Gen. Rodger Whittenberg, having anticipated a somewhat inglorious retirement, was surprised when he was tapped by the new President to replace Admiral Bergstrom as the new Chief of the General Staff of the United States Armed Forces. From time to time he exchanged personal letters with the Russian Defense Minister.
Memorial services were held in Red Square for cosmonauts Vasili Lubinin and Sergei Yemitov. Their families were granted special dispensation to continue living at Star City. Yemitov's widow bore her dead husband a daughter, whom she named Nadja.
Lt. Fyodorlbpelov was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and promoted to captain.
The flight crews of the stealth bombers were awarded the Silver Star, en masse.
Slowly at first, then with a bit more frequency, refrigerators and television sets became easier to obtain in Moscow, and food availability seemed to increase a bit. Instead of spending her average two hours a day in shopping lines, the typical Moscow housewife had cut it down to an hour and twenty minutes.
Senior managers with McKinsey & Co. and other American consulting firms started flying to Moscow with greater frequency.
Lydia Strand stayed at SPACECOM, even though the command's space mission had been curtailed to a great extent. She was on the promotion list for lieutenant colonel.
Peter Lamborghini healed. Slowly, but he healed. He was offered the Congressional Medal of Honor, but turned it down. Having survived the wild ride, Lamborghini didn't feel he was Monaghan's equal. He was then offered the Distinguished Flying Cross, and at Whittenberg's urging, he accepted it.
By special order of the Chief of the General Staff, Lamborghini was appointed Commander of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing (F-16s) at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. And by special appointment of the President, Juliet Lamborghini was named as Assistant United States Attorney in Salt Lake City.
But perhaps the greatest and most tragic irony of the entire Intrepid affair was the fact that there was never anything wrong with the two Russian shutdes that were incinerated during their reentry. The Buran and the Mikhail Suslov were perfectly sound spacecraft.
Prior to the respective final lift-offs of the Buran and the Suslov, a KGB agent — dressed in the white coveralls of a technician — gained access to the gantry tower and threw a beaker of sulfuric acid onto the fragile silica tiles of the orbiters' underbellies. Although only a few tiles were affected by the corrosive acid, their loss allowed the air friction to gain a foothold and tear a seam of tiles from the bellies in a "zipper effect." This exposed the orbiters' soft aluminum skin to some 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which quickly turned the delicate metal into liquid, causing the spacecraft to break apart.
Four innocent cosmonauts died and two magnificent spacecraft were vaporized because of the acid. But Vitali Kostiashak was a ruthless man, and if his audacious plan to topple the "unholy alliance" of the Politburo and steer Russia onto a new course was to succeed, then the Buran, the Suslov, and their crews were expendable. Indeed, he considered their demise as a necessary strategic move to push General Secretary Vorontsky into an act of desperation — to lure him into bringing the Intrepid down onto Russian soil. And once the American spacecraft had touched down at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the final trap could be sprung.
It was an intricate chess game, of sorts, and the diminutive grandmaster often wondered if Roosevelt and Machiavelli would have approved.
About the Author
Payne Harrison is a former newspaper reporter and business consultant. He holds B. A. and M.A. degrees from Texas A&M University and an M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University. Although not a pilot, he has been a life-long military and aviation buff. He and his wife live in Dallas, Texas.