Текст книги "Последние тайны СССР – Проект Марс 88"

Автор книги: Андрей Меньшутин

-3-

Time in space, like on earth, goes at different speeds. Sometimes a month flies past like several days, and sometimes one day lasts like eternity!

It is the TIME becomes a threat and a difficulty, just like everything around in the open space. “Solar wind” calms down or strengthens, sometimes it practically disappears… meteorites flash past far or very near, and the “bravest” of these burn in the magnetic field of the spaceship.

This two-hundred-meter magnetic field around MS 88 burned almost completely the dangerous impact of cosmic radiation that penetrated through anything, and besides – high-energy particles of such a set of cosmic radiations that were fortunately not even dreamed of on Earth.

And time does not burn, it is not near and not far – it is always close to you and there is no protection from it! At least, for the time being…

The first month of flight was the fastest and the easiest. While settling in on the spaceship, we got used to it working, not standing in the integration house or training center. And everyday experiments and research were carried out as usual during this period of adaptation on board, so time passed unnoticed.

Everyday duties in space were now performed in the automatic, somewhat background mode. Having come to terms with practically the whole spaceship, now the crew had much more time to pay to themselves in general and everyone separately.

The crew members got to know each other about two months before the flight. The coordinator had a good imagination and liked extraordinary methods and solutions of a great number of problems and tasks that constantly arise during many years of preparation for the start.

It was he who made a decision that the future “Martians” would be trained in quite different groups of cosmonauts. During standard and customary training in Zvezdny camp and other places, they never met and could not see each other, even at a glance.

It takes a long time to fly, so there will be time to get to know each other.

During six month of flight this desire increased or disappeared altogether. Sometimes they gathered together in one of compartments, discussing their cosmic affairs and duties, telling funny stories from the former life on Earth. Laughter and emotions filled the spaceship and there was an impression that the crew was much larger, that there were ten of them at least, not just four.

Mood changed and you felt like being alone for weeks. After a regular shift you went straight to bed, and it was like this for five days on end. When you got enough sleep for the whole month, you felt like devouring books. There were not many of them on board, of course, just about forty, but you could read them over and over again! In this case there was enough until Mars. No, there will be several left as you sometimes get bored with reading.

There were several personal computers, the very first models of them, and you could play “Tetris” or “Pacman”, but there was no desire to pass all 256 levels. Games usually finished on the fifth or sixth level at the most. Even though there is much more time in space than on Earth, there is just as less desire to waste it on these computer games.

And the best remedy against monotony and humdrum of the long flight is this same flight. There is always sufficient work on board a spaceship and you can never do it completely, but it must be done, and the more you work, the more changes the time: it almost disappears and becomes imperceptible.

When all that has been tried out and no longer helps, there is the last and probably the most important method – another person.

-4-

When Svetlana finished her usual duties in the biological compartment, she flew to look for Andrey – he has not been in sight for some time. Well, he is not in the central compartment, not in view of cameras in the corridors between compartments… can he be in the service compartment again, fiddling around with his beloved reactor?

Yes, he was exactly there. However, Andrey was sitting fastened at the working table and reading a thick book… but this was surely better than gloating the reactor.

Instead of saying hello, Svetka asked: Can you tell me how to get to the library?

Well… several million kilometers to Mars… and then it's not far to the Earth – there are libraries on every corner there. If you get lost, ask the first humanoid you meet and he is sure to show you something! – said Andrey, looking at Sveta over his book.

You yourself are a humanoid… And what’s that about – “show you something”? Are you again with your erotic fantasies and platitudes?

No fantasies, no platitudes… how shall I know what he may show you? Maybe he will show you where you get off, – laughed Andrey.

All right there, local wanton. What are you reading there?

I suddenly remembered of Kipling and decided to read him over again.

Are you in your second childhood – decided to read “Mowgli” again? – Sveta started to laugh.

No, it’s not about “Mowgli”… I read it probably when I was 6–7 years old. There was such a cartoon, too – probably the whole country remembers, I remembered the surname of Kipling… And I am ashamed to say that I thought he did not write anything else.

Later I found out that he was a military correspondent in Africa in the times of Anglo-Boer War, wrote articles, sketches and stories about India where he was born and lived, and once also wrote a lot of stories…

I read “Indian Stories”, too, – Sveta put in. They are well written, but there were few of them, I found them in some collection along with other authors.

Just the same – I read them in a collection, Andrey continued:

“English Poetry in Russian Translations, 20th century”, and you see, first there is an English variant, then a Russian translation, and there are even 2–3 variants of translation for the most interesting poems… The poems are stunning, but the main surprise is ahead… – So Kipling was a poet as well? – Yes, and a great one! I still remember some of his lines by heart:

 
Eyes of grey – a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
Eyes of black-a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.
Eyes of blue-the Simla Hills
Silvered with the moonlight hoar;
Pleading of the waltz that thrills,
Dies and echoes round Benmore.
Eyes of brown-a dusty plain
Split and parched with heat of June,
Flying hoof and tightened rein,
Hearts that beat the old, old tune.
Maidens of your charity,
Pity my most luckless state.
Four times Cupid's debtor I —
Bankrupt in quadruplicate.
Yet, despite this evil case,
And a maiden showed me grace,
Four-and-forty times would I
Sing the Lovers' Litany:
«Love like ours can never die!»
 

Yes, this poem is really great… There are few words and it is even short, but very succinct, said Sveta sadly.

He has a lot of poems, but he received the Nobel Prize in 1907 for stories… and he refused to get it! You know, during his whole life he refused all kinds of titles, – remembered Andrey, now distracted from poems, – even the most prestigious one in England: Poet Laureate.

Yes, people were much more modest before… Remember? It seems that Pushkin wrote: What is glory? – A patch on the poet’s sackcloth, said Sveta thoughtfully.

All right, let’s put aside the materialistic side. The saddest thing is that there are no more such poems, – added Andrey.

Besides the poems themselves, many authors in this collection have interesting and tragic lives, full of events… Many of them went to the First World War, some died, and some died later but from the wounds of war anyway, Andrey continued.

It’s sad but it’s life… You’d better recite something else, asked Sveta.

One of Kipling’s best – “If”. There are a lot of translations, but Lozinsky probably did best of all:

 
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
 

It looks like a motto of the whole generation, said Sveta thoughtfully.

Andrey continued:

 
The world's a stage. The trifling entrabce fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays not music in particular.
The do not printing programme, that I know.
The cast is large. There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot
 

This is Belloc, – Andrey finished reciting.

Yes, the style is quite different and it is more philosophical, – summarized Sveta.

You know, it’s sad… The beginning of 20th century was the golden age of poetry as an art, but now it’s gone… There is poetry and there are poets, but there is no art, and I am afraid there will not be, he said thoughtfully.

All right, Andrey, we have held a social event, even though between us, now let’s go and do something for the society, – said Sveta.

-5-

At the beginning of 70s USSR officially rejected a manned flight to Mars, concentrating on interplanetary automatic stations.…

There were surely many variants of a manned flight to Mars, but they were developed in a more optional way, as a long-term perspective.

The coordinator analyzed both national and western projects, taking something from them and adding something new.

So he decided to do without unnecessary fuss of preparation for the flight, the flight itself and the rest.

The plan was quite simple: secretly prepare an expedition to Mars, fly there, take as many samples as possible and return.

And then, having analyzed the information and the samples, announce unintentionally: we have recently returned from Mars and received very interesting results which we will soon reveal…

It seemed like a simple and ordinary affair, it was day-to-day work in terms of USSR – well, the Russians flew to Mars and came back… It’s almost the same for us as for some people, especially in the West, to go to a restaurant or the nearest Disneyland.

The effect would surely be stunning. Even though Andropov was not very enthusiastic about the space, he imagined the possible effect and so agreed to this expensive expedition.

But the expedition turned out to cost much cheaper than the preliminary estimates.

The living modules were based on those nearly prepared for the Mir station, the only difference was a larger size, and the majority of equipment and devices was practically the same.

The rocket was the almost standard Molnia-M, with a new double body and just two stages instead of three to four used as usual.

A part of materials and technologies was taken from the well-known rocket СС 18 which terrified the Americans… They even invented such a name for it that I’d better refrain from saying it out loud.

Both bodies were composite ones, containing different materials, and the structure of the bodies was no less complicated than the whole of MS 88 taken together…

Almost half of the outer body of the spaceship consisted of different layers, each of which protected the crew from something special, and that’s why it was created. All these layers had been used somewhere or were just being elaborated and finished.

That’s why all the institutes that worked on the materials for MS 88 had associations with tanks, planes and submarines.

-6-

The farther was MS 88 going into space, the more often Andrey remembered the launch site. It was the last thing he saw on Earth, so he recollected it best of all; moreover, he worked and lived there for almost a year and a half…

More and more often he got the impression that the Launch site was alive. It had its own peculiar atmosphere. However, all the numerous objects, military units and launch sites were surrounded by the taiga, and when you drove several kilometers from them, and sometimes even one or two hundred meters, you found yourself absolutely on your own. Just taiga and silence surrounded you…

But you felt there was somebody else around you, and there were a lot of them – tens of thousands of servicemen and civil employees working on the launch site, and among the endless number of silent trees around you there was a feeling of an invisible presence of people united by one goal.

On many roads that connected almost 2 000 objects scattered all over the launch site, there was round-the-clock movement of cars and buses of all types and sizes, construction and military equipment… A car going past you made you feel that you are not alone, but when it drove away, loneliness surrounded you from all sides again.

The atmosphere of the launch site was absolutely unique and incommunicable. It can probably happen only on our numerous earthly cosmodromes. Each rocket and its multiple parts, components, devices, systems, materials were the results of work of hundreds of design offices and scientific and research institutes, thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of people scattered all over the huge country.

And all that was delivered, brought and concentrated on the launch site. The launch site gave a final touch to all that, checked and tried it many times in accordance with numerous technologies and rules, until the final and probably the most important stage came – rocket launch, for which the Launch site was created.

But the launch site – it’s not only hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel, integration buildings, launch grounds and a long list of parts that make it up: these are just instruments. The main thing is people working there, so the launch site is really alive…

Considering the schedule of launches which was the most intense on Earth, the working environment in the many-thousand team of the launch site was quite tense… It probably reflected on the northern nature surrounding it, and it produced the atmosphere which was nothing like any other cosmodrome on Earth.

While they are flying, the launch site could have launched a good hundred of rockets with satellites and research craft to the Moon, Venus or Mars. Some rockets are still in the integration house, some are already on launch grounds, some are being delivered, and some are being assembled on plants. But sooner or later they will meet in the place from which they started – on the launch site.

The word “cosmodrome” was not very widely used then, rocket engineers had their own terms and designations, and other military units had theirs. But most of them called it all simply a launch site.

Probably some part of him, Andrey, as well as the whole crew, remained there, and they took some part of the atmosphere with them…

It was a place where you could meet representatives of practically any kind and service arms available in the USSR Armed Forces. It was probably just sailors and paratroopers that Andrey did not meet there… but probably they were there but just he did not encounter them? And access was given not everywhere on the launch site, but only to those related to direct duties.

And very often, based on the specific character of a regular program or project, officers wore shoulder straps and collar patches of the service arms they were not connected with in any way. Only a few people knew what exactly they were doing at the launch site, and curiosity was not welcomed there.

It was Andrey’s colleagues, KGB officers, who “loved” and probably just had to change their uniforms. These were the representatives of the Special Department of the launch site. There were a lot of units, so the staff was just as diverse in quantity: there were small units of communications men that contained several dozens of people and separate battalions, regiments and brigades which contained thousands of soldiers and officers.

Practically nobody wore the uniform of a KGB officer: if you are posted to rocket engineers, wear the same uniform, any uniform except for the real one.

Somehow Andrey liked visiting the airfield most of all. It was located a little aside from most other military units of the launch site and lived its own independent life, and a part of it was surely subjected to the launch site as a whole.

The checkpoint was located just near the wing, the staff office of the barracks, the club and the dining hall were lost among birch trees… There were surely a lot of evergreens in the taiga, a lot of mixed vegetation, and birch thickets were not that frequent. Maybe that was the reason why the wing seemed so homely and comfortable and people were attracted here?

The pilots were not the most secret part of the launch site, that’s why there was no fence around the unit. The pilots themselves lived in the cosmodrome’s main camp. The wing and its barracks accommodated soldiers from two assigned separate support battalions, as well as the soldiers included directly in the separate wing.

There was quite a comfortable club with a large audience hall and quite a big screen where movies were shown at weekends. In the other part of the club there was a good gym where soldiers from the regiment and battalions sometimes played volleyball.

The acquaintance with the life of taiga pilots happened all of a sudden. There was still some time before another board was to be met, so Andrey left the ordinary military offroader near the checkpoint and went out to walk among the birches. The road bifurcated to barracks and staff office of the regiment. On a small drill field there was a row of a dozen soldiers or officers – a usual work formation or instructions before the shift.

The soldiers of the air regiment were dressed probably best of all at the launch site. One could rarely see them in ordinary uniforms. In summer they wore summer technical clothes: a dark blue cap, a light and comfortable jacket with pockets and slacks of the same color, and the main thing – they wore light and comfortable low shoes on elastic and comfortable soles, almost like trainers, instead of tarpaulin boots with foot wraps as indispensable attributes.

In autumn they had to put on boots, cold-proof bib overalls, a demi-season jacket with a cold-proof hood that could be worn in a pocket on the back. All these clothes were almost black.

In winter, when the temperature often fell to minus 30–4 °C°, they wore felt boots and thick, warm and long overalls that reached the neck. As for outdoor clothing, they wore a very thick jacket of very warm material with a tied lining of good well-dressed sheepskin. There was also a huge collar of beaver lamb which rose above the head with a hat on it, which could be fastened if necessary.

Above all that you could also put on a thick and warm hood with dog fur, and when it was especially cold, there was a knitted helmet with holes for the eyes. Moreover, all that was put on over two sets of underwear – cold (summer) and warm (winter), and then there were semi-woolen peg-top trousers with a service coat, and then the rest.

This is not like knight’s armor, but quite heavy; however, you will not be afraid of cold or wind. There were also thick and warm mittens of the same natural sheepskin with leather inserts on the palm; they were long and had lapels of different kinds – white, blue, even orange. Soldiers liked to put them in the pockets of the jacket or overalls, so that these bright lapels could be seen against the background of the rest – the jet blue uniform.

All changes of seasons and uniforms of the soldiers from the air regiment assigned to the launch site stuck in the memory by themselves.

It was summer, and soldiers were wearing the lightest summer technical uniform. A little aside, a senior lieutenant was walking; he seemed to be here by change and to bear no relation to what was going on. In his hands he was turning a long chain with keys and in the form of a pendant, with about five cartridges to the modernized Kalashnikov gun, but all of these were shining as if chrome-plated.

Andrey felt that it was his colleague by the department, came up and shook his hand. Pilots had somewhat strange pendants… The colleague laughed and said that these were the amusements of local demo bees: they found cartridges somewhere and polished them with sand paper in their free time. The trick was that the cartridges in arms rooms were strictly accounted, and it was hard to imagine where they took these.

They started talking, Igor turned out to be a landsman, and they got on more familiar terms.

Pilots and technicians finish their working shift soon, and they are going to play volleyball. Shall we join them? – Igor suggested.

Let’s try, said Andrey. And where’s the ground? – It’s near the airfield, we can cut through the forest. Soldiers trod paths to every quarters, Igor answered.

There were at least ten paths from the asphalted part of the air regiment’s camp to all cardinal points. There was taiga everywhere, and you could get lost in ten meters from separate buildings of the camp. However, one could see the high control tower of the airfield.

Igor selected the path leading to the left, and soon they crossed an asphalt road that ran almost parallel the airfield: one could see massive АN-12 cargo aircraft from it.

The path divided into three again, but one could already see the ground with a row of houses on wheels (shelters), a hangar with almost unneeded, cumbersome plane parts that were probably written off, and a smoke room in the form of a large covered octagonal pergola. The volleyball ground was located not far from it.

Everything was painted green, just the white volleyball net stood out. A technician sometimes went out of the shelters that merged with the forest, and it could seem from afar that some wood spirits appear from nowhere…

By the end of the working day soldiers from different groups appeared one by one, carrying testing equipment and instruments. The whole plane – all its components and systems – were divided among three to four groups, each of them had its own shelter on wheels which served as a storeroom for parts and a small workshop for small and quick repairs.

The attitude to instruments in the aviation is special, a forgotten screwdriver or pliers could get anywhere during the take-off and height gain: into the elements of elevators or ailerons control system, into the gear leg; vibration or rolling motion could make any forgotten screwdriver to move somewhere, and it could result in a plane crash.

So when technicians and mechanics were leaving the shelter to provide servicing to planes, they checked the availability of the whole set of instruments, after they worked with the planes – checked again, and then again when returning to the shelter.

If there was a shortage, almost the whole squadron started to look for the missing instruments. No plane could take off until the screwdriver was found. There surely were such cases, but they were quite rare and the instruments were quickly found. At best, the guilty one got off with a few extra duties.

But once a young soldier forgot all the instruments at once on the plane, the whole iron case. It was found in less than five minutes, but the whole squadron where it happened flipped! Nobody remembered anything like that – forgetting all at once…

Moreover all the instruments were branded: they contained eight or ten digits, the first two stood for the last two digits of the unit number, two more – the service group number, then the number of instrument on the list and something else. If these were, for example, pliers or nippers, the brand was put on both parts.

This topic was the theme of numerous jokes. Each AN-12, besides a lot of different equipment, contained an ordinary broom with a long handle, used to remove snow from the plane where it was difficult to reach or to sweep inside the plane, and there was also a whisk broom. But the ordinary broom was used more often.

Once several technicians were sitting in a spacious smoking room after dinner. A chief of regiment staff – the half colonel – came in. His position did not imply flying, it was more of a bureaucratic character, for there were a lot of papers, plans and reports in the regiment. The chief was always bemused about something, and this time, too, he was thinking about something connected with his service, smoking a Belomor cigarette…

And then one of the technicians decided to joke and asked half colonel if they should brand the brooms. The chief said in surprise: Haven’t you branded them yet? The jaws of all the technicians in the smoking room dropped. The technician who tried to joke said: and where should we brand it – on the handle? The half colonel replied: yes, on the handle and on each twig separately…

On the whole, officers and warrant officers in the air regiment were mainly young, aged from 20 to 35. There was less than a tenth of those aged forty and over. So when they had a little free time, they played the fool as they could.

They did so especially in winter: they liked to dump somebody in the snowdrift or just play snowballs. They removed a small entrance ladder to the shelter of the neighboring service group and quickly put up a hill of snow. A technician who went out of the shelter did not suspect anything, made a step and… felt a bit of a paratrooper during his very first jump.

Having shaken off the snow and sworn, he shouted – we are being attacked! The other members of his group flew out of the shelter to be attacked by those who had removed the ladder! It was funny just like in childhood – a pig pile of officers, warrant officers and soldiers…

When the squadron engineer, a mustached and stern major, the oldest of all those lying in the snow, came out of his separate shelter upon hearing the noise, he shouted: Stop playing the fool in the snow!

Also, pilots and technicians had a special approach to dividing into teams: those married played against the bachelors, and the bachelors beat the married more often somehow. Sometimes the mustached played against the shaven, and very rarely the pilots played against the service staff that worked on the land.

The games were not very frequent: there was one day off – Sunday, and not everybody had a day off on the same day.

A plane, the more so – a pilot, should fly. The whole regiment flew almost every other day. The first and fourth squadrons on one day, the second and third on the next one. There were day and night flights, training and operational flights. A part of the regiment was on constant business trips upon the tasks given at the launch site: they flew all over the country, sometimes the plane returned in two or three days, sometimes in two weeks.

Sometimes the flying line was half empty, and then the regiment gathered again, but almost never completely. The days of operational flights were always the most strenuous ones. Technicians and mechanics prepared almost twenty planes for the flight, pilots had pre-flight trainings, studied the plan of flights.

All the maintenance groups worked on different planes, each in accordance with its profile, sometimes almost all of them gathered on one which had to fly first, and then dozens of technicians and mechanics swarmed in all parts of the plane at once. After preparing this one they started working on others.

Pre-flight preparation, preliminary preparation, preparation for a second flight and post-flight one, and also regular maintenance work on different elements and the whole plane… there were many of them. Finally the planes were ready, the crews started checking and launching the engines.

There are four of them on AN-12, each almost 4 00 °CV… The airfield is covered by deep rumble, and the planes go to the steering paths one by one, then to the take-off runway and disappear above the taiga. The airfield gets empty, and technicians can have a little rest.

Now the first plane returns and drives to its line, the technicians go there again to prepare it for the second flight. One more returns, now everybody goes to this one, and all the planes that fly on this day or night follow the same procedure. Having accomplished the flying task, the plane returns to its line for good. The technicians carry out the post-flight preparation, the plane is fuelled to the full and stays there to rest.

It happens to every plane that flies on that day. Finally everybody is back on the line, all the planes are checked and fuelled, and the airfield grows quiet. The tired pilots and land maintenance workers return home or to the barracks. The airfield is closed and passed for guard to the field squadron.

The procedure is the same every other day. During flights sometimes there were small pauses, one or two hours long: planes landed on the airfield to make room for another rocket in the sky.

The best season is summer: the clothes are light, and you don’t have to uncover the plane before the flight and cover it back again afterwards.