Chapter 25: Light My Fire - The Soviet-American Moon Mission Gets Heated
Above: Astronaut Neil Armstrong of Wapakoneta, Ohio, and Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov of Tisulsky, USSR, two of the several men selected to work on the joint American-Soviet Moon Mission.
Thirteen stripes of red and white, alternating between the two colors to represent the thirteen original colonies which broke away from Great Britain in 1776. A field of blue sky containing fifty stars, each one representing a state; a region of people with their own distinct culture and history who came together to form one united nation from their massive differences.
E Pluribus Unum, from many one, went the national slogan of the Americans. Alexei Leonov appreciated the symbolism and sentiment of the American flag, even if he’d been taught for all his life to despise it.
There’s something charming about it. Leonov thought.
Thinking that people fit together so naturally, like pieces of a puzzle, or the weave of cloth.
Back home, Leonov reflected, the Soviet Union had something of a similar path to nationhood, as it were. Born like America in the fires of revolution, the USSR represented both to its own people and abroad, the exemplar of a new ideology, and at that, one dedicated to equality, to freedom. Of course, to the Soviets, definitions of these ideals were drastically different than they were to their American counterparts. Did freedom mean liberty from imperialist domination, or the ability to belong to a political party other than the one of your father? Did equality mean that no single man could claim a crown over the peasants beneath him, or that a crown could be bestowed, but only by the will of his peers?
As different as the answers are, at least we’re asking the same questions. Leonov thought.
Why should I hate a man just because he happens to be born somewhere different than I? The cosmonaut grappled with such thoughts as he toiled away on the joint Moon Mission in Houston, Texas through the winter of 1966 and into 1967.
To Leonov, and anyone else who was paying attention to the project, its very survival and solvency seemed perilous from the start. After surviving public scrutiny in Congress thanks to President Kennedy’s well received television address, the project suffered other obstacles as well. Long, drawn out hearings were held in both houses of Congress between members of the Military Brass, Department of Defense and NASA arguing whether or not bringing Soviet scientists into the country to work on the Space Program constituted a national security risk, especially as advanced missile designs were discussed for use not just to deliver men to the Moon, but Nuclear warheads to intended targets. To make matters worse, the President had promised that bringing the Soviets aboard the mission would be a net gain for the United States as it would save the country’s checkbook a bundle, as opposed to having to fund the entire mission to the Moon themselves. As of yet, the Soviets had sent several dozen scientists and cosmonauts in the team led by Gagarin, but any substantial amount of funding had yet to materialize. Khrushchev made his promises, but many in Congress and the Military were starting to wonder if Kennedy was being played the fool for letting the Soviets into the country to steal secrets.
After months of debate, and with a vote to curtail funding for NASA soon to make its way to the House floor, Secretary of Defense Robert Kennedy was able to negotiate a compromise. The Soviet scientists and cosmonauts would be permitted access to American rocket technological information and designs only after the designs and reports were sent through the NSA for “redaction and necessary censorship.” Further, the military would be granted permission to pursue its own development of space-level rocketry independent of NASA, through the Air Force at Vanderburg rather than Cape Canaveral. The President and Secretary of State McNamara were not pleased with what amounted, in their eyes, to a massive shift in authority from civilian to military agencies. Robert Kennedy insisted to his brother however, that he “couldn’t have his cake and eat it too.” The American public had first thrust JFK into office in 1960, largely on Kennedy’s rhetoric of closing the so-called “missile gap” with the Soviets. Just as technology had allowed the United States to not only match, but surpass the Soviet Union, the President was seemingly inviting the “enemies” of the nation to come in and reap the benefits of years of American work and ingenuity, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars. Some of the President’s most bitter enemies even began to whisper about whether or not Kennedy’s insistence on a joint Moon Mission could constitute treason according to the “giving comfort” clause of the Constitution. Bobby set out for his brother a choice: either fears of Soviets stealing American missile capability could be put to rest by giving the military what it wanted, or Jack could call for an end to the joint mission, risking embarrassment and losing everything he had worked for politically over the last several months on the issue. The President, never a fan of the military-industrial complex he felt too strongly controlled policy in the country, was angry but convinced and yielded.
What this meant in practical terms, was a nightmare for Leonov and his peers, who often had to train for missions aboard vehicles they seldom understood and were hardly briefed on. They were promised additional information by the scientists they brought with them from Moscow, but Leonov privately began to wonder if it was really possible to work with someone on a project when they weren’t willing to trust you with the details. Accustomed to the bloated, Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Soviet agencies, the cosmonauts treated the Americans’ secrecy and cold demeanor toward them with cynical humor. “I expect they’ll fly us to the Moon in a biplane.” Valentina Tereshkova, the sole woman in the program, joked to Leonov one evening. “Anything else would have to be stricken from the record.”
…
Gemini XII, the last of the planned American space flights of that project, was completed by Buzz Aldrin and James Lovell on November 15th, 1966. A resounding success, Gemini had come a long way in advancing not only American capability to put human beings in space with better rockets and orbital launch systems, but also in their ability to conduct scientific work in the space environment, with advances like spacewalks and better space suit technology progressing all the time. Beyond political issues, the next program, Apollo-Svarog, was an intense personal gauntlet for many of the patriots involved.
One such young man was Neil Alden Armstrong, 36 years old, from the nation’s heartland at Wapakoneta, Ohio. An Eagle Scout, former Navy test pilot and veteran of the Korean War, Armstrong knew from the time he first saw an airplane at the age of two with his father that he was born to fly. Naturally quiet, and renowned for his good humor and humility, Armstrong was well liked by his fellow astronauts around Houston and was being fast tracked to possibly command an American mission to the Moon. This distinction for Armstrong continued after Apollo became Apollo-Svarog, and the Soviets were invited, but was called into question following the tragic events of January 27th, 1967.
Apollo-Svarog I, the first planned flight of the joint mission, was to be a low Earth orbital test of the program’s newly designed Command/Service Module. Aiming for a launch date of February 27th, the program coordinators picked a crew and backup crew of four a piece, two Americans and two Soviets each time, in the name of keeping everything fair and balanced between the two nations. Of course, the original designs for the module had only been made to accomodate three, so new plans were drawn up, more time spent on figuring out how to make the thing work. Armstrong privately wondered if all the “goodwill” this mission would represent was really worth it in the end. It seemed to him more a hindrance having the red tape the Soviets brought with them, than some grand help for humanity. He was also disappointed to learn he wouldn’t be involved in AS I, the selected crew was as follows:
Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom (USA) - Command Pilot
Ed White (USA) - Senior Pilot
Valeri Kubasov (USSR) - Engineer
Pavel Popovich (USSR) - Tertiary Pilot and Backup commander
The Soviets complained, naturally, that an American was placed in primary command of the test, rather than a Cosmonaut. Their complaints fell on deaf ears however, as NASA was already under intense pressure about the Soviets being too involved and accomodated. Trying to tell an American to take orders from a Soviet was a surefire way to break the camel’s back and get the project cancelled altogether. Despite all of the roadblocks standing before it, the project seemed ready to move ahead and the test went forward on that pleasant Texas day in January.
The test, originally scheduled to begin at 1:27 CST was delayed by several hours due to difficulties connecting the module’s communications systems to ground control, and Grissom complaining of a strange odor, which he compared to “sour buttermilk” over his open microphone. The cosmonauts and astronauts alike waited for the installation of a heat shield hatch which would act as a protective coating for the module on its descent back into Earth’s atmosphere once the tests were completed and this thing finally made it off the ground. Unfortunately for Grissom and his men, it wasn’t heat from the outside of the module they would need to be shielded from.
At 6:31 CST a momentary increase in AC Bus 2 voltage occurred. Nine seconds later, both Grissom and Popovich exclaimed “Hey! Fire!” over their microphones and the sounds of hurried, frantic motion were being picked up by mission control. Due to the nature of the air in the cabin, made exclusively of oxygen, the fire grew rapidly into a conflagration which consumed the entire interior of the module. Ironically, the hatch that was meant to serve as a shield from the heat wound up serving as the door to a giant oven, cooking the explorers with nary a way out, as the inner latch to release the hatch grew stuck in the heat.
Workers on the ground rushed to release the module and rescue the astronauts and cosmonauts, but were held back when fears mounted that the fire could spread to nearby stores of rocket fuel and ignite into a massive fireball, which would likely kill all of the ground workers as well. When the likelihood of this proved nill, and the screams of the men inside had long since faded into tragic silence, the workers were finally permitted to approach the module and remove the bodies, which had been melted into the nylon of their seats by the intensity of the heat. All four were killed within minutes of the fire breaking out, though the fatalities must have been anything but painless.
Watching the afternoon’s events play out with his fellows on closed circuit television, Armstrong felt a giant pit in his stomach as his friends and their Soviet counterparts were pulled from the burned husk of a module. Their bodies were nearly gelatinous in composition after exposure to the fire, and for a moment, Armstrong was reminded of the ashes of comrades burned alive in gas fires he’d witnessed from above during armed recon over Korea. He began to shake with fury as he realized the connection. Soviet bombs had killed his comrades near the 38th parallel, and the damn commies were likely behind this failed mission as well.
He turned his attention to the Soviet sitting next to him, Leonov, he thought his name was. “Tell me.” Armstrong’s voice wavered, hardly above a whisper. “Was losing two of your boys worth taking two of ours, you son of a bitch?”
Leonov, still struggling with his grasp of English, turned to face Armstrong and was abruptly met with a fist to the face. The brunt of Armstrong’s fury fell on Leonov then, and the two engaged in a brawl on the floor of the control center. Though several astronauts, such as Buzz Aldrin rushed to pull the two men apart, others, who mistrusted the Russians as fellow veterans from Korea or for some other reason, cheered the American on. “Kick his ass, Neil!” one of them laughed while Valentina Tereshkova rushed to get her superior. Though they were coming together to prove the strength of the human spirit, it seemed that even these intrepid adventurers were not immune to human impulses and emotion. Like Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy might say to Mr. Spock, “These are men, not machines! Your confounded logic can’t appeal to them all!”
In the end, Armstrong was given a stern warning from his superiors and charged a fine for his assault on Leonov. Threatened with removal from the program if his actions continued, Armstrong satisfied himself with the beatdown he’d given the Russian that day in Houston. The two men would eventually reconcile, and serve together on arguably the most important of all Apollo-Svarog missions, but not before sharing a beer at the Wrangler, a local dive and bonding over the oddest of things: fly fishing.
…
The political aftermath of the AS-I disaster was taxing for President Kennedy, to say the least. In the wake of myriad doubts from Air Force experts, powerful senators, and a skeptical public, the program desperately needed a success to save face and show the world that cooperation between East and West was more than just the stuff of science fiction or idle liberal fantasy. Desperate to avoid being painted as an amateur, and wanting nothing more than to continue the quest for his dream of seeing the joint Lunar mission through, Kennedy ordered NASA to assemble a team of its absolute best to look into the fire, produce a thorough report of the causes of the accident, and rule out
in no uncertain terms that the Soviet members of the team were in any way responsible for what occurred to the module.
Once sabotage was successfully dismissed as impossible, thanks to the thorough questioning of Senators Hubert Humphrey (D - MN) and others, Kennedy slowly began overseeing the steps necessary to restoring public faith in the project. Appearing in an hour long television special alongside John Glenn, Yuri Gagarin, and the cast of NBC’s smash hit Star Trek, Kennedy assured the American people that every possible precaution was being made to ensure that such a tragic accident would not occur again.
“The sacrifices of Gus Grissom, Pavel Popovich, and their heroic crew will never be forgotten by this administration nor any that seek to reach out and touch the stars. As was the case with the great explorers of the past, taming this, the final frontier, requires all the courage, bravery, and tenacity that we as a species can produce. I ask only that as we move forward with project Apollo-Svarog, we as a nation commit ourselves not only to scientific advancement, but to new friendships with our fellow man. As the cast of this wonderful program have shared with you already, infinite are the possibilities of what we can achieve when we set aside our differences and strive, united, against impossible odds to touch the face of God. Thank you all, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”
In the weeks and months that followed, public trust in the President and the Mission was slowly, but surely restored. The quest for the Moon would continue, but not without top to bottom changes, and a new emphasis on safety, as well as results. Of all the struggles President Kennedy would find himself in over the last two years of his Presidency, Moonshot would ultimately prove one of his most triumphant.
Next Time on Blues Skies in Camelot: The President makes history, and even the Jordan River has Bodies Floatin’
MINOR RETCON: The Political Party formed by George Corey Wallace and Jerry Falwell will be known as the “American Conservative Party” rather than the “Conservative Party, USA” and use this logo:
Thanks to Nerdman3000 for the awesome logo design!
I will soon make the change to the relevant chapter (Chapter 24) as well, just wanted to bring everyone’s attention to this retcon right away.