Everyone took a moment to absorb their deductions. Then Whittenberg picked up his green Pentagon phone.
Chief Designer Grigory Vostov breathed a sigh of relief as the final fastener finally closed on the launch shroud. The mating collar with the Progress engine was now firmly ensconced within the aerodynamic shell and could now be attached to the SL-14 booster. Getting the mating collar fitted with a launch shroud had taken more time than he'd expected. Too late he'd discovered there wasn't one of the proper size in the Baikonur inventory. He had to have one flown in from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and that took time. But now it was ready and he felt relieved.
The launch commander — an elfin lieutenant colonel in a heavy overcoat — walked up and announced, "We are prepared except for the baseplate attachment, Comrade Vostov, and that will not take long to complete."
"Very good. Make haste, Colonel. How are the cosmonauts, Lubinin and Yemitov?"
The launch commander looked at his watch and said, "They will be awakened in approximately one half hour. They will undergo their final flight briefing, meal, and preflight dress, then load onto the Soyuz."
Vostov nodded. "Not a minute to waste now."
"Would somebody be kind enough to tell me just what the hell is going on down there?" demanded Col. David Colquist. "First the Intrepid doesn't show up, and now the Constellation has gone off the air… You'd tell us if our spacecraft were being abducted by UFOs, wouldn't you?" Colquist, commander of the SDI prototype platform, was in the communications room of the hexagonal structure, floating upright in front of the transmitter microphone.
The speaker box replied, "I can tell you it doesn't have anything to do with UFOs, sir. But that's all. Eagle One says stay off the air except for routine reporting."
In a mocking voice, Colquist said, "Well, please be sure and tell Eagle One not to forget us, and that we're still waiting for our delivery. There's not much to do up here until We receive the final package, you know."
"I will do that, sir," squawked the speaker. "CSOC, out."
Colquist slapped the mike switch off, then in frustration the former gymnast stomped on the "floor" and did a backward somersault up to the "ceiling" of the commo room. "Damn," he cursed. "I don't like being in the dark."
"Yessir," replied the commo officer. "Not much we can do about it, though. I just hope everything's okay."
"Yeah," said Colquist, while putting himself in a slow cartwheel to relieve some of the tension from his body. One thing the former gymnast didn't like about long-term spaceflight was that the weighdessness caused his well-developed muscles to atrophy. "Something tells me things are not right." He sniffed. "This whole prototype assembly has gone way too smooth. It's like we've been leading a charmed life up here. We were due for some bad luck, and now I think we've got it. In spades. If they'd just tell us what the problem was, I could handle it a lot better."
"Yessir," comforted the commo officer.
"Well, no sense wasting time here. If anyone should call, I'll be in Reactor Control."
"Yessir."
Colquist executed a beautiful jackknife and propelled himself into the passageway.
Usually, cosmonauts boarded their Soyuz capsule from a gantry tower after the SL-4 booster was hoisted into a vertical position. However, rolling the crew access gantry into place and then retracting it took time. So to expedite matters, Lubinin and Yemitov were climbing into the crew compartment of their spacecraft while the SL-4 booster was still lying sideways on its flatcar transporter.
The Soyuz-T spacecraft into which the two cosmonauts were gingerly crawling looked like an hourglass mounted on a stubby tin can.
The stubby tin can section was the instrument compartment of the spacecraft. It was about nine feet in diameter and contained the life-support and power-supply systems, the long-range voice and telemetry radio transmitters, the on-board computers, and the liquid-fuel retro rockets. After the Soyuz reached orbit, a pair of blinder-like solar panels would deploy from the compartment into a thirty-foot span and provide the spacecraft with its electricity.
Sandwiched between the stubby tin can of the instrument compartment and the top sphere of the hourglass was the descent module. It was here that Lubinin and Yemitov would sit in conformational seats during lift-off and reentry. The module contained little more than the seats, an instrument panel, and a television camera that allowed ground controllers to keep an eye on the cosmonauts. After retrofire, the descent module would detach itself from the rest of the Soyuz and position itself for reentry. It would then descend to earth like the old Mercury-Gemini-Apollo capsules, except for one aspect — the descent module had a deceptive aerodynamic shape that reduced reentry g-forces for the cosmonauts to a maximum of three to four g's. (The American capsules, and the early Vostok and Voshkod capsules, inflicted eight to eleven g's on their passengers during reentry.) At 25,000 feet the Soyuz descent module deployed a drogue chute, followed by a main chute. Then a scant meter-and-a-half above the ground, a cushioning rocket was fired to absorb much of the landing impact.
The second half of the hourglass was the orbital module, which was a spherical vessel about eight feet in diameter. It contained storage compartments, as well as instruments, along its interior walls. Food, scientific equipment, and excess gear were stowed here, and it was in this sphere that the cosmonauts worked, ate, and sometimes took their sleep breaks. The sphere possessed three hatches — one on top that provided ingress and egress through a docking collar, one on the bottom that provided access to the descent module, and one on the side that allowed the cosmonauts to enter the spacecraft from the outside.
Climbing into the orbital module, and then into the descent module, was slow work for Lubinin and Yemitov, because they were already wearing their extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, which were bulkier than the regular Soyuz cabin suits. Wearing the EVA suits as they went aloft would save them considerable changing time when they reached orbit.
All in all, the Soyuz was very much a Russian vessel. It was simple, functional, utilitarian; it got the job done. Comparing the Soyuz to an American space shuttle was like comparing a Chevy Nova to a Mercedes. One vehicle was cheap, the other expensive and elegant, but both could transport you across town.
Once inside, Lubinin and Yemitov were "buttoned up" as the hatches and launch shroud were secured. The launch commander monitored the preparations, and when everything appeared to be in order he instructed the locomotive to fire up its engines and roll the SL^l booster out to the pad.
Like the Soyuz, the Baikonur Cosmodrome reflected another facet of Russian nature. In most ventures they undertook, Russians did not exhibit a proclivity for being the best in a qualitative sense; but they certainly had a passion for being the biggest, as exemplified by their cosmodromes. The Baikonur complex possessed eighty launch pads and was seven times larger than the Kennedy Space Center — and KSC was not a small launch facility. Huge hangars dotted the landscape, along with office buildings and living quarters, while a latticework of rails connected the pads and hangars.
Lubinin and Yemitov felt the vibration of the locomotive as the booster was rolled out to its pad.
"So, Sergeivich, we begin our journey," said Lubinin, trying to sound cheerful.