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OCR for page 114
Satyr 6: The End of isolation
"! Could Work in Space 24 Hours a Day "
The hatch wouldn't open. No matter how hard they pulled,
Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Oleg Makarov couldn't get the docking
hatch of their Soyuz capsule to release. On the other side, inside
Salynt 6, the newest Soviet space station, Georgi Grechko and his
crewmate Yuri Romanenko anxiously waited. Both men had al-
ready been in space for 30 days, and were eager to greet their guests.
On Earth almost 200 miles below, ground controllers, historians,
engineers and, most importantly, Leonid Brezhnev, also waited im-
patiently, watching through Salynt 6's television camera aimed at
the bow hatch where Grechko and Romanenko floated.
Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the Soyuz hatch popped free,
throwing both Dzhanibekov and Makarov back a few feet. Almost
instantly Grechko dived in and grabbed Makarov, joyously pulling
him into Salynt 6. Dzhanibekov followed, and the four men gath-
ered in the station's main section, hugging and laughing, toasting
each other happily with tubes of cherry juice.
To the rookie Dzhanibekov, the station had that "new-car"
smell. Launched just three months earlier, Salynt 6 still hadn't lost
that aroma of freshness. To the more experienced and cynical
Makarov (whose last flight had been the terrifying aborted launch
of Soyuz 18-1), the station exuded a more complex ambience. Mixed
in with the new-car smell of fresh metal and plastic and equipment
114
OCR for page 115
Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
115
were the smells and sounds of a working space vessel: the whir of
fans, the smell of chemicals and fuel combined with sweat and
flatulence.
Nonetheless, at that moment the men felt mainly joy and hap-
piness. For the first time, three separately launched spacecraft, car-
rying two separate crews, were linked together in space, producing
an orbital complex almost 100 feet long. After a decade of failure
and struggle, the Soviet space program finally had clear direction,
and was going somewhere.
Launched on September 29, 1977, Salynt 6 was the direct descen-
dent of the last civilian station, Salynt 4. Using the same 20-ton
Almaz hull, it had three solar panels producing the same 4 kilo-
watts of power. It had the same temperature control, atmosphere-
recycling, and attitude-control systems. Its interior was laid out in
much the same manner, with the main compartment dominated
by the cone-like telescope housing, the narrow-diameter section
holding the station's control center, and the bow of the station func-
,, ~ /~
port ~ //.~
Or\
bow
~~/~
starboard
Salynt 6. Note how the aft service donut now includes a docking port
and engines. NASA
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116
LEAVING EARTH
tioning as the docking-transfer module with airlock and docking
port.
Salynt 6 did incorporate some significant improvements on
Salynt 4. The docking-transfer module was larger, as was the hatch
for exiting the station during space walks. It used an improved
water-recycling system, based on what had been learned on the
previous three Salynts. Engineers hoped that this Rodnik system
("spring" in Russian) would be more successful than Salynt 4's in
preventing humidity from accumulating inside the station. To
make its inhabitants' lives more comfortable, the soundproofing
on operating equipment had been improved. A shower, similar to
the one that had been on the military Salynts, had been added, and
the variety of the food increased. Many food items were also made
as bite-sized chunks, to make them easier to eat in weightlessness.
However, the station's most significant improvement was that
it had two docking ports, one on each end. To add a second port,
designers had extended Salynt 6's aft end several feet with the addi-
tion of a donut-shaped service section. The new docking port, with
an entrance tunnel leading into the station, was in the new section's
center. On either side were the twin main engines used by Salynt 3
and Salynt 5 for maintaining the station's orbit. The rest of the
service donut was filled with refuelable tanks that supplied fuel for
the twin main engines and for the four clusters of small attitude
jets placed at intervals on the donut's outside. With this second
port, two Soyuz crews could dock with the station simultaneously.
Furthermore, the aft port provided a haven for a new unmanned
freighter, dubbed Progress, which could dock automatically and
bring fuel that could be pumped directly into the station's tanks.
Because Progress's cargo also included oxygen, water, food, and sup-
plies, future missions could be extended almost without limit.
Salynt 6 was to become by far the most successful of the Soviet
Union's Salynt space stations. Eighteen different manned missions
were launched to it during its almost five years of operation, achiev-
ing a number of significant milestones. Human space flight was
extended to more than six months and the station periodically car-
ried two crews totaling four men.
Despite these later achievements, the first Soyuz mission to
the station was a failure. Like many previous failed Soyuz mis-
sions, Soyuz 25, crewed by rookies VIadimir Kovalyonok and Valeri
Ryumin, was unable to dock with the station. Once the Igla auto-
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Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
117
matic system had brought the spacecraft close to Salynt 6,
Kovalyonok took manual control and piloted it into a soft docking
in Salynt 6's bow port. At that point, the docking latches refused to
engage, preventing a hard docking. Under orders from the ground,
Kovalyonok backed Soyuz 25 up a few feet and tried again. No
luck. He backed up again, and this time tried to jam Soyuz 25 for-
ward with much greater speed. The two spacecraft banged together,
but still the latches refused to engage.
Some obstruction or damaged equipment, either in the bow
docking port of the Salynt station or in the docking gear of Soyuz
25's orbital module, was keeping the two spacecraft from complet-
ing a hard dock. Their fuel reserves low, Ryumin and Kovalyonok
had no choice but to retreat, returning to Earth after only two days
in space.
Because their Soyuz orbital module was discarded as planned,
burning up during re-entry, there was no way of knowing if the
problem was in its docking port or worse, in the bow port of Salynt
6. In order to use the station's most important new capability, its
two ports, the next crew was going to have to make repairs, includ-
ing the first Soviet space walk in nine years.
Before this rescue mission could occur, however, Leonid
Brezhnev intervened. Though the docking failure of Soyuz 25 had
had nothing to do with its rookie crew, Brezhnev stepped in person-
ally to forbid any future all-rookie crews.) To accommodate this
command, and to bring someone to Salynt 6 who had the specific
abilities to fix the problem, required the immediate shuffling of all
crew assignments.
Thus, Georgi Grechko returned to space as part of the first crew
to occupy Salynt 6. His experience as an engineer and his previous
success on Salynt 4 made him the best choice to try to fix the
problem on Salynt 6. Within days of Soyuz 25's landing, 46-year-
old Grechko was paired with 33-year-old rookie Yuri Romanenko.2
With Romanenko providing support, Grechko would do a space
walk to inspect and, if necessary, repair the bow docking port. If all
went well, the two men would then attempt to break Skylab's
record for the longest mission in space.
This crew shuffle brought Romanenko and Grechko together
only two months before launch, an unusually brief training period
for Soviet crews. The circumstances were further complicated in
that, as pilot and military officer, rookie Romanenko was officially
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118
LEAVING EARTH
the mission commander, even though Grechko, the hero from
Salynt 4, was more experienced. Moreover, their personalities
clashed. Grechko, an engineer, was a friendly, good-natured man
who was quick to smile and laugh. Romanenko, a military man,
was far more serious and focused. "He is highly strung and tem-
peramental," Grechko later noted. "I am not fond of people who
give orders."
Days before launch, the two men worked out a compromise.
As Grechko remembered, "We would act as if Yuri was not the
commander and as if this was my first time in space." They even
tried to get mission control to not give them separate orders and
instead assign duties to the whole crew, and let them decide who
would do what.3
For the rescue work, however, such egalitarianism could not
work. Romanenko was still a pilot, and Grechko was still an engi-
neer. On December 12, after one day of orbital maneuvers, Soyuz
26 was finally close enough to Salynt 6 for Romanenko to take
manual control. With the condition of Salynt 6's bow docking port
still unknown, Romanenko piloted the Soyuz 26 capsule into
Salynt 6's aft docking port.
Then, after spending the first eight days activating the station's
systems and experiments, the crew prepared for the first Soviet
space walk in almost nine years, and the first ever from a Soviet
space station.
Grechko was to take the lead. The plan called for the men to
don their spacesuits and seal and Repressurize the docking-transfer
compartment. Grechko was to open the front docking port, inspect
it for damage, and then climb out to inspect the Igla radar antenna
on the outside to see if it was in good working order. If all was
right, Grechko was to attach a cassette filled with biological
samples to the outside of the station and come back inside.
Romanenko was to wait at the docking port in case something went
wrong and hand Grechko tools and hold him in place if necessary.
On December 20, the two men climbed into their spacesuits.
Unlike the American spacesuits in use then and now, which are
custom fitted to each person, the Soviet Orian-D spacesuit was ad-
justable. Within the strict limits on body sizes allowed for Soviet
cosmonauts, an OrIan suit could fit anyone. A cylinder of metal
covered the chest and torso like a suit of armor. At the holes for the
arms and legs flexible fabric was attached. To don this semi-rigid
OCR for page 119
Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
119
suit, a cosmonaut unhinged a permanently mounted oxygen pack
attached to the back of the suit's rigid section, inserted his feet and
body through this hatch and climbed inside. His partner then closed
the hatch, sealing him in. With this suit, a cosmonaut could get
dressed for up to three hours in space (later increased to five) in
about five minutes.4
Once dressed, the men closed the inner hatch that separated
the docking-transfer compartment from Salynt 6's main chamber
and Repressurized the docking compartment. Rather than use the
airlock hatch, Grechko was going to open the port itself, swinging
its receptacle cone assembly into the docking compartment so that
he could inspect its parts. At first, the cone did not open. Because it
hinged inward, the tiny pressure from the small amount of residual
atmosphere in the docking compartment held it in place. It took
several tries before the two men, pulling hard together, could get it
to pop open.
As soon as the cone opened, however, the last bits of air inside
the compartment rushed out. To Grechko's surprise, he found him-
self being sucked out as well. Instinctively he grabbed at the edges
of the opening, holding himself inside and waiting for things to
settle down. Then he swung the docking cone into the station to
study it, quickly reporting that it seemed in perfect working order.
"The butt end is brand new just as when it was machine-tooled.
There are no scratches or dents or traces. The cone is clear: not a
scratch. "5
Then he floated through the port, carefully inspecting its
latches, plugs, and various mechanical parts. Periodically Roma-
nenko handed him a tool so that he could take something apart and
reassemble it. Once again, everything seemed to work fine.
Next Grechko climbed out the port onto the station's exterior
where he could inspect the Igla automatic docking system. Ro-
manenko followed him into the port, holding his ankles so that he
could work without drifting. Grechko again reported that every-
thing seemed fine. He climbed farther out so that he could attach a
small cassette of experimental compounds that engineers on Earth
wanted to expose to space and see how they degraded.
As ebullient as Grechko normally was, he took this space walk
somewhat nonchalantly. "It was nothing exciting," he remem-
bered. "The same starry sky, the same Earth below. And some
structures around me."
OCR for page 120
20
LEAVING EARTH
Romanenko, meanwhile, waited in the port, finding himself
fascinated with the blue-and-white view of Earth below him. A
serious and hard-working man, Romanenko committed himself to-
tally to a project once he decided to do it. As a child, the son of a
navy destroyer captain, he had been fascinated with ships, engi-
neering, and planes, so in high school he built both model ships
and airplanes. Then, after graduation, in order to learn construc-
tion techniques, he worked for a year, first as a concrete mixer on
construction sites and then as a locksmith. Only then did he enroll
in the Chernigov Higher Air Force College, becoming a pilot-engi-
neer and flight instructor for the college. Then, a visit to the school
by cosmonaut Gherman Titov convinced him to become a cosmo-
naut. He applied, went through the stringent medical exams, and
was selected. By 1970 he was a member of the cosmonaut corps
where he worked for the next six years as backup on a variety of
missions and as capcom in Soviet mission control during the
Apollo-Soyuz missions
Now he floated in zero gravity, watching the bright blue Earth
drift past him 200 miles below. As Grechko worked a few feet away,
Romanenko got the urge to get a better view. For safety he was
attached to the station in two ways, first by a rigid back-up cable
that kept him safely within the docking port, and second by a 60-
foot umbilical cord that provided their spacesuits both communi-
cations and electrical power.7 Unable to restrain his curiosity,
Romanenko disengaged the back-up cable so that he could drift
further out into the port. With the outer rim of the hatch still about
3 feet away, he could see the vast blue Pacific ocean gliding by,
streaked with white clouds.
Outside, Grechko had finished attaching the cassette, and was
using his handheld camera to beam back pictures of the earth to
mission control. Then, after about five minutes, he pulled himself
into the hatch as Romanenko backed up out of his way. Together
again within the docking-transfer compartment, they had some
extra time because Grechko had finished his work in only 20 min-
utes, well ahead of schedule.
At that moment the station moved out of range of Earth com-
munications. Free from ground control, Romanenko looked at
Grechko. "I'm only a meter from space," he said. "Maybe I'll never
get a chance to go outside. Let me take a look."
Grechko agreed, though he said, "Do it fast. We don't want to
fall behind schedule."
OCR for page 121
Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
121
Eagerly, Romanenko shot past his partner, aiming for the open
port. At that instant Grechko's heart skipped a beat. Seeing the
detached rigid back-up cable, he somehow imagined that Roma-
nenko would fly out the opening and drift away. Aghast at the pos-
sibility, Grechko grabbed at Romanenko's tether, yelling "What's
your hurry?!" Grechko had forgotten that Romanenko was still
tethered by his umbilical cord, which had to be attached to the
station. Without the electricity provided by that cord, their space-
suits couldn't function.
Abashed, he spent the next few minutes playing out Roma-
nenko's tether so that his crewmate could poke his head and body
out the port and look out into space. Then Romanenko eased back
inside the docking-transfer compartment and closed the docking
cone. Neither said anything to ground controllers about Roma-
nenko's little excursion.8
At the post-flight press conference, the jovial and imaginative
Grechko ("He is an amusing chap," noted Romanenko.) jokingly
told interviewers that Romanenko's safety line had become de-
tached, and that he would have been lost in space if Grechko had
not grabbed the end of his line in the nick of time. To Grechko's
surprise, and Romanenko's chagrin, the journalists took Grechko
seriously, a circumstance that has since forced them to repeatedly
explain what really happened. 9
With the bow port apparently operational and the receptacle
cone shut, the two men patiently awaited orders from the ground
to start repressurizing the docking-transfer compartment so that
they could climb out of their spacesuits. But the order did not come.
Unbeknownst to the cosmonauts, engineers in mission con-
trol were getting telemetry from the station indicating that the
docking cone had not shut properly. The situation, with a warn-
ing hatch light and the threatened suffocation of the crew, seemed
frighteningly reminescent of Salynt 1. In this case, the men's life-
boat, Soyuz 26, was docked to the other end of Salynt 6, with the
station's main body between them and it. If the transfer compart-
ment did not repressurize they could not get back inside the sta-
tion, because the compartment hatch opened into the main com-
partment, and the difference in air pressure between the station
interior and the docking compartment made it impossible to push
the hatch open. Furthermore, a space walk on the exterior of
Salynt 6 back to Soyuz 26 was useless. Even though they could
open the hatch on the Soyuz spacecraft to get inside, they couldn't
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22
LEAVING EARTH
close it on their spacesuit umbilical cords. The only option was
for mission control to remotely Repressurize the entire station so
that the men could open the interior hatch and then repressurize
everything. Though theoretically feasible, no one on the ground
wanted to try it.
For about 10 minutes, ground controllers scrambled to try and
figure out what was wrong with the closed docking cone. Then, in
the hope that the problem was just a failed sensor, ground control-
lers told the cosmonauts to begin filling the transfer compartment
with air. If there was no leak, the pressure would hold and then
increase steadily. The men opened the valves on several oxygen
tanks. To the relief of mission control, the pressure quickly began
rising. A second test confirmed that the docking cone had shut,
and the compartment was quickly repressurized. Grechko and
Romanenko, entirely unaware of the crisis, climbed out of their
suits and re-entered the main body of Salynt 6.~
With the port fixed, the two men settled into their planned daily
routine. Their sleep schedule, unlike that of crews on earlier civil-
ian stations, was not adjusted to keep them awake when the labo-
ratory was over Earth-based ground stations. Neither was their
schedule staggered so that someone was on duty for most of the
day, as had been the case on the military Salynts. Both of these
schedules had been unnatural and tiring, and had caused problems.
Instead, the men lived on Moscow time, with a normal five-day
work week and two days off on the weekend.
Each day they ate four meals, made up of freeze-dried meals
and bite-sized chunks of food, from meat to candy bars. Each day
they did about two hours of exercises, half on the treadmill, half on
the bicycle. Each day they had a list of scientific chores to perform,
from snapping detailed photographs of the earth's surface to using
the station's various telescopes to study the stars. For example,
their biological experiments included an aquarium holding tadpoles
and an incubator holding drosophila flies the same kind of flies
that Sevastyanov had given pet names on Salynt 4. There were two
sets of tadpoles, one hatched on Earth, the other in space. While
the space-born tadpoles tended to swim in spirals, the Earth-born
tadpoles swam about randomly, showing a greater inability to ori-
ent themselves to weightlessness.l2
During these early weeks the two men mostly focused on
checking out the station's systems in preparation for the impend-
OCR for page 123
Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
123
ing arrival of the second Soyuz spacecraft in mid-lanuary.
Dzhanibekov and Makarov's flight was actually a quickly impro-
vised six-day mission with only two real goals. First, the mission
was to accomplish the first docking of two crews to a single space
station. Second, and more important, the mission was to free the
aft port, blocked by Grechko's and Romanenko's Soyuz 26 space-
craft, so that Progress freighters could use it to refuel the station's
tanks. Mission control was unwilling to simply undock Soyuz 26
and have Romanenko fly it around to the bow port. Doing so
would have required the complex task of shutting down the sta-
tion as if it were being left unmanned, just in case the crew had
trouble redocking and had to return to Earth.
Instead, controllers planned to use Soyuz 27 to get the aft port
clear, albeit in a roundabout fashion: After docking Soyuz 27 to the
bow port, Dzhanibekov and Makarov were to return home in Soyuz
26, thereby clearing the aft port. The switch would not only give
the Soviets a new space first the first time two vehicles had
docked to a third in space it would also give Grechko and Roma-
nenko a fresh return vehicle.
As Dzhanibekov steered Soyuz 27 towards Salynt 6, he did
things differently than Kovalyonok and Romanenko, both of whom
had taken manual control during their dockings. He instead de-
cided that it was essential to let the automatic docking system
complete the docking. Many unmanned Progress freighters were to
come after his flight, and mission control needed to know if Salynt
6's radar docking systems could be trusted to work.
Making this decision, however, took some nerve. During dock-
ing operations cosmonauts were required to stay inside Soyuz's de-
scent module, even though it was impossible to see anything use-
ful through the descent module's three tiny windows. To give the
pilot some visual guidance, a periscope was attached to his win-
dow. He also had a 3-inch-square black-and-white television screen,
which showed a split-screen image from the two cameras pointing
out the front of Soyuz.
Dzhanibekov's docking was scheduled to occur at night. To
make Salynt 6 visible, the station had four lights on the perimeter
of its docking port, two steady and two flashing. There were also
two steady lights, one each on the outside ends of Salynt 6's port
and starboard solar panels. If the automatic system was on course,
each screen image should show Dzhanibekov six lights, for a total
of twelve lights on his 3-inch-square screen.
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LEAVING EARTH
As the Soyuz spacecraft edged closer, it began to twist slightly
off course, its lights drifting sideways. Dzhanibekov braced himself
to take control. Then, in a leap of faith, he did nothing. "Instinc-
tively I knew that everything was right," he said later. On his
viewscreen he could see 12 lights, some blinking, some not, "like a
Christmas tree." If the ship was going to miss the port, the lights
would have been more askew.
Dzhanibekov's instincts were right. At 20-feet separation, the
automatic system made some adjustments, righted itself, and slid
Soyaz 27 precisely into the port.~3
Grechko and Romanenko were thrilled to have company after
a month in space. The men hugged and laughed for the camera.
Then, after Makarov and Dzhanibekov had presented their hosts
with newspapers and letters from home, Grechko and Romanenko
offered their guests a simple space meal, small crackers and salt
tablets, the closest they could get to emulating the Russian tradi-
tion of feeding guests bread and salt. They washed these down with
toasts of cherry juice squeezed from tubes.
Unlike American society, which has few hospitality rituals
other than to shake hands and to bring the host a small gift (usually
a bottle of wine), Russian society places great importance on its
welcoming rites. Bread and salt are eaten as a symbol of fellowship
and good luck. Toasts of vodka are required before every meal. On
special occasions, the toasts must be frequent, copious, and deeply
savored. For Grechko and Romanenko, therefore, the toast of cherry
juice was not merely for public relations. They were truly happy to
have guests, and felt a strong obligation to show their happiness in
a manner that everyone in Russia would understand. The isolated,
lonely, artificial, and dangerous existence on the station had al-
ready begun to wear on the two men, especially Grechko. "Grechko
is an extremely emotional man," noted the crusty, hard-edged
Makarov. "With only a few days to go in a mission, he works fine.
With a month or more left, he can be nearly sick with enthusiasm
and anxiety."~4 The arrival of visitors gave Grechko and Roma-
nenko a welcome break from their daily routine.
Salynt 6 now comprised three separately launched spacecraft,
with a habitable volume of almost 3,900 cubic feet. In order to test
this complex against any unexpected vibrational resonances, the four
cosmonauts held onto the Salynt 6 treadmill and "bounced" up and
down together, seeing if the complex amplified this vibration (just as
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LEAVING EARTH
city's main telephone exchange. Fifteen minutes later the Ministry
of the Interior was captured. By dark, Soviet personnel controlled
key intersections, post offices, ammunition depots, the radio sta-
tion, and all government buildings.69
Several hundred Soviet commandos wearing Afghan army
uniforms and driving vehicles with Afghan markings attacked
Darulaman Palace, where the communist ruler of Afghanistan,
Hafizuliah Amin, lived. He had moved there only a few weeks ear-
lier for safety, acting on the "advice" of his Soviet advisors. In a
battle that lasted four hours, Darulaman Palace was occupied and
Amin was killed. Soviet troops found him drinking at one of the
palace bars, and shot him instantly. That same evening, using a
Soviet transmitter on Soviet soil but broadcasting on Kabul Radio
frequency, Barak Karmal, one of the founders of the Afghan Com-
munist Party but exiled in the Soviet Union for the past two years,
announced that he was now in charge.
In a move that put the final nail in the coffin of his policy of
detente, Leonid Brezhnev and the fellow members of the Soviet
Politburo had decided to invade and occupy Afghanistan in order to
prop up its failing communist dictatorship. In power for only 21
months, the rule of the communist People's Democratic Party of
Afghanistan, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, had been brutal, vio-
lent, bankrupt, and unsuccessful, a failure that even today, a quar-
ter of a century later, causes problems worldwide. Its leaders had
imprisoned 30,000 people and executed 2,000. They had tried to
force through a land-reform program that bankrupted the small
farmers. They had threatened the practice of religion, in a country
100 percent Muslim and devoutly so.70 By September 1979, the
populace of Afghanistan was in an uproar, ready to rebel.
In the Soviet Union, Brezhnev and the Politburo were also los-
ing their patience. As oppressive as the Soviets usually were,
Taraki's government had exceeded even their tolerance. In Septem-
ber they had even suggested that Taraki fire his prime minister,
Hafizuliah Amin, whom they blamed for most of the problems.
Instead, Amin found out about the plot and had Taraki killed so
that he could take over the government himself. He then acceler-
ated the purges and executions. If the Soviets did not take action,
Afghanistan could become the first communist government in his-
tory to fall. Worse, Afghanistan was a Soviet neighbor, and its
downfall carried dreadful consequences for Soviet security.
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Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
153
In the past, Brezhnev could have accepted a neutral but agree-
able neighbor in Afghanistan. However, after communist rule was
established he could not tolerate a retreat to neutrality. As he de-
cIared defiantly in Moscow on the occasion of Barak's first trip
outside Kabul after the invasion, "The revolutionary process in
Afghanistan is irreversible. Time works for new revolutionary
Afghanistan." Less than a month after the start of the Soviet inva-
sion, more than 50,000 Soviet troops, including 1,750 tanks and
2,100 infantry combat vehicles, were in Afghanistan, controlling
all the major airports, military installations, and cities.7i
Brezhnev badly misjudged the international consequences of
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however. By 1979, detente be-
tween the United States and the Soviet Union had already showed
signs of failing. In the four years since the signing of the Helsinki
Accords, the Western nations had become increasingly impatient
with the Soviets' truculent refusal to institute human-rights re-
forms. Refuseniks and dissidents continued to be arrested and im-
prisoned, and the borders to the communist bloc remained closed.
The Afghan invasion brought about the complete and final end to
detente. U.S. President Carter withdrew the SALT II Treaty from
Congress. He imposed a grain embargo. He blocked the sale of com-
puters and high technology to the Soviet Union. He postponed the
renegotiation of a cultural exchange agreement. And he pulled the
United States out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. As Carter de-
cIared in a nationally televised broadcast within days of the inva-
sion, "The world cannot stand by and permit the Soviet Union to
commit this act with impunity." He further added that ". . . nei-
ther the United States nor any other nation which is committed to
world peace and stability can continue to do business as usual with
the Soviet Union." Or, as one senior administration official put it,
"The probability is that U.S.-Soviet relations will be at a very low
level for years to come.''72
The "generation of peace" and "peaceful co-operation" proclaimed
by Nixon and Brezhnev seven years earlier was officially over.
Meanwhile, Soviet engineers spent the spring of 1980 finishing
their tests of the first Soyuz-T. The new spacecraft was going to
significantly increase the capabilities of the Soviet manned pro-
gram. It carried additional fuel and electrical capacity, including
the reinstatement of two solar panels to the outside of the service
module. Its propulsion and computer systems were also redesigned.
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These changes meant that Soyuz-T could remain in orbit uncocked
for four days, twice as long as the older Soyuz.
Two days after Soyuz-T returned to Earth, a Progress freighter
lifted off, docking with Salynt 6 on March 29, thus heralding the
beginning of another manned mission. Soyuz 35, planned to last
six full months, lifted off two weeks later, carrying rookie Leonid
Popov and, surprisingly, Valeri Ryumin!
After his return the previous August, Ryumin had intended to
spend several years working on the ground in mission control. Since
graduating from school, he had always changed jobs every few
years. "Otherwise," Ryumin explained in his memoirs, "a person
begins to 'fall asleep' at the job." After finishing his tour of military
duty he trained to be an electrical engineer. Then he spent three
years building the Zond spacecraft. Next he spent three years help-
ing to design and test Salynt 1. Then, for the last eight years or so,
he had been a cosmonaut.73
Now he wanted to try running the missions from the ground.
The idea of spending several years as a backup in order to get an-
other flight assignment didn't appeal to him. Instead, he figured
management would be more interesting, since it would put him
directly in charge of each new flight. The next launch crew was
supposed to be Leonid Popov and Valentin Lebedev. Ryumin was
eager and ready to work from mission control with both men.
Six weeks before launch, however, Lebedev injured his knee
exercising on a trampoline. At first everyone thought it was merely
a sprained knee. Then the pain got worse, and doctors told him that
an operation was necessary. Two days after this accident Ryumin
got a call from Aleksei Yeliseyev, mission flight director at the time,
under whom Ryumin was working as he prepared to join mission
control. The two men were supposed to attend a conference to-
gether, and had to work out a meeting place beforehand. After chat-
ting about this for several minutes, Yeliseyev mentioned offhand-
edly that Lebedev had torn his knee ligaments. The cosmonaut had
been grounded, and that Yeliseyev wanted Ryumin to fly in his
stead.
Ryumin was astonished. He didn't know what to say.
"You have tonight to think about it, and tomorrow we'll talk, "
Yeliseyev said as he hung up. In other words, Ryumin was being
ordered to go. In Soviet society, one could rarely refuse a direct
"request" like this.
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Despite the objections of his wife and children and despite hav-
ing never trained with Popov, Ryumin decided it was in his best
interest to do it. He knew the station and was familiar with its
problems. He was still fascinated with studying the sporadic and
unpredictable glows in the atmosphere's upper layers, and thought
his previous experience might help him discover their cause.74
Unlike his previous flight, which had no visitors, Ryumin's sec-
ond mission to Salynt 6 saw the station transformed into a travel-
ing motel. Four different crews arrived at regular intervals, includ-
ing three international missions and the first manned flight of the
redesigned Soyuz-T spacecraft. The three international missions
brought a Hungarian, a Vietnamese, and a Cuban to space. Each
was accompanied by the typical pronouncements of peace and in-
ternational cooperation. Just before the Vietnamese visitor's arrival,
which had been timed to coincide with the 1980 Olympics in Mos-
cow, Ryumin and Popov participated in the opening ceremonies,
reading an uninspired message to the crowds on Earth. "Let the
Olympic fire of friendship burn on Earth always. Let people vie
with one another only in sports arenas."75
Most of the world ignored the event. When Brezhnev first an-
nounced these international missions three years earlier, their pro-
paganda value seemed priceless. Now, with numerous Russian dis-
sidents in prison, with Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and a U.S.
boycott of the Moscow Olympics, the statements seemed nothing
more than empty symbolic gestures.
Before, between, and after these visits Popov and Ryumin spent
their time maintaining the station, doing minor repairs and equip-
ment checks. They replaced control panels, wiring, ventilation fans,
anything that had to be fixed. They discovered that with a little
innovation they could keep even the most complicated piece of
equipment working. For example, rather than struggle with nu-
merous and clumsy 10-pound tanks, they figured out a way to pump
water directly from a Progress freighter into the Rodnik water tanks
on Salynt 6. They attached a hose to the tanks and ran it from
Progress, through the docking port that separated the two ships
and to the Rodnik system.76
Unlike his first flight to Salynt 6, Ryumin's second was a much
livelier and happier mission. Leonid Popov was a warm, easygoing
man with a sense of humor that fit well with Ryumin's. For ex-
ample, when the two finished their last breakfast on Earth before
~ ~ . r . 1 1 1 1 . 1 . T T T1 _h
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climbing into their spacesuits for launch, they found they still had
two uneaten cucumbers. Ryumin, remembering his failure to grow
cucumbers on the previous flight, suggested they pocket both and
take them into space. He wanted to have some fun with Galina
Nechitailo, who so passionately wanted to harvest plants in space
and had so far had so little success. He also knew that at that mo-
ment she was in the hospital. A joke might cheer her up.
Three days later, during their first space telecast, Popov aimed
the camera at one of the station's greenhouses while Ryumin
showed off his new garden. Among the dead stalks and seeds left
over from eight months earlier lay one full-size cucumber. As Popov
filmed, Ryumin innocently explained that they had been shocked
to discover this cucumber when they first came on board. He
thought the cucumber must have grown by itself during the last
eight months. Everyone in mission control was speechless. Then
they began peppering the men with questions. Eventually, ground
controllers decided that it must be a plastic cucumber, which was
what was reported on television that night.
Later, when Ryumin heard about this report, he kicked him-
self. "We should have taken a bite while we were on television."77
Before launch Ryumin had asked a radio reporter if he would
help him create a fake news report of the cucumber discovery and
take it to Nechitailo's hospital bed. The man, who knew her, heart-
ily agreed. That night the reporter brought a tape recorder to her
bedside and played the report. "So, here you are, wasting time,
while Ryumin grows huge cucumbers in space. What are you going
to do about it? "
Almost a quarter of a century later, Nechitailo remembers this
moment with affection. "There weren't a lot of people in our space
program, " she remembered. "We all had close and warm relations. "
This was not the only joke Ryumin and Popov played on
Nechitailo. Later, during the Vietnamese visit, Ryumin joked that
one of the Vietnamese plants had blossomed in honor of the visit.
To his astonishment, Galina and other ground controllers believed
him. Nechitailo, who, as a scientist, was actually Ryumin's supe-
rior in the Soviet hierarchy and could get him grounded if she
wanted to, got very excited about the possibility of the first blooms
in space. She gave him careful instructions on how to preserve and
pack the flower so that it could be sent back when the visiting crew
returned to Earth a few days hence. Then she arranged to fly to the
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157
landing in the remote emptiness of Kazakhstan so that she could
be on hand to get the flower as soon as possible.
Rather than reveal the truth, Ryumin decided to fashion a fake
flower out of some pink paper he happened to have on board. When
Nechitailo got on the radio after the return of the Vietnamese,
Ryumin nonchalantly asked her, "Galina, how's the flower?" All
she could do was laugh, and demand that he grow her some real
flowers in space.78
Nor did Ryumin and Popov limit their jokes to Nechitailo. Late
in the mission, they told the director of the medical group ". . . to
have the same girls at our landing who put the medical belts on us
during launch." They explained, deadpan, that neither man had
been able to figure out how to take the belts off, and that they
needed these women to help.
The doctor was credulous. "You mean, you've been in tthe
belts] for the entire five months?" Ryumin and Popov saw no rea-
son to explain, insisting that they needed those girls to help. The
next day the director began to question them about whether they
were having nightmares and hallucinations.
Soon after, Popov decided to play a joke during a television
broadcast. He and Ryumin rigged an empty spacesuit with cables
and a tape recording. Halfway through the broadcast, a knock was
heard coming from the closed docking hatch behind them. The two
men turned in surprise, saying "Who's there?"
A prerecorded voice answered, asking for permission to enter.
Then Ryumin pulled a cord, opening the hatch and pulling the
spacesuit into the station, directly at the camera. Once again
ground controllers were speechless. Then everyone broke out into
laughter.79
Despite these on-board shenanigans and visits from four differ-
ent crews, Ryumin and Popov still had to work hard to get through
the long months of isolation and loneliness. The time cramped to-
gether in such a small and artificial space once again began to wear
on them, draining both men of enthusiasm. Two months into the
mission their treadmill broke. Rather than fix it, Popov and Ryumin
simply stopped exercising. Ryumin, who had hated the workouts
on his first mission, wrote in his diary how the repair ". . . meant
unscrewing a lot of bolts and would take a lot of time to repair."
When their doctors found out, the cosmonauts were ordered to
make the repair anyway. Five months into the mission, they de-
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cided to cancel their weekly shower. After two missions, Ryumin
had had enough. The work required to set up and dismantle the
shower, almost a whole day, made the effort seem pointless.~
Their loneliness became most obvious with the arrival of each
new visiting crew. The two men stayed up late talking with their
visitors, giving toasts, and eating with relish the newly arrived fresh
food. Then, after their tired visitors had finally gone to sleep,
Ryumin and Popov spent many additional hours reading and re-
reading their mail. "How wonderful it was to get letters in orbit,"
Ryumin mused happily in his diary.
Research helped keep them focused. Once again, they tended a
variety of greenhouses. Once again, Ryumin turned Salynt 6 into a
veritable garden, with plants hanging everywhere, cultivating on-
ions, peas, radishes, garlic, cucumbers, parsley, and dill. And once
again, they found that space seemed a difficult environment for
plant life. The flowers on their orchids fell off. Though onions and
garlic shoots seemed to prosper long enough to produce seeds, no
seeds appeared. Moreover, some arabidopsis and hawksbeard seeds
that were brought to space at the beginning of Grechko's mission
showed significant chromosomal damage when Ryumin brought
them home nearly three years later.82
Nonetheless, in their fifth month in space, the two men suc-
ceeded in getting an arabidopsis plant to bud, the first time buds
had ever grown in space. Ryumin wondered whether the redesign
of the greenhouse, which kept the plant's atmosphere separate from
the station's, could have helped the plant's growth. However, when
Energia's biologists studied the plants on the ground, they were
sadly disappointed. Though the plants had grown from seed and
developed seeds, the new seeds were sterile. Whether it was weight-
lessness, the design of the greenhouse, or some other factor that
caused the sterility, no one yet knew.83
Popov and Ryumin returned to Earth on October 11, 1980. The
first few minutes after landing were difficult. They were carried
from the capsule to lounge chairs, where Soviet reporters photo-
graphed them and asked them some questions. Once again Ryumin
was overwhelmed with joy at smelling the clean air and seeing the
grass. Then they were carried to a temporary medical tent set up
nearby. To Ryumin, everything felt twice as heavy, as if he were in
a 2-g environment. "I didn't feel very good," he remembered.
When it came time to walk the 1,000 or so feet from the tent to
the helicopter, however, Ryumin insisted on walking. Not only did
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this short stroll feel like weights were pressing down on his body,
his coordination and balance were confused.84
Within a month, however, both men were completely back to
normal. Their circulation readjusted, their muscles regained their
strength, their sense of balance returned. Ryumin's return to nor-
mal was especially significant, because he had spent 12 of the last
20 months in space.
The loss of bone calcium remained the only significant medi-
cal unknown. Ryumin's exercise routine once again seemed to slow
the rate of bone loss, though the workouts didn't stop it. During
the second mission he lost 4 percent of his bone tissue in his
heelbone, around 0.75 percent per month, a slow rate of loss com-
pared to others.85 Whether a human skeleton could remain strong
enough over longer periods was still unclear.
The final two crews to occupy Salynt 6 stayed in space for rela-
tively short periods, focusing more on testing new equipment or
keeping the aging station operating so that the last few Intercosmos
missions could be flown. Originally designed to operate between
18 and 24 months, by late 1980 the station had been in orbit more
than three years. Every additional mission was a bonus.
Soyuz-T 3, launched November 27, 1980, was very short, only
13 days long. Its main purpose was to re-initiate Soviet three-man
space flights. The crew, veteran Oleg Makarov and rookies Leonid
Kizim and Gennady Strekalov, devoted their time to either testing
the Soyuz-T spacecraft or performing maintenance and repair work
on Salynt 6. The cosmonauts installed a new hydraulic unit for the
laboratory's temperature-control system, as well as replacing sev-
eral electrical components.
After their return to Earth on December 10, 1980, Salynt 6 re-
mained unoccupied for three months until the launch of Soyuz-T 4
on March 12, 1981 and the orbiting laboratory's sixth and last
manned occupancy. Crewed by Vladimir Kovalyonok and Viktor
Savinykh, this 74-day mission's goals were simply propaganda and
maintenance. The last two international flights in the Intercosmos
program brought cosmonauts from Mongolia and Romania to the
station to complete the program.
Though they focused on repairs and maintenance, the cosmo-
nauts also tended the station's greenhouse, attempting, as had pre-
vious crews, to grow plants and flowers from seed. While an
arabidopsis plant flowered once more, they still could not get seeds
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to bud. Nechitailo suspected the cause was lack of light. Maybe if
they increased the light to the plants, they might finally germi-
nate.86
Kovalyonok's and Savinykh's return to Earth on May 26, 1981,
signaled the end of Salynt 6's manned operations. By now the sta-
tion had the smell of an "old car." Its fabric-covered walls were
stained with food. Its gear needed continuous maintenance. Debris
had begun to accumulate in its nooks and crannies.87
The station's last task was to see if two several-ton modules
could dock together and function as a unit, using a transport-sup-
port module conceived by Chelomey to support his Almaz station.
On April 25, 1981, one month before the return of Kovalyonok and
Savinykh, this transport-support module, dubbed Cosmos 1267,
was launched from Baikonur. Cosmos 1267 weighed 15 tons and
was about two-thirds the size of a standard Almaz station. Docked
to its port was a Merkur capsule (weighing another five tons), origi-
nally designed by Chelomey to carry humans to and from orbit.
After four weeks of orbital tests, the Merkur capsule separated and
returned safely to Earth.
After two more months of orbital maneuvers, the module
docked with Salynt 6 in mid-June, several weeks after Kovalyonok
and Savinykh had returned home, creating an orbiting facility
weighing about 35 tons with a total volume of about 5,000 cubic
feet, less than half the mass and half the volume of Skylab. For four
months the two modules flew in orbit together, using Cosmos
1267's engines to make several orbital changes. Then the complex
was allowed to drift in orbit for an additional nine months while
ground engineers tested its combined systems to see how they were
holding up in space. Finally, on July 29, 1982, Cosmos 1267's en-
gines were fired one last time, bringing both modules out of orbit
to burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
This Salynt complex demonstrated that a many-ton structure
made of two spacecraft modules could be operated in space safely
for long periods. The next Soviet station would attempt to build
such a structure, and this time put men inside.
Morality sometimes carries with it a momentum unintended. Some-
times those who claim high moral positions for superficial reasons
later find themselves trapped by those positions, and have no choice
but to follow them, against their will.
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Salyat 6: The End of Isolation
16
For more than a decade Brezhnev and those who ruled the So-
viet Union with him had been claiming that they were for peaceful
co-existence. Yet again and again, they gave the lie to this state-
ment. They built barbed-wire walls that divided cities and kept
children from parents, husbands from wives. They invaded and oc-
cupied their neighbors Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Czecho-
siovakia, Afghanistan using brutal military force to impose their
will on populations that simply wanted to live their lives in peace.
By the early 1980s, when Salynt 6 was finally de-orbited, the
contradiction between what Brezhnev said and what he did was
clear. Few believed his words. Instead, it was President Reagan's
words that moved people, as he called the Soviet Union an "evil
empire" and demanded, standing before the Berlin Wall, that
Gorbachev "tear down this wall." In western Europe, political re-
sistance to the installation of more-sophisticated military missile
systems weakened. In the Middle East, countries like Egypt, Syria,
and Iran, though often hostile to the West, decided that they wanted
even less to do with the Soviet Union, kicking Soviet advisors and
military troops out of their countries.
The military actions of the Soviet Union also made the nine
international missions to Salynt 6 seem nothing more than empty
gestures. So what if a Czechoslovakian, a Pole, and an East German
had flown in space, if the citizens of these countries remained im-
prisoned and oppressed? The Soviet Union and the communist
movement were simply not as open as these space missions tried
to suggest. Instead, they were far more restrictive and oppressive
than the tiny "metal hall" in which Ryumin had spent a year.
And yet, hollow as Brezhnev's high-sounding words sounded,
they had an effect one that was quite unintended. For 70 years the
communists, culminating with Brezhnev, had devoted enormous
energy to preaching the lie to the Soviet public that communism
stood for prosperity, freedom, democracy, and justice. The Soviet
public had listened to this propaganda, and learned. As Russian
historian Rachel Walker has noted, "The many peoples of the So-
viet Union, who had never experienced democracy and had no his-
tory of democracy, learned the language of democracy from the
"Communist Piarty itself."89
The Soviet space program illustrates this perfectly. Brezhnev
intended his international program as nothing more than a series
of superficial publicity stunts. The Soviet people, however, took
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him at his word, learning from these flights the lesson that "peace-
ful co-existence" and "worIc! peace" were more important than es-
tablishing a global communist utopia. Moreover, the openness that
the Americans hac! clemanclec! cluring the Apollo-Soyuz missions
was like a drug. Even though press coverage cluring the Salynt 6
. . .
missions was never as unrestricted . as c ur1ng t ne point mission, it
was far more open than it hac! been before Apollo-Soyuz. The genie
was out of the bottle. Soviet citizens hac! seen a glimpse of free-
clom, and liked it.
Uncler Brezhnev's status quo, play-it-safe leaclership, commu-
nism hac! failed to give the Soviet people freedom, or fulfill any of
the promises it hac! macle since the October Revolution in 1917.
Instead, the entire centralized communist system hac! steaclily crept
toward bankruptcy. Both agricultural and inclustrial production hac!
cleclinecI. The lack of consumer goods encouraged a black market
and extensive corruption. An c! the citizens of the Soviet Union re-
mainec! trapped in a burdensome, overwrought bureaucracy that
worked incessantly to stifle their freedom. "Stagnation" was the
cocle wore! used by most Soviet citizens to describe the decaying
system uncler which they lived.
Having listened to Brezhnev's words, the Soviet public more
and more wanted the words to be more than empty propaganda.
The consequence of this clesire was literally inconceivable, for
Brezhnev, his comrades in the Communist Party, the citizens of
the Soviet Union, its nation's space program, en c! every person
worIc~wicle.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
mission control
