Space: Self-Control in Soyuz 3

As Russia’s newest cosmonaut, Colonel Georgy Beregovoy, piloted his spacecraft through a series of seemingly routine maneuvers last week, nervous U.S. space officials began to relax. The flight of Soyuz 3 did not suggest that the Soviets had moved ahead in the race to the moon. Indeed, there was growing suspicion that Soyuz had not even achieved its own limited objectives.

Twice during the mission, Beregovoy guided Soyuz 3 close to unmanned Soyuz 2 in a maneuver that the Russians described as priblezhenie, or approach. Western experts were at a loss to explain why the two ships apparently never came closer than 650 ft. Soyuz (which means “union” in Russian) seemed designed for docking, and a Pravda article earlier in the week had noted that the purpose of the mission was “to perfect docking techniques in orbit.” Yet without any further attempt to link the two craft, Soyuz 2 was returned to earth and safely recovered. Beregovoy was left alone in space.

Another Voice? Not to be outdone by his U.S. counterparts, Beregovoy presented a humorless version of Apollo 7’s Walt, Wally and Donn Show. Live television from Soyuz showed him recording data on a pad and giving a thumbs-up gesture as he viewed the earth through a spacecraft window. Beregovoy also panned the TV camera around the Soyuz cabin, thus confirming reports that it was roomy enough to hold at least a few more cosmonauts.

In an oblique reference to the irritability demonstrated by the Apollo astronauts, Tass reported that Beregovoy showed “self-control” during his flight and had said that he would carry out all the orders of his ground controllers “with pleasure.” But the stolid cosmonaut lacked the snappy spontaneity of a Wally Schirra. When Soyuz 3 passed over Southeast Asia, Beregovoy radioed a greeting to the “courageous Vietnamese people” and sent his praise for their “heroic struggle against the American aggressors.”

By midweek, the Russians announced that Soyuz 3 had “completed the full volume of its scientific, engineering and medical experiments.” But the spacecraft remained in orbit, and hints in the Soviet press suggested to Western experts that another manned ship might be launched to rendezvous and dock with Soyuz 3. But after only four days in space, and apparently without making any significant new technical breakthroughs, Cosmonaut Beregovoy brought Soyuz 3 safely back to earth, landing it by parachute on the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan.

Satisfied that the Russians had not taken a great leap forward in manned spaceflight, U.S. spacemen moved ahead with their own plans to assault the moon. As technicians continued their inch-by-inch inspection of the Apollo 7 and sifted through its telemetered data, NASA officials promised that they would decide before mid-November whether to send Apollo 8 around the moon in December.