Voshkod:The Soviet Gemini
© b.w. white
Russian designers were well aware that once the Mercury flights ended, America would move on to operational flights of the more advanced Gemini capsule. It appears that their short-term goal was only in beating the Americans step by step and not gaining the essential experience necessary to send cosmonauts to the lunar surface. In an attempt to upstage the United States, Korolev, the Russian chief designer, created the Voshkod capsule. It was essentially a modified Vostok (the first capsules that were used to send cosmonauts such as Gagarin and Titov into space) that enabled cosmonauts to perform space walks and send multiple man crews up in one capsule before the Americans. It is important to note in this analysis of Voshkod that the short-lived program would not lead Russians to the moon. Since it was really just a re-dress of a Vostok, it was an engineering dead end that wagered America would stumble in their own attempt to send men to the moon.
Only by April of 1964 had Soviet designers received funding approval from the Politburo to begin work on Voshkod. By this time, the Gemini program had been in development for several years almost 7 days a week twenty-four hours a day in hundreds of companies and NASA facilities across the United States. Korolev had no such luxury; all of the Russian spacecraft were built in one place by one group of people. Never the less, their work, despite lack of funding and cooperation from their government, is startling. In less than 6 months the first Vostok capsules had been modified to carry more propellant, gases for atmosphere in the cabin, and scientific instruments, but these changes also had some surprising consequences.
In October 1964, the first multi-man crew in history entered space aboard Voshkod 1. Once again, the world was stunned. Had the Soviets created a new spacecraft much like the unfinished three-man Apollo? Did this mean that they could go to the moon in this new capsule? The answer was a resounding no.
