Voices of the Soviet Space Program Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space Slava Gerovitch ISBN 978-1-349-50296-7 ISBN 978-1-137-48179-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137481795 VOICES OF THE SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM Copyright © Slava Gerovitch, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-48178-8 All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. GOVERNMENT RIGHTS NOTICE This work was authored by Slava Gerovitch under Contract No. NAS1- 02081 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting this manuscript for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. All other rights are reserved by the copyright owner. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voices of the Soviet space program : cosmonauts, soldiers, and engineers who took the USSR into space / by Slava Gerovitch. pages cm Interviews translated from Russian. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Aerospace engineers—Soviet Union—Interviews. 2. Aerospace engineers—Soviet Union—Biography. 3. Astronautics—Soviet Union— History—Sources. I. Gerovitch, Slava. TL539.V65 2014 629.4092247—dc23 2014024994 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory of the polar explorer and space history enthusiast Valery Spitkovsky Contents List of Figures ix Note on Transliteration xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Multiple Perspectives on Soviet Space History 1 Part I The Soldiers Chapter 1 Commanding Officer Abram Krayzman 19 Chapter 2 Construction Engineer Sergey Safro 27 Part II The Engineers Chapter 3 Engine Designer Anatoliy Daron 39 Chapter 4 Guidance Engineer Sergei Khrushchev 67 Chapter 5 Control Engineer Georgiy Priss 77 Chapter 6 Radio Engineer Felix Meschansky 99 Chapter 7 Display Designer Yuriy Tyapchenko 107 Chapter 8 Computer Designer Viktor Przhiyalkovskiy 127 viii CONTENTS Part III The Cosmonauts Chapter 9 “Cosmonaut 13”: Vladimir Shatalov 143 Chapter 10 Test Cosmonaut Mikhail Burdayev 179 Chapter 11 Scientist Cosmonaut Ordinard Kolomiytsev 205 Chapter 12 “Second Backup”: Valentina Ponomareva 217 Chapter 13 Stress Psychiatrist Ada Ordyanskaya 237 Notes 243 Selected Bibliography 285 Index 291 Figures 1.1 Abram Krayzman and Valery Spitkovsky, 2008 19 2.1 Sergey Safro, 2009 27 3.1 Anatoliy Daron 39 3.2 Anatoliy Daron at work in Glushko’s design bureau 45 3.3 Anatoliy Daron 50 4.1 Sergei Khrushchev, 1990s 67 6.1 Felix Meschansky, 2009 99 7.1 Yuriy Tyapchenko at the Specialized Experimental Design Bureau of Space Technology, 2002 107 8.1 Viktor Przhiyalkovskiy, 2002 127 10.1 Mikhail Burdayev on board a sea ship, 1973 179 10.2 Mikhail Burdayev and Vladimir Alekseyev at the funeral of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, 1967 183 10.3 Mikhail Burdayev after zero gravity and stress tests, 1971 188 10.4 Mikhail Burdayev during zero gravity training, 1972 191 10.5 Mikhail Burdayev during a zero gravity flight, 1975 196 10.6 Mikhail Burdayev receives the Order of Honor from acting president Vladimir Putin, 2000 201 12.1 Valentina Ponomareva, 2002 217 12.2 Valentina Ponomareva in uniform 221 12.3 Tatyana Kuznetsova, Irina Solovyeva, Valentina Tereshkova, and Valentina Ponomareva 223 12.4 Valentina Ponomareva in parachute gear 227 12.5 Valentina Ponomareva in spacesuit 231 13.1 Ada Ordyanskaya, 2014 237 Acknowledgments Interviews in this collection have been accumulated over several con- secutive oral history projects. The first interviews were obtained dur- ing my trip to Russia in 2002 under the History of Recent Science and Technology (HRST) project, funded by the Sloan Foundation and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. I am thankful to David Mindell, who led a historical study of the Apollo Guidance Computer under the HRST project and involved me in interviewing American space veterans, and then encouraged me to expand the study into the history of the Soviet space program. Two more trips to Russia in 2004 and 2006 were made under the proj- ects, “Trusting the Machine: On-board Computing, Automation, and Human Control in the Soviet Space Program” (2003–2005) and “Designing a Cosmonaut: The Technopolitics of Automation in the Soviet Human Space Program” (2006–2007), funded by the National Science Foundation. Finally, in the years 2008–2010, additional inter- views were collected, annotated, and prepared for publication under the project, “Oral History of the Soviet Space Program,” supported by the NASA History Program. I wish to thank William P. Barry, Steven J. Dick, and Stephen Garber at the NASA History Program, who provided both funds and patience that allowed me to complete this project, as it grew and changed shape over time. Roger Launius’s outstanding scholarship and per- sonal encouragement made the field of space history attractive to me. Cathleen Lewis kindly shared her deep knowledge of the Soviet space program; she also provided, along with an anonymous NASA reviewer, immensely helpful detailed comments on the first draft of this collec- tion. In the preparation of this volume, scholarly exchanges with Igor Afanasyev, Jeffrey Hoffman, Andrew Jenks, Bettyann Kevles, Dmitry Payson, Eduard Proydakov, and John Tylko were extremely stimulating. My friend and colleague Asif Siddiqi traveled with me to Star City and participated in our joint interview with Vladimir Shatalov. This project greatly benefited from Asif’s encouragement and generous sharing of his vast expertise. xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to Mike Aperauch, Chris Chappell, and Kristin Purdy at Palgrave Macmillan, series editors Roger Launius and James Fleming, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and an audacious decision to include a volume of oral interviews in a series of history monographs. This collection would not have appeared without the indefati- gable efforts of the polar explorer and space history enthusiast Valery Spitkovsky. In the years 1961–1964, he worked at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Waves Propagation near Moscow and participated in several Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. In particular, he summered at Mirny Station in 1962 and wintered-over at Vostok Station in 1964.1 In the years 1964–1973, he worked as a radio astronomer and telescope designer at Pulkovo Observatory near Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), serving one of the leading designers of the world’s largest stand-alone radio telescope, the RATAN-600. In 1973 he joined the Moscow Scientific-Research Institute for Automatic Equipment (MNIIPA), where he designed mission control room equip- ment and trained personnel for the Soviet Strategic Missiles Forces and the space program. In 1977 Spitkovsky was offered a high-ranking posi- tion in a new missile defense program. By then, however, his political views had radically changed. He refused to work for the Soviet mili- tary and applied for an exit visa to emigrate. He was denied visa and remained a refusenik (a person denied permission to emigrate) under the tight control of the KGB for 12 years. Eventually, in 1989, after Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power and several appeals from the Royal Society and a number of British political figures, Spitkovsky was allowed to leave the Soviet Union.2 He came to the United States in 1990 and became an enthusiastic promoter of contacts between American and Soviet polar explorers and space veterans. In 2005 he organized the Pioneers of Space panel discussion at the Boston Museum of Science. In 2009 he initiated a public panel discussion on the prospects of establishing an Antarctic facility to serve as a training base for astronauts.3 The astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman introduced me to Spitkovsky in May 2008, and I was imme- diately caught up in the whirl of his enthusiasm. On Valery’s initiative, I undertook an oral history project to interview veterans whom Valery personally introduced to me, including Daron, Kolomiytsev, Krayzman, Meschansky, Ordyanskaya, and Safro. Valery tirelessly worked for the project, helping arrange interviews and collect historical documents and photographs. He urged me to interview space veterans while they were still alive and could tell their stories. Unfortunately he himself did not live to hold a printed copy of this book. He passed away on March 2, 2011. It is to his dear memory and to his ardent passion for space history that I dedicate this book. Introduction Multiple Perspectives on Soviet Space History Instead of attempting to construct a single, “true” narrative of events that occurred in the Soviet space program, this book aspires to show the different perspectives of Soviet military officers, space engineers, and members of the cosmonaut corps. The interviews in this book contain a wealth of factual detail, but the focus is on the subjectivity of the experiences of Soviet space program participants. Secrecy restrictions limited their knowledge, institutional allegiances shaped their perspec- tives, and professional cultures formed their distinct collective identities. This book aims to capture this diversity of viewpoints; it stresses the multiplicity of perceptions of the same event by different participants.