Vostok (spaceship)
Wostok [ vasˈtɔk ] ( Russian Восток for east , transliteration : Vostok ) was the name of the first generation of manned Soviet spaceships . From 1961 to 1963, the USSR launched a total of six manned spaceships in this series. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the first person to enter Earth orbit, was on board Vostok 1 ; on June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereschkowa , Vostok 6, was the first female cosmonaut .
The single-seat Vostok spaceships were launched with the Vostok rockets of the same name and flew in a relatively low orbit . Both the maximum mission duration and the pilot's control options were very limited. The Vostok spaceships were subsequently used as the basis for various military and civil unmanned satellites of the “Kosmos” series, from 1985 under the name “ Foton ”. In the manned program, Vostok spaceships were replaced by the similarly constructed, but larger and heavier Vozhod spaceships .
history
The Soviet Vostok program, which was later seen as a direct response to NASA's “ Man In Space Soonest ” program , drove the space race to its first climax in the early 1960s. With the development of a simple spaceship on the basis of existing unmanned military concepts, it was possible to bring a person into space several months before the United States.
Technical specifications
The Vostok spaceship consisted of two parts: the spherical landing capsule (diameter: 2.3 m, volume: 1.6 m³, mass: 2.46 t) for the respective spaceman including the necessary control parts as well as an adjacent double-conical device part (diameter: 2.43 m, length: 2.25 m, mass: 2.27 t), which contained the brake engine and fuel .
Only the round landing capsule could be traced back to earth, which for this purpose was surrounded by an asbestos layer up to 18 cm thick as a heat shield . The total complex had a mass of 4.73 t, in combination with Block-E (upper stage of the launcher) 6.17 t. Vostok was 4.41 m long (with Block-E 7.35 m).
In the wall of the landing capsule there were three very large hatches with a diameter of 1.2 m, through which the cosmonaut entered, the parachute shot out or equipment installed. Three smaller hatches with a diameter of 25 cm were used for earth observation and as a navigation aid or as an optical visor ( Wsor ) and could be closed by small blinds during re-entry . The technical and scientific equipment of the landing capsule with a mass of almost 800 kg consisted mainly of telemetry and communication systems as well as landing sensors and the landing parachute. The cosmonaut was strapped into an ejector seat that was catapulted out before landing. The reason for this procedure was the fact that only ballistic landings could be carried out with the spherical landing capsule , which meant loads of up to 10 g for the spaceman and also made it difficult to slow down the landing capsule sufficiently before impact. The cosmonaut's safety was considered a priority; therefore it should land separately on a parachute.
In the event of an accident with the launcher on the launch pad or in the first few seconds of the flight, the ejection seat also served as a safety system that could have saved the cosmonaut from the immediate danger area. The atmosphere in the landing capsule was normal . The original plan of how Americans use pure oxygen was abandoned because of the dangers involved.
During the flight the device part remained connected to the landing capsule by four elastic straps, which were blown off after the engine burned out or immediately before re-entry. The engine used was the "Issajews TDU-1" based on nitric acid and an amine fuel with a 45 second thrust of 15.83 kN . The position control in the orbit was ensured by infrared sensors connected to 2 × 16 nitrogen nozzles . To supply the spaceship and all systems including the landing capsule, 14 pressurized gas containers with oxygen, nitrogen and pure air were attached outside. Chemical batteries with an operating time of ten days were used as the only energy source.
development
At the beginning of Soviet space travel , every program was based on the needs of the military. The designers knew this , above all Sergei Koroljow , who would have had no chance of funding or significant state support with civil projects. The armaments industry has long played a crucial role in the USSR's presence in space. The OKB-1 , Koroljows design office, received the order in 1956 to develop a photo reconnaissance satellite called Zenit . Due to the lack of powerful transmission technology, Zenit was supposed to return the captured images to earth in a small landing capsule in order to develop and evaluate them there. The United States used a similar system in its Keyhole reconnaissance satellite. With this program, space travel was instrumentalized both as a direct ( espionage ) and indirect ( propaganda ) “weapon” of the Cold War even before the start of Sputnik .
This fact motivated the then party leader Khrushchev to give the entire space program the highest priority for the fastest possible success under all circumstances and to make it militarily and technically usable. The long previously considered possibility of sending a person into space moved into the focus of all planning. In the summer of 1956, Korolev received the order to develop a manned spacecraft under the name Vostok and began in early 1958 with more intensive planning. Around the same time, the United States announced that it would be the first nation to take a human being into space and return it safely within a few months. The road to this goal was far less rocky for the Soviet Union than for the United States. The latter had already suffered massive setbacks in their unmanned space program and did not have a sufficiently powerful rocket that a comparatively heavy manned spacecraft could have carried into space. The Soviets were different: they had the universal and very powerful R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile ( Semjorka ) at their disposal. Ultimately, Korolev could simply fall back on the planned zenith capsule for the manned spaceship. With a diameter of 2.3 m, a cosmonaut and life support system could easily be accommodated in its capsule .
At the beginning of the Vostok program, the mission scenario was unclear. So it was initially considered, similar to what the United States later realized, to conduct a ballistic flight with the help of a sounding rocket and not to orbit the earth in the process. One of the most energetic opponents of this plan was Korolev himself, who considered this plan to be technically relatively easy to implement, but not a real space flight. The United States should be struck more clearly in the public eye by orbiting the earth, orbital flight, rather than short ballistic flight.
In parallel to these plans, the "Block-E" upper stage for the R-7 missile was designed. As early as 1957, the R-7 qualified for use in space travel thanks to the successful Sputnik launch. Due to the increased payload , however, a modified upper stage was necessary, which could bring the several-tonne Vostok spaceship onto a sufficiently high orbit. Koroljow thought even further with the Block E : This upper level, in combination with the three-stage R-7, which in a modified form still forms the backbone of Russian space travel today, could bring all types of heavy earth satellites as well as lunar and planetary probes into space . However, the time factor remained the most important aspect. With the completion of the preparatory work in April 1958, it became clear that a lot of time and energy could be saved if a sophisticated landing system was dispensed with and instead the cosmonaut was catapulted out of the landing capsule at a certain height after re-entry in order to land independently of the actual landing capsule .
With the completion of the planning phase, a manned space flight committee chaired by Konstantin Rudnew , chairman of the Defense Technology Committee (GKOT), was hastily formed to better coordinate and centralize the efforts of the Vostok program. Korolev was appointed Rudnev's deputy. In November 1958, the Council of Chief Constructors of the USSR decided to intensively prepare a manned space flight and to give this civil project the highest priority over comparable military plans. The decision was also made to direct the mission to an orbital flight in any case. At the beginning of 1959 the construction of the Vostok spaceship began - again in terms of time and organizational advantage over the Americans. The fact that construction and construction took place at the same time had a negative effect on the quality of the entire project. This made it hardly possible to test the spaceship on earth, and so further risks were taken in order to win the race into space. In the fall of 1959, a spacecraft without a heat shield was completed at the Kuibyshev plant . With this step, the essential technical design of the program was completed, and the upper level made the R-7 one of the most successful, safest and most reliable launch vehicles in the world and a long-lasting workhorse of Soviet space travel.
Around parallel to the completion of the electrical analogue, a more intensive test phase began, which began with the drop tests of the Vostok landing capsule. Due to the spherical shape, the flight behavior of the landing capsule did not have to be examined first, as was the case with the conical shape of the Mercury landing capsules from American NASA , which saved several months of development time. A series of catapult tests were also carried out to the landing sequence - to - next to the start of the riskiest part of the overall mission simulate . In January 1960, several test launches of Vostok missiles were carried out from Baikonur in the direction of Kamchatka , with the ballistic re-entry, the heat shield and the landing process being tested under realistic conditions with the landing capsule. There are no longer any precise records of the course and number of these flights. The Vostok spaceship passed its baptism of fire on May 15, 1960, as a simplified unmanned spaceship (Wostok 1P, prostjeschij: German simple ) under the name "Korabl 1" ("Spaceship 1", misleadingly referred to in the West as "Sputnik 4") was brought into an approximately circular earth orbit.
Unlike the later version, "Korabl 1" was more like the Zenit satellite and had two solar panels , but no life support or landing systems. To the dissatisfaction of all those involved, there were enormous problems with the radio link , which was transmitting on a trial basis to the spaceship and from there back to the ground. On May 19, the "TDU" brake engine was tested, with which an essential and very risky part of the mission was checked. However, due to a fault in an infrared sensor , “Korabl 1” got its bearings incorrectly, and the engine did not initiate the descent, but instead brought the spaceship to an even higher orbit. The landing capsule and part of the device later burned up in the atmosphere as planned .
A setback was on July 28th of the same year that a fully equipped spaceship (designation "Vostok 1", 1KA) with the two dogs "Bars" and "Lisitschka" on board about 19 seconds after the version used later exploded at the start and hit near the launch site . As usual, the false start was not announced, instead the mission was repeated on August 19, with the spaceship named "Korabl 2" (Sputnik 5) with the two dogs "Belka" and "Strelka" and two rats and 40 Mice on board reached the intended orbit. On August 20, after around ten earth orbits, the capsule landed safely near the town of Orsk . The animals on board were catapulted out of the landing capsule as planned and subjected to an acceleration of up to 10 g. They survived the hardships and proved the operational capability of the "R-7 / Block E / Wostok" network. Meanwhile, the United States watched the Soviet preliminaries with concern as its Mercury program kept waiting for results.
In August 1960, further details on the following unmanned missions became clear. Various design changes, simplifications and mass savings as well as details of the rescue system and the SK-1 spacesuit were decided. On September 19, Korolyov, the chief of the Strategic Missile Forces submitted Mitrofan Nedelin , Deputy Prime Minister Ustinov and the Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Mstislav Keldysh the Central Committee of the CPSU to transfer the recommendation, the date for the first manned space flight in December. The approval of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers came on October 11 and cleared the way for space flight. Individual systems, including the vital ejection seat, proved to be inoperable or malfunctioned, which claimed the life of a subject when the ejection seat was tested. This made it uncertain whether the December deadline could be kept. The decisive factor for the cancellation of the flight in December was the lack of personnel left by an explosion of the newly designed ICBM “ R-16 ” from OKB Jangel on October 24th on a launch platform of the Baikonur Cosmodrome . More than 120 people, including leading space specialists, were killed in the " Nedelin disaster ". Among the victims was the head of the missile forces, Marshal Nedelin, one of the key sponsors of the space program.
For safety reasons, it was decided to make two more unmanned flights in December. The prelude was on December 1st “Korabl 3” , which was supposed to transport the two dogs “Ptscholka” and “Muschka”. But the TDU-1 engine did not work properly again and initiated a too shallow descent. The capsule landed after 17 earth orbits and was not found. The Pacific is assumed to be the landing site . In a manned space flight, the landing capsule would have reentered the earth's atmosphere after a few days through its elliptical orbit even without the engine , but the landing location would not have been planned in advance. In this project, for example, no landing in the ocean was planned, especially since a landing in non-communist countries would have meant a propaganda catastrophe. Therefore, the "TDU-1" engine had to be thoroughly revised; the date was delayed to 1961. When “Korabl 4” was launched on December 22nd, one of the external boosters of the Vostok launcher did not work until the intended burnout. With this loss of thrust, no planned orbit could have been reached, whereupon the flight was aborted. The spacecraft was blown off by the rocket, the landing capsule went down in Eastern Siberia . The two dogs on board, "Domka" and "Krasonka", survived this emergency landing including the hard impact, but they died in the landing capsule as the recovery took two days.
The success of the first manned space flight was therefore uncertain; the death of a spaceman would have ended the entire Soviet program. In order to minimize the dangers, the spaceship was modified again under the name "3KA". The thickness of the asbestos heat shield has been increased from 3 to 13 cm. It was also decided that the first space flight should only circle the earth once (flight duration about 90 minutes) and not 17 times as planned (which would correspond to a one-day flight). Meanwhile, the United States announced its first suborbital flight for April 28, 1961. The party leadership now urged that the flight be carried out before this date under all circumstances. For the final tests of the ejection seat and the parachute for the pilot, a dummy with the size and weight of a person called Ivan Ivanovich was used. During the one and a half hour flight of “Korabl 4” on March 9, 1961 everything went as planned and the dog “Tschernuschka” on board, several reptiles, a few dozen mice and a guinea pig survived the mission and were doing well after landing. Some of the animals were housed inside "Iwan Iwanowitsch" in order to be able to prove later that the doll was not exposed to any fatal accelerations or temperatures.
The communication system was also tested: inside the cardboard cosmonaut, a tape recorder played choral music. During the entire orbit of Sputnik 9, the ground control received the music. At the start of "Korabl 5" on March 25th, the six spaceman candidates were present in Baikonur . This last test flight with the dog "Svyosdotschka" and "Ivan Ivanovich" on board and the landing, 80 km from Izhevsk , went according to plan. After this final test, the designers gave their approval for the manned flight at the beginning of April.
The cosmonaut group No. 1
The human factor for a space flight was never underestimated by Korolev, and in early 1959 the search for suitable candidates began with a strict selection process. In February 1960, 20 young fighter pilots were selected to form the first cosmonaut group in the Soviet Union. The training took place under the direction of Nikolai Kamanin in the newly created "Star City" Swjosdny Gorodok , 40 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
As of May 1960, six of the 20 candidates were trained on the Vostok simulator. These were Juri Gagarin , German Titow , Andrijan Nikolajew , Pawel Popowitsch , Anatoli Kartaschow and Valentin Varlamow . Kartaschow and Varlamow had to leave this group for medical reasons and were replaced by Grigory Neljubow and Valeri Bykowski .
After their exams on January 17 and 18, the six candidates were awarded the title “(Aviator) Cosmonaut”, but were not allowed to call themselves that publicly because they were obliged to maintain secrecy. Ultimately, it was a matter of choosing from among the six remaining people who on the one hand brought the best test results and, on the other hand, was usable for the propaganda machine through his demeanor. General Kamanin informed Yuri Gagarin at the end of March that he could hope to be the first to fly into space; he was among the top performers in all disciplines. At the same time he had a strong, by no means arrogant, character.
Flight history
Six missions were carried out under the Vostok program.
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Vostok 1 : April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin
start at 7:07 a.m. CET, one-time orbit. Return after a 108-minute flight (= 41,000 km flight distance). Landing near Smelowka , 26 km southwest of Engels . Funk call name: "Kedr" (cedar) -
Vostok 2 : August 6, 1961, German Titow
Carrying out 17 orbits of the earth (duration: 1 d, 1 h, 17 min; flight distance 703,000 km). For the first time film recordings and experiments under the conditions of weightlessness . Titov suffered from acute space sickness, complained of nausea and disorientation. Temporary failure of the on-board temperature regulation, the on-board temperature drops to 6 ° C. Successful landing in the Krasny Kut region near Saratov . Funk call name: "Oryol" (eagle) -
Vostok 3 : August 11, 1962, Andrijan Nikolajew
Serious problems during take-off, as a cable mast did not come off the rocket as planned, but only swiveled to the side a few seconds before take-off. 24 hours later Vostok took off 4th landing after 3 d, 22 h, 22 min near Karakalinsk in Kazakhstan . Funk call name: "Sokol" (falcon) -
Vostok 4 : August 12, 1962, Pawel Popowitsch
Start just one day after Vostok 3. The first group flight in history is held. Proximity up to 6.5 km, which made direct radio contact possible. Testing of important rendezvous techniques for planned lunar missions. For the first time, Nikolayev and Popovich floated freely in their cabins, neither of them suffered the then completely unexplored space sickness like Titov. Landing just seven minutes after Vostok 3 near Atassu , south of Karaganda . Funk nickname: "Berkut" (royal eagle) -
Vostok 5 : June 14, 1963, Valeri Bykowski
Originally a tripartite flight with Vladimir Komarow , Bykowski and a female spaceman was planned, but this was rejected on April 1st. Vostok 5 was also a preparation for upcoming lunar missions and should last eight days. The start was postponed several times from June 12thdue to dangerous solar activity . On June 14th, during the countdown , a control gyro suddenly failed and a string got tangled under Bykowski's seat shell. Both problems were resolved, contrary to the regulations and at Bykowski's express request, while the countdown was running. The perigee achieved was ultimately too low to actuallyremainin orbit foreight days. The landing took place on June 19. Funk call name: "Jastreb" (hawk) -
Vostok 6 : June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereschkowa
Two days after Bykowski, the 26-year-old textile worker Tereschkowa set out into space. During the flight, the group flight of Vostok 3 and 4 was largely repeated, the two spaceships approached within 5 km. Various reports contradict the official version that Tereshkova tolerated weightlessness surprisingly well. Tereschkowa landed 2.5 hours ahead of her colleague Bykowski. Funk call name: "Tschaika" (seagull)
End of program
Obviously Korolev originally planned at least one more Vostok flight for 1964. However, it was clear to all those involved that the limits of the technical possibilities and thus of the propaganda usability had been reached. The planned successor spaceship “Soyuz” was still a long time coming, so that various replacement missions with modified Vostok spaceships “Vostok Tsch” were planned. This would not only have provided important experience in the field of coupling technology, but at the same time the first manned space station with a mass of 15 to 25 tons could have been built. A direct further development to a moon spaceship would have been conceivable. "Wostok Tsch" was met with little approval, so that all studies and designs were included in unmanned programs ("Zenit"), but were never implemented due to a lack of time and money.
Finally, in 1964, the United States announced the flight of its Gemini spaceships. Korolev countered with a simple modification of the Vostok system by removing the ejection seat in favor of up to three seat shells. The spaceship, which was modified in this way, was given the name “Vozhod” to indicate to the West that it was a completely new system. This ended the Vostok era.
In 2011, a first-generation Vostok space capsule was auctioned for the equivalent of 1.9 million euros in New York City to the Russian businessman Yevgeny Yurchenko.
The Mars crater Vostok is named after the spaceship.
Web links
- Vostok in the Encyclopedia Astronautica , accessed August 1, 2009.
- Anatoly Zak: Russia's early manned space flight projects (1945–1963). russianspaceweb.com, accessed August 1, 2009 .
- Vostok project. www.raumfahrer.net, 2009, accessed on August 1, 2009 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ “Vostok” capsule of the first generation auctioned. In: Der Standard , April 13, 2011.
