyone who would listen to him, including all of the potential sub-contractors, and many within NASA. In June 1962 von Braun put his weight behind the LOR plan, and then in July NASA announced that would adopt LOR as the primary option for Project Apollo. It had the advantage that it would require only one launch vehicle which would contain all of the components required for the mission, and NASA chose the Saturn V to serve this role. The downside was that it required a rendezvous and docking in moon orbit where there was no abort option. Also the Lunar Module (LM) only had one ascent engine; if it failed, the crew of two would have a longer stay on the moon’s surface than anticipated. However, the biggest advantage was that it could be implemented much more rapidly than the other two modes, and therefore get men on the moon within Kennedy’s deadline. Nevertheless, LOR left NASA with nothing to build on. Had the challenge from Kennedy not

arisen, there was a much more logical, albeit slower, way of getting man to the moon.

On the 15 May 1997 the Soviet Union achieved something that had eluded it for many years, the launch of a heavy lift booster. As we have seen in earlier chapters the ill-fated N-1 moon rocket endured four failures before its cancelation, but the brand new Energia rocket was launched successfully first time. The payload for its maiden launch seemed a very simple one at first glance. The Soviets reported that it was a mock-up of a manufacturing and material processing platform known as Polyus, future versions of which would be used either as add-on modules for existing space stations, or as free-flying platforms for particular missions. It had a mass of about 80 tonnes and was slightly larger than the existing Mir base block. Unfortunately, in

this case the platform did not perform as designed; whilst the Energia rocket per­formed perfectly, the payload fired its own insertion engine at the wrong orientation and propelled itself back toward the Earth, destroying itself in the process.

Equally unfortunately, all of the above description of the payload from the Soviets was totally inaccurate. Polyus was indeed its name, and it did weigh about 80 tonnes, but in actual fact Polyus was a military orbital weapons platform proto­type, a system that apparently Soviet Premier Gorbachev had ordered not to be launched in order not to jeopardize his delicate negotiations with U. S. President Reagan. Basically, Polyus was the Soviet’s response to Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strat­egic Defense Initiative. It consisted of many pre-existing space components like a TKS tug, which was similar in design to the FGB or Functional Cargo Block that would be launched as Zarya, the first component of the International Space Station (ISS) many years later. It was also thought to include defensive armaments, and test targets that could be released to test its on-board weaponry. None of these features were ever confirmed, and in fact very little information on this “battle platform’’ has ever come to light. The answers lie at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for anyone that wishes to look.

With NASA now enjoying great success with their manned spaceflight program, the U. S. Air Force wanted to be more involved. Their earlier project DynaSoar, which

was to have been a manned orbital space plane, was in budgetary limbo, and NASA had not selected as many Air Force candidates for astronaut training as the top brass would have liked. Air Force manned space projects were not new: before Project Mercury it had created the “Man In Space Soonest” or MISS program, but this had been ignored when President Eisenhower decided in 1958 that he wanted manned spaceflight to be handled by a civilian agency, and established NASA.

In 1962, the USAF began to look closely at the proposed Gemini program, and realised that it held great potential to be modified for Air Force use, it had the added bonus that it would be tested first by NASA and it would be ready to fly much earlier than their own DynaSoar. With the addition of a cylindrical pressurized habitat that would be launched attached to the bottom of a modified Gemini spacecraft, the idea grew into MODS, or the Manned Orbital Development Station. However, even this interim project would not be ready early enough in the eyes of the Air Force brass, and it was proposed to fly a number of Gemini missions, in partnership with NASA, under the banner of “Blue Gemini”. Unfortunately, the potential of this joint pro­gram was undermined when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara demanded that not only should the Air Force take over the entire Gemini program, but all future low-Earth-orbit missions as well. NASA officials were naturally aghast at this pros­pect, and protested strongly that such a move would destroy America’s plans to land on the moon by the end of the decade. Perhaps more surprisingly, senior USAF officers were similarly opposed to this plan, because they did not want their interim plans for a Blue Gemini, which they viewed purely as a means of gaining flight experience, to interfere with the larger DynaSoar project for which they had great hopes. Upon hearing of the Air Force’s objections McNamara appeared to back down, and a new agreement was reached which merely allowed the installation of Air Force experiments on NASA Gemini flights. No sooner had this been agreed, McNamara took his revenge for the USAF’s lack of support as he saw it, and cancelled both Project MODS and Blue Gemini. In fact these were just two of thirteen new projects for which the Air Force had sought funding in January 1963, and McNamara canceled them all, bringing to mind something about a secretary scorned! In December 1963 he rounded it all off by canceling DynaSoar as well. A bone was thrown to the Air Force, however, in the form of a new project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). Essentially, MOL was MODS reborn. MOL was to be launched with its crew in a Gemini capsule, to be used once, and then discarded.

It was not until August 1965 that official funding for MOL came through when President Johnson allocated $1.5 billion to the program. With the program now in development, it was decided to begin the construction of launch facilities. MOL called for a base that could launch the vehicle into a polar orbit, a first for manned spaceflight, and so Vandenberg Air Force base on the California coast was chosen. Construction began in March 1966 of Space Launch Complex 6, or Slick 6 as it became known. The first real success of the MOL program came in November that same year when an already flown Gemini spacecraft, that had been modified to have a hatch installed in its heatshield, was launched not from Vandenberg but from Cape Canaveral atop of a Titan IIIC booster with a Titan II propellant tank standing in for the MOL beneath the capsule. The capsule was successfully recovered and repre­sented the first reusable spacecraft launch and recovery. However, by the end of that first year, despite continuing progress, the program was faltering under the load of ever increasing costs, and a falling budget. Also becoming a problem was the ever increasing weight of the MOL combination, which in turn required the man-rated version of the Titan IIIC, known as the Titan IIIM, to be upgraded with additional segments to its solid rocket boosters. However, despite the program’s difficulties, progress was being made, Slick 6 was nearing completion, and the Air Force had recruited 14 astronauts.

The MOL pilots were recruited in three groups in much the same way that NASA appointed its astronauts. The first group, which was chosen in 1965, consisted of eight pilots; six from the U. S. Air Force, and perhaps surprisingly, two from the U. S. Navy. They were:

Michael J. Adams, USAF Albert H. Crews, USAF John L. Finley, USN Richard E. Lawyer, USAF Lachlan Macleay, USAF Francis G. Neubeck, USAF James M. Taylor, USAF Richard H. Truly, USN

This group was different from the NASA astronaut selections in that they were all active military, and were all pilots, a moniker that they retained rather than calling themselves astronauts. All were handpicked from a list of Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) students, instructors, and graduates by Chuck Yeager, the ARPS commandant.

The second group were selected the following year, and consisted of five more pilots:

Robert F. (Bob) Overmyer, USMC Henry W. (Hank) Hartsfield, USAF Robert L. Crippen, USN Karol J. Bobko, USAF Charles Gordon Fullerton, USAF

Again, one year later, in 1967, a third and final group was chosen, only four pilots this time:

Robert T. Herres, USAF Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., USAF Dr. Donald H. Peterson, USAF James A. Abrahamson, USAF

Of these fourteen pilots nearly all would go on to continue their careers with some distinction. From the first group, Mike Adams left the MOL program and transferred to the USAF X-15 program where he successfully completed six flights before he was killed on his seventh flight after the aircraft experienced technical difficulties that put it into a spin at about 206,000 ft. Adams recovered from this spin, but the aircraft disintegrated under the 15 g loads and fell from the sky. Richard Lawyer left and had a distinguished test pilot career, before re-entering the MOL story toward the end of his life as we will discuss later. Robert Lawrence would have been the first African American in space, but he was killed in 1967 whilst flying in the backseat of an F104 on an ARPS mission to practise X-15-type landing approaches. The pilot of the aircraft, Major Harvey Royer, misjudged his approach and hit the runway hard, the undercarriage collapsing and launching the aircraft back into the air, now ablaze at its rear. It landed 2,000 ft further down the runway and disintegrated as it bounced once more. Both pilots ejected successfully, but Lawrence’s parachute failed to deploy, and he was killed—Major Royer survived the accident.

The MOL program received a shock in June 1969. All of the major program officials fully realized that the program was late and over budget, and they certainly feared that when the budgets were announced that would be left short, but it seems that no-one had actually considered complete cancellation of the project, which is what President Richard Nixon did. The MOL pilots were offered the opportunity to transfer to NASA. Seven took up the offer, and all went on to become important members of the space shuttle program. Richard Truly flew STS-2 and STS-8 before retiring from NASA, and later became the 8th NASA Administrator between 1989 and 1992. Robert Crippen was the pilot of the very first space shuttle flight aboard Columbia in 1981, and went on to fly two more missions as shuttle commander. Ironically he was to command the first mission of the space shuttle from the same Vandenberg Slick 6 launch complex that MOL was to have launched from, but that mission was canceled after the Challenger accident, and Crippen retired from NASA. He too later returned in a management capacity, acting as Director of the Johnson Space Center between 1992 and 1995. Karol Bobko also flew the shuttle three times, once as pilot and twice as commander. Bobko is still involved in the spaceflight business as Vice President of SpaceHab. Gordon Fullerton still works for NASA as a research pilot. He flew Enterprise in the Approach and Landing tests, and later on STS-3 and STS-51F, the latter a Spacelab mission which to this date holds the distinction of being the only in-flight abort of the shuttle program. Henry Hartsfield was another to fly the shuttle three times, once as pilot on STS-4, and twice when he commanded STS-41D, the first flight of Discovery, and STS-61A, a Spacelab mission that was the first in history to have an eight-person crew. Unfortunately, Bob Overmeyer was killed in March 1996 whilst piloting an aerobatic aircraft; but he had successfully flown two shuttle flights, his first as pilot on board the first opera­tional shuttle flight, STS-5, and the second in command of flight STS-51B, a Spacelab mission. Don Peterson flew just one mission on the space shuttle, STS-6, and was the only member of his group not to fly as pilot but as mission specialist. However, his mission specialist designation allowed him also to be the only member of the group to carry out a spacewalk.

Colonel Richard Lawyer re-enters our story in June of 2005, when artefacts from the abandoned MOL program were found at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A room at the launch complex 5/6 museum that had apparently not been opened for many years was being checked by security officers when two blue MOL spacesuits that had been used for training were found to be in almost perfect condition, one belonged to Lt. Col. Richard Lawyer. Other MOL spacesuits are on display at the USAF Museum in Dayton Ohio, and at the Johnson Space Center. The two newly discovered suits were donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Unfortunately Colonel Lawyer died later that same year. To the very end he had kept his vow to keep his country’s secrets. While very forthcoming about general aspects of the MOL program, he would never say a word about its actual mission. He would simply say, “I am not at liberty to deny or confirm the reported mission for MOL.’’