The Voskhod Missions - Khrushchev's Folly Quiz

Answer: Vostok

The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had developed a liking for space spectaculars because of the prestige his country had gained after launching the world's first satellite, Sputnik, and then placing the first man in orbit, Yuri Gagarin, followed by the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, using Vostok spacecraft.

The man behind these feats Sergei Korolev or the 'Chief Designer' as he was anonymously referred to in the Soviet press was planning the next generation of manned spaceship which eventually became Soyuz and was due to fly in 1965.

When the Americans announced their plans for Project Gemini in late 1963 which would include multi-manned missions and spacewalks Khrushchev was determined to forestall them and ordered Korolev to upstage them at all costs. To meet this goal Korolev and his team at OKB-1 were forced to drop work on Soyuz, a true multi-manned spacecraft, and adapt the single person Vostok (East) to meet these goals.

This involved gutting the Vostok capsule and rebuilding it to accomodate a multi-man crew. Cosmos was not a programme as such but an overall label used to name missions which the Soviets did not wish to be identified like military missions, failed lunar and planetary probes and development flights for different programmes.

For example the unmanned test flight which took place a week before the Voskhod 1 mission and cleared it for flight was called Cosmos 47. Sputnik ('fellow traveler') was the name given to the original Soviet unmanned satellites before they started being called Cosmos ...

Answer: Three

The commander of the mission was Vladimir Komarov, the only trained cosmonaut, and he was accompanied by one of the designers from OKB-1 Konstantin Feoktistov and a medical doctor Boris Yegorov who was seated between the other two men and somewhat above them - the only way to shoehorn three occupants into the cabin.

The mission lasted just over a day and had a limited science programme but did establish the dubious record of being the first multi-man mission.

Answer: True

At the time this was disingenuously explained away as being because the spacecraft was so reliable that spacesuits were no longer necessary. In fact there was no room for spacesuits in the restricted confines of Voskhod. In addition the ejection system was removed and the seating re-oriented 90 degrees away from the main hatch so there was no way for the crew to escape in the case of an emergency.

As there was no Launch Escape Tower as was the case with Mercury, Apollo, and Soyuz, Voskhod was on the only manned spacecraft from which there would be no escape once launched.

This dangerously overloaded spacecraft was launched by the same R-7 booster but with a modified upper stage and aerodynamic shroud which had launched Sputnik and Vostok spacecraft.

Answer: False

This procedure was not possible because of the revised seating arrangements in the spherical re-entry capsule and there were no ejection seats or individual parachutes. The crew rode the capsule down as it was suspended from its single parachute and the final impact was cushioned by small retro-rockets that were attached to the parachute shrouds.

In fact the final touchdown was so gentle the crew only knew they were on the ground because they could hear wheat stubble rustling against the hull of their capsule. Korolev was so relieved that the mission had succeeded he was heard to say: "I would never have thought it possible that Voskhod could be made out of Vostok and that three cosmonauts would fly in space".

Answer: Khrushchev was overthrown

Even as Khrushchev was on the phone congratulating the Voskhod 1 crew on their success the plotters in the Kremlin made their move and, as he later said 'pulled the receiver from my hand.' This phone call proved to be Khrushchev's last public statement. When the crew was given a hero's welcome at the Kremlin it was the new leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin who greeted them while the champion of their mission was under house arrest. One of the accusations levelled against Khrushchev by the plotters was that the billions being poured into space spectaculars did not benefit the Soviet economy. With the removal of Khrushchev, Korolev finally got the go ahead to begin full scale development of his N-1 booster which was to be the basis of the Soviet moon landing. Rival designer Vladimir Chelomei who had been promoting an alternative system lost influence in the Kremlin. The fact the he was employing members of Khrushchev's family may have had some bearing on this. To the Americans it appeared that the Soviets had once again upstaged them by introducing a new three man spacecraft at a time when their own Apollo was not scheduled to fly until 1966/67.
The pad explosion referred to was known as the Nedelin catastrophe after the Marshal of the Strategic Rocket Forces who ordered repair work to continue on a fully fuelled experimental missile in order to meet a tight schedule. He was killed along with about 120 other key personnel. This disaster happened in October 1960. Sergei Korolev the driving force behind the Soviet manned space effort died in early 1966.
The Central Committee's belated resolution to put a man on the moon was passed in August 1964 when they finally realised the USA was serious about fulfilling President Kennedy's pledge made over three years before.

Answer: Alexei Leonov

Alexei Leonov was accompanied by his commander Pavel Belyayev during this historic day long mission which also reached the highest altitude (495 km) yet achieved by a manned spacecraft. Leonov's 10 minute walk in space upstaged Ed White's much more extensive EVA, or Extra Vehicular Activity in NASA jargon, which took place on Gemini 4 the following June. Soviet official reports at the time made Leonov's exploits seem like a walk in the park but information released in subsequent years has shown that the venture came close to disaster. Korolev was extremely anxious about this mission because a previous unmanned test mission, Cosmos 57, had exploded when the self destruct command had accidentally been activated and there was no other vehicle available to check changes apart from the flight vehicle assigned to Belyayev and Leonov. The pressure at this time to upstage Gemini was intense so he outlined the grave risks of going ahead with the flight to the cosmonauts and said the decision to proceed was theirs. Belyayev and Leonov assured Korolev that they were ready to fly.
Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov were the first and second Russians in space.
Vladimir Komarov commanded the first Voskhod mission but tragically perished on the first Soyuz mission.

Answer: True

This special 'Volga' airlock was designed, built, and tested in 9 months and was only deployed after Voskhod had successfully entered orbit. During the planning stages this mission involving an EVA was called 'Vykhod'(Exit) but once it was launched it was officially called 'Voskhod 2'.

The Voskhod cabin could not be depressurised for an EVA like Gemini because its avionics needed to be cooled by cabin air hence the necessity for an airlock. The suited up Leonov entered it from Voskhod's side hatch which Belyayev then closed.

The air was then vented from the airlock before the outer hatch was opened allowing Leonov who was attached to a 15 metre tether to exit head first into the near vacuum of space. Live TV images of the historic feat were beamed back to an astonished audience on earth.

Answer: The cosmonaut's spacesuit ballooned making him "too big" to re-enter the airlock.

After Leonov had spent 12 minutes floating in space he was instructed to return to the spacecraft, but discovered his suit had ballooned dangerously and he was unable to bend his legs or use his hands to re-enter the airlock. During his struggles his pulse rate went up dangerously and he was close to suffering heatstroke and later reported being up to his knees in sweat.

After 10 minutes he managed to deflate his suit sufficiently to squeeze into the airlock headfirst. Deflating the suit was a dangerous move because if he had deflated it much more he was in danger of developing the 'bends'. Once in the airlock there was a further struggle as he had to somersault in its claustrophobic confines so he could close the outer hatch. Further difficulties were encountered when trying to establish a hermetic seal with the inner hatch. Years later Leonov revealed that he carried a suicide pill in the event that he became stranded and Belyayev was forced to leave him in orbit. One wonders how he was meant to take it in the case of such an eventuality!

Answer: True

Soviet-manned missions were largely automated with a minimum of input from the ommander. When the automatic re-entry sequence failed to operate at the scheduled time, Voskhod 2 was forced to make an extra orbit while the frantic ground crew made the appropriate calculations to fire the retro-rockets manually.

When the scheduled time came to fire the retro's Belyayev was unsure if the craft was correctly oriented and had to lean across Leonov to look out the cabin window to check this. The instrument panel was oriented at 90 degrees to the seats as a direct result of the new seating arrangements when developing Voskhod from Vostok and this further complicated Belyayev's task.

As a consequence he was 45 seconds late pressing the fire button and Voskhod overshot the landing zone by 1100 km and ended up in a heavily forested area near Perm.

After two hours a rescue helicopter located the capsule suspended between two trees and hanging over deep snowdrifts. The rescue team was unable to immediately reach the crew, which was forced to spend two freezing nights surrounded by wolves before they were finally picked up.

As a direct consequence of this experience, survival skills in remote locations is a mandatory part of all cosmonauts training.

Answer: False

Komorov was actually killed on the first manned test of the new Soyuz spacecraft in April 1967. Although further Voskhod missions were planned none were launched as the rapid series of Gemini achievements in 1965/66 eclipsed anything that they could have accomplished. The Soviets concentrated their efforts on developing the true second generation manned spacecraft Soyuz. Without the guiding hand of Korolev this development encounted many difficulties which resulted in the premature launch of Soyuz 1 before they had been resolved.
The flight of Voskhod 2 marked the zenith of Soviet accomplishments in manned spaceflight which had commenced with the worlds first manned spaceflight nearly four years earlier. It was also the last manned spaceflight to be launched under Sergei Korolev's direction and was followed by an unprecedented twenty four months when no piloted mission would be launched. Sergei Korolev passed away in early 1966 after complications during a routine operation.
The title for this quiz was inspired by an article respected space analyst James Oberg wrote in the BIS journal 'Spaceflight' in April 1974 where, with limited information, he deduced the true reasons for the Voskhod missions. Most of his speculations have turned to be correct with the release of subsequent information. Other references consulted include: Space Missions...From Sputnik to SpaceshipOne edited by Jim Winchester, Deborah Cadbury's excellent work 'Space Race', Wikipedia.