Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [88]
Nedelin paced impatiently throughout the morning, glancing disapprovingly at his watch as the technicians checked connections and valves and electrical circuits. Sometime during the diagnostic tests—there are conflicting accounts as to precisely when—a malfunction with the satellite was uncovered. One of its silver zinc batteries was leaking electrolytes, and there was a disruption in the current. “Technical banditry,” howled Rudnev, the man who had assured Chertok that no one would be sent to Siberia if the R-7 failed. But now, in the heat of the moment, he wanted heads to roll for the perceived sabotage. Korolev, however, was uncharacteristically calm. “Let’s not make a fuss,” he consoled the highly agitated deputy minister. “There is still time to make the necessary corrections.”
It was not until shortly before six the following morning, on Friday, October 4, that fueling could begin. By then, many of the launch crew had fallen ill from spending so much time in the unseasonably cold weather. An Arctic blast had descended over the Kazakh steppe from Siberia, bringing howling winds and freezing temperatures, but the personnel at Tyura-Tam were still dressed for the broiling summer. Huddled around a makeshift shack that served moldy salami and stale pastries but no hot tea, the soldiers and technicians shivered and cursed. “OK, dear,” said one, addressing the missile. “Fly away and carry our baby into space. Or at least crash. Just fly away, and don’t stay here,” he added, dreading the prospect of the additional days it would take to drain and dismantle a stalled rocket.
Rail tankers containing 253 tons of kerosene and supercold liquid oxygen pulled up to the hinged girders of the Tulip, and soldiers heaved huge hoses onto cables and pulleys that hoisted them up to the R-7’s intake valves. The troops manning the fueling operation wore no protective clothing other than gloves, and clouds of cryogenic condensate descended on them through the bleed valves that hissed frozen oxygen vapors as they pumped a small amount of liquid oxygen to cool and pressurize the rocket’s plumbing.
The nearly minus-300-degree liquid oxygen evaporated at an alarmingly rapid rate, which was why the R-7 had to be filled shortly before takeoff and its tanks constantly topped off, and could not be stored ready for firing like future generations of ICBMs that would use storable propellants. The combustible mist infused the soldiers’ hair and clothes; eventually, after several horrific cases of people igniting, the Soviets would adopt more stringent safety precautions. But during the early R-7 launches, caution was not a concern.
The fueling process lasted five excruciating hours, the soldiers carefully distributing the propellant into each of the missile’s ten integral tanks to maintain weight equilibrium. Compressed gases like nitrogen and liquefied hydrogen peroxide were then pumped under high pressure into the turbos that would drive the fuel pumps. Throughout the arduous process, Nedelin once again must have watched the clock with alarm and dismay. The next war would be an instantaneous conflagration, won or lost not in a matter of days or months but hours and minutes. In such a conflict, when missiles could cross continents and oceans in the time it took to load a bomber, five hours was an eternity. The Americans were already talking about designing a new storable solid-fuel rocket that could be ready to launch in less than five minutes, and here Nedelin had to wait a day and a half just to top off the tanks. The very same soldiers fueling the R-7 would have to fire it in the event of a war, and unless they picked up the pace, the R-7 risked being taken out while it was still on the ground.
Korolev, however, ignored the impatient rumblings of the military observers. “Nobody will rush us,” he instructed his engineers. He had come too far to make a mistake now. He had waited twenty years for this moment, sacrificed his marriage to Ksenia, his health, even his freedom during the purges to work on rockets.