The story of the astronauts who were stranded.

 

 

This is the story of the astronauts who were stranded in the space station after Challenger blew up. Upon hearing of the loss of seven of his friends and colleagues, one of the astronauts—who have reputations for being all business—actually did break down in tears. And in the weightlessness, tears don’t fall, they just puddle up and flood the eyes; he shook his head to clear his eyes and the tears floated around next to his face and head. It was a surreal and sorrowful moment.

There were two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut. They realized that the shuttle would be grounded for a long time—a year, perhaps two—and ground control said as much, telling them that they’d have to stay for the long haul. So they undertook a path of making the best of it—making the space station “home”. Yet, meanwhile, the ground crew were cudgeling their brains for a way to get them back to Earth. So the two parts of the mission were on two different paths.

Finally, ground determined that they should use the Russian Soyuz that was docked on the space station like a life boat. These non-reusable craft are crude and even while not in use (i.e., tethered to the ISS) have a rather short shelf life. This one was approaching its useful life’s end so the decision quickly emerged to use it now rather than to leave the men in space for another year.

There is a peculiarity to the Soyuz which reflects its totalitarian (Soviet) origins: once launched, neither ground control nor flight crew have any control over the thing; it is entirely automated. Also of note is that the US hectored the Russians to at least update the computers but even those were not flight tested …how could they be? The Soyuz being a one-off one way unit!

The Soyuz is also very small, tighter than the Apollo. It will hold three, but in small, cramped plastic bucket seats with the knees drawn up to the chest—a bad posture indeed for the purpose.

But away they went. Orbited Earth a couple times and then the retro-rockets fired automatically. But they fired late—by about a second. Not something that a passenger would notice, but it put the Soyuz in a flight path the problem of which I’m not clear on. I don’t know if the late ignition put them in an attitude that would make the Soyuz “skip” off the atmosphere like a flat rock on a pond, and carom back into space; or if it just meant that the eventual descent to earth would be into the Indian Ocean or something dreadful like that. Soyuz are not supposed to “splash” down. They are not designed to float. They are designed to smack into the ground, not the water.

So far, nobody knew there was a problem because the capsule has no readouts for the passive passengers to look at; and Russian ground had no telemetry, or radio, or anything except some sort of animated illustration on a screen. One astronaut by the window, and the Russian in center seat by now were remarking that there certainly did seem to be a lot of flame coming off the heat shield. Suddenly the Soyuz’s computer realized the error and automatically fired the “Go Down Now” rocket. This is the emergency back up. It was like being fired out of a shotgun, straight down at the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The G-forces mounted. Now, here these guys are, having spent about a year in zero gravity; they are not in the same top physical shape they were in when they left Earth. They are in a weakened condition. And now they are hurtling toward Earth and both rocket thrust and natural gravity are increasing. The Russian amused himself by counting up the G-forces as they mounted: 2 Gs, 3 Gs, 4, 5… In the end they had nearly 8 Gravities pressing on them—at least a thousand pounds. They could feel their tongues falling back into their throats, their rib-cages being compressed by their doubled-up knees, unable to breathe, the blood pooling in the backs of their skulls, hard to stay conscious. This went on for a very long time.

Then the parachute deployed, and they got some relief while the capsule swung on its tether and lost much of its frantic speed. Eventually it hit terra firma with a resounding smash—bone jarring, I would think. The Russian was slow to sever the ‘chute connection and the wind of the steppe grabbed it and pulled the capsule over onto its side. They lay there for a while feeling gravity and looking out the downward-facing window at the green grass beneath, and out the upward-facing window at the blue sky. Finally the Yanks prevailed on the Russian that they should open the hatch and they crawled out onto the sweet smelling, sun-warmed steppe of Central Asia. With not a thing in sight.

Meanwhile, Russian ground control was trying to calm down the head of NASA who was there for the landing. Except there was NO landing. “They’ll be here in just a moment!” they said but the minutes turned into hours and eventually it was assumed that the Soyuz was lost and her crew killed. The second catastrophic event for NASA—doubtless would mark the end of the American space program for years. Much gloom and grief.

Meanwhile, our plucky space boys have had enough of laying in the fragrant grass on their backsides staring into the Space they’ve just left. The Yanks, that is. Not the Russian. He didn’t want to be the one knuckle-head actually doing anything unauthorized when the retrieval crew showed up. He had absolute totalitarian faith (or actually, fear of not demonstrating faith) in the system.

But the system had NO idea where they were or even if they were alive. So the Yanks started doing stuff. One set out to turn the parachute into a tent for the night. The other crawled back into the Soyuz to hoik out a beacon and its antenna and set it up—got its aerial pointed up at a satellite orbiting even farther away than the Space Station they’d just left, and bounced a signal off of it—by following the Cyrillic directions that came with it!

In the meantime, the Russian did get in the spirit of things—he dug out the double-barreled sawed-off shotgun from under the seat and fired off flares and loads of buckshot in a futile effort to signal their presence—in an area not only devoid of any human life, but of any human presence in the last hundred years. (The shotgun, by the way, was standard issue for the Russians after an early Soyuz went down off-target into a forest and the cosmonauts had to abandon their fire and retreat back into the cramped and cold capsule after wolves approached too aggressively…. Gotta love them Russians!)

Soon a rescue plane—actually a search jet—heard the beacon and used it to home in on the trio. So contact was made and Russian ground and NASA notified, much to the relief of the grieving wives one might assume. But it was another four hours before the helicopter could get to them and pick them up. Four hours. They were, as it happened, hundreds of miles away from their landing point, in the middle of one of the most remote areas on the planet. They had come from one of the most high-tech environments ever devised by man; they were in constant, intimate contact with their colleagues and REMFs on the ground. Now they were slammed into an area that had NO technology at all, in any direction for several days’ march. They used their four hours to come to terms with their successful return, their peaceful location, which despite its remoteness felt very much like home, in contrast to the Space Station circling but a few hundred miles above, and coming to terms with their imminent return to what by now was a Vodka-induced uproar back at Russian ground control and the press of the press, and all that. The spotlight. But they lived through it.

Cool story, huh!