Последние тайны СССР – Проект Марс 88 - [7]

The plan was quite simple: secretly prepare an expedition to Mars, fly there, take as many samples as possible and return.

And then, having analyzed the information and the samples, announce unintentionally: we have recently returned from Mars and received very interesting results which we will soon reveal…

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.

-6-

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.

On many roads that connected almost 2 000 objects scattered all over the launch site, there was round-the-clock movement of cars and buses of all types and sizes, construction and military equipment… A car going past you made you feel that you are not alone, but when it drove away, loneliness surrounded you from all sides again.

The atmosphere of the launch site was absolutely unique and incommunicable. It can probably happen only on our numerous earthly cosmodromes. Each rocket and its multiple parts, components, devices, systems, materials were the results of work of hundreds of design offices and scientific and research institutes, thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of people scattered all over the huge country.

And all that was delivered, brought and concentrated on the launch site. The launch site gave a final touch to all that, checked and tried it many times in accordance with numerous technologies and rules, until the final and probably the most important stage came – rocket launch, for which the Launch site was created.

But the launch site – it’s not only hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete, steel, integration buildings, launch grounds and a long list of parts that make it up: these are just instruments. The main thing is people working there, so the launch site is really alive…

Considering the schedule of launches which was the most intense on Earth, the working environment in the many-thousand team of the launch site was quite tense… It probably reflected on the northern nature surrounding it, and it produced the atmosphere which was nothing like any other cosmodrome on Earth.

While they are flying, the launch site could have launched a good hundred of rockets with satellites and research craft to the Moon, Venus or Mars. Some rockets are still in the integration house, some are already on launch grounds, some are being delivered, and some are being assembled on plants. But sooner or later they will meet in the place from which they started – on the launch site.

The word “cosmodrome” was not very widely used then, rocket engineers had their own terms and designations, and other military units had theirs. But most of them called it all simply a launch site.

Probably some part of him, Andrey, as well as the whole crew, remained there, and they took some part of the atmosphere with them…