The history of the struggle for time in space

Last week, the annual expedition to the ISS of Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly was successfully completed. Many people know that the 340-day mission should not have been a new record, but the fact that it ranks fourth in the list of flight durations is less known. The duration of space missions is one of the indicators of how we master space, as far as we are ready, for example, to fly to Mars. And at the beginning of the space age, every hour of flight was highly valued in the space race. About how to set new records for the duration of space flight, today's story.

Minutes and hours

Initially, the duration of the flight was determined, at the same time, technology and medicine. The Soviet ship Vostok was designed for a multi-hour flight (due to a non-duplicated brake engine, emergency passive deceleration of the atmosphere remains to return to Earth, which should take about a week), and the American Mercury could stay no more than a day in space. These features are superimposed on the lack of knowledge about how the human body will behave in space. And although in the first two years of the space race both countries gradually increased the time of missions, the Soviet Union was the absolute leader in terms of flight duration.


USSR cosmonauts in order of flight, from left to right

108 minutes - Vostok-1, Yuri Gagarin, April 12, 1961. Curiously, there are supporters of the idea that the flight lasted 106 or 113 minutes. Only one turn now looks very short flight, but at that time it was a serious risk. The doctors frightened that in weightlessness a person would not be able to eat, drink, breathe, go crazy, and even if this does not happen, his eye muscles will relax, his eyes will change shape and the astronaut will not be able to see anything. The risk, however, was reduced by the fact that the Vostoki could fly in automatic mode and could very likely bring even the astronaut who had lost his working capacity back.
In the United States, however, the rocket was not ready for orbital flight, so the first two Mercury missions used a less load-lifting rocket, were suborbital, and lasted only fifteen minutes.
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25 hours 11 minutes - Vostok-2, German Titov, August 6-7, 1961. Again risk - the duration of space flight increased immediately by thirteen times. And the first cosmic troubles began to appear - in flight, Titov felt dizzy and nauseous. The problem of adapting to weightlessness has not yet been completely solved. Yes, we know how to select and train people so that they are less nauseous in orbit. Yes, we know how to ease the severity of symptoms (move less and try not to move your head). But so far, neither the training nor the pharmacology have been able to completely defeat the cosmic nausea, and about half of the selected and trained cosmonauts are not alone in the first days of the flight.
The flight of Titov was another serious blow to the United States. Only six months later, the first "Mercury" went into orbit, but stayed there for only 4 hours and 55 minutes - due to the failure of the reset sensor of the heat shield, the mission was erroneously interrupted early.

94 hours 22 minutes (3 days 22 hours 22 minutes) - Vostok-3, Andrian Nikolayev, 11-15 August 1962. On the first day of the flight, Nikolayev performed a very important experiment, which now seems a bit amusing - for the first time in the history of astronautics, he got rid of the chair and swam in weightlessness for about an hour. Now there is no way without it, but then it was also a risk - and if the astronaut cannot return to the chair? It would be much more difficult to transfer the overload and would have to sit in the descent vehicle, which hit the ground hard, without any means of depreciation. But the fears were in vain - swimming in weightlessness turned out to be very pleasant and quite simple. And Andriyan is the first cosmonaut to whom the flight duration was extended - initially the duration was determined to be three days, but due to the cosmonaut’s condition, after violent disputes on Earth, it was decided to extend the flight for another day.

115 hours 55 minutes (4 days 22 hours 55 minutes) - Vostok-5, Valery Bykovsky, June 14-19, 1963. And in this flight another system of a spacecraft and a man was checked for the first time - on the third day Bykovsky went to the toilet for the first time “big” in space. Like many achievements of the first years of cosmonautics, it now looks funny, but it would be very sad if it suddenly turned out that toilet questions restrict the movement of humanity into space. Bykovsky was unlucky - due to the fact that the orbit was lower than the calculated one, he lost the possibility of extending the flight to eight days. But, nevertheless, he still holds the record for the duration of a single flight.
In the United States, it was only in 1963 that they reached the frontier of flight duration of one day. The final mission of the program “Mercury” - “Mercury-Atlas 9” with a specially modified ship with additional batteries and oxygen cylinders lasted 34 hours. What is curious, and there was no toilet issues - the problems with the tightness of the urinal bag led to short circuits, and the ship had to be planted almost manually.

Days

The American lunar program required long flights - if you don’t learn to spend two weeks in space, then there would be no point in flying to the moon. The Soviet cosmonautics suffered from uncertainty with the lunar program, delays in developing the new Soyuz spacecraft and an increased risk of launching the Voskhod spacecraft, which did not have a rescue system in the first minutes of flight. And the record flight of the Breeze and Coal dogs, which have been in space for 22 days, cannot be included in human records.


US astronauts second set

7 days 22 hours - Gemini-5, Gordon Cooper, Charles Conrad, 21-29 August 1965. The first long flight of the very successful Gemini program, during which the Americans began to overtake the USSR in the space race. This mission almost failed due to pressure problems in undeveloped fuel cells. On the third day, the thermoregulation system began to be naughty - the temperature in spacesuits fell to 5 ° C. But, despite all the problems, the flight was extended every day. Boredom was a separate challenge - the astronauts did not take, for example, books with them, and the main entertainment was the six-hour cleaning of the ship.

13 days 18 hours - “Gemini-7”, Frank Borman, Jim Lowell, December 4-18, 1965. The second long flight in preparation for flights to the moon. This time the astronauts prepared and took the books with them. But the flight was very hard - the cabin was gradually filled with the smell of urine and unwashed bodies. The astronauts, as they could, postponed the trip to the toilet "in a big way" and decided on it only on the tenth day. After landing, the astronauts, in spite of the vigorous smiles seen in the chronicles, hardly shifted their legs. Frank Borman later recalled that he literally commanded his legs “right! left! right! left! Also during the flight, astronauts lost 4-5 kilograms. But nothing fatal happened - you could fly to the moon. By the way, the Apollo flights did not beat this record, the duration of the mission was chosen very correctly, with a margin.


A film about the crew of the "Union-9"

17 days 16 hours - Soyuz-9, Andriyan Nikolaev, Vitaly Sevastyanov, June 1-19, 1970. The Americans won the lunar race in 1969, and this flight was an asymmetrical response - the USSR was preparing for long missions and began to create orbital stations. In addition, it was necessary to block the record of the Americans at Gemini-7. Therefore, the flight was scheduled for 17-20 days. The flight was successful, without serious technical problems. The cosmonauts for the first time in the USSR were shaving in orbit (curiously, they liked electric razors more, and the Americans - safety razors), spent the first space day in history, played chess on the radio, and also for the first time held a communication session with relatives for psychological support of the crew. But after landing there was an unpleasant surprise - the condition of the astronauts turned out to be worse than expected, attempts to just stand on their feet led to problems with balance and increased heartbeat. Doctors had to refine physical exercise methods in space and rehabilitation algorithms after the flight.

From a comparison of the post-flight status of the astronauts Gemini-7 and Soyuz-9, followers of the lunar conspiracy are trying to prove that the program Gemini, like Apollo, was a hoax. Indeed, at first glance it is difficult to compare cheerfully step-up Americans with almost astronauts dying after the flight. However, this argument has something to answer. Adherents of the lunar conspiracy shift the accents. The Americans had problems with walking (I already quoted above), and the Soviet cosmonauts were not on the verge of life and death. If you search for materials from the medical staff who investigated Nikolayev and Sevastyanov, an unpleasant, but not critically dangerous picture opens up. Let me quote the article “Medical and Biological Research on the Soyuz Spacecraft Flight Program” by Professor L.I. Kakurina, published in 1972 and available on the RAS website :

Immediately after landing, the astronauts noted a general weakness. An unusual increase in heart rate was observed when walking or other minor loads. Not only the objects used by the astronauts after the flight, but also parts of the body (head, arms, legs) were subjectively perceived as heavy. For 3-4 days after the flight, ordinary terrestrial gravity was perceived as the effect of accelerations within 2–2.5 g. At least for 3 hours. after the flight, the astronauts found it difficult to maintain a vertical posture. A day after the flight, their gait was still uncertain, and efforts were required to maintain a vertical posture.

But after 11 days, the state of the astronauts approached the pre-flight one.
The results of the flight of the Soyuz-9 showed the need to develop new methods of maintaining performance after the flight. The astronauts had a treadmill, load suits and an anti-overload vacuum suit. And the time of compulsory physical training was raised from half an hour to two hours a day. By the way, the problem of the rehabilitation of the organism after the flight, I suspect, has affected the duration of the flight of space tourists - not a single tourist has yet been in space for more than 15 days.

Weeks

Volkov, Dobrovolsky, Patsayev

23 days 18 hours - "Soyuz-11", George Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, Victor Patsayev. The next stage of the movement into space was associated with orbital stations. The station gave more space, it was possible to replenish supplies with cargo ships and even change manned ships, if the lifetime of the ship in space turned out to be lower than the duration of the expedition. The crew of the Soyuz-11, which docked with the first orbital station Salyut-1 and worked there for more than three weeks, became pioneers in this matter. The experience of Soyuz-9 was taken into account, and, according to data from orbit, the physical condition of the astronauts remained normal. Alas, Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsayev died while returning to Earth, and it was not possible to conduct post-flight tests.


Crews station "Skylab"

28 days Skylab-2
59 days Skylab-3
84 days Skylab-4 - Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue, 11/16/1973 - 02/08/1974. The very successful was the American Skylab station. In each flight, new records were set for the duration of their stay in space. Astronauts successfully combined scientific research, maintaining the station in working condition and taking care of their own health. According to Carr's memoirs, the doctors joked that the astronauts had returned in better condition than they had launched into space. Of course, it was a joke, after a long flight, the volume and strength of muscles in people decreased, calcium was leached from the bones, and the vestibular apparatus weaned off the weight. All these changes need to be corrected in the process of post-flight rehabilitation. But, despite all these problems, it turned out that it is possible to work in space for a long time and successfully and recover to a normal state after a flight.

Months

Starting from a certain stage, long expeditions become similar to each other, because the crew is engaged in four things in general - performs scientific experiments (of which there are a lot of orbits in months), maintains the orbital station in working condition (repairing broken units, struggles with accidents, upgrades the station), maintains its own working capacity (two hours of physical education every day, medical tests, earthly landscapes on the wall, communication with relatives) and carries a social burden (congratulations, sean s communication, etc., etc.). Therefore, in this chapter I will briefly focus only on records.


Romanenko and Grechko

Salyut-6
Skylab's record lasted four years. Only at the Salyut-6 station did Soviet cosmonauts beat the record of the Americans - the expedition of Yuriy Romanenko and Georgy Grechko spent 96 days at the station. But new expeditions raised the bar twice - 139 days, 175 days, 184 days.



Salyut-7
Two records were set at Salyut-7, which still remain in the Top-10. In 1982, Anatoly Berezovoy and Valentin Lebedev spent 211 days at the station. And in 1984, Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Soloviev and Oleg Atkov made a flight of almost 237 days.


Valery Polyakov in the porthole

"World"
But the real factory of records, some of which are not broken even today, was the Mir orbital complex. In 1987, Yuriy Romanenko worked at the station for 326 days. In 1988, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov spent exactly one year in space. In 1994-95, the legendary Valery Polyakov stayed at the station for 437 days. This record has not been broken so far. By the way, Polyakova did not work out the first time - in 1988-89, he spent 240 days on the Mir, but was forced to return early due to the station's conservation. But after Polyakov in 1998-1999, Sergei Avdeev worked in orbit for 379 days.

Conclusion

A successful and repeated long-term human presence in orbit says that space, even if unfriendly, can easily be defeated, and not losing working capacity, being in weightlessness for months. The annual flight of Kornienko and Kelly did not become a record one, but because of this, it is not less interesting. Medics on both sides of the ocean can compare the various technologies that Russia and the United States use for long flights. The twin experiment with Scott and Mark Kelly is very curious. Each new piece of information can be valuable, allowing you to fly even longer, better and safer for health.

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