Small Steps, Giant Leaps: An Alternate History of the Space Age
- Thread starter ThatCallisto
- Start date
I mean, we wouldn't be a proper space program without delays, right?
Part 10 soon. Probably. Maybe. No promises.
All joking aside, Part 10's chugging along nicely and due to life circumstances I've got a lot of time on my hands, so. Soon™
Imagine if the scene contained definitive proof that Grissom did or didn't blow the hatch himself, since that was never resolved IOTL, although Grissom insisted the hatch blew by itself (which I'm inclined to believe).
As I understand it, it's pretty solidly settled at this point that it wasn't Grissom:
/https%3A%2F%2Ftf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffiler%2Fb8%2Fcb%2Fb8cbe79b-97c7-4175-bb3c-a3286a641224%2Fgrissom.jpg)
New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own Spacecraft 60 Years Ago
Careful analysis of the recovery film showed it was static electricity that doomed the Liberty Bell 7.
www.smithsonianmag.com
Ah! Thanks for that.As I understand it, it's pretty solidly settled at this point that it wasn't Grissom:
New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own Spacecraft 60 Years Ago
Careful analysis of the recovery film showed it was static electricity that doomed the Liberty Bell 7.
Fair warning, Part 10A (going up tomorrow) is going to be:
- Very long (currently approx. 4500 words, with many yet more to write).
- 100% narrative, in-the-moment storytelling from the point of view of those in it.
- Something I fully expect to generate a lot of questions and opinions.
Part 10A: Великолепное Запустение (Magnificent Desolation)
Small Steps, Giant Leaps - Part 10A: Великолепное Запустение (Magnificent Desolation)
August 27th, 1973
Skylab 3 MET 30 days
Al Bean and his crew had been up on Skylab for nearly a month now, arriving on station aboard the CSM Lexington on the 28th of last month. They had, by this point, settled into a pretty regular routine from day-to-day; meals, especially breakfast, were their longest blocks of free time aside from sleep. The three men were gathered around the rather Spartan kitchen (more or less a few heating trays and water tubes bolted to the wall, only marginally better than Apollo) listening to Bill Thornton read off the news from down in Houston as they ate, with Al on-mic with a headset to comment.
"...Twins lost to the Tigers, 5-0, Reds beat out the Pirates, 6-5, and the Brewers lost to the White Sox, 4-6, and that about does it for sports. In international news, President Kennedy is set to return tomorrow from his visit to Iceland, having met with both the prime minister and the president while there. In South Vietnam, Thiệu is calling for international arbitration after more skirmishes on the border with Laos. This last one’s something you’re all gonna want to hear- are the others nearby, Al?”
Looking up from his rehydrated scrambled eggs, Al Bean was momentarily distracted by a small blue rubber ball, tossed his way by a smirking Owen Garriott. He swatted it back towards the Science Pilot, then keyed the mic to respond.
“Yeah, they’re right here- what’ve you got for us, Bill?”
"Well, it seems the Soviet Union's heading back for seconds. Early this morning they announced another flight to the lunar surface is on its way- Rodina 5. It’ll be around the Moon in three days, unclear when or where it’ll land."
The three exchanged mutual glances of surprise; given the Soviets’ new space station program, it’d largely been assumed that the Moon was one-and-done for them. Al keyed the mic again.
“Well, that’s certainly a surprise- and two crews flying at once, with our neighbors over on Zarya. That should definitely be exciting to see, let us know how the TV coverage is!”
Off-mic next to Al, Jack Lousma raised his orange drink bag as if in toast. “Here’s to ‘em. Maybe they think coming in second place twice adds up to a win?” Owen snorted with laughter, but the Commander simply shushed his two crewmates as the CAPCOM continued.
“The, uh- the crew selection of Rodina 5 has made headlines worldwide down here, whole lotta front pages.”
Al idly ate another spoonful of eggs before keying the mic. “Why’s that? They sending a politician or something?”
“No, they’re sending a woman.”
She could have left at any time.
In 1963, when a seat on Vostok 5 assuredly set to be hers was instead given to a male pilot, she could have quit. In 1966, when an all-female Voskhod mission was cancelled after months of training, she could have quit. In 1969, when she was denied a lunar flyby mission to follow Rodina 1, when head of cosmonaut training Nikolai Kamanin came to the remaining female cosmonauts and told them he believed their entry into the program was “a mistake”, she could have retired with all the rest. But she had refused; remained, if perhaps out of spite.
It was not until 1972 that she got her chance, after Alexei Leonov had returned, Moon rocks in hand. In that time, half a dozen flights had gone past, all without any consideration towards her - the last female cosmonaut.
Kamanin was gone by then; pushed out due to age. His replacement, none other than Vladimir Shatalov, came to her in the months following Rodina 4. He spoke of another lunar landing, of one more great accomplishment: a woman on the Moon. And he wanted her to fly it.
After 10 years without a single spaceflight, Valentina Leonidovna Ponomaryova was ready to try, one last time, to make her mark on history.
----
It took months and months. Engineers and politicians squabbled. The lunar program came close to cancellation on more than one occasion. The cosmonaut corps languished without a flight as one, two, three space stations failed in one way or another.
Many of the men - military pilots and grim engineers, the lot of them - flatly refused to fly alongside a woman, let alone a woman commander, a rookie who’d never yet flown in space. Even with the mission approved by those in power, it took Shatalov time to find a cosmonaut willing to work with her. The man to accept, and the one with whom she would then train and fly, was Georgy Dobrovolsky; a man of 45, having previously flown on the docking test mission of Soyuz 10/11, with much technical and piloting knowledge that would serve the mission well.
----
The training was a blur, month after month, more intense than Vostok or Voskhod had ever been. Classes in orbital mechanics, countless hours in the simulators practicing all aspects of the mission, days on the Kazakh steppes climbing out of a capsule over and over, even a day at sea to prepare for a possible splashdown. Valentina herself spent many days perfecting her helicopter training, to prepare for the LK; she walked around in simulated lunar gravity, climbed into and out of a lander cabin in a bulky spacesuit to practice maneuvering, deployed simulated science packages and planted a flag in a fake lunar surface over and over. All of it came with endless advice, comments, questions, and commands from the men around her, all no doubt expecting her to fail, as many openly stated to her face.
But Valentina did not fail. The mission was not cancelled. Rodina 5, the second Soviet moon landing, moved ever closer to flying.
----
In the last months before the mission, Valentina and Georgy met with OKB-1 Chief Vasily Mishin several times.
Mishin was more or less as expected; not entirely an incompetent drunkard, as his enemies made him out to be, nor the great and worthy heir to Korolev’s designs as his staunch allies positioned him. Vasily Mishin was simply a man, an engineer who smelled of paper and vodka, with an office full of scattered rocket schematics and a mind full of big ideas about much the same. The engineer spoke excitedly about the N1 - his N1, as he had proudly declared over one lunch, having brought Korolev’s brainchild from paper to launchpad.
He joined them to observe the launch of Lunokhod, two months before their own launch, and even then spoke of nothing but his rockets and his ideas; disdaining the “nasty, brutish machine” that was the UR-500, speaking of his plans to replace it, and of the future - cargo rockets, a moon base, new designs. Their mission was not an end, but a beginning. It was as if the cosmonauts were simply not there, the great endeavour they were set to embark upon almost of no consequence; merely a catalyst to move things along to whatever came next, whatever grand future design Vasily Mishin was fixed so solely upon.
August 25th, 1973
8:32 PM local time - Rodina 5 T-4:00:00
The day leading to launch was dreadful. Awoken in the late morning following a long and fitful night of sleep, Valentina and Georgy went through the expected routines of the day - lunch and dinner, namely - with endless, aching stretches of nothingness between each flurry of activity. They’d donned their flight jumpsuits after dinner, and now, draped in light coats and carrying nothing on them but their hopes and worries, the two would-be lunar voyagers were ushered aboard the bus that would carry them those last few miles on Earth.
[N1-9L stands at Site 110, August 1973. Image credit: AEB Digital - used with permission]
----
T-2:51:00
The ride was uneventful, trundling across the dark, empty Kazakh plains with the bright floodlights and looming towers of Site 110 growing in the distance. There, hidden atop the white obelisk of the N1, Rodina 5’s two spacecraft awaited. Golub’ and Berkut - Dove and Golden Eagle - two birds for two crew, for the second lunar landing.
They stopped, of course, mid-way, for one of the many little rituals of spaceflight; Valentina was content to wait aboard the bus, but one of the technicians shattered that idea as he stepped to her, mumbled an awkward “This is- for the wheel.” and handed her a vial that undoubtedly had come from her pre-flight medical checks before shuffling away.
Valentina sighed, pocketed the vial, and clambered out of her seat to join Georgy outside. ‘So many silly little rituals the men have-’ she mused silently to herself, ‘one would think they’d ask me to spear a wooly mammoth next, like some primitive Neanderthal man!’
[The launch of Rodina 5. Image credit: RKK Energia]
----
August 26th, 1973
12:32 AM - Rodina 5 MET 0:00:02
The sound of it was immense, rumbling up through the structure of the rocket to shake the crew of Rodina 5 down to their very bones. Shrouded within the fairing atop N1 Booster No. 9L aboard their Soyuz, Valentina and Georgy could do little except report their status as Control and the instruments in front of them informed the pair of their ascent, without so much as a window to look out of. The seconds seemed to pass both in slow-motion and with rapid vigor, a rush of adrenaline, riding atop the most powerful rocket stage humankind had ever had the audacity to construct.
“Failure of Blok A Engine 3. Ascent trajectory is remaining nominal.”
“Copy, Control,” Georgy half-shouted his response while pressed back into his couch, “our situation is nominal. 2.7G.”
----
The vibration throughout the whole of the vehicle did not truly cease for any moment, even as it lessened from a mighty earthquake to more of a humble tremor as the N1 fought its way through progressively less air. The acceleration was immense, increasing almost exponentially as Blok A’s dozens of engines pushed onwards, upwards, faster and faster with less heavy fuel remaining in the tanks to weigh the monumental rocket down. Valentina and Georgy watched as the gauges in front of them informed them of the ordeal in real-time as they felt it - 3G, 3.5, 4, pressing them back into their seats-
“Rodina, we have ignition of the Blok B stage, and-”
The acceleration seemed to stutter, tripping backwards, as a drunken man stumbles on a street corner. The two crew automatically gasped for breath as the weight left their chests, replaced just for a moment by this respite of lesser force.
“-staging. The Blok B stage is operating nominally.”
Georgy breathed out a clipped “Understood,” and reached to wipe a tear from one of his eyes, still breathing like a winded runner.
Valentina monitored what she could from her seat, but Georgy made most of the call-outs to Control, as had been the case during training - despite her title of “Commander”, in practice, it was made clear, she was effectively second-in-command. It was only when the massive aerodynamic shroud separated, giving the crew their first view out the small windows of the blue curve of Earth against the black sky, that Valentina spoke up - “Control, it is a beautiful view up here.”
----
The ride atop Blok B was markedly more comfortable, so high in the atmosphere. Even when control called out the loss of one of the engines’ thrust, there was hardly much but a small jolt in the ever-present vibration - one engine simply chose to stop firing, so it seemed, and the rocket shut down its opposing twin and carried on without any mind to the issue. Staging, too, occurred smoothly and easily, and Blok V hefted the vehicle into orbit without so much as a hiccup. Engine cutoff came, and a final jolt of staging put the L3 complex into orbit. The N1 had dutifully done its job for the Union and her people, delivering the next of her great space travelers the first step of the way back to the Moon.
----
Microgravity was, for both the first-time space traveler and her more experienced companion aboard Rodina 5, a marvel; even still strapped into the launch couch, Valentina marveled at the ability to leave an object - a pen, or a flight plan, for example - floating in mid-air, where it would remain drifting until plucked back to continue reviewing procedures in preparation for trans-lunar injection.
The pair smiled to one another - friends as they were after months of training - as they set to work readying their vehicle for the next leg of the journey.
August 30th, 1973
Rodina 5 MET 4 days, 5 hours
"...96 by 253 kilometers, with a maneuver delta-V of 681 meters per second. All systems remain nominal from the ground. Good luck, Rodina-"
As the spacecraft passed over the limb of the Moon, the transmission from Control, rechecking the parameters for Lunar Orbit Insertion, faded to static.
Georgy let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Finally, some peace and quiet for a moment. They are like a mother before the first day at a new school, so worried that the children will not handle the day alone.”
Valentina gave a chuckle, poking her head into the Descent Module from the hatch to the Orbital Module. “Да, my father fussed endlessly when I chose to enter the Aviation Institute. But Control puts even him to shame.” Georgy nodded sagely in response.
The two set back to work once more, Georgy verifying that the flight computers on the Blok D were talking to his control console and double-checking the programmed burn parameters, as Valentina photographed the rugged lunar surface emerging from shadow out the window.
As the moment of lunar orbit insertion approached, the two cosmonauts returned to their couches in the Descent Module. RCS thrusters banged and rattled, slewing the L3 stack out of a thermal control roll and onto the proper heading. With the flick of a switch, a final thruster burst ullaged Blok D as the seconds ticked down.
Georgy’s finger hovered over the button labeled РУЧНОЕ and its associated joystick, ready to manually execute the LOI burn in case the computer failed. Valentina counted down the seconds until the burn was set to initiate. "Три... Два... Один... Now."
With a low rumble through the spacecraft, the Blok D roared to life. In the sky over the lunar far side, a faint new star briefly glimmered to life, slowing and settling into a steady coast before engine cutoff.
Inside the cramped Descent Module, the crew broke once more the air of cool professionalism that had settled in for many of the mission’s critical moments, whooping for joy and clasping one another’s hands. The third Soviet crew were here - the next man and first woman in lunar orbit.
Rodina 5 MET 4 days, 8 hours
Berkut was not a very big spacecraft. The LK was perhaps half the size inside as Golub’, the LOK, with its Descent and Orbital Modules. The lander’s little cabin was dimly lit and incredibly cramped, packed with instrument panels and sample containers and small science experiments to deploy on the surface. It was made much smaller by the bulky EVA spacesuit Valentina now wore, itself a spacecraft within a spacecraft. She stood - so to speak, held to the floor in a standing position by elastic straps - with the hatch to her left, looking out the window at the black of space, a few faint and static stars visible with the sun out of view.
Save for in her sleeping quarters in Star City and Baikonur, this little lander was the sole place Valentina had found herself alone for months. Here on the far side of the Moon, she was even more alone, without the constant presence of Control over the radio. It was admittedly relaxing to have even just this short moment of silence, one final time, as she prepared the vehicle for landing. This stretch of the flight was the only time that she was, in a sense, truly the Commander of this mission; Control could dictate that Cosmonaut Dobrovolsky perform all the important duties aboard the LOK on the way to the Moon and back from it, but this crucial middle step of landing was all hers - in wanting to land a woman on the Moon and with only a one-crew landing vehicle, Control had simply no choice but to let that woman actually perform the landing.
There was very little to do, in the final minutes before a burn. So much of the L3 complex was automated, all that the cosmonaut was required to do for most of the lunar orbit phase was to occasionally flip a switch or enter updated parameters calculated by Control. All of that was behind her now; the parameters for Berkut’s landing had been entered over the previous several orbits, checked and re-checked again, and the vehicle was now oriented correctly for the deorbit burn to begin.
Valentina watched the clock carefully. 30 seconds to ignition. At 25, a sharp burst of static over the comm and the insistent voice of Control once more returning told her that Golub’, in its higher orbit, had come within sight of Earth, and was relaying the signal and that Berkut would momentarily be within line-of-sight as well. No more time for quiet contemplation. 15 seconds.
“Control, all systems are functioning nominally. 10 seconds to engine ignition… 5 seconds-”
A burst of automated thruster fire settled the fuel. The clock inset into the console ticked over the final seconds, and Blok D’s sole engine silently roared to life, pressing weight once more into the soles of Valentina’s boots.
The first phase of landing, Blok D steadily pushing the LK out of orbit, was marked primarily by Control’s repeated requests for status updates. The burn was proceeding and Berkut was flying steadily, and Valentina reported as such, as many times as Control felt it necessary to ask to satisfy whatever anxieties they surely had.
----
Within a few seconds of the expected time late into the burn, a light on the console to the side of the window told the Commander that her lander had locked on successfully to the radio beacon from Lunokhod 2, and was steering the trajectory automatically to target that location for landing.
Valentina had mixed feelings about the Lunokhod. On one side of things, it was another few firsts for her mission: the first lunar landing guided by a beacon from the ground, the first Soviet rendezvous on the lunar surface, the first meeting between a Soviet cosmonaut and a probe on another world. But there was, on the other side of things, a part of her, the proud and competitive pilot, that felt it would only serve to lessen the accomplishments of the flight; “the first woman to land on the Moon, with help,” “Leonov hadn’t needed one on Rodina 4,” and so on.
Regardless, it was there, and with or without Valentina’s own personal feelings on the matter, Lunokhod 2 had found her a landing site and she wasn’t going to turn it down.
Right on time, Blok D’s thrust cut out, and with a rattle of pyrotechnic bolts the stage detached from Berkut. The little lander’s legs sprung into a deployed position at once, as the Blok E stage beneath the cabin lit for the first time. Valentina watched as Blok D tumbled away towards the rapidly-growing lunar horizon, to create a new crater in the rugged grey landscape.
It took less than a minute for Berkut to cancel out its remaining horizontal velocity, pitching more and more towards the vertical and revealing the surface below. Looking out the window, Valentina was greeted with the expected smattering of craters across the landscape; none in the vicinity, however, were too large or particularly blocky to prevent a landing. From this high vantage of several hundred meters up, with the low angle of the sun, Valentina could even spy distant tread marks in the dust, and a glint of metal that was undoubtedly Lunokhod.
In these few short seconds of hover time, Valentina did not once consider aborting the landing. She simply steered the vehicle onwards, adjusting course to avoid the few small rocks poking out from the surface below. There was no turning back now; one way or another, Valentina and her lander would be on the Moon in mere moments.
“Control, I have initiated terminal descent. Visibility is excellent and the surface is safe for landing.”
Berkut’s engine throttled lower first, then gradually back up, dropping the LK down towards the surface at a rapid but decreasing rate. At around 35 meters, the surface that had sat quiet and still for eons sprang alive as dust disturbed by Blok E’s engine began to stream across the surface, obscuring the miniscule craters and leaving only a few larger rocks visible, islands in the increasing tide. Slowly, carefully, the lander descended.
In the last moment, everything seemed to happen at once - through the obscuring curtain of dust, one of Berkut’s footpads contacted the surface, and the engine cut off as the four retrorockets on the leg structure fired and shoved the lander firmly onto the surface, rocking the whole vehicle down to Valentina’s left as the legs settled onto the slightly angled slope of the ground.
As the dust outside the window retreated away to the horizon, Valentina was left looking out through Berkut’s shadow across the lunar surface, static once more.
Mare Crisium - Rodina 5 MET 4 days, 11 hours
The surface of the Moon was a uniquely alien place to stand upon. It was not particularly bright and shining white, as one might expect when looking into the night sky from Earth; and yet still, all around it seemed much brighter than the gray, dusty surface might at first imply from up close. The way the unfiltered light of the Sun was scattered gave an almost subtle softness to everything, dulling the abrupt shadow of every boulder and scattered pebble. What little definition the curving horizon had was flattened by a lack of air; with no point of reference other than the empty surface itself, large objects kilometers away gave the illusion of ones much smaller, and closer.
The few familiar objects in sight did give some point of reference as to distance; contrasting the subtle beauties of the lunar surface was the sharp and geometric shape of Berkut, surrounded by stirred-up patches of darker soil where she’d walked, a small collection of deployed scientific equipment, and the bright red banner of the Soviet Union. Framing it all above was a great blue spotlight, the shining orb of Earth, hanging low over the horizon. The photographs, no doubt, would be stunning, little as they might do to capture the sight in full.
----
An hour into the two-and-a-half-hour EVA, and Valentina was feeling far less tired than she’d expected to be by this point. The spacesuit was bulky and heavy, not exactly made to be comfortable, but in the light gravity of the Moon it felt more akin to hiking with a heavy pack on, or wearing several layers of thick winter clothing. Were it not for the limited air supply, she felt she could go far beyond two or even three hours; four or five, perhaps, and then she’d be truly ready for a rest.
The moonwalk had started not unlike Leonov’s, with first steps and a few practiced words about the significance of the mission for the Soviet people, the flag planting for the camera, all the performative propaganda every cosmonaut was expected to participate in. After planting the flag she’d spoken briefly with the crew aboard Zarya 1, relayed through Control; another victory for the Soviet Union, the first phone call from a space station in Earth orbit to the Moon, even if it had been damn-near impossible to understand half of what the three men had been saying through the static interference. Deploying the few scientific experiments carried aboard the lander was an easy chore, completed quickly and without any difficulty, before she’d set out further afield across the surface.
----
Valentina couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride, being here. No more denials, no more broken promises, no more “maybe next time”. She was now, and for all time would be, the first woman on the Moon. It was difficult not to think about how this achievement would be seen, in hindsight; would her role here do anything to change things for women in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, in the long run? Inspire young girls to become pilots, like she had? Show the leadership in the space program that women had value not simply as tools of propaganda, but as competent cosmonauts?
Musing upon this as she walked and surveyed the path ahead, the lone cosmonaut stopped occasionally to photograph and collect samples - a rock here, a scoop of soil there. Hardly a few minutes’ stroll from Berkut, she grew closer to her only other companion on the Moon: Lunokhod 2. The rover was faced away from her and the landing site, as positioned by its drivers pre-emptively to shield it from dust kicked up by her own landing. It was strange to see movement from something else, out among the stillness of the Moon, but on her walk towards it Valentina had watched as Lunokhod had flipped its large lid open, as commanded by ground controllers, to allow her to photograph the rover’s condition after two months operating on the surface.
Coming upon it, Lunokhod looked like a fittingly alien creature for such an alien landscape. With its central rounded compartment, eight small wheels caked with lunar dust, bug-eyed rectangular cameras, and spindly antennas poking off in every direction, it gave the appearance of a large, metallic crustacean, scuttling the beaches of a primordial world searching for morsels in the sand. Valentina approached it carefully, mindful not to accidentally bump an antenna out of place as she walked around towards the front. She photographed it from every angle she could, reporting to Control anything of note - The back did show some amount of fine dust deposited over the white paint by her nearby landing, but no damage or impairment to the rover's actual function. While she wasn’t set to linger near Lunokhod for too long, she did take the time to remove a small rock lodged in one of the wheels at the behest of the engineers.
From there, it was a matter of treading on known ground. Valentina roughly followed the twin tracks of the rover back along its path, sampling areas of note along the way, towards the next target: Luna 22, the lander which had delivered Lunokhod 2 here two months prior, perched on the edge of a small crater about 400 meters past where the rover now sat. Sampling this crater and removing engineering samples from the now-dormant lander would be Valentina’s final task, before returning to the landing site to load all her lunar rocks, and herself, back aboard Berkut before a rest and liftoff.
----
It was only on re-entering the LK, repressurising the cabin, and cracking open her spacesuit that Valentina really felt the exhaustion of the day in full. Only this morning, she and Georgy had just entered lunar orbit. A handful of hours ago, she’d been descending to the lunar surface. And now, in hardly two hours’ time, she’d be leaving. All she had to show for the journey, really, was a bag full of rocks and soil, a few hunks of metal, and a bit of a headache. Valentina wouldn’t trade it for the world, of course, but it just felt like so comparatively little for what it took to get here. ‘One would hope that Mishin’s moonbase will prove more fruitful in its scientific and material gains,’ she thought, looking about the little cabin and taking a long draw off of a drink bag.
[Rodina 5 LK Berkut lifts off from the surface of the Moon, August 30th 1973. Image credit: AEB Digital]
Rodina 5 MET 4 days, 17 hours
With a heavy metallic thunk that seemed to echo through the vehicle, the LOK finally locked onto its target.
“Control, I have a successful hard dock with the LK.”
“Understood, Golub’. Proceed.”
Georgy flipped a switch on the control panel to activate his comm link to the lander he now had skewered. “Berkut, this is Golub’. I am preparing to suit up for the EVA and depressurize the Orbital Module. Welcome back.”
“Thank you. I look forward to joining you aboard soon.”
As she’d told it, the ascent to orbit had gone flawlessly for Valentina aboard the LK. Lifting off from the Moon, so it seemed, was much easier than landing on it. The rendezvous had been within expected parameters as well, and only on the final approach did any issues arise when the Kontakt docking system failed to capture on the first try. Despite a moment of worry for both the crew and Control back on Earth, however, a second attempt at a slightly increased speed had now firmly locked the two spacecraft together.
----
With one less cosmonaut and one less spacesuit stored inside, the Orbital Module felt as wide open as an empty warehouse. Georgy closed his own suit and sealed the hatch to the Descent Module, and slowly depressurized the little room. Opening the outer hatch, he was greeted by the beautiful sight of the near-full Earth, hanging motionless in the black void above. Poking up out of the hatch and looking down the length of the stack, he could just spy the bright lunar horizon.
A call from Valentina over the comm indicated she was exiting the lander, and surely enough, feet-first out of Berkut’s cabin came the spacesuited figure of his fellow cosmonaut - no longer the bright white-with-red-stripes of a clean new Krechet suit, but darkened from the knees down and across the gloved hands by over two hours’ worth of kicked up lunar dust. Tied tightly to one arm she carried a large fabric bag, stained as well with dark smudges; within would be the precious samples Valentina had collected, themselves in their own special vacuum containers to prevent contamination.
There was little for the LOK Pilot to do but watch as the Commander worked her way back across from Berkut towards the hatch, being there more in case she required assistance than anything. As Valentina shifted the final few meters, Georgy reached out a gloved hand. Valentina grasped it in a clumsy sort of handshake, and the two worked together to pull the samples, and the Commander, carefully back into the spacecraft.
September 3rd, 1973
Rodina 5 MET 8 days, 14 hours
Golub’ sped towards the waiting Earth, mere minutes from the Kazakh steppe with little but the fires of re-entry between. Within the cramped capsule, the two weary space travelers worked through the final steps in the last pages of their now well-worn flight manuals.
Even in microgravity, the weight of exhaustion after a week in space seemed to weigh the two down. Georgy rubbed a hand across his face, now sporting the beginnings of a dark beard, and exhaled deeply before returning once more to securing the straps on his couch. Valentina keyed the last few commands into the console before doing the same.
----
The ride back from the Moon had been largely without incident. After casting off Berkut and the Orbital Module as well as a night’s rest for the crew, Golub’ had fired its engine once to depart lunar orbit, and twice more mid-way to adjust course, and the two cosmonauts had spent the intervening three days with very little to do but wait, and observe the receding Moon and approaching Earth out the windows.
----
Settled into their couches and carefully monitoring the control consoles, Valentina and Georgy ran through the very last re-entry checks. Finishing these out, Georgy radioed down to Control to report their status.
“Control, we have completed the re-entry verification and are ready to proceed on your order.”
“Understood, Golub’, you are cleared to proceed with separation and re-entry sequence.”
With a nod, Valentina reached up and hit the switch to activate the automated re-entry program. From here, it was more or less up to the computers. The vehicle shifted to the correct orientation with a staccato rattle of RCS thrusters, and with a sharp bang and a jolt through the capsule, the equipment module separated. All that remained was the Descent Module, now the sole operational part of the towering N1-L3 complex that had lifted off from Baikonur just over a week prior.
Inside the capsule, the two cosmonauts settled into their couches to await re-entry. Valentina leaned her head back into the headrest, closed her tired eyes for a moment, and exhaled heavily, feeling her ears pop.
[Rodina 5 LOK Golub’ separates in preparation for re-entry. Image credit: AEB Digital]
Kazakh SSR
2:54 PM, Moscow Time
The fully-inflated parachute was a reassuring sight, as the Descent Module broke through the low-hanging clouds over the steppe. A billowing umbrella of orange and white, bringing with it the safety of a survivable touchdown even without the retrorockets. Worries of a fatal failure, of the capsule exploding on separation or burning up on re-entry, were proven idle by this sight alone; the early cutoff of contact was just another radio transmitter failure like Rodina 1.
Excepting the radio issue, Rodina 5’s final return proceeded relatively nominally. The Descent Module’s retrorockets fired, the capsule hit the ground softly; the momentary dust cloud cleared to reveal the charred spacecraft sitting on its side, pulled over by the parachute in the wind before it was automatically cut.
[Rodina 5’s Descent Module after landing. Image credit: Unknown]
The recovery team worked with practiced speed, safing the capsule and preparing to open the hatch. The small inset windows in the capsule were fogged over, covered in soot and misty with interior condensation. The lead recovery officer looked in, giving a wave to see if the crew could spot him - he could certainly make out the shape of them in the cramped capsule, but not much else through the murk; they no doubt were much too tired to wave back, feeling the weight of Earth’s gravity after over a week in space and an intense re-entry. He thought he saw the one nearest the window - that would be the pilot, Dobrovolsky - shift, perhaps noticing the movement outside the windows, or reaching to undo his harness; the position of the capsule on its side left the crew leaned uncomfortably forward, not quite hanging from their straps, but awkward enough that the two would undoubtedly wish to get out soon.
Finally, after some minutes, the hatch was levered open and removed. The lead recovery officer put on his best smile - to welcome the triumphant lunar explorers home - and, getting down close to the ground, stuck his head up into the capsule.
“Welcome back to Earth-”
The remainder of the sentence died on his lips.
Closest to the open hatch, Ponomaryova sat with her head rolled limply down and to one side, eyes shut as if sleeping. Dobrovolsky hung half-out of his couch by the straps, his torso leaning forward towards the console. Both had blood on their faces.
Something was very, very wrong.
"Medic! MEDIC!"
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Second biggest Part we've ever written, and it happens to drop on the 1 year anniversary of when SSGL started. It's been quite the year.
Part 10B will be taking a step back to look at the full scope of the Soviet space program of the 1970s - Rodina, Soyuz, Zarya, and beyond - to see where everything ended up. once we hit Part 11, we'll be back to the US program.
Thanks as always to @KAL_9000 and @Exo for a whole lotta drafting, @e of pi for historical help and especially for providing the invaluable resource of Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 by Asif Siddiqi, which examines in detail the history of the Soviet lunar effort. And of course, to @nixonshead for the stunning renders.
As with all our multi-segment parts, notes for this time around will be posted after Part 10B.
Part 10B will be taking a step back to look at the full scope of the Soviet space program of the 1970s - Rodina, Soyuz, Zarya, and beyond - to see where everything ended up. once we hit Part 11, we'll be back to the US program.
Thanks as always to @KAL_9000 and @Exo for a whole lotta drafting, @e of pi for historical help and especially for providing the invaluable resource of Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 by Asif Siddiqi, which examines in detail the history of the Soviet lunar effort. And of course, to @nixonshead for the stunning renders.
As with all our multi-segment parts, notes for this time around will be posted after Part 10B.
I mean,
it makes sense given she was one of the frontrunners - the stuff mentioned here about Vostok/Voskhod and a possible circumlunar mission were all as OTL, they literally cancelled Voskhod 5 like months before it would've flown with her on it
I knew when I saw that picture of the actual Soyuz 11 descent module something was up. You absolute maniac Callisto, what a brutal twist.
You've got a damn good eye, recognizing that shot. Yes, for other folk reading this, that last shot is of the descent module from OTL Soyuz 11 with some minor edits by myself.
Namely, I edited out the bodies of the crew laid out under white sheets on the ground behind the capsule, to give the impression of a before-hatch-opening shot. Rest assured I mean no disrespect to their tragic loss, nor do I wish to treat this kind of thing lightly.
That said, though, thank you- I'm rather proud of this particular bit of storytelling.
If it turns out they’re actually dead I’ll change it to Irina Solovyeva to avoid tastelessness 😕
Fun fact, we actually almost put Irina Solovyova on Rodina 5 ITTL given she was Valentina Tereskova's backup. In terms of your own use, it's not up to us to dictate what actual historical figures you do or don't use in your own althist work.
Honestly I'm surprised the Soviet government would want Ponomaryova for a flight, she was considered a troublesome figure by them. I feel like Solovyova would be a more realistic pick in this scenario, but hey, you do you.