As a space bore on the "Time of the First" went
The main spoiler - I liked the movie. He is good, but not perfect. And some of its inaccuracies and features are interesting and give a reason to talk about physics, space technology and the organization of flights.
A shot from the second official trailer for the Time of the First film
The main consultant of the film was personally Aleksey Arkhipovich Leonov, whose flight is the subject of the film. His authority is enormous, and the fact that he endorsed the film literally makes you think that everything was literally as shown on the screen. But you need to understand that the film is still artistic, and there can be both random errors and changes in real events to suit the vision of the scriptwriter and director. Fortunately, the flight of "Voskhod-2" was well described in two very authoritative sources - the memoirs of "Rocket and People" by Boris Evseevich Chertok, who was directly subordinate to S.P. The queen also was engaged in control systems, and diaries of the general Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin who supervised selection and preparation of the Soviet cosmonauts. Both of them, by the way, are shown in the film.
Probably, because now the movie must be very dynamic, those who make films are tempted to embellish reality by reducing time, reducing the distance or increasing the speed of real events. For example, in war dramas there are often more opponents than in reality, and they are firing from a smaller distance. And this “concentration” of the film does not always look good. For example, in the film “Gagarin: The First in Space,” a rocket launches like an atomic explosion, so vividly that the characters literally crouch in blinding light. It is clear that I want to show how impressive is the launch of the rocket, but still it is too much. "Time of the first", alas, did not avoid the same desire to press the pedal all the way.
')
At the very beginning of the film shows the crash of an airplane piloted by Leonov. And here begins - if a dive, then sheer, if the exit from a dive - then in centimeters from the ground. The saddest thing is that this story could well have taken place in reality - jet aircraft engines really need to be unrolled by an oncoming stream to launch in the air, only here a dive will require quite a slope. And then there would not have been a blatant unreality of landing - an attempt to sit down as on the screen would have ended with the chassis tearing off when releasing them at unacceptably high speed and a catastrophe. And the tension would have been preserved if they focused on how Leonov was trying to reach the runway by overcoming the technique.
Then the pedal is also not released - if the oxygen ends, it will end at the very last moment, if it is saved - after seeing the last signal flare on the last remnants of fuel, which magically ceases to run out as soon as the astronauts were noticed. Against the background of the true drama of what was in reality, it looks somehow frivolous and far-fetched.
To shoot the original movie is difficult. Vivid films that have become the first or extremely successful in some area, often generate stamps, which are then used in other paintings. The whole question of relevance. "Time of the First" clearly quotes "Gravity", "Gagarin: First in Space" (or even "Gladiator"), "Apollo 13". And personally, in my opinion, the quotes are not quite appropriate - you have time to figure out what you have just been quoted, and you realize that in principle it was not necessary, because quotes rather distort real events, and you could do without them.
But the technique and display of its work on the screen turned out at the highest level and I liked the most. The rocket’s winter launch is more beautiful than the summer one, and thanks to computer graphics we see events in a way that no real camera can show.
Separating the side blocks, shot from the third official trailer
Against the background of such beauty, real shooting of the onboard camera looks paler. And in the film, the work of steering engines and aerodynamic steering wheels of the first stage, boost and discharge of the airlock chamber, reset of the backup braking engine are perfectly shown. Even the block And (the third step) was spun in the right direction after the launch, although it was not very clearly depicted. Work with the Vzor device, which is used to build the correct braking orientation, is clearly shown. The work of the parachute system, which, in the arrangement with two parachutes and a soft-landing engine above the ship, was only very good for the Voskhod was very well demonstrated.
At the same time, of course, it was not without small technical errors.
First, the last command to launch the rocket is given by turning one mechanical key - the so-called. "Key to start". The words "Preliminary", "Intermediate", "Home", "Rise" (it was not in the film) indicate the stages of increasing the thrust of the engines and are performed by the rocket independently. Switching toggle switches, as in the film, no, and the person who utters these words, just notifies those who do not see the indicators on his remote. The operations of launching rockets of the R-7 family as a whole have not changed, and now they are turning the same key and saying the same words. Here is a video of a real start, at 9:57, the safety cover is screwed on with a key at the start.
Secondly, for some reason, incidents that were not in this flight are cited. When braking the ship does not separate the aggregate compartment, which was in the real flight of Gagarin, but problems with the separation of compartments in the Voskhod-2 are not mentioned either in Kamanin, or, more importantly, in Chertok, and in fact the electrician had his work profile. Further, Kirillov (announcer), when recording a report about the death of astronauts, actually retells Komarov’s catastrophe on Soyuz-1, which is not very appropriate.
Thirdly, Leonov didn’t bother the atmosphere in the spacesuit - the designers made it possible to reduce the pressure from 0.4 atmosphere to 0.27. The main risk was in a decompression sickness — if there were nitrogen in Leonov’s blood, he could boil and block the normal blood flow through the vessels. But by that time the cosmonauts had been breathing pure oxygen for about an hour, and the nitrogen from the blood had disappeared. Unfortunately, this is not explained in any way in the film, and against the background of the fact that Leonov is shown a healer ignoring the rules, he looks worse than he could.
Fourthly, for some reason, instead of the correct name of the landing cycle commands - “Descent-1”, “Descent-2” and “Descent-3” the expression “Cycle-4” is used. Indicators of the stages of descent can even be seen on the close-up of the cabin. The cabin, by the way, is recreated very authentically.
Fifth, the failure of the hatch closing system is not confirmed by other sources, but, apparently, it was invented for more drama and not to explain that it is necessary to turn around even in the case of a normal automatic hatch closing, because you still need to enter the ship with your feet forward ( there is a trite little place).
Sixth, the accident of an unmanned training ship is too dramatized. In reality, Cosmos-57 received two identical teams from two different ground points, which, overlapping each other, formed a team to descend. And the emergency detonation system, having determined that the ship does not land on the territory of the USSR, blew it up. This story is interesting in its own way, and it is a pity that it was not told in the film. Further, the process of landing a ship with a "collar", which remains after the airlock was reset, was managed to be checked on an unmanned photo reconnaissance aircraft, which landed quite normally. So the risk was less than that shown in the film, and the engineers and designers knew more.
In the seventh, the film constantly shows antennas of far-space communications. Of course, they look impressive, but they are off-frame in the frame, and in reality the connection with the astronauts and the reception of the TV signal were modest, but in their beautiful four-helix antennas
Antennas of telemetry "Tral" and space television "Yastreb" and "Topaz-25", photo KIK USSR
But the rotation of the ship after the release of the gateway was in reality and almost literally described in the diaries of Kamanin. Indeed, they did not stop it, saving the supply of compressed gas in the orientation system. In the film, he, alas, was called “fuel”, which is wrong, and this scene could be presented more clearly. The increased gas consumption was due to the fact that in order for Leonov to enter open space, the ship needed to maintain an unchanged position in space. Alas, this is not explained in the film.
With physics in the film things are also not very smooth.
First of all, it is very funny to look at trainings on the plane. On the one hand, the parabola, at which artificial weightlessness is obtained, is shown quite reliably, on the other hand, the maximum duration of such weightlessness is approximately 30 seconds, and it is physically impossible to complete all operations in one session. The race for time is shown well, but, alas, it is not realistic.
A very offensive bloop is taken, probably, from an attempt to quote Apollo 13. At the MCC, there is a conversation that, if it is incorrectly oriented, the ship will jump away from the atmosphere and will dangle in space for a long time. It is physically impossible - the Vostok and Voskhod ships have a spherical descent vehicle, and do not create any lifting force. If you entered the atmosphere, then everything is already braking and landing. Further, even if such a lifting force were, then from a low circular orbit it would be possible to jump on it for minutes and hours, but not days, as in the film. But on the trajectory of the return from the moon, indeed, the energy reserve is such that wrong actions can send the ship back into space for a very long time. At the same time, the danger with the wrong orientation was - if the astronauts had oriented themselves backwards, they would have spent the fuel on raising the orbit. And even then there was the last chance - a spare solid-fuel engine, which is located above the area of ​​the descent vehicle.
In the episode with the return to the ship, Leonov is already too in the style of "Gravity" with incredibly high speed flying around the ship. Most likely due to the concentration of drama, speeds and pulses were increased several times.
Exactly this was certainly not the case. Shot from the third official trailer
At the same time, in reality, going back was a huge problem, it is a known fact. It is also known that Leonov did not report his problems to the ground, but complete radio silence with loss and visual visibility, from which everyone is nervous - again, excessive dramatization.
And finally, the scene with braking shows that the filmmakers do not really understand ballistics. In reality, the 17th revolution did not include the brake motor due to the failure of the solar orientation system. But there was a connection with the earth, and the astronauts were recommended to sit manually on the 18th or 22nd circuit. The astronauts trained in the case of manual landing and had the appropriate instruments. Therefore, talking about the heroic death in orbit is an insulting nonsense.
Cabin "Voskhod-2", photo from the book of K. Gatland "Space technology", incorrectly attributed as the cabin of "Voskhod-1"
In the photo above, the round porthole on the left is the “Gaze” for building a landing orientation. If the ship is oriented correctly, then the earth runs upwards, and on the periphery of the device a flat horizon line. Above the "Gaze" dashboard, which shows the globe. This globe can show the current position of the vehicle and the point at which the ship will land, if you turn on the brake motor at that second. Despite the fact that the globe is small, you can aim accurately enough, with an error of tens, but not thousands of kilometers.
Another very important thing missed in the film - it is necessary to slow down at the right moment. You can not sit and think as shown. In reality, according to the memories of Leonov, they really could not properly orient the ship, being in the lodgments, and Belyaev ruled, getting out of the lodgement and lay across across Leonov. Because of this, they were forced to once again occupy the original places and started the engine not immediately, but in principle sat down about where they were going. This could be shown as a dramatic moment, but with maximum realism the accents would be different.
This episode begins with a clear attempt to quote Apollo 13, when the freezing water tears up the wrong body, or something in the ship’s electrical system. But if the Apollo shows a real accident , here the reason is invented. Leonov himself in the interview cited the uneven heating of the ship and the misalignment of the hatch due to this as the cause of air leakage from the cabin. Kamanin and Chertok did mention that the pressure in the oxygen boost system dropped from 75 to 25 atmospheres, and this was actually an emergency. But in real history after the meeting at the command post, it was decided not to do anything - the pressure drop stopped, and the oxygen supply was enough until the normal landing on the 17th orbit. So the idea to quote Apollo-13 again with a panel cut, almost arranged by a short circuit and pulling the sensor out of its unconscious state turned out to be so-so. My main complaint here is that instead of showing a truly teamwork in the detection and elimination of problems, we draw a miraculous salvation of the crew from mortal danger. I have repeatedly said that for some reason, films and books on real accidents turn out to be more interesting than on imaginary ones. And the drama could be well served even if the astronauts were sitting, waiting and doing nothing.
Probably my biggest claim to the film is after the landing scene. From what is happening on the screen, it seems that the search and rescue system for astronauts in the USSR is no good, and Belyaev and Leonov are again saved by a miracle. Moreover, in reality, the story was in its own way very interesting. Indeed, Voskhod-2 landed in a deep forest north of Perm. But in the USSR there was a system of direction finders and radar control of outer space, which saw the decline of the ship and were receiving its radio beacons. The location of the ship was known with an accuracy of 50-70 km. But search planes were deployed in 600-800 kilometers from the landing site, and could not reach immediately. In Alma-Ata, the “VN” cosmonauts' signal (everything is normal) was received on short waves, therefore, at the command post they knew that the ship had boarded, and the cosmonauts were almost certainly in order. Belyaev and Leonov were alone for some time, but after four hours they were noticed by a helicopter and reported:
Alas, due to excessive dramatization in the film they are trying to tell a completely different story. But just when in the cinema the scene ends with the discovery of astronauts, in reality the most interesting begins. The fact is that no one could get to Belyaev and Leonov, the helicopter with the rescuers did not find a landing pad nearby, and the soldiers of the air defense regiment who had advanced on the truck could not quickly reach the cosmonauts either. As a result, Belyaev and Leonov had to spend the night alone. The next morning the situation did not look so dramatic, as in the movie:
As a result, rescuers were able to reach Voskhod-2 only at 11:35 am on the second day. But the astronauts did not dare to evacuate the rope ladder into the helicopter, and began to cut down the landing pad for it. The astronauts spent another night in the forest. This was not a special discomfort, they even cut down the hut, and there was no problem with the supply. But only on the morning of the third day Belyaev and Leonov were finally evacuated from the landing site on skis. And the Soviet media wrote that all this time they rested at the party regional committee :)
A separate sad story with an episode about a radio fan from Sakhalin. Theoretically, he really could have heard the "Voskhod-2" over thousands of kilometers - the re-reflection of radio waves from the ionosphere on short waves allows for this. But then begins an unpleasant story in the style of "bloody gebni." Considering that the consequences for the radio amateur are not shown in the film, if you wish, you may well think that they have planted him, but this does not combine with the heroic and patriotic pathos of the film. It is doubly insulting to look at this story to those who saw the funny Soviet film “Alien Ship” and has already managed to make fun of the local “meteorologist Mangulov”.
Shot from the second official trailer
A separate interesting story with the Mission Control Center, as shown in the film. Alas, but the beautiful picture above is a copy of the American TsUPa. In reality, in the Soviet cosmonautics, the beautiful hall of the MCC was made only for the flight “Soyuz-Apollo”. During the joint mission, the mission control center could not be secret, so they specially made a large and beautiful hall with the best equipment at that time, so that there was something to show. And before that, flights were quite successfully controlled by a slightly different ideology. In the USSR, the basis was the measuring point IP-1 at Baikonur, and the launch of the rocket was recorded here in such boxes of the Tral telemetry system.
Kung system "Tral", photo site KIK USSR
And the IP-1 itself was a complex of buildings, cars and antennas. In addition, near the launch pad is a bunker, from which the missile launch is directly controlled. And Korolev, Chertok, Kamanin and others at the time of the flight were at Baikonur.
General view of IP-1, photo KIK USSR
Also in Moscow, he worked combining the functions of a computer center and the mission control center of the CEC at NII-4.
Building NII-4, photo KIK USSR
The CEC calculated the parameters of the orbit, formed commands for transmitting to the ship and target designation for ground-based means — where and when to turn the antenna to communicate with the ship. The internal organization of the premises was so secret that in the photo and video now you can only find imitations for films.
So could look like the work of CEC. Photo by RIA Novosti / KIK USSR
The MCC, which we now know as MCC-Moscow, appeared in 1973–75 on the basis of the CEC. In principle, no one bothered to reflect this specificity in the film.
There is a funny astronomical blooper in the film - in one frame the moon is full, in the other - only half of the disk is visible. That is, Belyaev and Leonov would fly for a week in phases of the moon. If you look at the real phase of the moon at the moment of flight, then the first option, Voskhod-2, is right in the region of the full moon.
The characters of the astronauts turned out, in my opinion, almost caricatured. Leonov constantly violates all possible rules, and he gets away with it. And Belyaev is shown so pronounced melancholic that one wonders how he was taken to the cosmonauts.
Amazingly, despite the fact that the film is heroic and pretentious, it turned out gloomy. It seems that a bit too much suspense and not enough light moments. Even the joy in the last scene is blurred by the effect of the old film. And the final song, which really brings tears to its eyes, is sung more slowly and somehow sadder than it was sung in Moscow-Cassiopeia.
Despite the fact that for many paragraphs I point out flaws and blunders of the film, in general I liked it, and it’s worth at least once to watch it.
A shot from the second official trailer for the Time of the First film
About the origin of the facts
The main consultant of the film was personally Aleksey Arkhipovich Leonov, whose flight is the subject of the film. His authority is enormous, and the fact that he endorsed the film literally makes you think that everything was literally as shown on the screen. But you need to understand that the film is still artistic, and there can be both random errors and changes in real events to suit the vision of the scriptwriter and director. Fortunately, the flight of "Voskhod-2" was well described in two very authoritative sources - the memoirs of "Rocket and People" by Boris Evseevich Chertok, who was directly subordinate to S.P. The queen also was engaged in control systems, and diaries of the general Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin who supervised selection and preparation of the Soviet cosmonauts. Both of them, by the way, are shown in the film.
The problem of excessive drama
Probably, because now the movie must be very dynamic, those who make films are tempted to embellish reality by reducing time, reducing the distance or increasing the speed of real events. For example, in war dramas there are often more opponents than in reality, and they are firing from a smaller distance. And this “concentration” of the film does not always look good. For example, in the film “Gagarin: The First in Space,” a rocket launches like an atomic explosion, so vividly that the characters literally crouch in blinding light. It is clear that I want to show how impressive is the launch of the rocket, but still it is too much. "Time of the first", alas, did not avoid the same desire to press the pedal all the way.
')
At the very beginning of the film shows the crash of an airplane piloted by Leonov. And here begins - if a dive, then sheer, if the exit from a dive - then in centimeters from the ground. The saddest thing is that this story could well have taken place in reality - jet aircraft engines really need to be unrolled by an oncoming stream to launch in the air, only here a dive will require quite a slope. And then there would not have been a blatant unreality of landing - an attempt to sit down as on the screen would have ended with the chassis tearing off when releasing them at unacceptably high speed and a catastrophe. And the tension would have been preserved if they focused on how Leonov was trying to reach the runway by overcoming the technique.
Then the pedal is also not released - if the oxygen ends, it will end at the very last moment, if it is saved - after seeing the last signal flare on the last remnants of fuel, which magically ceases to run out as soon as the astronauts were noticed. Against the background of the true drama of what was in reality, it looks somehow frivolous and far-fetched.
What are you quoted now?
To shoot the original movie is difficult. Vivid films that have become the first or extremely successful in some area, often generate stamps, which are then used in other paintings. The whole question of relevance. "Time of the First" clearly quotes "Gravity", "Gagarin: First in Space" (or even "Gladiator"), "Apollo 13". And personally, in my opinion, the quotes are not quite appropriate - you have time to figure out what you have just been quoted, and you realize that in principle it was not necessary, because quotes rather distort real events, and you could do without them.
This wonderful technique
But the technique and display of its work on the screen turned out at the highest level and I liked the most. The rocket’s winter launch is more beautiful than the summer one, and thanks to computer graphics we see events in a way that no real camera can show.
Separating the side blocks, shot from the third official trailer
Against the background of such beauty, real shooting of the onboard camera looks paler. And in the film, the work of steering engines and aerodynamic steering wheels of the first stage, boost and discharge of the airlock chamber, reset of the backup braking engine are perfectly shown. Even the block And (the third step) was spun in the right direction after the launch, although it was not very clearly depicted. Work with the Vzor device, which is used to build the correct braking orientation, is clearly shown. The work of the parachute system, which, in the arrangement with two parachutes and a soft-landing engine above the ship, was only very good for the Voskhod was very well demonstrated.
At the same time, of course, it was not without small technical errors.
First, the last command to launch the rocket is given by turning one mechanical key - the so-called. "Key to start". The words "Preliminary", "Intermediate", "Home", "Rise" (it was not in the film) indicate the stages of increasing the thrust of the engines and are performed by the rocket independently. Switching toggle switches, as in the film, no, and the person who utters these words, just notifies those who do not see the indicators on his remote. The operations of launching rockets of the R-7 family as a whole have not changed, and now they are turning the same key and saying the same words. Here is a video of a real start, at 9:57, the safety cover is screwed on with a key at the start.
Secondly, for some reason, incidents that were not in this flight are cited. When braking the ship does not separate the aggregate compartment, which was in the real flight of Gagarin, but problems with the separation of compartments in the Voskhod-2 are not mentioned either in Kamanin, or, more importantly, in Chertok, and in fact the electrician had his work profile. Further, Kirillov (announcer), when recording a report about the death of astronauts, actually retells Komarov’s catastrophe on Soyuz-1, which is not very appropriate.
Thirdly, Leonov didn’t bother the atmosphere in the spacesuit - the designers made it possible to reduce the pressure from 0.4 atmosphere to 0.27. The main risk was in a decompression sickness — if there were nitrogen in Leonov’s blood, he could boil and block the normal blood flow through the vessels. But by that time the cosmonauts had been breathing pure oxygen for about an hour, and the nitrogen from the blood had disappeared. Unfortunately, this is not explained in any way in the film, and against the background of the fact that Leonov is shown a healer ignoring the rules, he looks worse than he could.
Fourthly, for some reason, instead of the correct name of the landing cycle commands - “Descent-1”, “Descent-2” and “Descent-3” the expression “Cycle-4” is used. Indicators of the stages of descent can even be seen on the close-up of the cabin. The cabin, by the way, is recreated very authentically.
Fifth, the failure of the hatch closing system is not confirmed by other sources, but, apparently, it was invented for more drama and not to explain that it is necessary to turn around even in the case of a normal automatic hatch closing, because you still need to enter the ship with your feet forward ( there is a trite little place).
Sixth, the accident of an unmanned training ship is too dramatized. In reality, Cosmos-57 received two identical teams from two different ground points, which, overlapping each other, formed a team to descend. And the emergency detonation system, having determined that the ship does not land on the territory of the USSR, blew it up. This story is interesting in its own way, and it is a pity that it was not told in the film. Further, the process of landing a ship with a "collar", which remains after the airlock was reset, was managed to be checked on an unmanned photo reconnaissance aircraft, which landed quite normally. So the risk was less than that shown in the film, and the engineers and designers knew more.
In the seventh, the film constantly shows antennas of far-space communications. Of course, they look impressive, but they are off-frame in the frame, and in reality the connection with the astronauts and the reception of the TV signal were modest, but in their beautiful four-helix antennas
Antennas of telemetry "Tral" and space television "Yastreb" and "Topaz-25", photo KIK USSR
But the rotation of the ship after the release of the gateway was in reality and almost literally described in the diaries of Kamanin. Indeed, they did not stop it, saving the supply of compressed gas in the orientation system. In the film, he, alas, was called “fuel”, which is wrong, and this scene could be presented more clearly. The increased gas consumption was due to the fact that in order for Leonov to enter open space, the ship needed to maintain an unchanged position in space. Alas, this is not explained in the film.
Entertaining physics
With physics in the film things are also not very smooth.
First of all, it is very funny to look at trainings on the plane. On the one hand, the parabola, at which artificial weightlessness is obtained, is shown quite reliably, on the other hand, the maximum duration of such weightlessness is approximately 30 seconds, and it is physically impossible to complete all operations in one session. The race for time is shown well, but, alas, it is not realistic.
A very offensive bloop is taken, probably, from an attempt to quote Apollo 13. At the MCC, there is a conversation that, if it is incorrectly oriented, the ship will jump away from the atmosphere and will dangle in space for a long time. It is physically impossible - the Vostok and Voskhod ships have a spherical descent vehicle, and do not create any lifting force. If you entered the atmosphere, then everything is already braking and landing. Further, even if such a lifting force were, then from a low circular orbit it would be possible to jump on it for minutes and hours, but not days, as in the film. But on the trajectory of the return from the moon, indeed, the energy reserve is such that wrong actions can send the ship back into space for a very long time. At the same time, the danger with the wrong orientation was - if the astronauts had oriented themselves backwards, they would have spent the fuel on raising the orbit. And even then there was the last chance - a spare solid-fuel engine, which is located above the area of ​​the descent vehicle.
In the episode with the return to the ship, Leonov is already too in the style of "Gravity" with incredibly high speed flying around the ship. Most likely due to the concentration of drama, speeds and pulses were increased several times.
Exactly this was certainly not the case. Shot from the third official trailer
At the same time, in reality, going back was a huge problem, it is a known fact. It is also known that Leonov did not report his problems to the ground, but complete radio silence with loss and visual visibility, from which everyone is nervous - again, excessive dramatization.
And finally, the scene with braking shows that the filmmakers do not really understand ballistics. In reality, the 17th revolution did not include the brake motor due to the failure of the solar orientation system. But there was a connection with the earth, and the astronauts were recommended to sit manually on the 18th or 22nd circuit. The astronauts trained in the case of manual landing and had the appropriate instruments. Therefore, talking about the heroic death in orbit is an insulting nonsense.
Cabin "Voskhod-2", photo from the book of K. Gatland "Space technology", incorrectly attributed as the cabin of "Voskhod-1"
In the photo above, the round porthole on the left is the “Gaze” for building a landing orientation. If the ship is oriented correctly, then the earth runs upwards, and on the periphery of the device a flat horizon line. Above the "Gaze" dashboard, which shows the globe. This globe can show the current position of the vehicle and the point at which the ship will land, if you turn on the brake motor at that second. Despite the fact that the globe is small, you can aim accurately enough, with an error of tens, but not thousands of kilometers.
Another very important thing missed in the film - it is necessary to slow down at the right moment. You can not sit and think as shown. In reality, according to the memories of Leonov, they really could not properly orient the ship, being in the lodgments, and Belyaev ruled, getting out of the lodgement and lay across across Leonov. Because of this, they were forced to once again occupy the original places and started the engine not immediately, but in principle sat down about where they were going. This could be shown as a dramatic moment, but with maximum realism the accents would be different.
Drama with oxygen
This episode begins with a clear attempt to quote Apollo 13, when the freezing water tears up the wrong body, or something in the ship’s electrical system. But if the Apollo shows a real accident , here the reason is invented. Leonov himself in the interview cited the uneven heating of the ship and the misalignment of the hatch due to this as the cause of air leakage from the cabin. Kamanin and Chertok did mention that the pressure in the oxygen boost system dropped from 75 to 25 atmospheres, and this was actually an emergency. But in real history after the meeting at the command post, it was decided not to do anything - the pressure drop stopped, and the oxygen supply was enough until the normal landing on the 17th orbit. So the idea to quote Apollo-13 again with a panel cut, almost arranged by a short circuit and pulling the sensor out of its unconscious state turned out to be so-so. My main complaint here is that instead of showing a truly teamwork in the detection and elimination of problems, we draw a miraculous salvation of the crew from mortal danger. I have repeatedly said that for some reason, films and books on real accidents turn out to be more interesting than on imaginary ones. And the drama could be well served even if the astronauts were sitting, waiting and doing nothing.
Search and rescue
Probably my biggest claim to the film is after the landing scene. From what is happening on the screen, it seems that the search and rescue system for astronauts in the USSR is no good, and Belyaev and Leonov are again saved by a miracle. Moreover, in reality, the story was in its own way very interesting. Indeed, Voskhod-2 landed in a deep forest north of Perm. But in the USSR there was a system of direction finders and radar control of outer space, which saw the decline of the ship and were receiving its radio beacons. The location of the ship was known with an accuracy of 50-70 km. But search planes were deployed in 600-800 kilometers from the landing site, and could not reach immediately. In Alma-Ata, the “VN” cosmonauts' signal (everything is normal) was received on short waves, therefore, at the command post they knew that the ship had boarded, and the cosmonauts were almost certainly in order. Belyaev and Leonov were alone for some time, but after four hours they were noticed by a helicopter and reported:
Between the villages Fortieth and Shchuchino in the forest we see a red parachute and two astronauts. The astronauts are sitting, having lunch. The ship landed in a dense forest, far from populated areas. Around deep snow.
Alas, due to excessive dramatization in the film they are trying to tell a completely different story. But just when in the cinema the scene ends with the discovery of astronauts, in reality the most interesting begins. The fact is that no one could get to Belyaev and Leonov, the helicopter with the rescuers did not find a landing pad nearby, and the soldiers of the air defense regiment who had advanced on the truck could not quickly reach the cosmonauts either. As a result, Belyaev and Leonov had to spend the night alone. The next morning the situation did not look so dramatic, as in the movie:
I see two by the ship, one cuts firewood, the other puts them in the fire, both are dressed in flight uniforms.
As a result, rescuers were able to reach Voskhod-2 only at 11:35 am on the second day. But the astronauts did not dare to evacuate the rope ladder into the helicopter, and began to cut down the landing pad for it. The astronauts spent another night in the forest. This was not a special discomfort, they even cut down the hut, and there was no problem with the supply. But only on the morning of the third day Belyaev and Leonov were finally evacuated from the landing site on skis. And the Soviet media wrote that all this time they rested at the party regional committee :)
A separate sad story with an episode about a radio fan from Sakhalin. Theoretically, he really could have heard the "Voskhod-2" over thousands of kilometers - the re-reflection of radio waves from the ionosphere on short waves allows for this. But then begins an unpleasant story in the style of "bloody gebni." Considering that the consequences for the radio amateur are not shown in the film, if you wish, you may well think that they have planted him, but this does not combine with the heroic and patriotic pathos of the film. It is doubly insulting to look at this story to those who saw the funny Soviet film “Alien Ship” and has already managed to make fun of the local “meteorologist Mangulov”.
History with MCC
Shot from the second official trailer
A separate interesting story with the Mission Control Center, as shown in the film. Alas, but the beautiful picture above is a copy of the American TsUPa. In reality, in the Soviet cosmonautics, the beautiful hall of the MCC was made only for the flight “Soyuz-Apollo”. During the joint mission, the mission control center could not be secret, so they specially made a large and beautiful hall with the best equipment at that time, so that there was something to show. And before that, flights were quite successfully controlled by a slightly different ideology. In the USSR, the basis was the measuring point IP-1 at Baikonur, and the launch of the rocket was recorded here in such boxes of the Tral telemetry system.
Kung system "Tral", photo site KIK USSR
And the IP-1 itself was a complex of buildings, cars and antennas. In addition, near the launch pad is a bunker, from which the missile launch is directly controlled. And Korolev, Chertok, Kamanin and others at the time of the flight were at Baikonur.
General view of IP-1, photo KIK USSR
Also in Moscow, he worked combining the functions of a computer center and the mission control center of the CEC at NII-4.
Building NII-4, photo KIK USSR
The CEC calculated the parameters of the orbit, formed commands for transmitting to the ship and target designation for ground-based means — where and when to turn the antenna to communicate with the ship. The internal organization of the premises was so secret that in the photo and video now you can only find imitations for films.
So could look like the work of CEC. Photo by RIA Novosti / KIK USSR
The MCC, which we now know as MCC-Moscow, appeared in 1973–75 on the basis of the CEC. In principle, no one bothered to reflect this specificity in the film.
Bit of astronomy
There is a funny astronomical blooper in the film - in one frame the moon is full, in the other - only half of the disk is visible. That is, Belyaev and Leonov would fly for a week in phases of the moon. If you look at the real phase of the moon at the moment of flight, then the first option, Voskhod-2, is right in the region of the full moon.
The characters and the atmosphere
The characters of the astronauts turned out, in my opinion, almost caricatured. Leonov constantly violates all possible rules, and he gets away with it. And Belyaev is shown so pronounced melancholic that one wonders how he was taken to the cosmonauts.
Amazingly, despite the fact that the film is heroic and pretentious, it turned out gloomy. It seems that a bit too much suspense and not enough light moments. Even the joy in the last scene is blurred by the effect of the old film. And the final song, which really brings tears to its eyes, is sung more slowly and somehow sadder than it was sung in Moscow-Cassiopeia.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that for many paragraphs I point out flaws and blunders of the film, in general I liked it, and it’s worth at least once to watch it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/403033/
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