On June 18 of 1959 the modified R-7 with the E-1 upper stage was ready to try for the moon again but once more failed just after launch. The initial flurry of success enjoyed at the end of 1957 was now beginning to look more like good luck, because most of the failures of 1958 and 1959 had little or nothing to do with the new upper stage. However, on September 12, Luna 2 was finally dispatched to the surface of another world. This impressive achievement was swiftly followed up with the launch of Luna 3 on the second anniversary of the flight of Sputnik. Luna 3 was a much more complex craft than either of its predecessors. The outside of the satellite was enveloped in solar panels that sup plied electrical power to the camera system on board. Unlike Luna 2, which had done little but plow into the moon carrying a bunch of plaques and flags, Luna 3 was carrying a sophisticated camera, scanning and fax system. On October 7, 1959, from an altitude of just over 6000 km. the Luna 3 photographed the far side of the moon. Its figure-eight orbit brought it back close to the Earth eleven days later at which point it transmitted the pictures to ground controllers. It was a remarkable achievement for the Soviet team, since the photographs showed the world the lunar far side for the first time in history. Despite the success of Korolev’s advanced R-7 lunar program his decision to not use Glushko to build the upper stage engine would quickly fester into an all-out feud over the future direction of Soviet rocketry.
Luna 1 with E-1 upper stage
R-7/ Luna 1 launch at Baikonur
Less than two months after Korolev had given the contract for the E-1 engine to Glushko’s competitor, Glushko had his own meeting with Premier Khrushchev and convinced the Soviet leader that he should assign a major missile con tract to one of Korolev’s competitors. Undoubtedly under pressure from his chief military advisors to begin funding a more practical ICBM weapon system, Khrushchev decided to go with Glushko’s recommendation and in May 1958 gave the go-ahead to Mikhail Yangel’s design bureau, OKB-586, for this new missile. Yangel had been the beneficiary of Korolev’s earlier work with storable propellants and he would later put that research to good use. He had already contributed two strategic missiles, the R-12 and R-14 to the Soviet arsenal. The R-I4 would go on to become the first stage of the Kosmos space launcher, used to place many smaller payloads into orbit, but the proposed R-16, with storable propellants and a greatly extended range would be an effective ICBM, and if Yangel and Glushko could make it fly, it could make the R-7 obsolete as a weapon. Korolev tried to convince the Soviet leadership that he could build a better ICBM, the R-9, but still using cryogenic liquid oxygen and kerosene. This competition ultimately placed two new boosters into the Soviet arsenal but more importantly Glushko’s support for Yangel further increased the tension between the two most important players in the Soviet space program.
R-14, basis for the Kosmos launcher
R-7/Molniya four stage launcher
While struggling to prove the worth of his boosters to his military bosses, Korolev continued work on another upgrade to the R-7.This had begun life on the drawing board in January 1960 and was to be later named the Molniya. Taking the basic structure of the R-7, Korolev’s team reinforced the vehicle to be able to withstand the additional structural loads of a fourth stage. The R-7/Molniya would be a full eleven meters taller than the basic R-7 ICBM that had flown three years earlier, This additional height was comprised of two upper stages that were designated Unit 1 and Booster L. Unit 1 was basically just a third stage that was powered by a RD-0107 kerosene/LOX engine and built by the Kosberg bureau, the same bureau that had built the E-1 and RD-0105 (Note: engines beginning with RD-0 were Kosberg engines while those beginning RD-1 through 7 were almost all Glushko’s). Booster L was powered by Korolev’s own SI-5400A1 engine, ostensibly the first engine ever built with a closed- loop and powered predictably by LOX / kerosene. This engine could start in space and was thus ideally suited for long-range payloads such as interplanetary probes. The Molniya/R-7 would be Korolev’s choice for both his Mars and Venus probes as well as for sending heavier payloads to the moon.
While Korolev was inaugurating the space age, another engineer, one whose name is still relatively unknown in the west, was test flying primitive cruise missiles out of Kapustin Yar. His name was Vladimir Chelomei and his contributions to Soviet space efforts would be comparable to Korolev’s. Chelomei had suffered a series of setbacks in the mid 1950’s as he was bounced from project to project, often finding his basic research given to other, less-deserving designers. Finally, in the summer of 1955 he was given a small factory in Moscow where he could begin to develop his ambitious plans. He wanted to send ion-propelled fleets to Mars, much the same as von Braun had proposed on Disney’s Sunday night television shows. He also believed in another of von Braun’s dreams, a winged reusable space shuttle. This winged spacecraft was a natural extension of Chelomei’s work on winged cruise missiles. He had also been privy to the Ger man designs of Eugen Sanger, whose Silverbird long range space bomber had so infatuated Stalin. Just as von Braun was showing off winged Martian landing vehicles, Chelomei was suggesting a space shuttle for the same purpose, he called it the Kosmoplan. There were of course military applications for such a manned shuttle and Chelomei was undoubtedly aware that the Americans were working on just such a vehicle, the Dyna-Soar, as the next logical step after their X-15 program. Chelomei’s military variant was called the Raketo plan. These ambitious designs were being touted directly to Khrushchev just as Korolev was building his Molniya/R-7 in preparation for an assault on Mars and Venus.
Vladimir Chelomei.
After making an impassioned speech to Khrushchev, Chelomei was inducted into the ICBM building business. Now the Soviets had three totally independent and competing bureaus building ICBMs, all with their eyes on space travel. While the United States government retained literally dozens of missile building contractors at this time, they were all operating on the free market principle where if you didn’t deliver (for the most part) you didn’t get paid. There was not supposed to be any such parallel in the socialist Soviet system and yet the bulk of these design bureaus were struggling to compete in an almost completely capitalistic way for considerably less funds than were available in the USA. Korolev had clearly worked miracles by bringing the R-7 to its cur rent level of proficiency and Glushko had certainly contributed substantially to the large engines required. Then there was Mikhail Yangel whose design bureau had filled an important void in the need for quick-loading, quick- deploying ballistic missiles. The introduction of a third player to compete with both himself and Yangel must have seemed completely absurd to Korolev; in hindsight Chelomei was to later prove his worth, but only at great expense to Korolev.
At the same time that Korolev was creating the Molniya, he began a series of meetings with his primary assistants to discuss even more ambitious plans. Von Braun’s Saturn program had been under development in the United States since 1957 and although it wouldn’t fly for almost another two years, there was nothing like it being planned at OKB-1 . Glushko advocated following von Braun’s lead by strapping multiple ICBMs to one center stage. For this, he suggested seven of Korolev’s R-9s for the first stage and four for the second stage. This configuration would have been three times more massive than von Braun’s more modest Saturn I, which was an aggregate of Redstone and Jupiter missiles. Korolev had similar ideas and was leaning towards a vehicle of slightly larger proportions to that suggested by Glushko, around 1.5 million kg. This would have placed it somewhere between the Saturn I and the Saturn V in size. Over the course of the Spring of 960 Korolev would sell this long- range plan for an ambitious space program directly to the Central Commit tee and by June they were ready to approve his ambitions. The new super booster program was now potentially up to 1.8 million kg and was slated to fulfill the Soviet needs well into the late 1960’s.
Object-K (Vostok)
Almost as soon as Korolev had secured sup port for his long-range plans he turned his attention back to the manned spacecraft that had been gradually brewing at OKB-1 since March of 1959. It was designated Object-K, the “K” was an acronym for the Russian word for ship. In many respects Object-K was superior to the American Mercury. The cosmonaut was to sit in a dedicated descent module while the scientific and support equipment were placed in a separate instrument module. In the event of problems during assembly, this modular approach allowed for much easier access to critical systems. The US program would not adopt this modular method until the Gemini program. Consequently when something went wrong with Mercury it often required the removal of perfectly good hardware to access the problem. It also meant that everything had to be compressed into a much smaller volume, making the Mercury considerably more cramped than Object-K.
Since as early as 1955, Korolev and some of his team had been speculating on the possibility of building an advanced launch vehicle capable of putting a human subject into space. Now that the R-7 had been refined sufficiently to be able to carry an upper stage it was inevitable that the next course of action was to try and see if it could be modified even further to launch a heavier pay load. Once again Korolev turned to the work of his old friend Mikhail Tikhonravov who had been spending some considerable “unofficial” time working the problem.
It should be noted that when Luna 3 was performing spectacular things above the moon, the Soviet government still had no official policy regarding space, or space exploration. Korolev’s achievements up to this point had been useful propaganda stunts, but the Soviet infrastructure was still firmly in the hands of Ustinov and the Strategic Rocket Forces. The old artillery men saw little use for these extracurricular activities and were more concerned with perfecting long range missiles that could be launched quickly by using storable propellants. In January of 1960 Ustinov had bluntly reminded Korolev that his work on a spy satellite was a more important project than his manned spacecraft. Not to be deterred Korolev, rather craftily, decided to make them both from the same basic design.
At this time the United States was conducting most of its surveillance of Soviet missile efforts by using the ultra-secret high-flying U2 spy plane. On May Day 1960, just a few months after Korolev’s triumphant lunar success, one of these U2 planes was shot down over Soviet territory, thus precipitating a major political crisis. One of the consequences of this crisis was the sudden urgency for surveillance methods that could fill the void left by the now vulnerable U2. Even though the United States’ rockets were well behind the Soviets in lifting power, they were still able to pull the occasional coup. Just three months after losing Francis Gary Powers’ U2 to a Soviet anti-aircraft missile, the United States deployed the Corona spy satellite system, thus moving the world of military intelligence gathering into a whole new realm; one that required space launchers. The enormous launch pads required for the R-7 were easy to see from orbit, this made them an easy target. The combined problems created by the United States consistently over-flying the Soviet Union’s most secret facilities with the inability to easily hide an R-7 launch site started to work against Korolev, especially with his most illustrious benefactor, Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Despite this, as time went by, the Soviets gradually realized the enormous advantage that the 4J Americans had by flying spy satellites over Soviet territory. Space-capable boosters clearly had a military advantage and so Korolev’s R-7 would continue to be useful.
Ever the tactician, Korolev designed a modified version of his proposed Object-K manned spacecraft and equipped it with cameras. It was a shrewd move by Korolev because it not only kept his R-7 booster in the game it also allowed him to continue to work on his manned ship, while simultaneously mollifying the military. The spy version of Object-K became known as Zen it but it would not fly successfully until April of 1962, by which time the Americans had been pulling in pictures from Corona for almost two years.
Zenit spy satellite assembly
Korolev’s team finally rolled Out a boilerplate version of Object-K. now renamed Vostok, and on May 15, 1960 it took flight atop an R-7, equipped with an E-1 third stage similar to that which had sent Luna 1 to the moon. The Vostok weighed just over four and a half thousand kilograms, more than double the large Object-D/Sputnik 3 of just two years earlier. It was equipped with an unusual solar array at the forward end as well as an ingenious system of thermal control shutters. The cabin was modifiable to include an assortment of payloads, including animals, and the instrument module was dominated by a small de-orbit engine, developed and built over the previous year by Korolev’s old friend Alexei Isayev, the same rocket engineer who had “fixed” Glushko’s RD-107 problems.
The first Vostok flight exhibited problems with the guidance and orientation system and when the de-orbit engine fired, the vehicle was facing entirely the wrong way; instead of returning to Earth it moved into a much higher orbit. Instead of a four day flight it remained in orbit for over five years. It was not an encouraging start. The next launch took place two months later and carried two dogs as passengers; this time the R-7 failed only nineteen seconds into the flight and both dogs perished. Only eighteen days later Korolev’s team tried again, this fast turn-around time was indicative of just how streamlined the OKB-1 manufacturing process had become for making not only the R-7, but also the Vostok prototypes. This time the mission was much more successful and the two canine passengers were not only to complete eighteen orbits they would survive re-entry and the ejection of their life support compartment. Ironically, just a day earlier the Americans had successfully retrieved their first useful canister of film from Corona. These two flights vividly demonstrate just how close the race had become. Both countries retrieved their first orbital payloads within hours of each other, although the Western media didn’t know that the Soviets had flown a living payload until some time later.
This success encouraged the Soviet team to schedule their first fully equipped and manned spaceflight attempt for the end of 1960. For the next two months the wild assortment of projects continued unabated at OKB-1. Just after the third anniversary of Sputnik, on October 10, 1960, Korolev tried to use the new four stage R-7/Molniya to send a probe to Mars. Kosberg’s new third stage failed to place the payload in orbit but it’s worth noting that this Mars launch was a full four years before Mariner 3, the first American attempt. Incredibly, another attempt was made with the Molniya/Mars package only four days later but it ended in the same way, with a loss during launch. In the grand scheme of things this was only a minor setback, but worse things were brewing.
The military chiefs of the artillery directorate were still pushing hard to deploy a viable ICBM, using storable propellants. Yangel’s proposed R-16 had yet to fly, but only two weeks after the failure of Korolev’s first Mars attempt the inaugural R- 16 was sitting on the pad at Baikonur. Evidently, the day before launch it had been leaking fuel but there was a much more serious flaw inside the second stage. On the night of October 24 1960 an error in the command controls triggered the engines in the second stage causing the entire booster to erupt in a catastrophic explosion while the ground crews were still engaged in fixing the leak; 126 people were killed. The inquiry delayed the work of many people who were also involved with Vostok.
Naturally, this terrible failure of Yangel’s ICBM was a grim reminder of the dangers of using toxic storable propellants that are highly volatile and ignite spontaneously on contact. Ironically, the R-16 would finally be deployed with dozens of them placed in silos and coffin launchers around the Soviet Union, but the main reason for its existence, the so called storable aspect of its fuel and oxidizer would turn out to have little advantage. Once the nitric acid was placed in the rocket it could only be kept there for a relatively short time before the rocket had to be rebuilt. The loading and off-load ing of propellants didn’t have such an adverse effect on the R-7. One other side effect of the accident was that Chelomei increased his own influence as Yangel’s star temporarily faded. The same month as the R-16 disaster Chelomei was given the Krunichev Machine Building Factory. This facility would become a force to be reckoned with in the years ahead.
Next: Part 6
Prev: Part 4
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