A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster
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Part 2 Post 1: A Fall of Moondust
Post 1: A Fall of Moondust
“My footprints join those of Neil Armstrong, and the other brave explorers of Earth. Like them, for all the people of the Soviet Union and all the world, we come in peace for all mankind.”
- Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, Zvezda 4
++++++++++++++++++++
For many years afterwards, there was speculation that Alexei Leonov’s first words on the Moon were not those originally scripted for him in Moscow. The sentiments expressed seemed at odds with the wider mood of triumphalism that characterised Soviet coverage of the mission, and the lines were not widely repeated in official reporting, at least until the era of Glasnost brought in greater freedom of the press. Still, no definitive evidence has come to light, one way or the other.
Whether those first words were as intended or not, the actions of the mission spoke louder. Eight years after the US had left the Moon, Soviet cosmonauts were seen walking upon its surface, in colour, on the televisions of the world. Those pictures showed the impressive scale of the Soviet achievement, with the spacesuited cosmonauts dwarfed next to their Zvezda spacecraft, which was visibly larger and more impressive than the sixties-era lunar modules.
On their first moonwalk, Leonov and Popovich spent more than two hours on the surface. Their first priority was, of course, setting up the Soviet flag and ensuring that Moscow got all the photographs they wanted of the pair on the surface. This was followed by a five minute telephone conversation with Brezhnev. Despite his failing health, the General Secretary sounded up-beat and enthusiastic as he congratulated the cosmonauts on their achievements on behalf of the workers of the world. Following this political theatre, the cosmonauts spent a further hour gathering samples and setting up a few simple, remotely operated geological experiments, as a safeguard should they have to leave the moon in a hurry. This done, they re-entered the capsule, brushing down each other’s suits on the outside porch, before re-entering the Cocooned Habitation Block. The module was then repressurised, after which Voronov exited the Return Capsule to help his comrades out of their moon suits. As they secured the suits and made preparations for their first ‘night’ on the moon, all three noted the “gunpowder smell” of moon dust that had first been reported by the Apollo astronauts.
The next few days followed a regular pattern, with moonwalks by two of the cosmonauts while the third remained in the capsule. On the second day it was Leonov and Voronov who ventured outside, on a moonwalk lasting over four hours that completed the set up of remote experiments and explored out to a few hundred metres from the landing zone. Day three saw Leonov and Popovich deploy the Soviet “moon-mobile” and take it for a test drive. Following the time-honoured Soviet engineering tradition of “the Americans aren’t dumber; do it like they do!”, the vehicle was an almost direct copy of the Apollo rover, and performed just as well. Television footage of the two cosmonauts bouncing across the lunar landscape made news headlines around the world, and extended the range of exploration for the mission. After six hours outside, Leonov and Popovich returned to Zvezda 4 tired, but cheerful. It was the tiredness that Leonov assumed was to blame for the soreness of his eyes, and Voronov’s occasional sneezing was nothing worth bothering the mother-hen doctors back in Moscow about.
Five days into their planned two week mission, it was becoming obvious that there was a problem. All three cosmonauts were complaining of some combination of sore eyes and throats, pain in the sinuses, and headaches. Despite watering eyes, the cause was plain to see, as a film of dark, powdered moon dust seemed to coat every surface of the Cocooned Habitation Block’s interior. Even the inside of the Return Capsule, which was kept pressurised and sealed during moon walks, was becoming dirty with moondust. Early designs for the GB2 lander had included an external airlock where the cosmonauts could have donned and doffed their moon suits separated from their living quarters, but this had been eliminated to keep the lander within its mass budget. Clearly, the air filters of the life support system and the decontamination protocols they were following were not enough to maintain a healthy environment. Perhaps even more worrying than the medical symptoms was evidence of scratches on some of the windows and metal surfaces of the ship’s interior. Though minor, and nowhere near serious enough to pose risk of a hull breach, it did raise concerns over what the dust might be doing to the seals and mechanisms on the various hatches of the ship.
For day six of the mission, the cosmonauts were ordered to remain inside and perform a vigorous spring-cleaning of the ship. The Krechet moon-suits were curtained off as best as possible, while the crew wiped down all surfaces using cloths dampened with a mild mixture of water and cleaning alcohol. They also swapped out all the air filters in the ship. Both cloths and filters were left black with dust, and were sealed up in sample bags to stop them re-contaminating the ship. These efforts appeared to have paid off, with the interior looking much brighter than before, but by the next morning surfaces were beginning to lose their shine again, as ultra-fine dust suspended in the low gravity pressurised environment of the habitat started to settle once more. Additionally, while Leonov and Popovich’s symptoms had not gotten any worse, Voronov was starting to run a temperature in what looked like a mild allergic reaction. Leonov informed Moscow that they would not be able to complete their fourteen days on the moon, and called for an abort. Reluctantly, Mishin, Semenov and their TsUP control team agreed.
On day eight, 10th September 1981, Leonov and Popovich made a final, brief moonwalk to make sure all emplaced experiments were safe and to collect a few final, high priority samples. Use of the rover was ruled out, due to concerns over the huge “rooster tails” of dust the vehicle threw up, and so only samples close to the ship were collected. After just eighty minutes outside, the pair returned to Zvezda and sealed up the ship for the last time. Four hours later the Propulsion Block’s RD-510 engine lit and Zvezda 4 blasted away from its Landing Stage, ascending into the black sky above.
For the next three days, the crew spent as much time as possible in the Return Capsule, isolating themselves from the dustier environment of the Habitation Block. This was largely successful in preventing their symptoms from worsening, and Voronov’s temperature dropped to only slightly above normal on the first day of their return cruise. Nevertheless, the crew were prevented from making the sort of regular “Cosmovision” broadcasts and radio interviews that had marked their outward journey, and this difference was noted in the West.
Officially, of course, the mission had been a complete success, and had always been intended to last just one week on this first attempt. The Soviets, after all, were not as reckless as the Americans, who were even now planning to put men on the first flight of their experimental space shuttle! This line was generally accepted by the Western media, and in any case the seven days Zvezda 4 had spent on the surface had smashed Apollo 17’s previous record of just over three days - even more so if you counted in person-days, considering Zvezda’s larger crew. There were a few Apollo veterans, however, who read the reports and stroked their chins, wondering…
On Sunday 13th September 1981, at an altitude of 750km, explosive bolts split the hull of Zvezda 4’s Habitation Block, releasing the Return Capsule with its cargo of men and moonrocks. Minutes later, the capsule entered the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Temperature and g-forces rose steadily… then slackened, as Zvazda 4 skipped off the thickening atmosphere and re-entered space, cooling once more as it arced over the north pole, before diving again into the air of Earth. This time the module stayed the course, a shooting star moving north to south as it transmuted speed into heat.
At 10km above the ground, with its speed reduced to 220m/s, the capsule received a sharp jolt as the drogue parachute released and inflated, quickly followed by the three main chutes. For fifteen minutes, the charred pod drifted downwards towards the barren steppes of Kazakhstan. Finally, just metres from impact, the parachutes were cut and solid rockets ignited, dropping the spaceship to the ground in a halo of flames.
For twenty minutes, nothing moved around the blackened capsule. Then, a black speck appeared in the sky: a Mi-8 helicopter of the Soviet air force. Spotting the capsule, its pilot put the aircraft down a dozen metres from the ship. Even before it touched the ground, recovery crew members jumped down from the helicopter and raced to the capsule. As two of the men got to work on the ship’s side hatch, a third rubbed away soot from one of the windows and peered in through the triple-paned glass.
Inside the Zvezda 4 capsule, three cosmonauts grinned and waved at the recovery team. The first Soviets to walk upon the moon had returned.
Thanks all for your patience in waiting for Part 2. This part is slightly shorter than Part 1, with 8 posts plus 8 interludes planned. The format will be similar to last time, with a new post each week and interludes in between, but the holiday period might disrupt that on occasion.
I’d also like to make a note on the advancing state of knowledge on OTL Soviet lunar plans. Thanks to some recent document dumps from the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD), there’s a lot more information available on the L3M mission and its associated hardware than was the case when I started writing A Sound of Thunder. This means that the divergence between this timeline and the OTL plans is greater than I’d originally realised or intended. After some consideration, I’ve decided not to ret-con Part 1, but rather carry on from where I left off. I hope this won’t impact your enjoyment in reading it, but I mention it here as a word of warning, in case anyone took my depictions to match the OTL planning. They don’t!
For those interested in learning more about the OTL plans, I strongly recommend Nick Steven’s Soviet Space Substack. Nick regularly trawls through the RGANTD and other Russian-language sources for information on Soviet space plans, distilling them into digestible, English articles. Nick is also the source for the detailed N-1 plans I used in building my 3D models. You can buy a wealth of reference material, cleaned-up and translated, from his Gumroad site at a very reasonable price.
Finally, just an update on the socials. Like many people, I’ve recently dropped off Twitter, so here’s where you can find me instead:
Mastodon: https://spacey.space/@AEBdigital
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/aebdigital.bsky.social
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/aedwardbaker
I’d also like to make a note on the advancing state of knowledge on OTL Soviet lunar plans. Thanks to some recent document dumps from the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD), there’s a lot more information available on the L3M mission and its associated hardware than was the case when I started writing A Sound of Thunder. This means that the divergence between this timeline and the OTL plans is greater than I’d originally realised or intended. After some consideration, I’ve decided not to ret-con Part 1, but rather carry on from where I left off. I hope this won’t impact your enjoyment in reading it, but I mention it here as a word of warning, in case anyone took my depictions to match the OTL planning. They don’t!
For those interested in learning more about the OTL plans, I strongly recommend Nick Steven’s Soviet Space Substack. Nick regularly trawls through the RGANTD and other Russian-language sources for information on Soviet space plans, distilling them into digestible, English articles. Nick is also the source for the detailed N-1 plans I used in building my 3D models. You can buy a wealth of reference material, cleaned-up and translated, from his Gumroad site at a very reasonable price.
Finally, just an update on the socials. Like many people, I’ve recently dropped off Twitter, so here’s where you can find me instead:
Mastodon: https://spacey.space/@AEBdigital
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/aebdigital.bsky.social
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/aedwardbaker
Oh you bastard! The way you keep everything in suspense up until the last moment made me think you'd just Soyuz 11'd our first Soviet moonwalkers!
Interesting problem with the moondust though. I assume this is just an effect of the longer-duration spacewalks and not any technological superiority in the Apollo infrastructure. Could you even fit an inflatable airlock on to the front of the capsule? Maybe just improve the air filters? Otherwise a lot of the plans for multiweek missions are gonna have to be reconsidered.
IT'S ALIVE
Super excited, this made my day. Curious to see how Soviets respond to the dust problem, and how the Americans react.
Super excited, this made my day. Curious to see how Soviets respond to the dust problem, and how the Americans react.
I got very, very worried for a second reading those last couple lines. Masterful writing as always, glad to see it back - I'll be interested to see what medical research into lunar dust looks like ITTL, and how mission procedures change for the next batch of Soviet moonwalkers.
And, as my friend @KAL_9000 remarked upon seeing this picture:
And, as my friend @KAL_9000 remarked upon seeing this picture:
"get hatched. idiot"
I'm curious how Ronald Reagan will react on Soviet Moon landing in this TL.
i guess the Space Transport System will undergo massive modifications
i guess the Space Transport System will undergo massive modifications
Nixonshead has already covered the initial US response to the N1 here
A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster
Interlude : Report to Congress - Soviet Space Programs 1971-75, Staff report prepared for the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, United States Senate, August 30, 1976. … B. Soviet Political Uses of Space 1. The climate in 1971 In 1971, the Russians in their media seemed more...
www.alternatehistory.com
To summarise an all expendable Shuttle-C has been in development since 1977 and is meant to be ready for launch shortly, one of its initial missions will be to put an adapted Skylab-B into orbit in order to match the Soviet Zarya 2 space station. That will be Reagan's inheritance on coming into office, I agree I can't see him being happy about having the Soviets launching routine lunar missions while the US is confined to LEO but with Shuttle-C's 60 ton payload a US lunar return is going to require more launches to match the Soviet one and going to take years. The Soviets have been working on this for a decade and even the crash Apollo program took 8 years.
What race? US has abdicated it's place and won't be able to return with even a basic landing before the mid 80's. That said the Soviets need to do a serious redesign to include some form of airlock. Also now clear a lunar colony is probably out of the question as it wouldn't be safe.
True, but I can see calls for doing ‘something impressive’ in space so America still seems Top Dog, even if it’s not a return to the Moon.
I can't see a US mission to the Moon until the late 80's with what we know about developments in the US prior to September 1981, STS-1 still hasn't launched at this point though it will soon as work on Shuttle-C has delayed in by a few months. Shuttle-C will presumably follow in the next year or two though budget constraints means there's no reuse and in due course it will launch Skylanb-B. Centaur-G has been conceived but the last we heard in 1977 development had not been authorised and if things are following OTL it will have only been authorised in June 1981 . So unless NASA has been given an off screen budget boost it may not have any ability to send more than 3,000kg (using the IUS) beyond LEO for several years, never mind a full blown lunar mission.
However Centaur-G won't be big enough to deliver a viable lunar excursion module, assuming the US doesn't launch a (long, very expensive) development program for a 100 ton class LV and commits to STS for it's launch they are going to need to develop the following just to match the USSR:
- Lander probably in the Altair/LSAM weight class (40 tons)
- Earth Departure Stage (50 tons)
- Crew capsule capable of lunar return (20+ tons)
It has to be manned to be comparable and a station won't do, the Soviets have one of those. The only non-lunar mission I can conceive that could work would be to send a man beyond lunar orbit, which realistically means Mars or Venus. With the constraints of Shuttle-C and hydrogen* that realistically means a new super heavy launch and a nuclear rocket engine. Which makes a return to the moon look cheap.
In the long run yes, in the short run if they accept they can't run missions for longer than a week and beef up the air circulation system, bring lots of additional filters and factor in daily cleaning sessions they can probably reduce this issue to a manageable** level.
*I can't see NASA abandoning hydrogen for something with lower boil off at this time
**It's not going to be great for the cosmonauts health and despite stereotypes the Soviets at this point were if anything more cautious than NASA but compared to the radiation that going beyond LEO exposes you to it wouldn't be that bad.
I am hoping the USSR’s path goes very differently and much better than OTL.
Probably depends if a cosmonaut ends up dead from lung cancer due to all the crap. L
Also a Manned Venus flyby is possible with what NASA has available (or will have soon). Problem is you can't do anything the early Mariner's didn't (or Magellan can do far cheaper) while the Soviet's can point to "SCIENCE ON THE MOON" in reply.
Probably to late as the economic problems are baked in by the POD and there doesn't seem to have been anyone in the post Stalin leadership cadre who can make changes early enough to stabilise either the economy or the Union itself.
Reagan remember? A key point was matching if not over-matching the "Evil Empire" on every front. NASA will likely get a bit of a boost in budget and a mandate for a Lunar Return mission even though they will have to 'settle' for the Skylab II instead of the dedicated Space Station they wanted.
NASA will of course make a big proposal but the military build up has priority so what ever is proposed will likely get cut down some. Something like even IF we can't go back till the late 80s it will of course be "better" than the Soviets.
Can't disagree with anything here, keeping in mind that Bush is still likely Reagans successor ITTL as well the US will likely see through a series of Moon landings aimed a creating a FLO like outpost. Tossing a bone to the Astronaut Corps office by handing out Moon landing jobs and possibly more space time with Skylab II should placate them over loosing the "every flight manned" requirement on the STS and reducing resentment for the Shuttle-C.
Ya I don't see either nation doing manned interplanetary missions TTL as it pretty much screams "stunt" which the other side can counter with Lunar exploration. Skylab II is going to have more pressurized space but I suspect they will push harder on orbital industrial experiments given the time period, maybe some Space Solar Power experiments.
Likely the US will take the lessons (theirs and the Soviet) which could be a passive/aggressive form of a "space race goal" itself
Randy