Everyday Life - Tyura-Tam

From about 65 onward, our SOBIS crew worked with the system not only at the technical position but also at the launch position, as part of the combined launch crew. It added little to our workload and gave us access to the snack bar in the pre-launch building, where we might buy something to eat—a tin of saury, for example. Supplies at the test range were appalling, thanks to the military retail service.

We need to explain these calculations, since both terms sound the same. A standard calculation for any onboard or ground system, at a technical post, in the MIC, or at the start usually consists of two to five specialists. But for working with the vehicle at launch, all those calculations are merged into what is called the Start Calculation, i.e., consolidated. The composition of this calculation, and the movement of its members through hourly, half-hour, and fifteen-minute readiness states are under strict accounting and control.

This is needed above all, and especially on the second day of vehicle preparation, that is, on launch day, when from SP all those not directly involved in launch operations are removed. For this, special boards were later installed at the forward launch checkpoint for all readiness badges, showing which start calculation number and which time readiness it was, and where it was located. At launch, if everything goes normally, according to the process schedule, vehicle preparation takes two days.

On the first day after the carrier is brought out and installed in the launch structure, among other things, vertical integrated tests are conducted; if they are successful, the launch team moves on to the second, launch day. The rocket is loaded with components. It is a very dangerous operation, but this was only considered truly dangerous many years later after a terrible accident with many casualties on the Plesetsk range. In those years, right after fueling with liquid oxygen, any free member of the launch team used to scrape snow off the rocket with his fingernails to quench his thirst, and it felt wonderful on a hot day. There was so much free snow and it was so pure!¹

Electrical tests are carried out from the control bunker. It is an underground facility with armored doors and two boat-like periscopes, sticking up only about half a meter above ground. The distance to the launch structure is about 100 meters. A pre-launch control of the carrier systems is underway. Supervisors and academicians crowd into our bunker, and at the 15-minute readiness the entrance doors are shut and screwed in.

It is exactly then that two idiots from the launch crew, having taken permission from the bunker with the pretext of going to the toilet, run to the toilet itself (naturally, the bent and sagging two-hole wooden shack the base uses for that), but only to, at the signal of five-minute readiness, sprint closer to the launch into a pit covered by a concrete slab with a round hole. This pit is about halfway to launch and one and a half meters deep. They said this pit was planned to seat a camera operator. I’d like to have seen him, a civilian. They set their cameras up far beyond the perimeter wire. But at the moment of relocation both periscopes are aimed at the vehicle, and the pranksters are not visible. Naturally, this tempting adventure won’t happen without me… We sit in the pit and “monitor the process.”

Launch-preparation calls over the loudspeaker are by now almost memorized by heart. Finally the cable mast retracted, the rocket stopped swaying, so everything is proceeding normally and the oxygen tank drains were closed. Pressurization². Then ignition ignited. Under the launch structure appeared a glow, in a moment it became as bright as welding, and from the gas duct trough a hundred-meter pillar of dust and smoke shot upward, then the shock wave hit us. Both brave idiots squatted down, only their heads sticking out, and I personally had sharp doubts about staying so close to launch, which instantly turned into curses toward myself and a wish to sink into the ground. The engines moved from preliminary and intermediate thrust to main thrust. The acute wish was for it to leave and for nothing abnormal to happen. Air materialized, turning into a trembling jelly that struck my ears and seemed touchable and visible. All the cells of my body trembled in sync with it. The rocket seemed frozen, stuck in the trusses, standing on this furious gas column. But then it slowly began to move in the correct direction. From the upper halves of the blocks thick layers of white, fluffy ice and snow slowly slid downward. Then it pulled its roaring rear end past the zero launch mark and its full beauty and power became visible. The four girders holding it at the waist had been swung out. When it rose to about a hundred meters, it seemed to be directly overhead. Terrifying, it was dreadful. A late thought rang: “Fool! I’ll never dare such nonsense again.” But no words can express the thrill and terror of a 11A57-class carrier rocket launch! There are no words for that. After several launches I was in that same pit again. The last time!

The lightest watch is the MIC duty when no special work is happening, that is, when there is no one in the facility at night. There are two of us: the officer on duty and his assistant, a sergeant. On a summer night it was nice to bring a chair out of the watch room into the fresh air and read a good book by the light of the lamp by the entrance. In my bachelor years I had read quite a lot. So you sit comfortably and occasionally catch out-of-corner a phalanx or a scorpion rushing through the light. To be honest, scorpions were not seen often. Even very rarely, all of them were caught by the industrial workers.³ The same fate befell the big steppe tortoises. The night is quiet, the vault is dusted with silver stars, and little bugs are clicking. In winter, of course, it is worse. It usually blows, no cicadas, and every four hours you must open the strategic missile storage and take temperature and humidity readings. The storage is a large stone shed, slightly smaller than the MIC, with four rail-mounted railsets each holding a 8K74 rocket. That was the strategic reserve from HQ and the General Staff in case of nuclear war with the States. In short, in the absence of special work, MIC duty is a sinecure and a real spiritual break.

Then suddenly, steps are heard in the dark velvet night. And horror — it’s our “Goat,” the staff chief! The watch is gone, overruled! It’s him, damn it, who came to earn some honors, hoping to be included in the operational crew as a specialist. All of them, staff people but especially the political workers, want to appear on award lists if a launch is successful.

He takes the key to the control room, turns on the lights, turns up the transmission to full volume, and starts “commanding” according to the networked preparation schedule. He acts like our Captain Barbarich, who runs the horizontal tests of the carrier in the MIC. The moment he starts speaking it sounds: “Mating block A with block B”!! Then after half an hour or an hour again the MIC jolts: “Mating block A with block D.” Chaos. This is what he’ll do all the way till morning. And until morning the loudspeaker in the whole building will be booming. Idiot.

Apparently all staff officers and chaplains had fake honors, knowing that no one would ever let any of them near the hardware. But none of them ever played the specialist so stupidly.

And at the end of his service in the unit, as a demobilization refrain of this major, he was awarded the final “pearl.” A toilet was finally put into operation in our barracks, but with a surprise. The stalls were built so that the doors would not close, they hit your knees, and you have to hold them partly open by hand. Just to make it funnier.

Somewhere this summer over the range they were to detonate two nuclear warheads to test the new 8K75 missile complex’s radio-control system robustness. For this, from the Kapustin Yar range missiles were to be launched toward us with nuclear warheads. We knew when and at what time the first experiment would be: it was at 13 or 13.30, and we were on our way to lunch. The day was normal and hot. The sun was mercilessly burning; I remember that at the moment of the explosion we were passing the training center canteen. Suddenly everything around flashed bright white, like a welding arc, but only briefly, for a moment. Sunlight compared to the flash was a completely yellow color. We scanned the sky and saw no traces, no spots. Clear blue sky. I did not observe the second blast and do not know whether it happened. Later I heard a witness account of the second blast. They said they saw some cloud-like formation in the sky.

B. E. Chertok, in his memoir “Rockets and People,” describes a similar earlier experiment: “On November 1, 1962 at 14:15, with bright sun a second sun flared up in the northeast. A nuclear explosion in the stratosphere—nuclear weapons test under the code K-5. The flash lasted fractions of a second (rocket R12 at 60 km to check the possibility of shutting down all forms of radio communication.) By map distance, the blast site was about 500 km away. Effective. Complete silence on all bands. Communication was restored only after a little over an hour.”

That same year on the range near testing site 61 an operation called “Shift” was conducted—the determination of the shock-wave effect of a 1135-ton TNT explosion on a silo silo launcher, equipment, and animals. For the first time in my life I watched from a traincar window as two tanks, at tremendous speed, tore across the steppe toward us from the direction of site 61 through clouds of dust. The speed of combat vehicles was striking. The tankers drove their tanks to the final run. For the range experimenters, it was an unforgettable sight. I had not imagined that a tank could move so fast!⁴

On a summer day, steppe air feels completely dry. Still, the cold surfaces of oxygen tanks are covered in a thick layer of dense, very cold snow within a few dozen minutes.
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Creating additional (excess) pressure in the tanks to improve fuel pump performance (to fight cavitation).
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One of the favorite pastimes of the industrial workers (industrial representatives), especially those on their first assignment to Tyuratam, was “feeding the ants.” A phalanx was caught. It was often done right in the hall, where they got into gaps in the rail tracks. A half-meter rope was tied around its waist so it would not run too fast. By this rope the phalanx was brought to a hole in an underground ant nest. The ants were very small and the nest opening was 3-4 millimeters in diameter, several times smaller than the spider’s body. The phalanx instantly runs away from the nest. But then a couple of daredevils are already riding it, while new ones come out from the nest. Commotion and chase. If they can catch one, the spider bites it, but there are more and more riders it bites on the way. It was already 5 meters away, maybe all 10. But the victim’s movements weakened, and the phalanx was now moving the other way. And the closer the team of hunters got, the wider the entrance opening became. In a few minutes the phalanx vanished underground. The entertainment was over.
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Later, fate granted me the “pleasure” of riding in a tank “with the wind.” More on that below. ↩

Footnotes