Random Notes on Leonov's Side of the Moon - for discussion

Random Notes on Leonov's Side of the Moon - for discussion with colleagues

Jim Oberg (www.jamesoberg.com)

August 12, 2005



Ramblings inspired by the book, "Two Sides of the Moon - Our Story of the
Cold War Space Race", by David Scott and Alexei Leonov, with Christine
Toomey, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2004.



Amazon.com discusses it he
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books.
Numerous reader reviews, such as James Lampert, "I found the repeated
references to Scott being barefoot by choice for much of his youth, while
Leonov was barefoot by poverty for much of his, to be rather tiresome;" D.
Sampson, "What I did not like about the book was the ghost writer's
(Christine Toomey) propensity to write in such strong British language you'd
swear Dave Scott was a bloke in an English pub instead of American fighter
pilot/astronaut -- additionally, the ghost writer's total unfamiliarity with
aviation came through in her writing, making some of tales told in the book
rather silly and disappointing; " Gary O.: "Each man is frank, easy to
understand and allows his personality to show through his story."



Other insightful reviews can be found at
http://whizzospace.com/blog/blog2004.htm;
http://www.zone-sf.com/wordworks/2sidemoon.html;
http://www.thealienonline.net/ao_060...d=21&iid=2457;



These jottings don't cover all of the interesting things that Leonov wrote
in the book, just some items that attracted my interest, amusement, or
skepticism. Some items are also of interest to spaceflight historians and I
collect them here for sharing. Other issues and puzzles are raised, about
which I'm asking for insights from friends and colleagues.



Page 56, Bondarenko death - date is given as 5 March and as 23 March in two
successive paragraphs. Alcohol-soaked pad hit electrical heating element.
"Lived for four hours."



"The system of using an oxygen-rich environment in our spacecraft was
abandoned in favor of regenerating oxygen through a system of filters - a
much safer but more bulky process." [JimO: What does THAT mean?]



Page 57, Bondarenko death - "The Soviet Union did not alert those in charge
of the US space program to our tragedy.. What had happened to Bondarenko was
considered an internal matter, not something we wanted openly discussed.
Like nearly every aspect of our space program, it became a closely guarded
secret." [JimO: compare to the page 192 comments where he's mad at American
spies for NOT seeing through the coverup]



Page 61: April 14, 1961 - he got back to Moscow the afternoon AFTER Gagarin's
parade and Red Square fete [JimO: I thought pictures showed him in the crowd
that morning?].



Page 79 - defends the enforced Korolyov anonymity and claims K himself
approved of it, believing he might be assassinated by "enemies of the Soviet
Union". Also p. 144.



Page 86 - Nelyubov purge. Claims all four cosmonaut candidates resigned the
very next day, based on a vote of the entire cosmonaut team. He doesn't
mention how he himself was later shown photographs of the missing men (by
Piet Smolders and by Arthur Clarke, inter alia), and had to make up false
explanations of what happened to them.



Page 87 - Expelled cosmonaut Anikeyev later wound up in prison briefly in a
false hit-and-run conviction.



Page 87 - Expelled cosmonaut Nelyubov was killed when hit by a plank
protruding from a passing train. "Twice I went to visit his grave in the
remote village".



Page 99 - Voskhod-2 - 'Physical strain of training for an emergency like
this was so great that the commander of the backup crew suffered a minor
heart attack during training and had to be replaced." But no name given. --
Zaitsev or Gorbatko?



Page 101 - Voskhod-2 pre-launch preparations: "At the last moment I ordered
most of this food to be replaced with extra ammunition for my pistol. Much
better to carry more cartridges for self-defense, in case our spacecraft
landed in an area with wild animals." [JimO: I thought that the pistol was
added to space missions only AFTER the Voskhod-2 flight; also, I doubt that
a crewman would be allowed the latitude to remove food from the spacecraft,
especially to replace it with explosive items].



Page 116 - After the off-course landing, Leonov recounts that he used a
sextant "to determine our approximate location". [JimO: I've never heard of
any space mission carrying such heavy gear for such an unlikely and probably
useless capability]. The narrative makes no mention of encountering wolves
or bears or any hungry carnivores, although a rescue plane a few miles away
reported buzzed a pack of wolves to chase them away from the landing site.



Page 122 - A few weeks after the mission, Leonov reports he and Belyayev met
with NASA specialists posing as journalists, for many hours over several
days, in the offices of a Soviet press agency - and the interviews were
filmed. He wrote: "I do not believe that what NASA learned from us during
those discussions was put in a drawer and forgotten. I believe the
information we provided changed the course of America's next step in the
space race." But he admitted he didn't talk 'much' about the difficulties he
had getting back in. [JimO: Was he being paranoid here, or was there really
an American team, or even a NASA team, doing this? I've never heard of any
results of this alleged meeting]



p. 192 - After Apollo fi "But I was also very angry at how stubborn the
American engineers were in continuing to use a pure oxygen atmosphere in
their spacecraft. I couldn't understand why they had not switched to the
system we adopted after the death of Valentin Bondarenko - regenerating
oxygen during a flight. The Americans must have known of the tragedy that
had befallen Bondarenko. He had been given a big funeral, and the American
intelligence services would not have been doing their job properly if they
had not informed NASA about what had happened." [JimO: Bondarenko's funeral
in Kharkov seems to have been a subdued affair and his gravestone described
him only as a pilot - not for 25 years was it allowed to be changed to read,
'pilot-cosmonaut'].



p. 253 - Zond-7 in August 1969 carried turtles and white mice, but on
reentry "was a problem with the heat shield" and the animals died. This led
to decision to cancel the circumlunar program. [JimO: Is he confusing this
flight with an earlier failure, in late 1968?]



p. 260 ff, account of Salyut-1 in 1971.. P. 263, Leonov recounts that after
he was replaced, and the new crew launched, he was sent 'on vacation' to the
Black Sea coast for two weeks. [JimO: Isn't the back-up crew usually
intimately involved in ground communications and coordination during a
mission? I can't believe Leonov's account that he was sent away 'on vacation'}.



p. 263, Leonov writes, back from vacation, he talked with the Salyut crew
and reminded them to pencil in a personal procedural change Leonov had
developed for controlling the air vents in the Soyuz. "Make a note of it in
your logbook," he recalls radioing to them. "In my opinion this was the
safest procedure," he wrote. "It seems the crew did not follow my advice."
[JimO: I cannot believe that a cosmonaut had the authority to order a flight
crew to change approved procedures, or that anyone else on that comm loop
would have let him do it].



Page 264, he refers to cardiogram records that show Volkov died 80 seconds,
Patsayev died 100 seconds, and Dobrovolskiy died 120 seconds after
depressurization. He reports he flew to the landing site within three hours,
and that although the bodies had been remained, "their blood-soaked seats .
were the only evidence of the tragedy." [JimO: Would one expect serious
bleeding after death by depressurization?]



Page 264 - "Not only was I deeply saddened by what had happened, but I was
frustrated, too," Leonov writes. "Had I been allowed to fly in their place I
am sure my crew would have survived." [JimO: This parallels Leonov's earlier
assertions that had he been aboard any of the Zond missions that failed, he
would have been able to safely land them - pretty high level of
self-confidence, seems to me.]



Page 264, Leonov added: "I never told anyone that the crew had failed to
follow my instructions and that this had led directly to their deaths."
[JimO: What, he thinks his alleged radio conversation about the procedure
was private and that nobody else was listening or recording it?]



Page 332, Leonov describes the next Salyut mission attempt, with him as
commander of the crew. But in July 1972, the launch vehicle failed and
within three minutes the Salyut crashed to Earth. From the crash site, a
worker brought back some of Leonov's pajamas, found lying on the steppe.
"But there was no raising my spirits - I was really beginning to lose faith
in the program."



Page 333, a few months after the January 1973 announcement of the US crew
for ASTP, he was asked to command the Soyuz spacecraft. No mention of the
OTHER Salyut failure, Kosmos-557, in May 1973 [it was in May that he
elsewhere wrote he had been given the Soyuz command]. He preferred staying
with the Salyut program.



Page 351: "In the beginning there was some aggravation between our two
teams. I learned later that the Americans often complained that they were
monitored the whole time they were in the Soviet Union. A lot of this
paranoia was cultivated, I think, by the American intelligence services."[JimO:
I have some stories by Cernan and others in 'Red Star in Orbit' - worry
about being monitored in the USSR was hardly 'paranoia']



Page 357 - ASTP mission description: "By the morning of 17 July it was time
to move toward each other." Actually, as he later admitted, the Apollo did
the "towarding" - Soyuz was a passive target. But he still repeated the
mutual maneuvering imagery: "Eventually, the two spacecraft drew to within a
few meters of each other..Our spacecraft were given the go-ahead to move
together for final contact." He also writes that Apollo was in a higher
orbit than Soyuz, and lowered its orbit to increase speed to overtake Soyuz
[JimO: all the profiles I've ever seen show Apollo in a trailing, lower
over-taking orbit from the start]



Page 360, Leonov discusses a pilot error by Slayton during the second
docking: "After seizure and during contact, Deke inadvertently fired one of
the Apollo's side roll thrusters, which had the effect of pushing both
vehicles off center, folding them toward one another. There was a real
threat of damaging the joint docking mechanism and the possibility of a
catastrophic depressurization of our orbital module.. We never spoke about
the incident afterward. It would not have been very diplomatic for us to
reveal how close Apollo had come to crippling Soyuz. We treated it as an
internal affair. But we did receive an apology from Mission Control in
Moscow for the mistake."



Pages 365-6, refers to a post-flight incident in at the Kiev airport where a
police motorcade stopped the departing crews and read a document honoring
them. "When Americans saw live television footage of their astronauts being
approached by the police and stopped, they immediately assumed they were
being arrested.. The hue and cry over the incident in the United States was
just one example of the way in which good intent can be misinterpreted."
[JimO: The idea that such a scene was being broadcast 'live' on American
television is incredible (the ceremony wasn't THAT important) - and as for
the alleged 'hue and cry', I recall not a peep - does anyone else?]



Page 367 -Leonov explains why joint missions weren't continued: "Gerald Ford
was defeated in elections by Jimmy Carter. Carter's election campaign had
heavily criticized Ford's policy of détente, and it was not long before he
cancelled all future cooperation in space." [JimO: Carter a rapid
Russia-hater? Hah - he was the guy who kept warning Americans to avoid "an
inordinate fear of communism", he was a mushy-headed soft-hearted would-be
peacemaker who kept being blindsided by one Soviet aggression after another
in the late 1970s and became increasingly bewildered by it all..]



Page 370, Leonov discusses the declining Kremlin support for massive space
budgets in the late 1980's. "I think [Gorbachev's] wife, Raisa, was
partially responsible for this change in attitude. She had great influence
over her husband. Though popular abroad, in her own country she was disliked
by the majority, principally because she tactlessly tried to flag up her
participation in every aspect of government. [She] was quite cold toward the
cosmonaut corps. She seemed jealous of the attention we attracted. She
wanted that attention for herself. She never established any contact with
Valentina Tereshkova, for instance, whereas the wives of Khrushchev and
Brezhnev had treated Tereshkova as a daughter." [JimO: So Leonov's complaint
is that Raisa didn't kiss up to the cosmonauts like she should have? A
revealing whine.]



Page 371, in 1991 Leonov was under consideration to become director of the
Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (in 'Star City'). He was supported by the
defense minister, Dmitriy Yazov, and the deputy chairman of the 'Defense
Council', Oleg Baklanov. But then these men and others led the coup to
depose Gorbachev and reestablish Soviet-style discipline in the country. The
coup failed, and all their protégés - officers and officials closely
associated with them - were under suspicion [Leonov does NOT provide ANY
information of what he did or thought during the days of the abortive
putsch]. "Shortly afterward I received the order that my military service,
and with it all duties with the cosmonaut corps, was being terminated. I was
given no warning. This was totally out of keeping with normal military
protocol. I knew it was simply a matter of political intrigue. It was a stab
in the back. I felt betrayed." [JimO: During the same period, the center
director, cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, was ousted, but Leonov has no pity to
spare for him or anyone else except himself].



Page 372: His verdict on Soviet power: "Under the old system of the USSR,
power had been so concentrated that it did not allow the vast majority of
its people to lead decent lives. The state apparatus was structured to
impose limitations on the lives of ordinary citizens. Throughout the history
of the Soviet Union my fellow countrymen had sacrificed themselves for the
state. But the state did little for its citizens. As a result of my travels
in other communist countries, I had long been convinced of the limitations
of a one-party state." [JimO: So was it really such a good thing that the
Apollo-Soyuz crewmen had agreed not to discuss politics?]



Page 372-3, his new work at Alfa Bank, interesting details.



Page 376, a VERY funny episode about Arthur Clarke. When '2010: Odyssey Two"
was published, it had a Russian spaceship named after Leonov. The book was
being serialized in a Russian youth magazine. "But halfway through the story
the serialization was canceled" and Leonov was hauled before a political
committee to explain his friendship for Clarke. They demanded to know how he
had allowed "it" to happen, and Leonov answered that he had no idea what
they were talking about. "The crew of the spaceship 'Alexei Leonov' consists
of Soviet dissidents," they shrieked back at him in horror. Clarke had
mischievously used the names of about half a dozen Russians who were under
prosecution or other repressions by the Soviet government. "Pettiness and
lack of appreciation of true talent and creativity by certain Party members
was one of the factors that crippled our system," Leonov later wrote. [JEO:
How about mass repression and brutality?]

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:25:53 GMT, "Jim Oberg" wrote:

Page 264, he refers to cardiogram records that show Volkov died 80 seconds,
Patsayev died 100 seconds, and Dobrovolskiy died 120 seconds after
depressurization. He reports he flew to the landing site within three hours,
and that although the bodies had been remained, "their blood-soaked seats .
were the only evidence of the tragedy." [JimO: Would one expect serious
bleeding after death by depressurization?]

Could it cause hemorrhaging in the lungs? Not "after death", of course...

Page 264 - "Not only was I deeply saddened by what had happened, but I was
frustrated, too," Leonov writes. "Had I been allowed to fly in their place I
am sure my crew would have survived." [JimO: This parallels Leonov's earlier
assertions that had he been aboard any of the Zond missions that failed, he
would have been able to safely land them - pretty high level of
self-confidence, seems to me.]

"If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Alexei could land it"

This book is on my 2006 reading list. I'll save your post to go along
with it- thanks.

Dale

Jim Oberg wrote:
Random Notes on Leonov's Side of the Moon - for discussion with colleagues

Jim Oberg (www.jamesoberg.com)

August 12, 2005



Ramblings inspired by the book, "Two Sides of the Moon - Our Story of the
Cold War Space Race", by David Scott and Alexei Leonov, with Christine
Toomey, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2004.



Jim, it looks like Leonov could have used a good editor. He should hire
you to edit the next edition of his book.

Rusty