Epic Rivalry Read online

  My pragmatic father did not like to “put all his eggs in one basket,” particularly in light of the fact that the military rocket R-7 project did not yield a useful weapon and resulted in large expenditures for each launch pad built. Meanwhile, Mikhail Yangel, who had been “exiled” by Korolev to Dnepropetrovsk, gradually grew stronger and started designing his own rockets—initially medium-range types. When he proposed building the relatively “inexpensive” R-16 intercontinental missile using high-boiling-point components, dimethyl-hydrazine and nitrogen-tetroxide instead of oxygen-kerosene, and navigating by using a gyroscope instead of a radio beam, my father reacted to the idea favorably. He signed the government’s decree authorizing the R-16 project.

  In Russia, however, a formal document does not mean that everything is ready to go. My father did not risk making a final decision without consulting Korolev first. He invited Korolev to the Kremlin, but they did not have an amicable meeting. As soon as Korolev heard the name Yangel, he kicked up a fuss and denounced the project as a reckless scheme. He claimed that engines working with high-temperature components were not technologically feasible for intercontinental ranges. My father became upset at this news. The nation had gained a satellite but remained defenseless in the face of an American missile attack. That sense of hopelessness, and not a lack of trust in Korolev, prompted my father to double-check with “Korolev’s” engine specialist Valentin Glushko. Much to my father’s surprise, Glushko held the opposite opinion and promised to make Yangel’s much-needed intercontinental missile engines on time.

  Korolev now faced a dangerous rival, and he did not tolerate competition. He focused his anger on Glushko, calling him a snake in the grass, saying that he would never shake his hand, and he would never work with him again. However, after calming down a bit, Korolev tried to straighten out the situation by gaining control of Yangel’s rocket, but this transfer of power was not granted. Khrushchev not only disagreed with Korolev, but he also started having doubts about Korolev’s objectivity. That’s how Korolev lost both his indisputable authority and his invulnerability. Korolev was not entirely upset. The space programs were still under his control. But the military was already gossiping about Korolev. In time, the military placed its money on Yangel.

  Meanwhile, space mania became more fashionable. Korolev dragooned aviation designers against their will into space projects; they had never even dreamed about flights beyond Earth’s atmosphere. My boss, Vladimir Chelomei, who had been involved exclusively in submarine-launched missiles, was among them. Now we were drawing winged spacecraft that looked somewhat like the contemporary space shuttle. They looked appealing to government officials when presented on flip charts with purple, dark-green, or charcoal-black, outer-space-like backgrounds. Chelomei wanted to make them as real as possible, and he exasperated his deputy, Mikhail Lifshitz, by claiming that he just could not get the color of space right. And what was the “right” color of space? No one had seen it yet.

  Korolev was getting ready to send a man into space, while Chelomei was drawing his posters. Then came April 12, 1961. Radio reports announced Yuri Gagarin’s flight on the orbital spacecraft Vostok. He was a lieutenant at liftoff and promoted to major by the time he had landed. Khrushchev had a confrontation with Minister of Defense Marshal Rodion Malinovsky over that promotion. He believed that it was inappropriate even for a cosmonaut to jump rank, but he signed the order after grumbling a bit.

  My father greeted Gagarin at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. While Gagarin was marching up the red carpet, a rubber garter holding his sock up came undone and kept striking his leg and causing pain. Everything else went just fine. Gagarin’s triumphal procession moved along Moscow’s streets with the cosmonaut standing in the open limousine, while my father sat humbly in the back seat. The entire city cheered. People were hanging out the windows; there were crowds on the rooftops. A meeting in Red Square followed, then a reception in the Kremlin, and finally an awards presentation. The exultation at Gagarin’s celebration could only be compared to the victorious rapture of May 9, 1945, when Germany formally signed its terms of surrender.

  Korolev was humble at the reception in the Kremlin, knowing that everyone with the need-to-know understood that it was his celebration. But neither he nor the others knew that Korolev had reached his acme that day. He did create the R-7 rocket, which would serve mankind for a half-century, but Korolev would never provide a successor.

  Soon after Sputnik, Korolev ordered his subordinates to start designing a new, more powerful rocket, the N-1. This huge rocket would be capable of delivering a record 30-ton payload into orbit. But Korolev had no clear understanding of what one could do with those 30 tons. Worse, the N-1 was designed by “artisans,” who were skilled professional engineers, but lacked any “divine spark.” Tikhonravov was not interested in the rockets anymore; he was working in the cosmos area again to his heart’s delight and became the head of the satellites department at Korolev’s design bureau. Korolev never found another talented rocket specialist of the same caliber. As a result, all his energy and talent as an organizer and manager “slipped through the sand.” The rocket design took shape, but it was mundane and bland; moreover, no super, high-powered engines were earmarked for it. Glushko was now working with Yangel and Chelomei—with anyone but Korolev—and he remarked sarcastically that his “engines would shoot any piece of metal into space.” However, this particular “piece of metal” would be a rocket without his engines. Korolev gave up on Glushko, too, and said publicly that there are no indispensable specialists; one only has to look harder.

  In May 1961, President John Kennedy challenged the Soviet Union to a competition to land the first man on the moon. The Semyorka was not suitable for this new kind of mission. The N-1 project soon stalled, and Khrushchev was in no hurry to accept the challenge. It was one thing to set records using readily available R-7s and not spending a lot of money. It was entirely different to undertake another high-stakes project without any practical benefits. It was his understanding that any moon race would be costly, and he felt the outcome did not justify the expense. At the June 1961 meeting in Vienna, Austria, Kennedy tried to sound Khrushchev out and get a feeling for whether the two nations could undertake a joint moon project.

  On his side, Kennedy did not want to risk the Soviets being first again. He felt that it would be better to share success with a rival than to be left alone in ignominious defeat. But Khrushchev did not respond to Kennedy’s overtures. Let the Americans waste their dollars; he would find better use for his rubles. Housing projects and food production, not space, were the priorities for Khrushchev.

  Meanwhile, Korolev was champing at the bit and inundated Khrushchev with memorandum after memorandum, trying to prove that his N-1 could be the first to land a man on the moon. It would cost him very little since, unlike the Americans, he already had a head start. Khrushchev requested a cost estimate. Korolev prepared several estimates, since it was not easy to determine the cost of things in the Soviet economy. Finally, in February 1962, Korolev managed to get permission to start work. In August 1964, he literally wrested consent from Khrushchev for the launch of a full-scale project to design a moon-landing spacecraft. However, the approval came with a strict provision that the project must stay within budget.

  In October 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power. In the period that followed, nobody monitored whether Korolev was staying within budget. Nobody even asked Korolev about it. Brezhnev showed little interest in such trivial affairs, although the idea of jumping ahead of the Americans appealed to his vanity. Consequently, Korolev was given a green light. The race to the moon took off at full speed. However, a third participant suddenly appeared on the scene—Vladimir Chelomei. He and Glushko proposed their own moon project based on the UR-700 launch vehicle. Korolev then focused his energy on what he did best—the elimination of his rivals. My friend Vladimir Modestov, who was Chelomei’s deputy on guidance matters, used to joke bitterly that these two, Korolev and Chelomei
, would rather see the Americans land first on the moon than to see the other succeed. Toward the end of 1965, Korolev finally succeeded in his campaign against Chelomei and Glushko. He kicked both of them off the moon project. Yet Korolev was left with a Pyrrhic victory.

  By his own actions, Korolev had cleared the way for Wernher von Braun to beat him to the moon. Korolev had lost the competition even before it had started. Having ordered the design of the N-1 for a future mission to the moon, Korolev—as it turned out—had approached the problem backward. When calculating the weight needed at liftoff, one usually starts with the finish line: identify the spacecraft’s mass on the moon, then in the moon’s orbit, then in Earth’s orbit, and finally on the ground, with a 10-15 percent margin of error. As a result of this analysis, the Americans figured out what they would need to deliver the 129-ton Apollo spacecraft on a 2,900-ton Saturn V launch vehicle into Earth orbit. Taking into account the level of Soviet technology, especially in the area of electronics, the spacecraft would need to be at least 145 tons, which translated into a 4,500-ton UR-700 rocket on the launch pad at Baikonur. I myself, working for Chelomei, participated in this analysis.

  Korolev was firmly holding on to his N-1, yet from the very beginning it was “Trishka’s caftan” (a Russian expression literally meaning “poorly tailored coat”). In 1964, after multiple alterations, it was able to lift not only a 30-ton payload into orbit but eventually a 70-ton payload. That was a lot, but insufficient for a mission to the moon. Yet again, Korolev ordered that everything be redesigned to increase the spacecraft mass to 90-plus tons. Additional engines had to be added to the first stage. The engines had their own problems, since Korolev had gotten rid of “his engine expert” Glushko. He did find a replacement for him, hiring Nikolai Kuznetsov, but Kuznetsov was not a rocket designer. He was a turbojet aviation engine designer—a talented specialist but from a different field. He had to learn how to build rocket engines, but there was no time for that.

  What happened next is well known: On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and uttered the phrase: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” There was a triumphal return to Earth. Wernher von Braun won the race to the moon. However, Korolev was still the trailblazer. Just as Christopher Columbus discovered America, Sergei Korolev had laid the groundwork for mankind’s journey into space. No one following in his footsteps will ever catch up with him.

  In this book, Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman, in an entertaining and highly detailed way, narrate the beginning of the space age. They show how Sergei Korolev in the Soviet Union and Wernher von Braun in America were able to lead humankind beyond the boundaries of planet Earth through their perseverance and their ability to mobilize and unite huge collectives around them and to persuade the authorities to do what they considered important. The authors find dramatic and sometimes amusing episodes from the lives of heroes who didn’t consider themselves heroes at all; to them, they were just doing their jobs. It was to this end that they devoted their entire lives.

  Now please read and enjoy.

  —Dr. Sergei Khrushchev

  March 22, 2007

  A Russian illustration celebrates the 1957 launches of Sputnik 1 and 2, the first artificial satellites.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Epic Rivalry

  The space race may be defined broadly as the 12-year competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for dominance in the new frontier of space. A memorable episode in the Cold War era, this superpower rivalry—at once spirited, high-risk, and costly—developed roughly between the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 and the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. This book tells the story from both sides, using the rich body of English and Russian language sources now available to researchers. The narrative has a dual approach: to reconstruct the parallel universes of the American and Russian space programs—and then to identify how these separate worlds interacted in necessary and fateful ways. The authors have selected those key events, personalities, and technologies that shaped the course of the space race. Epic Rivalry appears in the 50th anniversary year of the launch of Sputnik, an occasion to reappraise how the vision and reality of space exploration shaped the modern world.

  Looking back, the Apollo 11 mission gave expression to the ancient urge by humans to explore distant worlds. This latter-day Homeric journey to the moon was televised directly to a global audience still caught firmly in the grasp of Earth’s gravity. Countless earthbound observers watched the dramatic moon landing. The lunar trek represented an engineering feat without parallel. When Neil Armstrong took his first step onto the lunar surface, he correctly described that moment as a “giant leap for mankind.” For space visionaries, Apollo 11 pointed to the possibility of future journeys to Mars and even more distant locales in the solar system. Yet this seminal moment occurred within a distinct historical context—that of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

  The story of the space race survives in human memory in peculiar ways. Now only a minority remember the tremendous impact the 1957 launch of Sputnik made on Americans, in particular their cherished sense of superiority in the realm of modern technology. Looking back, many Russians today remember the first orbital mission of Yuri Gagarin as the singular milestone of the space age; Americans, by contrast, often regard the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface as the pivotal moment. Also, most Americans know there was a space race, and the United States placed the first humans on the moon in 1969, but they may not know that the Soviet Union mounted a serious manned lunar program of it own, in direct competition to the Apollo program. Yet while America’s huge Saturn V rocket enjoyed a 100 percent success record on its lunar missions, the Soviet equivalent, the N-1—in four attempts—never got very far off its launch pad before exploding into a fiery conflagration.

  “I believe,” President John F. Kennedy stated on May 25, 1961, “the nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space.” Kennedy’s words, spoken in the immediate aftermath of Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight, focused the emerging American space program on the lofty—and exceedingly difficult—goal of flying to the moon. The untested new president spoke boldly at a time when the Soviets appeared to hold a decisive edge in space technology. Kennedy’s utterance keynoted a decade of space rivalry as each side worked to perfect the rockets and techniques to reach the moon—still a distant celestial body.

  This race became a fascinating study in contrasts. Both nations used their existing military technology to help fashion their space programs. While the American space program—except for its military aspects—remained open and dependent on public support, the Soviets operated under a shroud of secrecy, studiously concealing from view their specific goals in space for the near and long term, even declining to reveal the names of its chief space leaders.

  This competition prompted each nation to allocate vast human and economic resources for space exploration. In the end, though, more than just budgetary allocations determined the victor. Ultimate success rested on the technological, industrial, and organizational capacities to sustain a coherent space program. Each side had to integrate baseline military programs with new space priorities.

  The story told in Epic Rivalry predates the advent of modern rocketry. Indeed, the human interest in space travel and visiting the moon has its origins in ancient mythology. In more recent times, visionaries gave expression to the dream of a lunar trek in literature, art, music, and film. For these earthbound dreamers, the moon—with its powerful impact on the Earth’s tides and its hidden far side—remained beyond reach, notwithstanding its apparent close proximity as a celestial object. With the start of the 20th century, the gap between science fiction and science fact narrowed through the theoretical work of a group
of space pioneers—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, and Robert Goddard. These men grappled with the actual technical requirements for space travel.

  The advent of liquid-propellant rockets in the 20th century paved the way for the space age. This pioneering form of propulsion was volatile and dangerous, but it offered the best option to overcome gravity and catapult humans into outer space. This evolving technology reached maturity with the German V-2 rocket, first tested successfully at Peenemünde in October 1942. On that fateful launch, the V-2 took a trajectory through the upper atmosphere to the edge of outer space. As a weapon, the V-2 failed to reverse the course of the war, but it did represent a radical new technology. As the war ended, the United States and the Soviet Union raced to capture the surviving V-2 rockets. The wartime spoils of German technology became the basis for a new generation of rockets, prized initially as a delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons. Starting in the late 1950s, both superpowers moved to adapt their evolving rocket technology for space exploration.

  This book examines the historic role of the key political leaders who shaped the course of space exploration. Nikita Khrushchev, who consolidated his power in the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s, took a keen interest in space activities, seeing clearly the propaganda value of a series of space “firsts” with the launch of satellites, space probes, and manned orbital missions. The United States embraced the space age with a more cautious posture, at least initially. In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower was hesitant to pursue expensive space programs, often preferring more narrowly defined scientific goals rather than manned missions. Eisenhower also feared an unbridled pursuit of technology for military or civilian ends. John F. Kennedy, who assumed office in 1961, presided over a shift in American space policy. While not personally interested in space, he came to recognize its importance in the Cold War context. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s first manned orbital flight, Kennedy decided to commit the United States to the goal of a lunar mission, then considered by many as a most fanciful idea. His name would eventually adorn the spaceport in Florida. Lyndon Johnson had been alarmed at the Sputnik “surprise,” and he advocated a proactive space program for the United States. Richard Nixon affirmed the priorities of his predecessors, took great delight in the triumphs of the Apollo program, but eventually cooled to the idea of an expansive NASA program with all of its budgetary burdens.