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Voskhod 3
Part of Vostok

Voskhod 3 Interior

Voskhod 3 Interior
Interior of Voskhod 3, with dog enclosures as flown on Cosmos 110.
Credit: © Mark Wade

Manned space flight deferred just 15 days before launch in May 1966. It would have been a world-record 18-day space endurance mission, tasked primarily with testing ballistic missile detection equipment. Never formally cancelled, it just faded away in Brezhnev-era stagnation…

Launched: 1966 June. Number crew: 2 .

It became clear within the Soviet Union in 1964 that development of the Soyuz spacecraft was delayed. Known American plans for their new Gemini spacecraft indicated that this would allow the United States to set new space records for the first time in the space race. To prevent his from happening, the Voskhod spacecraft series was conceived. These were modifications of the single-seat Vostok. One version was to carry up to three crew, another added an airlock for spacewalks, a third was to have an improved environmental control system for extended missions. Unlike Gemini and Soyuz, Voskhod could not maneuver in orbit, and therefore could not conduct rendezvous or docking operations. But they could be used to snatch from Gemini any new space firsts - first multi-man spacecraft, first spacewalk, and first in space for two weeks.

Voskhod 1 and 2 achieved the first two objectives, and Voskhod 3 was to accomplish the third. In October 1964 it was planned that the Voskhods 3 and 4 would fly in the second quarter of 1965, allowing single cosmonauts to set new space endurance records of first twelve, and then fifteen days. This would upstage the American plans to fly Geminis 5 and 7 on seven and fourteen day missions in the second half of 1965. But development of a new environmental control system allowing Voskhod missions of at least 15 days proved difficult and was complicated by rivalry between Soviet space medicine institutions. Problems with the Voskhod cockpit layout and radio control systems revealed in the first two flights required a major redesign of Voskhod subsystems in order to reach an acceptable level of safety.

Crew selection was contentious. Volynov and Katys were those best qualified for the flight, in the opinion of Kamanin, the cosmonaut commander. But others in the Soviet leadership were opposed to them - Volynov because he was Jewish, Katys because his father had been executed as an enemy of the state by Stalin and had half-siblings living in Paris. Volynov was then paired with Gorbatko, then finally with Shonin.

By March 1965 it was clear that the Soviets could not prevent Gemini 5 from grabbing a new space endurance record in the summer. The plan was for Voskhod 3KV s/n 5 to fly a precursor flight with dogs to prove the new environmental control system. Voskhod 3KV s/n 6 would follow no earlier than October 1965 with a manned 15 to 20 day flight. This would at least beat the Gemini 5 record and prevent Gemini 7 from regaining the lead for the Americans.

By August 1965, the flight was slipping toward the end of the year, which meant that Voskhod 3 now would probably fly only after Gemini 7 had set a 14-day flight record. Korolev was ill, and overburdened with simultaneously getting the Soyuz out of development, achieving the first soft landing of a robot probe on the moon, and getting the immense N1-L3 project started. He secretly instructed his managers to concentrate resources on completing Soyuz development, and quietly abandoned completion of Voskhod.

However at this juncture the Soviet military was thrown into a panic by military experiments conducted aboard Gemini 5. They demanded an immediate Soviet counterpart. Ballistic missile detection and other military experiments were added to Voskhod 3. Korolev also had a pet project - an artificial gravity experiment - deploying a tether between Voskhod 3 and the spent last stage of its booster. It was also now thought that the flight would have to go for 20 days to definitively upstage the Americans. This would require development and qualification of yet another environmental control system version. Focus on getting the flight into space was being lost in the face of all of these additional requirements and Korolev's secret go-slow instructions.

By November 1965 the Soviet space program was in crisis. The cosmonauts had written a letter to Brezhnev, complaining of the lack of focus and clear management lines of the Soviet space program. Flight of Voskhod 3 had slid to February 1966, even with the deletion of the artificial gravity experiment.

Korolev's unexpected death in January 1966 did not stop work on the project, and perhaps even encouraged his successor, Mishin, to carry on. Launch was now set for March 1966, but development problems with the parachute system and the environmental control system during February and March further delayed things. It proved impossible to qualify the ECS for manned missions any longer than 18 days. Nevertheless, Voskhod s/n 5 was finally launched under the cover name Cosmos 110 on 28 February 1966. It completed a 21 day mission fairly successfully, and the way seemed finally clear for Voskhod 3 to launch. Then a failure of a version of the Voskhod booster in April caused the mission to be postponed again until the cause could be identified. Finally, at a meeting on 10 May 1966, the spacecraft was declared ready for launch by 25 May. Smirnov, Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, then stunned the participants by announcing that the Soviet government saw no further purpose in the flight. It would not represent enough of an advance on the Gemini series to impress the world.

In the new era of Brezhnev's stagnation, the flight could not be officially cancelled, since party resolutions ordering it to occur were never rescinded. The spacecraft remained in the assembly building at Baikonur. As late as October 1966 Mishin was instructed to prepare Voskhod 3 for flight again. But he knew that was a sham order, and he passed similar sham orders to his staff, that were in turn ignored. So Voskhod 3 was never cancelled -- it just faded away…


More at: Voskhod 3.

People: Beregovoi, Shatalov, Volynov, Shonin. Country: Russia. Spacecraft: Voskhod.

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