It seemed like a simple and ordinary affair, it was day-to-day work in terms of USSR – well, the Russians flew to Mars and came back… It’s almost the same for us as for some people, especially in the West, to go to a restaurant or the nearest Disneyland.
The effect would surely be stunning. Even though Andropov was not very enthusiastic about the space, he imagined the possible effect and so agreed to this expensive expedition.
But the expedition turned out to cost much cheaper than the preliminary estimates.
The living modules were based on those nearly prepared for the Mir station, the only difference was a larger size, and the majority of equipment and devices was practically the same.
The rocket was the almost standard Molnia-M, with a new double body and just two stages instead of three to four used as usual.
A part of materials and technologies was taken from the well-known rocket СС 18 which terrified the Americans… They even invented such a name for it that I’d better refrain from saying it out loud.
Both bodies were composite ones, containing different materials, and the structure of the bodies was no less complicated than the whole of MS 88 taken together…
Almost half of the outer body of the spaceship consisted of different layers, each of which protected the crew from something special, and that’s why it was created. All these layers had been used somewhere or were just being elaborated and finished.
That’s why all the institutes that worked on the materials for MS 88 had associations with tanks, planes and submarines.
The farther was MS 88 going into space, the more often Andrey remembered the launch site. It was the last thing he saw on Earth, so he recollected it best of all; moreover, he worked and lived there for almost a year and a half…
More and more often he got the impression that the Launch site was alive. It had its own peculiar atmosphere. However, all the numerous objects, military units and launch sites were surrounded by the taiga, and when you drove several kilometers from them, and sometimes even one or two hundred meters, you found yourself absolutely on your own. Just taiga and silence surrounded you…
But you felt there was somebody else around you, and there were a lot of them – tens of thousands of servicemen and civil employees working on the launch site, and among the endless number of silent trees around you there was a feeling of an invisible presence of people united by one goal.