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PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Michael Arena The space race started with the launch of Sputnik and other Soviet achievements which caused a real shock in the United States. Something unbelievable happened in that country: the truth about the ideological criteria that established their doctrinal and political bases began to be questioned.

Not only its citizens but all the countries of its area of influence were wondering whether the liberal and democratic system was the most suitable one to be on the lead of a modern world. Propaganda was dangerously minimizing the opponent's possiblilities and progresses. But President Eisenhower and his advisors lacked something Krushev had indeed: imagination. It was a goverment of businessmen who believed that a state could be ruled like a private enterprise in times of quietness, and its strongest concern was no other than that of keeping a balanced budget. That implied behaviouring as if the government could only worry about how to prevent deficit in time of war, instead of thinking about how to win the war. With enormous technical and economical power, with great scientific and industrial progress, and evident hegemony in all those fields, the United States should have never given in in front of the USSR. Wilson, president of General Motors and later named Secretary for Defense by Eisenhower, had even declared that a question like the conquest of space "had no relevance at all". During the eight years of republican Administra-tion, that lack of political views had very serious consequences. The United States seemed to have suddenly lost something the world had praised them for: technical primacy, a severe blow because the world was boiling over at that time. When masses of peoples in Asia and Africa were achieving their independence, the Soviet Union offered them the smashing show of a country that, thanks to communism, had succeeded in something as fabulous as sending the first man to the cosmos. To the eyes of the Third World, the USSR was an advanced country moving ahead of the United States in the most exciting adventure that man has ever undertaken. The war for image, initially won by the Soviets, was being decisive in the geo-strategical fight of the two superpowers. With Kennedy, the democrat Administration started to emphasize spatial programs in order to make up for lost time. Its counterattack consisted of achieving a startling objective in a short period of time, disregarding budgets. Within this context, Kennedy announced his commitment to place an American man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Obviously, the conquest of the Moon did not merely mean a technological conquest, but a great epic which hid a certain degree of idealism that was also patriotic and religious. All those journeys to heaven brought along constant references to God. Many Soviet cosmonauts would come back from their journeys declaring that, after searching once and again, they had not found him anywhere, not even on a tiny meteorite. They said God had to be a capitalistic deceit. These declarations were clear attacks to their "capitalist" opponents with the aim of humiliating them. But, by then, they did not know that God was powerfully allied to the turtle and would benefit it in its race against the hare. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step on the Moon, understood everything clearly from the very beginning. He was convinced that the Moon was up there, waiting for the United States, which was in charge of a mission comissioned by God like a kind of Pentecost. In a 1966 interview, the journalist asked, 'how about if the Russians get there first?'. 'No, that's impossible. God is with us, not with the Russians,' the cosmonaut would answer. He belonged to the Presbyterian church. Every Sunday afternoon he used to tell the New Testament to children in Houston. After the mystic experience, he became the Good pastor of lost sheep. Another sample about how NASA worshipped the divine favour can be found when Apollo 8, in December 1968, flew around the Moon for twenty hours, and its crew, astronauts Borman, Anders and Lowell, appeared quite busy broadcasting TV images to the earth while reading the Bible! To continue the fight againt God's feud and, by doing so, neutalize the American counterattack, between 1962 and 1964, Sergei Korolev, head of the Soviet space program, planned the "Soyuz complex", a new program that conveyed three types of spacecrafts based on the A-2 booster, which had given very good results with Voskhod: Soyuz-A. A manned vehicle integrated by a cylindrical equipment module, a bell-shaped reentry module and a spherical orbital module. This structure was exceptionally efficient and it is still used nowadays. Soyuz-B. An unmanned vehicle equipped by a powerful rocket that would be launched without consuming much fuel, that is, with nearly empty tanks. Soyuz-V. Unmanned tanker in charge of supplying Soyuz-B with propellant. The system programmed for the "Soyuz complex" consisted of the launch of a Soyuz-B rocket body, followed by a series of Soyuz-V tankers which would load the tanks of Soyuz-B before sending a manned Soyuz-A. Cosmonauts would facilitate the docking of the crafts that would then orbit towards the Moon. The Russian word Soyuz means "union". But that complex program of "unions" was cancelled in 1964, and substituted by another more ambitious one, the overdeveloped Proton. Behind that original sequence, there was finally a very realistic plan to reach the moon. That journey toopened several routes. The first one consisted of a direct ascent, a manned spacecraft that would be launched, overcome an exhaust speed similar to the force of gravitation (about 40.000 km.p.h.), get to the moon, land on its surface and take off to land on the earth. But it required such an extremely powerful booster, fifteen times bigger than the A-2, that was eventually considered unrealistic. The second one was the project called EOR (Rendezvous in Earth's orbit), which implied a redezvous (meeting) of several spacecrafts in an orbit around the planet, to unite their forces before the final assault once they were free from atmospheric and gravitational obstacles. This plan could be easily endeavoured with the already existing A-2 boosters, in the future it would give birth to space stations. That was the option chosen by Korolev. The third route was the LOR (Rendez-vous in a lunar orbit), and it implied that a spacecraft, with the required power for a direct ascent, tried out a circumlunar flight. It would need the development of two independent boosters, one to land on the moon and another one to go back to Earth, that would later perform a rendezvous. That was the system chosen by NASA –and the most efficient one– when the launch of the immense Saturn vehicles was ready for the Apollo 11 spacecraft to host Amstrong, Collins and Aldrin. Of all the "Soyuz complex", only Soyuz-A unities were built. Komarov and his collaborators did a brilliant work and found an extremely efficient and functional design based on a three-module structure. The rear module was the service module, and was cylindric; it was 2,3 meters wide, 2,2 meters long and weighed 2,7 tons. It contained a pressurized section for instrumentation and an unpressuized engine with a fuel compartment. For thrust, a KTDU-35 engine was used; both the main engine and the backup engine produced an energy of 3,9 newtons each one, main propellant was nitric acid and UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine). They could be both fired as many times as it was necessary for a total of 500 seconds. The service module had two solar arrays attached to the side to supply energy to the craft, with 3,6 meters length and 1,9 meters width when deployed after the launch for a total area of about 14 square meters. In the central element of the spacecraft was the reentry module, with a diameter of 2,3 meters, a length of 2,2 meters and a mass of 2,7 tones. It was protected from descent high temperatures by a sophisticated thermal shield, its concave shape assured an aerodynamic reentry. Furthermore, the Soviets had devised a maneuvering system that made the spacecraft "bounce" in the atmosphere, with an ondulating course of penetration and exit in its outer layer. Sudden decelerations were avoided with that system, and landing speed was reduced in such a way that the capsule's trajectory to its final destiny could be accurately controlled. The middle and front elements that formed the cabin lodged up to three people, with a total volume close to 9 cubic meters (cosmonauts had to become familiar with Moscow's underground at the rush hour). Inside were the control pannels, the reentry control system, the radio equipment, parachuting control devices and other instruments. On the side walls there were two round windows. Front vision was obtained through a periscope placed in the lowest part of the cabin. The front or orbital module was spherical, with a diameter of 2,25 meters and a mass of 1 ton; in some missions it incorporated a docking module with a diameter of 1,7 meters and a mass of 325 kg. This additional element contained food, provisions and tools or scientific equipment, and was also used as sleeping quarters and laboratory. The total mass of the spacecraft never exceeded 6.646 kg. For maneuvers and attitude control, the craft had a series of small propulsion systems that worked with hidrogen peroxid: eighteen with a thrust of 10 kg, and twelve of 1 kg; they had been assembled in both forward and rear parts to be oriented toward different directions. In the reentry module, space suits could not be worn in order to allow cosmonauts move from their seats and go to the orbital module, which could be depressurized and used as an intermediate chamber when they had to go out of the craft. Although its design was meant for a forthcoming lunar mission, and a docking system had been foreseen, they lacked a connection hatch and, consequently, a crew exchange from ship to ship could not be performed unless it was done through spatial walks, known as EVA or "extravehicular activity". At the end of the flight, the crew stayed in the reentry modul, the only recycable part of the spacecraft that might later have other uses, the rest of the components had been separated. Fall speed was reduced by one main parachute deployed just before the craft reached the ground, the termal shield was released at 2 meters altitude and four solid-fuelled rockets were ignited to decrease speed to 2-3 meters per second, the impact was thus minimized. Reentering phase was controlled by adjusting the direction of the ascent force (the aerodynamic force that operates in perpendicular direction to the flight's trajectory on the spatial vehicle when it is descending to atmosphere), in that way, deceleration was reduced at 3-4 g.and landing was more accurate. Both systems of flight and attitude control conferred the spacecraft exact orientation in space and stability in thrust periods, capturing stages and formation maneuvering. They could be managed either manually or automatically (this last system commonly known as SAU or Automaticheskogo Upravleniya system, a type of automatic pilot for spatial navigation). Radio equipment determined orbital parameters, received instructions from Earth and guaranteed two-way communications. The spacecraft also transmitted telemetric data and standard television images through four cameras placed outside it. Until spring 1961, year in which Kennedy started his lunar challenge, Soviets had undoubtedly been the kings of space. But during the sixties, a series of accidents and launching technical failures made the situation change in favour of the United States. However, it was Kruschev's reaction, undervaluing North American counterattack efforts, what determined the final result. Valentin P. Glushko, one of the best engine designers for rockets, advised the Soviet leader and transmitted him his scepticism about Wernher Von Braun's plan to get to the Moon. Von Braun was at that moment weighing the possibility of an EAR route, for which he needed the launch of a minimum of fifteen individual components. NASA did not have a single booster with the power of the A-2 for such an enterprise, and Kruschev concluded that Kennedy's discourse was merely propagandistic boasting. Glushko then tried to sell Kruschev his own plann: the assemby of a giant booster, fifteen times as big as A-2, which allowed a direct lift. That project had to remain awaiting until Glushko, a character of great pride, took Korolev's place in 1974. The decay of the Soviet spatial program cannot be understood without knowing other factors related to its ruling system, the Military-Industrial Complex, which represented the battlefield between lobbies (real mafias, as they were referred to). Those groups were integrated by technocratic, industial, apparatchiks and political men who had come into favour with some of the most powerful political and military characters, by then involved in a feudal war. The confrontation of those projects, due to technological and logistic differences, did not hide a conflict of economical interests: the real dispute was, in fact, caused by substantial contracts. Public squandering has not yet been quantified nowadays, and the decisions taken in order to benefit one project or another, disregarding their feasibility, highly contibuted to undermine the USSR lunar program. When Breznez got the power in Moscow in 1964, he perfectly knew about the progresses achieved by the North Americans with the missions of the Gemini spaceships, but he rejected the idea of losing prestige. Korolev took advantage of the situation to suggest a first spatial walk, which had already been devised but not so far put into practice. After dealing with a great deal of problems, on March 18, 1965, cosmonaut Leonov was sent to orbit to perform the first EVA in history. That fulfilment was quickly followed by a great number of North American successes with the Gemini missions, and by Korolev's unfortunate death on January 14, 1966, at 59, victim of a malignant tumour. The decision of the Politburo to name Vasili Mishin in his place was not exactly wise, his first action was to delay the launch of the first circumlunar flight until 1968 in order to overcome technical difficulties. With Mishin, the lunar program was finally defined towards the end of 1966: first, the circumlunar mission and, second, the much more complex mission of landing on the moon. For the North Americans, it all depended on the booster. Mishin decided to use an improved version of the booster used during the Voskhod flights to launch the first L-1 and L-2 spacecrafts. The first, L-1 was launched on November 28, 1966, with an enigmatic name, Kosmos 133. Once the capsule had been recovered, they saw that a new protective shield had to be designed before flights could be manned. Mishing was reasonably disappointed. The United States was going to launch the fist manned mission on board of the Saturn spacecraft. Never-theless, the days before that trip culminated with a sad tragedy brought on by the death of the future crew of Apollo 1, Grissom, White and Chaffee, in January 1967, due to an accidental explosion during training. The disaster, unfairly favourable for Soviets' expectations, would delay the Apollo project for two years. But, at the same time, the hopes to endeavour a circumlunar flight in October 1967 were soon dissipated. The first Soviet L-1 unmanned missions failed too when Mishin lost three spacecrafts (Kosmos 133, Kosmos 140A and Kosmos 140) in a series of se-quenced bursts at the very launching pad. Those failures, and his popular fondness for vodka, would eventually diminish Mishin's authority. But politicians knew very little about failures in spacecraft design. Breznev and Ustinov, secretary of the Party's Central Commitee and later minister of Defense, would finally comission a project to improve the success of the Gemini program. The mission would imply the docking of two Soyuz and a crew transfer in space. The most experienced cosmonauts were chosen for that risky mission: Komarov would travel in Soyuz 1, whereas Bykovsky, Yeliseyev and Khrunov would man Soyuz 2 a day after. After docking, Yeliseyev and Khrunov would perform a spatial walk to meet Komarov and fly back to Earth with him. That mission would not only state Soviet superiority but it would also test different key elements for lunar landing (the first rendezvous and docking in orbit as well as the first spatial crew transfer). The excessive anxiety to be ahead of the Americans brought on unwise decisions. Soyuz 1, the first manned spaceship, was launched on April 23, 1967, but problems started immediately after it entered the space. One of the solar arrays deployed covering the service module. Although that was reducing solar energy to the half, maneuvering was not disregarded, but Komarov was also having difficulties with the alignment engines. The problem was caused by an interference of thrust in the reactive control system with the ion flow sensors, essential for orientating the Soyuz. The best would be to stop the Soyuz 2 launch and facilitate Komarov's return. The first retrorocket ingition failed when the spacecraft automatic systems could not be properly oriented on going through an "ion pocket" (a low density area where sensors cannot exactly detect the direction of the craft) at the moment of maneuvering. To begin Komarov's return and reentry operations, he had to ignite a retrorocked with the space-ship properly oriented, so he had to repeat the oper-ation manually in the following orbit and, as that was happening when it was night on that side of Earth, Komarov would not be able to use the Vzor optical alignment mecanism to orientate the craft for retrofiring. Komarov then improvised alignment by observing the moon through the periscope, and anticipated in this way the manual method that would, some years later, be used in the adventure of Apollo 13. At the tracking center, Belyayev personally told Ustinov that the system could work, as it did in the experiments with Voskhod 2. Komarov used manual retrofire but a lack of fuel prevented him from controlling the capsule's orientation on descent. To get stability, he started rotating on the craft's longitudinal axis, but spinning could not be stopped and refrained the main parachute from opening. Komarov immediately resorted to the emergency parachute but, with the tumbling, the strips twisted and entangled with the main parachute. The module hit the ground at 500 km/h in a field near Orenburg, in the Urals, at 7 a.m. The local airforce commanding officer announced the tragic end of the cosmonaut to the control center. Ustinov was notified about it by General Kamanin at 11 a.m. At noon, Ustinov telephoned Breznev, who was then in Yugoslavia trying to solve diplomatically what he later would solve with tanks. The world was informed by the agency Tass seven hours later. Komarov's ashes were buried in the Kremlin's walls in a multitudinary ceremony. Some workers at the North American listening-in station in Turkey said that Komarov had been furious with the technical problems he had come across and was speaking ill of all those who had embarked him in that device. Rumours, from the Russian part, reveal that the impact area had not been properly cleaned and maintain that a group of Pioneers1 found parts of Komarov's body that received a second burial on that place. Soviet authorities received a great shock since that fact meant the end of their lunar conquest. As a first measure, they denied that the country had been involved in a lunar program (that would be a waste, so only small unmanned space probes had been sended, they said). And that was not all, Gagarin, backup cosmonaut for Komarov's mission, died along with his instructor in a jet crash, while piloting a two-seat MiG-15, on March 27, 1968, during a routine training flight. There are still a lot of question marks about this accident. And there is still a rumour in Moscow that says that Gagarin did not actually die, but he was "retired" to a psychiatric hospital in order to stop his increasing popularity when he was about reaching the power at the Party. In any case, his disappearance caused disappointment in the spatial world which had seen him as the future human embassador in the Moon. With the loss of Gagarin and Korolev, part of the soul that had fostered all the Soviet program during the first years disappeared. The glorious page of cosmonautics was closing, the new future ahead was uncertain. 1. Translator's note: A previous state in which adolescents (14-18 years old) were obliged to affiliate to Konsomol, and then to the Communist Party.

On a cold winter evening, at the end of 1967, two black Zil limousines were going across Red Square in Moscow. Inside the first car were travelling a group of veteran cosmonauts: Adrian Nikolayev and his wife Valentina Tereshkova, Aleksei Leonov, Vladimir Kornieyev and Georgi Beregovoi. After them, in the second Zil, followed the two highest Soviet leaders, President Leonid Brezhnev and the prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin. After passing through the gates of the Kremlin on their way to a reception, the cars slowed down and a man in a dark police uniform suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He was holding an automatic pistol in each hand and with a fierce look in his eyes began firing at the first of the cars. The bullets reached the driver, put an end to his life, Kornieyev was wounded. That man was obviously deranged, later it was found to be caused by his enforced recruitment. He had clearly mistaken the limousine in the belief that he was attacking the two leaders. Only a few seconds after emptying his chamber had passed when he was hit by the shots of the escort. That sequence had two immediate consequences: the sacking of the officer in charge of security for his evident lack of competence, and the appearance of Ivan Istochnikov on the scene. He had until then been the shadow of Kornieyev, whose injuries would now enable him to pilot the Soyuz 2 spacecraft, the following Soviet manned flight after the disaster of Soyuz 1. Ustinov wanted to get rid of his bad memories and had made all the necessary arrangements for a new manned flight for the Soyuz missions. Mishin would not make the same mistakes that had caused Komarov's death. The docking of the Soyuz in orbit would first be tried out with unmanned ships and, once its reliability had been proved, they would proceed with manned ships. In October 1967, Kosmos 186 and Kosmos 188 docked successfully. The same satisfactory result was obtained with Kosmos 212 and Kosmos 213, launched on April 14 and on April 15. The direction of the project could now embrace the idea of a circumlunar flight halfway through 1968 and a landing towards 1970. However, Apollo 6 had been launched a few days before. It had been the first mission to use Saturn 5 as a launch rocket. The United States was clearly in the lead and were already preparing their first manned flight with Apollo. Mishin was under strong pressure from upstairs: the circumlunar flight project had to be accelerated. The CIA had found out that the objective of the forthcoming Zond 5 would already be the conquest of the moon itself. Informed around the middle of July, President Johnson urged NASA to prepare a replica that might well be ahead of a Soviet spaceship orbiting around the moon before the USA did. In fact, NASA had never before launched a manned flight on board the Apollo spacecraft, but, as the news coming from the USSR was pressing, he accepted to modify his flights planned for 1968: if the Apollo 7 mission ended properly, Apollo 8 would already fly towards the moon. Nevertheless, there were serious risks involved in such an ambitious mission It would be the first manned Saturn 5 and besides, the lunar module was not ready yet. For this reason, the mission, under Borman's command, would just circle the moon in order to attain a stable orbit -something the Soviets would never achieve with their L-1. The CIA's suspicions were not unfounded: on September 14 1968, Zond 5 was launched into space and it became the first ship on Earth to circle the moon and later be recovered. But, again, a failure in the attitude control rockets made its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere quite difficult. The reentry capsule splashed down in the Indian Ocean far from the place it was expected to, after a descent which entailed high decelerations and temperatures of 13.000 degrees centigrade, conditions a human crew would never have survived. The following months were going to be very intense and the pace of work had already started to rapidly increase. The launching of Apollo 7 and its crew ended with great success (October 11-12). Against the impact of such good fortune, the Soviets devised a very theatrical mission. First of all, they would repeat Komarov's trial, which appeared accompanied with a certain morbid interest, to overcome the mistakes of that mission and achieve the rendezvous of the two Soyuz spacecrafts. Nevertheless, that had already been done by two Kosmos, so new ingredients had to be added. The Academy of Sciences and the factotum of its presidium, Mstislav Keldysh, suggested a solution which involved putting a dog in Soyuz 2 together with a cosmonaut, a mixed crew. The dog would star the first space flight of an animal, and would come back on Soyuz 3, establishing two new records in doing so, a human-zoological coexistence and EVA being carried out by an animal. Furthermore, given the force acquired by the asteroid Kadok, a "suicide" probe would be launched into the orbit to land there and transmit images and data about the composition of its soil. Although both commitments could have perfectly been saved, they offered the suitable scientific alibi for the Soyuz 2 and Soyuz 3 joint mission. Korneyev was chosen as the pilot for Soyuz 2, and Beregovoi for Soyuz 3. They both respectively had Istochnikov and Shatalov as shadows , and a second pivot shadow was also at their disposal, Volynov, who after the attack at the Kremlin, concentrated on a working scheme planned by Istochnikov. All of them had to go through a period of heavy training which was intensified as the launch date approached. Docking maneuvers were repeated over and over again under all imaginable conditions and adversities in the flight simulator building. In the swimming-pool, the cosmonaut would practices all those exhausting movements that he would later have to perform in the vast emptiness of space. A female dog was chosen to board the spacecraft and she underwent different tests in the microgravity chamber. During flights, animals were usually fed by a tube which introduced water and nutrients directly into their stomach. But, in order to allow the dog to move freely and perform EVA, it had to eat and defecate in a normal way. Any anomaly, like the simple persistence of an unexpected vibration, might overexcite the animal and cause the failure of the mission. And D day finally arrived: all the necessary drama for the climax had already been performed. The launching was progammed to be at 19:00 of a dark and cold evening in Baykonur (17:00 in Moscow and 14:00 G.M.T). The day before, the propellant tanks had been prepared for their loading. Six hours before, batteries were charged in the rockets and, a short time later, the booster was loaded with LOX. Despite being allowed visits from their relatives, the cosmonauts were not allowed to have any physical contact with them. They were not even allowed to sleep with their wives the night before, any sort of infection had to be prevented.   Quarantine services forced them into a strict isolation and only a few specialists, after having been in quarantine, might help them in tasks such as putting their space suits on. Inside the controlled atmosphere of the cosmic track in Leninsk, doctors performed their last checkup; ten days before they had detected an infection of Staphylococcus aureus in Ivan's buccal and nasal cavities which had already remitted completely after the checkup. His pulse was then 66, systole blood pressure was 100 and diastole 75; his temperature was 36.2 degrees. They went onto a coach that had been waiting for them outside the MIK door and were driven some kilometres through the Kazajstan steppe. The group of VIPS who had to witness the launching were already there, ready for it. And so was Irina, with glazed eyes and a tense smile which could not hide her uneasiness –still waters run deep. Ivan left his shadow behind; he thought that movement symbolised some kind of metaphysical breakup. From that very moment, he would be alone, so lonely that even his shadow was abandoning him. He was apparently undergoing a metamorphosis which transformed him into a cyborg, his vitality would, from now on, be ruled by microcircuits, sensors and electromagnetic waves. The spaceship mechanics would constitute a prosthesis, a tecnological extension of himself, with powers both in heaven and earth. It was 6:30. He felt plethoric. He waved his hand for the last time as some flashes blinded him. Next, the turret lift took him to the top of the rocket and he proceeded into the capsule through the orbital module side hatch to eventually take up his position in the command module. During the two and a half hours that remained before the launch, music was played for the cosmonaut to relax. Ivan had carefully chosen some records, including those of traditional melodies that Yuri Gagarin, not long before his accident, had given him as a present on February 23 of 1968, the Armed Forces Day, which happened to be the day before his birthday. Kloka was also there in the same compartment; she had been given a sedative whose effect would last the duration of all the launch phase. Ivan made some rutinary checking and then touched his pocket in order to feel the tiny volume of his foldable chess. Immediately after, he took his notebook and began to write about his impressions, it would be his logbook for three or four days. His life began to unfold in his mind like a slow motion film of its most relevant scenes. He revised his wishes as well as his sorrows and concluded that they had both been well worth it. He also remembered a poem by Ievtuchenko that Irina would put in front of him each time the cosmonaut would lose his nerve and get on his high horse: There are no men who lack interest. Their destinies are like the histories of the planets. Each one is unique, alone, on his own, No one else alike exists. And when someone has dwelled in silence, Happily in his nook, His own meaninglessness To him confers interest. Each one has a secret world, his own, Where the best moments are hidden, Where the most terrible hour hides. But we do not know anything. And if a man dies, His snowed spring also disappears, And the first kiss, and the first fight... Everything goes with him. Yes, there are books and bridges left, Machines and painter's canvases, Yes, many things have to remain, But there is something that escapes. This is the rule of the pitiless game. Worlds disappear, not people. Humans, wordly sinners, we remember, But, in fact, what did we know about them? Although Ivan was so very soon socialising with the immensity of such a vast firmament, he also thought of his own destiny as forming part of the history of the planet, and he thought of his life in silence, and of the secret world of his own, of his best moments, and of his most terrible times, his first snowfall, his first kiss and his first fight. He was emotionally seized by these memories as he was still scrawling his notebook. He hated being in the hands of fate and disliked being merely a temporary pro-duct of a destiny that had no god to reside over it. A part of his meaningless life had consisted of searching for his reasons to exist, his starting points, his sources. His inability to discover them took him sometimes to look for magical explanations, to search in absurdity what common sense was not offering him. He was a dreamer, not a rationalist like his father. When complex reasoning became false, it was easy to turn to the distant counterbalance of stars. He would soon leave a strange world aside, a world that was mixing joy and sorrow arbitrarily. I was becoming a year of change. Students from western countries had started their revolution, Spring had been crushed in Prague, napalm was still falling over Vietnamese villages, coup d'états were endless in Latin America, Northen Ireland was experiencing the strongest violence of its history, important people (Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King) were being killed in the United States... In what state would he find that world on his return? Only five minutes before the launch, all the controls in the craft activated and cut his dreams. In the command module of the launch bunker, Mishin's first assistant inserted the launch key in position. Everything was ready. Two and a half minutes before the final moment, the booster propellant tank pressurization started. When only one minute was left, one of the two umbilical towers separated. Forty-five seconds later, the second one did the same. The countdown was continuing. Ten seconds: engine turbopumps are at flight speed. Five seconds: first-stage engines at maximum thrust. Zero: fueling tower se-parates. Lift-off. A minute later booster velocity is 500 meters per second. Two minutes after, it is 1.500 meters per second. The four strap-on boosters are jettisoned. In three minutes the rocket leaves the atmosphere; the escape tower and launch shroud are jettisoned. The three modules of Soyuz remain in the open on the top of the spacecraft. Five minutes later the core booster separates, after having placed Istochnikov at 170 km of altitude. Ignition of the third stage. In seven minutes velocity is 6.000 meters per second. In nine minutes, the third stage is cut-off. Soyuz separates and is in orbit. Antennas and solar panels deploy. Istichnikov maneuvered an ellipse whose perigee was 180 km and its apogee 215 km; orbital period was 88,5 minutes. A short time before flying over Baykonur, in the twelfth orbit, at 12:33 p.m. (7:33 G.T.M.), Soyuz 3 was launched and flew directly into orbit. Beregovoi approached Istochnikov during his first orbit, using an automatic system to maneuver within 180 meters. Both ships closed to a few meters and flew in maintenance formation. During the capture phase , they established radar contact; onboard computers detectected distance, relative velocity, angular velocity, and relative angle of the spacecraft, and informed about the exact positions, which was essential considering they were moving at nearly 8 km per second. In the mooring phase , preceeding the final docking, Beregovoi acted as the active spacecraft and Istochnikov as the passive one. Although Beregovoi had the responsability of maneuvering, Istochnikov had to use attitude control rockets to slightly orientate the vehicle and align it to the Soyuz 3 axis. Something failed. The wrong processing of some radar information or the contamination of the computer by some interference activated one of the rockets of Soyuz 2, which ascended rapidly towards a higher orbit. When Stochnikov managed to stabilise the spaceship again, he had lost touch with Beregovoi and had to rekon the necessary orbit corrections for a new rendezvous. Nobody could exactly know what happened after that moment. The double bidirectional system failed and Istochnikov eventually remained cut off. After a few hours, Soyuz 3 could perform a Hohmann transfer in order to enter a new landing orbit for Soyuz 2. The two ships met again on October 27, but Istochnikov and Kloka had completely disappeared.

SIGNS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS Piotr Muraveinik

Ivan Istochikov kept a notebook on board where he jotted down his personal observations and made some sketches. During case proceedings investigators took special interest in a part where he related fragments of a dream. His on board diary was used as evidence number A-68/Soyuz 3/7821 in the legal proceedings. The paragraphs referring to this oneiric episode are transcribed here. "...I've just had a short sleep and my mind experienced a strange nightmare. I am writing it down before I start to concentrate on flight tasks and forget the details: The warrior breathed with difficulty and spoke between gasps: 'I have seen things that you would not believe. Attacked ships in flames beyond Orion. I have seen D rays shining in the darkness near the Gate of Tannhauser. All these moments will be lost like tears in the rain. It is time to die'. He was a giant but there was room for him in the capsule. I don't know how he got in, or how I could survive. His strength was as impressive as his beauty. 'You tried to rape Artemis, but the goddess punished you sending you a scorpion. Can you still feel the sting in your ankle?' Both the animal and the giant were transformed into constellations. For this reason Orion forever flees the Scorpion. The walls of the capsule had turned soft and sticky. Now we floated in the void, joined together solely by our ectoplasm. 'Irina has asked me to help you. The route is not entirely wrong. Selene is frightened and will make a show of her power. Take care not to be wrecked on her hanging rocks. Take care with Kadok's deep craters'. A white dove flew out of his hands beating its wings as it headed towards septentrion, but its flight coordinates were unfixed. Kloka barked twice while he looked in the same direction." This text and the drawings that accompany it were taken for examination to the forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Yevgueni Sheindlin, who made a brief diagnosis. "Split personality of a regressive character (primary sexuality) and possible hallucinatory state of oedipean origin. Schizoid-paranoid symptoms, with feelings of anthropomorphic depersonalization, of a paranoid nature, and cosmic messianism." Dr Sheindlin's report was not taken into consideration by the investigators, but it was an unpleasant surprise for Dr. Volovich's medical team. The mental state of a Russian cosmonaut was above speculation. Dr. Sheindlin was discredited and, in his record they found indications of Article 5 (this meant "of Jewish origin").

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