So the Voskhod program was fucking insane.
Like, this is probably the most deranged manned spacecraft ever flown.
The Soviet Union finds out that those Filthy American Pigs are going to put three people in space with the Apollo program
Being the Soviet Union, they immediately decide that they have to do it first.
They don't actually have something to do it with though
So they take a Vostok and modify it so they can squeeze three people into it.
Now, Vostok is really small. It's a one-person vessel, and the crew module is only 2.3 metres wide on the exterior. And now they want to put three people in it.
Solution Part 1: Remove the ejector seat!
This produces some interesting new issues. Firstly, the ejector seats are the entire Launch Escape System for the vehicle.
Secondly, Vostok used its ejector seat to bail out of the vehicle before landing, because the USSR had no viable waters to land in and they had to come down on dry land. As such, if the cosmonaut landed inside the vehicle, they'd probably die.
So they added a roll cage to the capsule and a braking rocket to the parachute to hopefully not turn the cosmonauts to pasta sauce when Voskhod smashed back into the Earth.
Solution Part 2: Remove the space suits!
Yeah they just fired these guys into space in unsealed jumpsuits.
Hope it doesn't spring a leak or you're all dead!
They select the crew of Boris Volynov, Georgi Katys, and Boris Yegorov for Voskhod 1.
The crew gets rejected.
Turns out that Katys' dad got murdered during the Great Purge and the KGB don't want him flying.
#justsovietunionthings
Also it turns out that Volynov is partially Jewish by ancestry and apparently that wasn't allowed either.
(They did eventually let Volynov fly on Soyuz 5 and Soyuz 21)
They are replaced by Vladimir Komarov and Konstantin Feostikov
Yegorov gets to stay because his dad has Politburo connections.
Also they only got four months of training.
Also also they had to diet to fit in the capsule
Because it was 2.3 metres wide and made for one person.
But hey fuck being logical GOTTA BEAT THE YANKS
They did in fact beat the yanks to a multi-crewed flight, launching on March 18th, 1964, almost a year before the first crewed Gemini flight.
That said, it was internally regarded as a "circus" by Soviet leadership, because of the issues with crew selection (not just the guy whose dad got murdered by the state or the guy who was too Jewish, but also the slapfighting between Sergei Korolev and the military over who the crew should be in general), the dieting, the extremely dangerous "Let's launch without spacesuits or an LES" plan, and also a bit of political upheaval during the mission.
Yeah, during the mission, the USSR had a USSR Moment and couped its leader.
The crew had a phone call with Nikita Khrushchev, who shortly thereafter went home and found that he'd been kicked out of the party and the role of premier. The crew landed and were met by Leonid Brezhnev's Eyebrows and also the rest of Leonid Brezhnev.
If I had a nickel for every Soviet space mission that happened to coincide with dramatic regime change, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?
Anyway this is probably why the mission was only 24 hours long, despite some impressive endurance records on Vostok flights.
Well hey they managed to not kill the cosmonauts (they did eventually kill Komarov on Soyuz 1, but that's its own terrible story), what's next?
Spacewalk.
Okay are we going to use a vehicle that's actually good for this?
No we're gonna take out one of the seats and replace it with an inflatable airlock.
And give one of the cosmonauts a spacesuit.
Great, now if there's a leak, only one of them will die and the other has to spend the rest of the flight with a floating corpse.
Oh god why
BEAT THE YANKS
(Gemini 4 was fast approaching)
At least there's no (recorded on Wikipedia) drama with the crew this time.
Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev are chosen. Leonov will make the spacewalk.
Leonov's dad did get Purged, but he was arrested and not killed, and later released, so I guess the KGB were okay with that.
Voskhod 2 launches on March 18th, 1965.
Once he gets outside of the ship, Leonov's suit immediately starts to inflate. He can't bend his arms enough to operate his camera shutter, he just floats around like the Michelin Man.
Footage of her dad floating around up there terrified Leonov's daughter
In fairness the stills are kinda spooky
Leonov is forced to start bleeding air out of his suit in order to be able to move his limbs.
He also starts verging on heat-stroke.
When he tries to get back inside the vehicle, the suit is still too fat, so he has to bleed so much air out that he risks decompression sickness (AKA the bends), going well below the safe limits.
I'm starting to see why they gave him a suicide pill.
Fortunately he didn't have to take it, and got back in the vehicle.
They then jettisoned the airlock and oriented for re-entry.
However, the capsule is so cramped that it takes them a while to get back into their seats, which throws off the centre of mass.
Also the service module failed to detach properly and sent the capsule spinning out of control until the re-entry heat burned through the tether.
This meant that Voskhod 2 came down wildly off-course.
It landed in a forest 386 kilometres from the target zone.
They're in bear country.
And also wolf country.
Fortunately they have a gun.
Yes really.
Mandatory equipment for Voskhod missions: Suicide pill, gun. Not mandatory equipment for Voskhod missions: Spacesuits.
They were quickly located by helicopter, but the area was so heavily forested that the helicopters couldn't land to recover them and I guess these helicopters didn't have door-winches or long enough cables.
So all they could do was throw warm clothes at them.
Also the government lied to the cosmonauts' families and told them that they'd already been recovered and were resting.
Meanwhile Leonov and Belyayev are hiding in a cramped metal ball with a single handgun for protection.
The hatch had automatically been blown open with explosive bolts and it dropped to -5 celsius overnight.
Also the heating system malfunctioned, the radiator stopped working entirely and the fans were stuck on full blast.
A rescue party found them on skis the next day.
When the advance party finally arrived, they built a small log cabin and a big fire, resulting in a slightly more comfortable second night, before having to ski back to the nearest safe spot for the helicopter to land.
They did again manage to beat the yanks, but only by three months this time. The gap was rapidly narrowing, and it's generally agreed that by the end of the Gemini program, the US were ahead in terms of practical space progress.
They wisely chose not to launch Voskhod 3 and 4, and moved straight on to Soyuz. And then immediately killed a man the first time they launched a manned flight.
It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Gemini program was also fucking insane, though to a slightly lesser degree.
