Photo provided by the Kudymkar Museum of Local Lore

March 19, 2015 marks 50 years since cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyaev landed in the forest near the village of Erna. To listen to how the astronauts are being searched for, Kudymkar pilot Viktor Khramtsov deliberately delayed his flight from Perm to Kudymkar. And the father of the city dweller Nikolai Fedoseev himself went in search - on skis.

"I see, here they are - on the Christmas tree!"

The former pilot, 77-year-old Viktor Khramtsov, knows about how the cosmonauts Leonov and Belyaev were searched for, not from newspapers and radio. He himself witnessed this event. As confirmation, he shows a small black notebook - the workbook of the aircraft commander. The notebook contains a schedule of his flights for 1965, and at the end of the page for March 19 a small remark was made. In it, he describes how he overheard the conversations of pilots who were looking for astronauts.

On the day that Leonov and Belyaev returned to Earth, Viktor Spiridonovich flew on a Yak-12 plane from Perm to Kudymkar. Usually, as he recalls, the flight took 50 minutes. His journey that day dragged on for 20 minutes.

Photo Evgeny Pikulev, "PN"

“I wanted to hear how they are looking for astronauts,” explains the former pilot ( in the photo on the left).

“I am examining such and such a square, and I am such and such,” the military discussed via radio.

Viktor Khramtsov, pilot

Subsequently, for his vigilance, Vasily Zhunev received a Kyiv camera from the Central Committee of the Komsomol, and a double-barreled shotgun from the Ministry of Defense.

“He spread his arms like wings and flew”

Voskhod-2 spacecraft with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyaev launched from Baikonur on the morning of March 18, 1965. During the flight, Leonov, for the first time in the history of mankind, stepped out of a spacecraft into outer space. The astronaut was in a spacesuit. He was connected to the ship by a halyard, the length of which was 5.35 meters.

- He went out into the expanses of space and made a movement first with one hand, then with the other, moving his foot. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Then he spread his arms like wings and flew. Very pleasant sensations, - Leonov shared his feelings after the flight with correspondents of the Izvestia newspaper.

Photo esa.int

Leonov told reporters that the Earth looks flat in space, the sky is black and black, the stars cast red, and the sun “without a halo, as if soldered into black velvet.”

Did this picture scare me? No. But to be left alone like this ... It's good that there was a friend nearby, - the astronaut admitted.

By the way, how the stars look, Leonov drew in his logbook. Writing and drawing in zero gravity turned out to be not so difficult, it was only necessary, as the cosmonaut notes, to put the pencil on paper more firmly.

"I took my skis and went in search"

The landing of Voskhod-2 was supposed to take place automatically. The planned landing site is the steppes of Kazakhstan. However, the automation failed. The commander of the ship, Pavel Belyaev, had to transfer the ship to manual control. As a result, the cosmonauts landed in the snow-covered taiga, 200 km from Perm, on the border of three districts - Usolsky, Kudymkarsky and Kosinsky.

Nikolai Fedoseev was then 7 years old. He lived in the village of Churaki, Kosinsky district. The fact that cosmonauts could land somewhere in their area was reported by radio.

Photo Evgeny Pikulev, "PN"

“The village council immediately gathered hunters and set them the task of finding Leonov and Belyaev,” says Nikolai Anatolyevich. “My father took his skis and went looking with other hunters.

Churakov's men walked more than a day to the landing site of the astronauts. When they finally got there, Leonov and Belyaev were no longer there.

- They're a little late. By that time they had been evacuated,” explains Nikolai Fedoseev.

The parachute canopy remained at the landing site. And Nikolai's father took parachute lines with him as a souvenir. Now they are still in the village.

The head of the Kosinsky district, Yevgeny Anfalov, was five years old in 1965. He also grew up in the village of Churaki. Yevgeny Vasilyevich does not remember anything about the landing of the astronauts - he was small. But he remembers the parachute lines that the hunters brought home.

“Then they used these slings as ropes on the farm,” the head of the district notes.

“Well, Pasha, fuck the space!”

The astronauts themselves told the following about their landing.

- The Earth accepted us gently - the ship sank between two large Christmas trees, - Pavel Belyaev was quoted in Izvestia for 1965. - Sat in deep snow. He began to sag under the weight of the ship. Opened the hatch. They got out and looked around. Large trees all around. The snow is deep from 1.5 to 3 meters. Hare and fox footprints in the snow.

Frame from the movie "Time of the First"

- It was probably minus 25 outside. In order not to freeze, they ripped open the spacesuits with a knife, took out heat-insulating material from the shell and wrapped it around the body, even wrapped it with parachute lines, - recalls Alexei Leonov.

“They took off the spacesuits, drained moisture from them - sweat poured from us in streams during the descent,” Alexei Leonov told the Facts newspaper in 2009. - Then they took off and squeezed out the clothes, put them on again. We returned to the cold ship. “Well, Pasha, fuck the space!” - I said to the commander, forgetting that the radio was on and a lot of people could hear us on the speakerphone.

Later, as Leonov adds, at a press conference, a foreign journalist tried to figure out the meaning of the word he threw. To the laughter of those present, the cosmonaut explained that this meant the successful completion of an important matter.

“It was impossible to land the helicopter”

At first they wanted to evacuate the astronauts from the taiga by helicopter. When Vasily Zhunev discovered them, Moscow asked him if he could take the cosmonauts on board. The helicopter pilot could not, because there was a continuous forest within a radius of 10-15 km. It was impossible to land the helicopter.

Previously, there was a continuous taiga at the landing site of the astronauts.

Therefore, the astronauts dropped warm clothes and food from the helicopter. And the next day, 9 km from the landing site, the rescuers, having cut down the forest, prepared a site for a helicopter landing. After that, the cosmonauts were taken by Mi-6 helicopter to Perm, Bolshoye Savino airport. The road leading from the airport to the city was later renamed the Cosmonauts Highway.

- The commander of the ship, Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev, in a warm summer jacket, fur boots, a hat with earflaps, - Zvezda correspondents reported from the airport. - Next to him is also warmly dressed Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov - the first person who opened the door to the Universe in the truest sense of the word.

"A damp notebook lies nearby"

After about five years, a stele was erected at the landing site of the astronauts. It has become popular among schoolchildren and tourists to go hiking to this place.

Photo courtesy of Evgeny Ermakov

Historian Artur Krivoshchekov recalls that young people from the Komi-Permyatsky district "rushed there." There they were accepted into the Komsomol, they took oaths.

“And there was also a box with a notepad in it. Everyone who came to the landing site of the astronauts left their statements, exultations, wishes in this notebook, - says Artur Mikhailovich.

The son of Churakovsky hunter Nikolai Fedoseev was also at the landing site. First as a student. And now as a hunter.

“In the late 90s, someone dismantled the stele,” the man remarks sadly. — It was made of non-ferrous metal. Now, however, a new monument has been erected. But the place is still not the same. In past years, I hunted in those places. Lumberjacks are working there. Soon there will be nothing left of this clearing. Here's your story!

Photo courtesy of the VeloKudymkar community

In August 2014, Kudymkar cyclists Vladislav Oshmarin, Evgeny Ermakov and Oleg Tupitsyn visited the landing site of Leonov and Belyaev ( from left to right).

- On the lapel there is a lumberjack trailer, then a clearing, on it a loaded KamAZ, a plot next to a memorial place. The case with the notepad is broken, the notepad is damp, lying next to it, - Evgeny Ermakov wrote after a trip to VKontakte.

Photo Evgeny Pikulev, "PN"

The local history museum in Kudymkar has a whole folder of newspapers and photographs dedicated to the flight of Leonov and Belyaev. There are also checkboxes. Irina Sedegova manages the museum's archives and demonstrates exhibits.

The editors of "PN" would like to thank the Komi-Permyatsk Museum of Local Lore for the information provided from the museum's funds for the preparation of the publication.

On March 18, 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov made the first spacewalk in the history of mankind.

The event occurred during the flight of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. The commander of the ship is Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev, the pilot is Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov.

The ship was equipped with an inflatable lock chamber "Volga". Before the launch, the chamber folded and measured 70 cm in diameter and 77 cm in length. In space, the chamber was inflated and had the following dimensions: 2.5 meters in length, inner diameter - 1 meter, outer - 1.2 meters. Camera weight - 250 kg. Before deorbiting, the camera fired back from the ship.
The space suit "Berkut" was designed to go into space. He provided a stay in outer space for 30 minutes. The first exit took 23 minutes 41 seconds (outside the ship 12 minutes 9 seconds).
It is interesting that the training before this flight was carried out on board the Tu-104AK aircraft, in which a life-size model of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft with a real lock chamber was installed (it was she who flew into space later). During the flight of an aircraft along a parabolic trajectory, when weightlessness set in for several minutes, the cosmonauts practiced exit in a spacesuit through an airlock.
Voskhod-2 launched on March 18, 1965 at 10:00 Moscow time. The airlock was already inflated on the first turn. Both astronauts were in space suits. According to the program, Belyaev was supposed to help Leonov return to the ship in the event of an emergency.
The spacewalk began on the second orbit. Leonov moved into the lock chamber and Belyaev closed the hatch behind him. Then the air from the chamber was vented and at 11:32:54 Belyaev opened the outer hatch of the lock chamber from his remote control in the ship. At 11:34:51 Alexei Leonov left the airlock and ended up in outer space.

Leonov gently pushed off and felt the ship tremble from his push. The first thing he saw was the black sky. Belyaev's voice was immediately heard:
- "Diamond-2" began to exit. Movie camera on? - the commander addressed this question to his comrade.
- Understood. I am Almaz-2. I take off the lid. Throw away. Caucasus! Caucasus! I see the Caucasus below me! Began to withdraw (from the ship).
Before throwing the lid away, Leonov thought for a second whether to send it into satellite orbit or down to Earth. Thrown to the ground. The astronaut's pulse was 164 beats per minute, the moment of exit was very tense.
Belyaev transmitted to Earth:
-Attention! The man went into outer space!
The television image of Leonov soaring against the background of the Earth was broadcast on all television channels.

12 minutes… The total weight of the “exit suit” was close to 100 kg… Five times the cosmonaut flew away from the spacecraft and returned on a 5.35 m long halyard… All this time the “room” temperature was maintained in the suit, and its outer surface was heated in the sun to + 60 ° and cooled in the shade to -100 ° С ...
The flight of Vostok-2 went down in history twice. The first, official and open, said that everything went brilliantly. In the second, which was revealed gradually and was never published in detail, there are at least three emergency situations.
Leonov was observed on television and broadcast the image to Moscow. When leaving the ship for five meters, he waved his hand in open space. Leonov was outside the airlock for 12 minutes and 9 seconds. But it turned out that getting out was easier than going back. The suit swelled in space and could not fit into the airlock. Leonov was forced to relieve pressure in order to “lose weight” and make him softer. Still, he had to climb back not with his feet, as was planned, but with his head. All the vicissitudes of what happened during the return to the ship, we found out only after the landing of the astronauts.
A.A.Leonov's spacesuit, after being in space, lost its flexibility and did not allow the astronaut to enter the hatch. A.A. Leonov made attempt after attempt, but to no avail. The situation was complicated by the fact that the supply of oxygen in the spacesuit was designed for only twenty minutes, and each failure increased the degree of risk to the astronaut's life. Leonov limited the flow of oxygen, but from excitement and stress, his pulse and breathing rate increased sharply, which means that more oxygen was required. S.P. Korolev tried to calm him down, instill confidence. On Earth, they heard the reports of A.A. Leonov: “I can’t, I couldn’t again.”
According to the cyclogram, Aleksey had to swim into the chamber with his feet, then, having fully entered the airlock, close the hatch behind him and seal it. In reality, he had to bleed the air from the spacesuit almost to critical pressure. After several attempts, the cosmonaut decided to "float" into the cabin face forward. He succeeded, but at the same time he hit the glass of the helmet against its wall. It was scary - because the glass could burst. At 08:49 UTC, the airlock exit hatch was closed and at 08:52 UTC pressurization of the airlock began.
TASS message dated March 18, 1965:
Today, March 18, 1965, at 11:30 Moscow time, during the flight of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft, a man's exit into outer space was carried out for the first time. On the second circuit of the flight, co-pilot pilot-cosmonaut Lieutenant Colonel Leonov Alexei Arkhipovich, in a special spacesuit with an autonomous life support system, made an exit into outer space, retired from the ship at a distance of up to five meters, successfully carried out a set of planned studies and observations and safely returned to the ship. With the help of the onboard television system, the process of Comrade Leonov's exit into outer space, his work outside the spacecraft, and his return to the spacecraft were transmitted to Earth and observed by a network of ground stations. The state of health of Comrade Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov during his stay outside the ship and after returning to the ship is good. The commander of the ship, comrade Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev, is also feeling well.

After returning to the ship, the troubles continued.
The second emergency was an incomprehensible pressure drop in the cabin pressurization cylinders from 75 to 25 atmospheres after Leonov's return. It was necessary to land no later than the 17th orbit, although Grigory Voronin, the chief designer of this part of the life system, reassured that there would be enough oxygen for another day. Here is how Alexei Arkhipovich describes the events:
... the partial pressure of oxygen (in the cabin) began to grow, which reached 460 mm and continued to grow. This is at a rate of 160 mm! But after all, 460 mm is explosive gas, because Bondarenko burned out on this ... At first we sat in a daze. Everyone understood, but they could do almost nothing: they completely removed the humidity, removed the temperature (it became 10-12 °). And the pressure is growing ... The slightest spark - and everything would turn into a molecular state, and we understood this. Seven hours in this state, and then fell asleep ... apparently from stress. Then we figured out that I had touched the boost switch with a hose from the spacesuit ... What actually happened? Since the ship was stabilized relative to the Sun for a long time, then, naturally, a deformation arose; after all, on the one hand, cooling to -140 ° C, on the other, heating to + 150 ° C ... The sensors for closing the hatch worked, but a gap remained. The regeneration system began to build up pressure, and oxygen began to grow, we did not have time to consume it ... The total pressure reached 920 mm. These several tons of pressure pressed down the hatch - and the pressure growth stopped. Then the pressure began to drop before our eyes.
Further more. TDU (brake propulsion system) did not work in automatic mode and the ship continued to fly. The crew was given the command to land the ship in manual mode on the 18th or 22nd orbit. Here is another quote from Leonov:
We went over Moscow, inclination 65°. It was necessary to land on this particular turn, and we ourselves chose the area for landing - 150 km from Solikamsk with a heading angle of 270 °, because there was taiga. No businesses, no power lines. They could land in Kharkov, in Kazan, in Moscow, but it was dangerous. The version that we got there due to imbalance is complete nonsense. We ourselves chose the landing site, as it was safer and possible deviations in the engine operation shifted the landing point also to safe areas. Only it was impossible to land in China - then relations were very tense. As a result, at a speed of 28,000 km / h, we sat down only 80 km from our calculated point. This is a good result. And then there were no reserve landing sites. And we weren't expected...
Finally, a report came in from a search helicopter. He discovered a red parachute and two astronauts 30 kilometers southwest of the city of Bereznyaki. The dense forest and deep snow made it impossible for helicopters to land near the astronauts. There were no settlements nearby either.
Landing in the deep taiga was the last emergency in the history of Voskhod-2. The cosmonauts spent the night in the forest of the Northern Urals. Helicopters could only fly over them and report that “one is chopping wood, the other is putting it on the fire.”
Warm clothes and food were dropped from helicopters to the cosmonauts, but Belyaev and Leonov could not be pulled out of the taiga. A group of skiers with a doctor, who landed one and a half kilometers away, reached them through the snow in four hours, but did not dare to take them out of the taiga.
A real competition unfolded for the salvation of the astronauts. The landfill service, encouraged by Tyulin and Korolev, sent its rescue expedition to Perm, led by Lieutenant Colonel Belyaev and the foreman of our plant, Lygin. From Perm, they got by helicopter to a site two kilometers from Voskhod-2 and soon hugged the astronauts. Marshal Rudenko forbade his rescue service to evacuate astronauts from the ground to a hovering helicopter. They stayed in the taiga for a second cold night, although now they had a tent, warm fur uniforms and plenty of food. It came to Brezhnev. He was convinced that lifting astronauts into a helicopter hovering near the ground was a dangerous business.
Brezhnev agreed and approved a proposal to cut down trees nearby to prepare a landing site.
When we landed, we were not immediately found ... We sat in spacesuits for two days, we had no other clothes. On the third day we were pulled out of there. Because of the sweat, my suit was knee-deep in moisture, about 6 liters. So in the legs and bubbling. Then, already at night, I say to Pasha: "Well, that's it, I'm cold." We took off our suits, stripped naked, wrung out our underwear, put it back on. Then the screen-vacuum thermal insulation was sporulated. They threw away all the hard part, and put the rest on themselves. These are nine layers of aluminized foil, covered with dederon on top. Parachute lines were wrapped around the top like two sausages. And so they stayed there for the night. And at 12 noon a helicopter arrived and landed 9 km away. Another helicopter in a basket lowered Yura Lygin directly towards us. Then Slava Volkov (Vladislav Volkov, future cosmonaut of TsKBEM) and others came to us on skis. They brought us warm clothes, poured brandy, and we gave them our alcohol - and life became more fun. The fire was lit, the boiler was put on. We washed. In about two hours they cut down a small hut for us, where we spent the night normally. There was even a bed.
On March 21, a helicopter landing site was prepared. And on the same day, on board the Mi-4, the cosmonauts arrived in Perm, from where they made an official report on the completion of the flight.
And yet, despite all the problems that arose during the flight, it was the first, very first exit of man into outer space. Here is how Alexey Leonov describes his impressions:
I want to tell you that the picture of the cosmic abyss that I saw, with its grandeur, immensity, brightness of colors and sharp contrasts of pure darkness with the dazzling radiance of the stars, simply struck and fascinated me. To complete the picture, imagine - against this background, I see our Soviet ship, illuminated by the bright light of the sun's rays. When I was leaving the gateway, I felt a powerful stream of light and heat, reminiscent of electric welding. Above me was a black sky and bright, unblinking stars. The sun seemed to me like a red-hot fiery disk ...

In the 50s of the 20th century, and especially with the beginning of the Space Age, space fantasy experienced its heyday. Writers came up with a lot of all sorts of devices for getting out of a spaceship, including magnetic soles, gravity hooks, cosmoscaphes, bursting membranes, etc. Engineers will not be able to realize this reserve in the next 200 years.

Meanwhile, the time for a very real spacewalk was rapidly approaching. Vostoks and Mercurys were also flying, and new projects were in the works - Gemini and Soyuz. These were already real ships. The space programs of the two powers, as it were, passed the exams for the first class of the School of Cosmonautics. There were 4 main exams: Crew, Maneuvering, Docking, EVA. It's like 4 actions in arithmetic, without which it is impossible to take on algebra.

However, Soyuz was more difficult than Gemini. It was not possible to create it in any way within the terms announced by the Americans for a dozen of their "Twins". And then the idea arose to create a kind of hybrid, remaking for this the legendary "Vostok", which has completely exhausted itself. And they remade it, calling it "Sunrise". It was completely impossible to put a docking port or a maneuvering engine on the assembled ship. But instead of one cosmonaut in a spacesuit and with a catapult, they managed to land three without any means of salvation. The spacewalk was also impossible in principle - the ship could not be depressurized (the consequences would certainly have been too serious). The airlock proposed by Tsiolkovsky did not fit into the dimensions of the cabin in any way. They tried to fit it outside, but then it did not fit under the head fairing, without which our ships do not fly.

The idea to make the airlock inflatable was proposed by S.I. Alexandrov from the 9th department of OKB-1. Several locks were manufactured by the 918th plant ("Zvezda", where Gai Ilyich Severin was in charge. The project's code name is "Volga"). The lock had an outer diameter of 1200 mm, an inner diameter of 1000 mm (folded 770 mm) and a mass of 250 kg. The hatch for entering the gateway had a diameter of 700 mm. It is even difficult to call this structure a door to outer space. It's more like a fork. The inner hatch opened inside the cabin and the lodgement of the exit interfered. Leonov was asked: to reduce the lodgement (then it would not fit on it) or to reduce the hatch? Leonov chose the second, the hatch was reduced.

The ship was originally called that - "Exit", but this name did not take root. Actually, the ship was "raw" and unlucky, but that's another story...

The suit with the name "Berkut" was also used only once. It had very low characteristics: an oxygen atmosphere, an autonomous supply of oxygen for 20 minutes, an oxygen consumption of 60 liters per hour (now up to 360). The pressure in it was manually regulated from 0.45 to 0.25 atm.

So that there was no doubt about our victory, it was decided to show the output on television to the whole world, for which we developed a new broadband television system with 100 lines.

To test the airlock on February 22, 1965, the Voskhod unmanned spacecraft was launched, for print it was called Kosmos-57. The tests of the gateway went well, the image on the TV screen was so good that Korolev immediately ordered the TV show to be even more classified, which, due to non-standard parameters, could only be watched by flight control centers at Baikonur, in Simferopol and in the Moscow region. After undoubtedly successful tests, KK disappeared. He disappeared without a trace from the radar screens just before landing. It wasn't until two days later that the reason came to light. Two Kamchatka NPCs simultaneously sent signal No. 42 - bypassing air into the airlock (NPC No. 7 "Keys" took the initiative, instead of remaining silent). The teams overlapped and formed team No. 5 - for the descent of the KK. The APO system determined the illegality of the descent and the ship blew up.

An important question remained unanswered: how will the SA behave during descent? The airlock fired back, but after it there was a frame around the hatch, which gave "asymmetry to the ball" of the SA. He protruded by 27 millimeters, which could cause the apparatus to twist. I had to adapt the same frame to the Zenit photo reconnaissance satellite, which landed on March 15 and dispelled fears - the SA began to spin, but quite moderately.

Korolev was a maximalist in matters of the championship in the space race. At one time, he abandoned the natural stage - suborbital flights, so that later descendants would not guess: was Gagarin's flight a real space flight or not? So it was with the spacewalk - so that there would be no misunderstandings, the astronaut had to: 1) leave the spacecraft completely; 2) switch to autonomous power supply; 3) push off from the ship and move away for the entire length of the halyard. Without a doubt, he would have tried to exclude the halyard, but only the means of maneuvering either on the ship or on the way out had not yet been.

And a new problem before the start. Someone came up with the idea: the astronaut flies away from the ship, the halyard pulls him back, but what if the astronaut returns to the airlock not with his face, but with his back? He hits the airlock, flies off again and continues to fly back and forth indefinitely, unable to cling to the airlock! Probably, reading Tsiolkovsky's fiction had an effect, where he repeatedly emphasized that no antics in space would help to give the body the desired orientation, and the astronaut who pushed off would definitely receive some kind of rotation. The engineers had to think. A cat came to mind. The cat always falls on its paws, vigorously twisting its insides in one direction, while the body turns in the other (and it determines with lightning speed: in which direction to twist for the fastest orientation of the paws to the ground). This remarkable property, by the way, practically excluded cats from "space animals" - in weightlessness they cling to everything that comes up and continuously yell, having lost the gravitational gradient. I just thought: our ancestors also lived on trees and, therefore, had similar properties. Isn't this the reason for "space sickness"? However, he digressed.

I had to make dozens of "hills" on the "TU-104LL", where, in half-minute periods of weightlessness, the testers dealt with this issue. Hundreds of "outputs", but always with sensors and filming! - and only to solve this, not the most difficult problem. They limited themselves to limiting the length of the halyard to five meters (more precisely, 5.35 m) - at such a distance, the astronaut did not have time to turn 180 °. But will the halyard begin to gather in loops and entangle the astronaut like a boa constrictor? And new slides...

But will the astronaut lose the ability to act intelligently when entering the Cosmic Abyss? Alas, this could only be determined in flight.

Such a passage is interesting: in all seriousness they were going to push the dog into outer space ahead of the person. A dog suit and a certain transparent hemisphere were designed under the sight of a television camera, which was supposed to open in flight. What is the inertia of thinking! For 20 thousand years, man sent a dog ahead of him. Once she was the first to climb into the cave to the bear, ran ahead of the man to the pole, then she was the first to fly into space, now they tried to push her into free space. But common sense has won - man's friend has remained on Earth for the time being. However, a year later, the dogs were nevertheless sent ahead of a man - on a long flight, at the last Voskhod. But that is another story.

But what about our American friends (who in those years were at least not friends)? Project Gemini is 18 months behind schedule! And this despite the fact that it was much simpler than the Soyuz. An airlock was not needed for spacewalks. The ship had an oxygen atmosphere with a pressure of a third of normal, so you could simply depressurize the cabin. Like all civilian space projects in the United States, the Gemini project was open, the flight schedule was known in advance, and all changes were announced immediately. The 1st spacewalk was entrusted to E. White, a novice in space. The Gemini 4 flight was scheduled for June 1965. However, Gemini's first manned flight was scheduled for March. Nothing prevented us from changing the short flight program (3 orbits, 3 orbit change maneuvers) and just opening the ship's hatches for a few minutes. After that, it was possible to reach the open space with your hand without getting up from your chair.
That is why the launch of Voskhod-2 was scheduled for February, then, due to a failure with Cosmos-57, it moved to mid-March, and there was nowhere to retreat further - there were several days left before the launch of the first manned Gemini.

But Russian slovenliness pursued the ship just like bad luck! Before the start, a sentry was posted near the ship and a lock suspended on a cable nearby, being checked for leaks. It was boring to stand and he poked around in the latch of the winch. The lock fell and broke. I think you can imagine what words were used to discuss this incident. We took a training lock. There was no longer any time to check thoroughly - the world achievement was slipping out of hand.

Voskhod-2 crew: commander Pavel Belyaev, one of the most senior cosmonauts of the 1st set. He even fought in World War II (in 1945 against Japan). And Belyaev was in bad standing with the doctors, he was threatened with expulsion from the detachment. However, the cosmonauts, and primarily Gagarin, insisted on his appointment to the crew. Yevgeny Khrunov, the main candidate for the commander of the ship, was pushed back into understudies (“You are young, you will fly again,” Gagarin told him). Belyaev did not live even five years after the flight ...
Aleksey Leonov was appointed to leave. It was an incredibly good choice! First, he was very strong with a small stature. Khrunov said that he himself squeezed 60-65 kg with a brush, and Leonov - 90! And it was very useful to him. Secondly, he is the best artist of the astronauts (in my opinion) and he managed to convey his vision of the Cosmos in his paintings. Thirdly, he is just a wonderful person with a good sense of humor, worthy of the Great Cause.

The understudy of both the commander and the exit was Yevgeny Khrunov. At first, he duplicated Leonov, he understood that he was inferior to him, but he trained on an equal footing. But then the doctors rejected Viktor Gorbatko, Dmitry Zaikin was appointed in his place, who did not have time to prepare and was purely formally an understudy.

There is a well-known story published by M. Rebrov, how Korolev asked Belyaev before the start: would he have the firmness to shoot off the gateway together with Leonov if he could not return? I do not believe in this replicated bike. You can’t ask Korolev and Belyaev anymore, Leonov doesn’t talk about this topic, and Khrunov said that this didn’t happen for the reason that Belyaev didn’t leave the group at the cosmodrome. But that's not the point. It was quite possible to shoot the airlock with a team from the Earth, and there was no need to explain the truth to the cosmonauts: the one leaving must return - or die. It would be another matter if the pyrobolts had failed and the airlock would not have fired back. Then (Leonov suggested) he would climb into it again, cut the base of the airlock with a knife, cut the ducts without breaking the tightness, in the hope that the loosely fixed airlock would immediately break off when entering the atmosphere.

When parting, Korolev gave Leonov the last instructions: "Don't be wise there - go out and come in ..." It was the simplest instruction for a whole year of training. However, it turned out to be difficult to carry it out.

On the very first turn, the gateway was deployed and already over Kamchatka, Leonov entered it and began to wait for the next entrance to the communication zone. And for almost an hour I lay (sagged?) In this tightly closed pencil case, not seeing the oceans and continents flying by below.

And finally, over the Black Sea, the outer hatch of the airlock was opened and the cosmonaut, like a butterfly from a cocoon, got out into the New World. On Earth, on this occasion, the weather was fine and you could see the entire Black Sea, the Caucasus, and a fair part of Europe. What the pioneer was delighted with and shouted to the whole airwaves. Belyaev solemnly announced: “Man has entered outer space! The man went into outer space!” In the flight control centers - also a complete delight: on the TV screen you can clearly see how Leonov separated from the airlock and swam to the stars. The exit was first filmed by a "distant" TV camera, and then Aleksey removed the cover from the TV camera mounted on the edge of the airlock and threw it away.

Leonov made 3 departures from the ship for the entire length of the halyard. On the television screen, it was clearly visible how for some reason he slapped his thigh. And it was he who tried to feel for the pneumatic bulb at the end of the cable that turns on the shutter of the Ajax spy camera mounted on his chest (it was hardly asked for from the chairman of the KGB). Leonov said that he could not find it because of the deformation of the spacesuit, and Eliseev writes that it came off when climbing out of the airlock. Anyway, no pictures of the ship were received. The halyard behaved diligently, did not create loops, but, as it were, memorized its position in space, neatly folding when returning to the hatch. Nevertheless, Leonov, before returning, had to fold it into a bay and strengthen it on a hook. It turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to do this - the spacesuit swelled so much that the legs crawled out of the boots, and the hands came out of the gloves and wringed like flippers. There was no way to squeeze through the hatch! What's the matter? Leonov says that the suit was not tested in a vacuum, but only with a decrease in pressure, as at an altitude of 60 km, while, of course, no exercises were done in it. During all trainings, it was blown up to 1.4 atm, creating excess pressure. In space, the suit behaved differently, the stiffeners could not stand it, and radiation + temperature difference could have an effect. I do not argue, perhaps. However, I would like to quote from Kamanin's Diaries of April 16, 1965:

General Kholodkov, Colonel Smirnov and Severin have already reported several times that by analyzing the telemetry films it was precisely established that Leonov, while outside the ship, was constantly provided with oxygen from the satchel and from the ship at the same time, and had to switch only to autonomous power from the oxygen pack .

Isn't this the reason for the deformation of Leonov's spacesuit? Pressurization in emergency mode could not withstand the suit. Leonov switched to the second operating mode of the suit, the pressure dropped from 0.45 to 0.25 atm. It was dangerous - if the nitrogen had not had time to wash out of the blood, it would have boiled. But Leonov had already been breathing oxygen for an hour, he remembered this, and everything worked out with that. But to enter the hatch "in the regular way" - feet forward to close the hatch behind you, it was not possible anyway! And then Leonov, without asking the opinion of the Earth, climbed into the hatch head first. At the same time, he still managed to remove the movie camera from its mounts and throw it into the airlock. That's where hand strength came in handy! He was able to squeeze through the hatch. But then you still had to turn around, close the hatch behind you and enter the cockpit feet first! It was impossible to turn around in the airlock, this option was not even discussed. Leonov did it! At the same time, he was so tense that he was close to heat stroke, the temperature rose to 38 °, the pulse reached 180, and then the movie camera strove to fly into space, Leonov managed to catch it at the very hatch. He literally choked with sweat and, as soon as the pressure leveled off, he tore off his helmet right in the airlock, contrary to all instructions. Belyaev seemed quite calm, but the sensors reported extrasystoles, in other words, his heart was intermittent ...

On Earth, sports commissioner Borisenko marked the beginning of a new series of records. According to the provisions of the International Sports Code, the net time spent by a person in outer space was calculated from the moment an astronaut appeared from the lock chamber (from the edge of the exit hatch of the ship) to the entrance back into the chamber. Leonov was in open space outside the spacecraft for 12 minutes 09 seconds.

Interestingly, as many as 25 years passed before the Soviet cosmonauts unhooked from the handrails on the skin of their spacecraft and retired to the length of the halyard, repeating Leonov's achievement. And even then, after the tests of the "space motorcycle", such flights were never made again. The Americans had them more than once, but also not so much. Difficult this business - the person-satellite.

Meanwhile, the troubles on the ship were just beginning. The hatch was not tightly closed, which created a reactive moment and the apparatus began to rotate, and the LSS regularly added pure oxygen to the air, turning the atmosphere into explosive gas (explosion from the slightest spark!), then one of the astronauts touched the toggle switch and started abnormal pressurization of the cab. At the same time, the pressure exceeded 900 mm, after which the hatch closed, the leak stopped, but almost the entire supply of air was consumed. The cabin, torn by high pressure, withstood, then the membrane valve worked, the precious air flew into space, but now the valve itself, having lost its "virginity", has become a threat to spacecraft. Then the orientation system failed, I had to make an extra turn, and then it turned out that it was impossible to navigate normally manually, because the chairs were turned away from the control system by the designers, and in addition the balance was disturbed ... And landing 400 km from the calculated point of the emergency area. And then the search service was not up to par, and the emergency supply - completely to hell. And two days in the cold by the fire ...

Such were the FIRST 12 minutes in outer space.

Shortly after the flight of Voskhod-2, a grandiose international discussion began on the question: how to call Leonov's movement outside the spacecraft? Many proposed a new verb - "leonit". Philologists with an absolutely serious look disputed this. Say, it’s more correct to say “leonate”. Here is what Kamanin writes on April 9, 1965 in his diaries:

“Editors received more than 8,000 letters, most of the authors of which propose to introduce a new verb derived from the surname Leonov - “to leon” (I leon, you leon, they leon, etc.). At first glance, the word seems difficult to pronounce and unusual, but we must not forget that new shoes are always tight, a new suit fetters, etc. Several years will pass, and the new Russian verb "leonovat" will become an international word - it will be a living monument to Leonov and the Russian people. There are thousands of foreign words in the Russian language that sound like native to us, but our purely Russian words "satellite", "Vostok", "Voskhod", "lunar", "leon" will be international words.

No, the verb did not take root. The mighty Russian language is still quite conservative and does not want to adopt new verbs unless absolutely necessary. It's a pity! How much space would there be for designations of specific body movements! Especially now, on the eve of the elections, when politicians will start to speak with their tongues and fatten other parts of their bodies.

Voskhod spaceships

"Voskhod" is the name of a series of Soviet multi-seat spacecraft for flights in near-Earth orbit. Length 5 m, transverse dimension 2.43 m. The astronauts landed in a descent vehicle, which had 2 parachutes. The first of this series, Voskhod, is a three-seat spacecraft; launched into orbit on 10/12/1964; mass 5.32 tons, mass of the descent vehicle 2.9 tons. The crew consisted of the commander of the ship V.M. Komarov, researcher K.P. Feoktistov and doctor B.B. Egorov. Flight duration 1 day 17 min 3 s. 10/13/1964 Voskhod landed 312 km northeast of the city of Kustanai. In terms of design and equipment, the Voskhod spacecraft differed from the ships of the Vostok series - it was equipped with a soft landing system, had a backup solid-fuel brake propulsion system (weight 145 kg), new instrumentation (an additional orientation system with ion sensors, improved TV and radio equipment and other). Flight tasks: testing of the spacecraft, study of the efficiency and interaction in flight of a group of cosmonauts, specialists in various fields of science and technology, conducting physical, technical and biomedical research.

"Voskhod-2" - a two-seat spacecraft (mass 5.682 tons, mass of the descent vehicle without airlock 3.1 tons); according to the layout scheme, the composition of the on-board systems corresponds to the ship "Voskhod". The main differences: Voskhod-2 has an airlock chamber, an airlock system, elements of systems for ensuring and controlling a person's spacewalk. The lock chamber is attached to the outer surface of the descent vehicle (on the upper hemisphere); at the launch site, the lock chamber is in the folded state; after the launch, it is inflated and installed in the working position. It is cylindrical in shape and has 2 hatches: one for communication with the descent vehicle, the other for spacewalks. The presence of an airlock as part of the spacecraft made it possible to maintain the tightness of the descent vehicle during the astronaut's exit and return to the spacecraft. "Voskhod-2" with a crew consisting of P.I. Belyaev (ship commander) and A.A. Leonov (co-pilot) was put into orbit on 18.3.1965. In flight, for the first time in history, Leonov (in a spacesuit with an autonomous life support system) left the spacecraft into open space; was outside the cockpit for 20 minutes, outside the airlock in open space - 12 minutes 9 s, the maximum distance from the airlock was 5 m. Leonov had communication with the ship using a halyard. The main stages of the exit were broadcast on television and photographed with a movie camera. The total flight duration was 1 day 2 hours 2 minutes 17 seconds, the landing was made using the manual contour of the attitude control system, the spacecraft landed in the area of ​​Perm. The launches of the Voskhod ships were carried out by one of the modifications of the R-7A rocket.