A WALK OUTSIDE

Rollout of Voskhod 2, atop its R-7 booster, to Gagarin’s Start occurred on 17 March, with an anticipated launch the following morning. That same day, data from the just-landed Cosmos 59 proved encouraging: during re-entry, despite the presence of the airlock attachment ring, the rate of rotation of the capsule never exceeded 40­100 degrees per second, well within design tolerances for both the crew and the parachute deployment mechanism. By the evening, intense rumours were circulating in Moscow of the impending flight of what was dubbed a ‘space bus’, but about which very little else was known.

Three cosmonauts suited up in the small hours of 18 March, one of them – Yevgeni Khrunov, who had trained for both Belyayev’s and Leonov’s positions – ready to take over from either prime crew member if needed. He was not needed on this occasion, but his spacewalking skills would be put to the test four years hence, when he embarked on a far riskier endeavour: to transfer between two orbiting Soyuz capsules in a pressurised suit. In his autobiography, Leonov recalled the customs he and Belyayev observed before launch: a breakfast of boiled eggs, a small sip of champagne, a brief moment of reflection with Yuri Gagarin and Korolev and, finally, at the pad, the time-honoured tradition of urinating on the wheel of the bus. Belyayev, the commander, was first aboard Voskhod 2, followed by Leonov. Also loaded into the capsule were a few personal items for the cosmonauts. Leonov’s stash included a sketchpad and a set of coloured crayons. His childhood dream to become an artist would figuratively and literally reach new heights on this flight. He had already decided not to tell his wife of the spacewalk, instead informing her vaguely that he and Belyayev would be embarking on ‘‘a particularly complex and challenging mission’’. Indeed they would be.

Launch occurred at 10:00 am Moscow Time and the spacecraft entered orbit shortly afterwards. The entire ascent was flawless, although the first minute in particular proved stressful, with both men fully aware that they had no means of emergency escape. ‘‘As the engine of the rocket beneath us ignited, we felt a light vibration start to build,’’ wrote Leonov. ‘‘Lifting away from the launch pad, we were pushed back into our seats. Now we felt the full force of the rocket propelling us upward through the Earth’s atmosphere. It felt as if we were being lifted vertically by a speeding train. From this moment on we were required to report constantly on how we felt.’’

Leonov’s first glimpse of Earth from the edge of space actually disappointed him, since it did not appear much different to the vistas he had seen from the MiG – 15s he flew at Chuguyev almost a decade earlier. ‘‘I had expected to see the curvature of the horizon against a dark sky, but we were not yet high enough for that,’’ he wrote. ‘‘Ten minutes into the flight, at an altitude of almost 500 km, our capsule separated from the rocket with a loud flap. We were flying far beyond the confines of the Earth’s atmosphere.’’ At this instant came weightlessness, which manifested itself in a flurry of loose objects drifting serenely through the cabin… and by an absolute, ethereal silence. In fact, with the R-7’s roar gone, it was now so quiet inside Voskhod 2 that the two men could even hear the clock on their instrument panel ticking.

‘‘For two or three minutes,’’ continued Leonov, ‘‘it was extremely uncomfortable. I had the feeling that I was suspended upside down, which is a well-documented phenomenon: once the force of gravity ceases, the senses become confused. But we quickly got used to it and started going through a complex series of checks to verify that all systems inside the capsule were operating normally.’’ Shortly afterwards, Belyayev requested permission to extend the Volga airlock and promptly activated switches which pumped air into small rubber tubes running along the length of the chamber, inflating it from a coiled 74 cm to a fully-unfurled 2 m. Leonov, meanwhile, busily strapped bulky breathing apparatus, carrying sufficient oxygen for 90 minutes outside, onto his ‘Berkut’ (‘Golden Eagle’) space suit. When he was ready, Belyayev clapped him on the back and wished him luck.

In a similar manner to the ensemble already in the works for Gemini, the Berkut was of the purest white, ‘‘to reflect all possible sunlight,’’ Time magazine told its readers, ‘‘for maintaining tolerable temperatures is one of the major problems in the design of space suits. Because sunlight in space is twice as strong as at the bottom of the atmosphere and contains ultraviolet rays that quickly weaken many materials, the outer layer of a space suit must not only ward off light and heat, but must be proof against ultraviolet”. Equally hazardous was the intense cold, as Leonov passed from the direct sunlight of orbital daytime to the deepest black of frigid orbital nighttime, requiring the Berkut to perform adequately at both extremes. Not surprisingly, Time added, the Soviets had failed to describe the materials from which their suit had been manufactured, only admitting to its colour and general appearance. ft would be many years before the Berkut was revealed in its entirety.

‘‘Once inside the airlock,’’ Leonov wrote, ‘‘f closed the hatch and waited for the nitrogen to be purged from my blood. To avoid suffering from what divers call ‘the bends’, f had to maintain the same partial pressure of oxygen in my blood once f emerged into space. With the pressure inside the airlock finally equal to zero pressure outside the spacecraft, f reported f was ready to exit.’’ He was ‘lying’ on his back when the outermost airlock hatch opened, revealing the grandeur of Earth in its entirety for the first time. Years later, he would lucidly recall those first few, heart­racing moments as he pushed his upper body out of the airlock and, safely attached to Voskhod 2 by a 15 m tether, into open space. As the capsule neared orbital sunrise, he beheld the vast, deep blue panorama of the Mediterranean, together with the familiar shapes of Greece, ftaly and, as Voskhod headed eastwards, the Crimea, the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains and the mighty Volga, largest river in Europe and national waterway of Russia.

Leonov brought his feet to the rim of the airlock and held tightly to a handrail for an instant, before letting go. The exhilarating feeling of being the first human being ever to do this – to actually leave the confines of a spacecraft – would remain with him with surreal clarity for decades; he felt both insignificant and overwhelmed by the importance of his achievement. His departure from the airlock came at 11:34:51 am Moscow Time, barely 94 minutes after launch, just before Voskhod 2 reached the radio horizon of the Yevpatoriya ground station in the Crimea. ft was here that the ghostly images of humanity’s first spacewalk were received.

‘‘Dim and probably purposely fuzzy shots showed the round white top of a helmet poking slowly out of a hatch,’’ Time magazine reported a week later on 26 March. ‘‘Then came the visored face of a man, followed by his shoulders and arms. He seemed to push something away with his left hand before he moved his left arm back and forth as if to test its freedom. He reached for a handrail and quickly his entire body came clear of the hatch. Now it could be seen that he was dressed in a bulky pressure suit, with cylinders strapped on his back and a thick cable twisting behind him. . . ’’ ft was an image that would trigger dispute from some observers, who

argued that the film had been faked in a terrestrial studio, that Sun-glint angles were not ‘quite right’ for it to be authentic. Rather than expressing disgust, however, Leonov acquiesced that ‘‘the race between our two countries for superiority in space was intense… Personally, I did not believe in all this boasting about who did what first, the Soviet Union or the United States. If you did it, you did it’’.

Leonov may not have cared eitherway, but Leonid Brezhnev certainly did. In spite of the tumult surrounding the overthrow of his predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev, the new premier continued to support Soviet ambitions in space. . . although his knowledge of its practicalities would later prove the butt of jokes when he suggested beating the Americans to the Moon by landing instead on the Sun. When advised that the cosmonauts would burn up, Brezhnev supposedly told them to land at night! On the morning of 18 March 1965, however, he was full of pride. ‘‘We, all members of the Politburo,’’ the premier, surrounded by his stone-faced aides, began, ‘‘are here sitting and watching what you are doing. We are proud of you. We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.’’ Brezhnev’s pride was not, initially, shared by Leonov’s young daughter, Vika, or his elderly father: the former hid her face in her hands and cried, while the latter, not understanding that the point of the mission was to venture outside, demanded that his son be punished for acting “like a juvenile delinquent” by abandoning his spacecraft in orbit.

Years later, Leonov would reveal more detail of the Berkut suit and his own activities outside Voskhod 2. He described the gold-plated filter across his visor, which, although satisfactory in cutting out nearly all ultraviolet sunlight, did not significantly improve his vision in the incessant glare. “It was like being somewhere in the south, Georgia maybe,” he wrote, “without sunglasses on a summer’s day.” Every so often, he would ease open the filter to observe Earth through the clear faceplate of his helmet. The view was akin to a geography class, he said, with thousands of square kilometres laid out, map-like, beneath him. As an automatic television camera on the end of the airlock filmed his every move, the task of capturing the astonishing vista fell to Leonov himself. Mounted in the chest of his suit was a Swiss-built camera, together with a switch sewn into the Berkut’s upper leg, which, unfortunately, turned out to be just beyond his reach!

At the time of writing, around 300 spacewalks and Moonwalks have been conducted since Leonov’s excursion and some astronauts who did both would describe the sensation of floating high above the home planet as far more powerful than ambling across the surface of our closest celestial neighbour. The ‘ethereal’ nature of spacewalking, the almost godlike feeling of looking down from on high, was certainly not lost on its first practitioner. ‘‘I felt the power of the human intellect that had placed me there,’’ Leonov wrote. ‘‘I felt like a representative of the human race… I was overwhelmed by these feelings.’’ He would also describe the profound tranquillity of floating in the void, the only sounds coming from his own breathing, the crackle of the radio and the noise of the life-support apparatus that kept him alive. Getting back inside Voskhod 2, however, would prove far from tranquil.