[FPSPACE] Kislyakov: 108 Minutes That Changed The World

[Asif Siddiqi]

At 4:02 PM -0500 4/14/06, Jim Oberg wrote:

>Does anything stand out as new and valuable?

Not really, although there are some errors here and there.

>If only
>they knew what a horrible tragedy was to delay the triumph for half a
>year. Compared to what happened at the Baikonur Space Center on
>October 24, the two unsuccessful automatic missions to Mars in late
>September, deplorable as they were, would seem child's play.

These Mars attempts were, of course in early October 1960.

>Five weeks later, the otherwise successful December 1 Pchyolka/Mushka
>re-entry was mispositioned in the high atmosphere due to a failure in
>the retropack. The capsule with, militarily speaking, "top-secret
>equipment" was going to land outside of the U.S.S.R. Some officer at a
>control center underground pushed the self-destruct button, hopefully
>not knowing what he was doing - smashing the capsule, killing both
>dogs, and driving the last nail into a plan to make a manned mission
>before 1961.

It was an automatic destruct command, not a manual one, that killed
Pchelka and Mushka. Also, he misses the launch abort in late December
1960 with two other dogs.

>On the technical side, it all went smoothly. The return capsule re-
>entered as planned. Gagarin successfully ejected and parachuted safely
>from 1,500 m, opening the first great chapter in the space history of
>mankind.

On the technical side, all, of course, did not go smoothly. The author
misses the problems during reentry with the 10 minute delay
in the complete separation of the two modules. [The original story
came out in 1991 in the journal Izvestiya TsK KPPSS where full
transcripts of Gagarin's flight were first published]. A more detailed
story came out a few years back as a result of the folks at Novosti
kosmonavtiki (specifically Igor Lissov). From what I remember, there
was a problem with a valve that led to lower than expected thrust of
the reentry engine that caused the control system to not implement the
original command to separate the modules. Eventually, a temperature
sensor(s?) detected a rise in temperature and separated the two modules.

>Khrushchev who, frankly, rather liked to show off, poured more oil
>into the flames by warning the Americans of something they had never
>seen before. Hearing his boastful promises and backed by CIA reports
>and by evidence from an escaped Russian naval officer, the Americans
>were anticipating something in the space department on September 27,
>1960. TASS remained tight-lipped through the day, though, which
>immediately raised rumors of another tragedy - and another dead pilot.
>
>What really happened was that two Molniya launch vehicles with the
>first 1M automatic Mars exploration station onboard exploded in
>flight, a failure turned into a lesson that ultimately led to the
>Gagarin success.

Once again, this was in early October, on two separate days.

Asif Siddiqi