Human spacecraft

Korolev’s planning for the piloted mission had begun back in 1958 when design studies were made on the future Vostok spacecraft. It was to hold a single passenger in a space suit and be fully automated. The capsule had an escape mechanism for problems prior to launch and a soft-landing and ejection system during the recovery.

On May 15, 1960 an unpiloted prototype performed 64 orbits of the Earth but failed to return. Four tests were then sent into orbit carrying dogs and the last two were fully successful.

After gaining approval from the government a modified version of the R-7 was used to launch Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961, the first human in Earth orbit. He returned to Earth via a parachute after ejecting at an altitude of 7 kilometres.

This was followed up by additional Vostok flights culminating with 81 orbits completed with Vostok 5 and the launch of the first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, on Vostok 6.

Following Vostok Korolev planned to move forward with Soyuz craft that would be able to dock with other craft in orbit and exchange crews. However, he was directed by Khrushchev to cheaply produce more ‘firsts’ for the piloted program. Korolev was reported to have resisted the idea, since he currently lacked a rocket of sufficient capability to lift a three-person capsule into space. However, Khrushchev was not interested in technical excuses and let it be known that if Korolev could not do it, he would give the work to his rival, Vladimir Chelomei.

To complete this task his group designed the Voskhod, an incremental improvement on the Vostok. One of the difficulties in the design of the Voskhod was the need to land it via parachute. The three-person crew could not bail out and land by parachute since the altitude would not be survivable. So the craft would need much larger parachutes in order to land safely. However, some tests with the craft resulted in failures causing the death of some test animals. This gave Korolev pause, but the problem was solved through the use of new parachute material.

The resulting Voskhod was a stripped-down vehicle from which any excess weight had been removed. Another modification was the addition of a backup retrofire engine, since the more powerful Voskhod rocket used to launch the craft would send it to a higher orbit than the Vostok thus eliminating the possibility of a natural decay of the orbit and reentry in case of primary retrorocket failure. This spacecraft made one unmanned test flight, then on October 12, 1964 a crew of three cosmonauts: Komarov, Yegorov, and Feoktistoy was launched into space and made sixteen orbits. This craft was designed to perform a soft landing thus eliminating a need for the ejection system. The crew was also sent into orbit without space suits, another risky move.

With the Americans planning a space walk with their Gemini program, the Soviets decided to trump them again by performing a space walk on the second Voskhod launch. After rapidly adding an airlock the Voskhod 2 was launched on March 18, 1965, and Alexei Leonov performed the world’s first space walk. The flight very nearly ended in disaster and plans for further Voskhod missions were shelved. In the meantime the change of Soviet leadership with the fall of Khrushchev meant that Korolev was back in favor and given charge of beating the US to landing a man on the Moon.

For the Moon race Korolev’s staff started to design the immense N1 rocket in 1961 using the highly efficient NK-33 liquid fuel rocket engine. He also had in work the design for the Soyuz manned spacecraft which many years later went on to carry the first space tourists, as well as the Luna vehicles that would soft-land on the Moon and make unmanned missions to Mars and Venus. But, unexpectedly, he was to die before he could see his various plans brought to fruition.

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Howard Hughes

Howard Hugheswas an aviator, engineer, industrialist and film producer. He is famous for setting multiple world air-speed records, building the Hughes H-l Racer and H-4 Hercules airplanes, producing the movies Hell’s Angels and The Outlaw.

Hughes was born in Houston, Texas, on September 24, 1905. His parents were Allene Stone Gano Hughes (a descendant of Catherine of Valois, Dowager Queen of England, by second husband OwenTudor) and Howard R. Hughes, Sr., who patented the tri-cone roller bit which allowed rotary drilling for oil in previously inaccessible places.

Hughes grew up under the strong influence of his mother who was obsessed with protecting her son from all germs and diseases. From his father Hughes inherited an interest in mechanics. Showing great aptitude in engineering at an early age Hughes erected Houston's first wireless broadcast system when he was 11 years old. At the age of 12 Hughes was supposedly photographed in the local newspaper as being the first boy in Houston to have a ‘motorized’ bicycle which he had built himself from parts taken from his father’s steam engine. He was an indifferent student with a liking for mathematics and flying taking flying lessons at 14 and later auditing maths and engineering courses at Caltech.

Hughes’s parents died within 2 years of each other. Young Hughes inherited multi-million dollar fortune. Soon after that Hughes dropped out of Rice University. At the age of 19 he married Ella Rice, and shortly thereafter they left Houston and moved to Hollywood where Hughes hoped to make a name for himself making movies.

He became famous not as a film producer but as an aviator and aircraft engineer.

Indeed, Hughes was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, pilot, and a self-taught aircraft engineer. He set many world records and designed and built several aircraft himself while heading Hughes Aircraft. The most technologically important aircraft he designed was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On September 13, 1935 Hughes set the airspeed record flying H-1. A year and a half later flying a somewhat re-designed H-1 Racer Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by making flight non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes. Average speed over the flight was 518 km/h.

The H-l Racer featured a number of design innovations: it had retractable landing gear and all rivets and joints set flush into the body of the plane to reduce drag. The H-l Racer is thought to have influenced the design of a number of World War II fighter airplanes such as the Mitsubishi Zero, the Focke-Wulf FW190 and the F6F Hellcat; although that has never been proven.

On July 10, 1938 Hughes set another record by completing a flight around the world in just 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours) beating the previous record by more than four days. For this flight he did not fly a plane of his own design but a Lockheed Super Electra, a twin-engine plane with a four-man crew. It was fitted with all of the latest radio and navigational equipment. Hughes wanted the flight to be a triumph of technology illustrating that safe, long-distance air travel was possible.

His most famous aircraft project was the H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the “Spruce Goose”. The plane was originally contracted by the U.S. government for use in World War II to transport troops and equipment across the Atlantic instead of sea going troop transports that were liable to the threat of German U-Boats. In 1947 it was the largest aircraft ever built with the weight of 190 tons. It was not completed until just after the end of World War II.

Hughes was summoned to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee to explain why the plane had not been delivered to the United States Army Air Forces during the war, but the committee disbanded without releasing a final report. As the contract required the aircraft to be built of “non-strategic materials”, Hughes built the plane largely from birch.

During a break in the Senate hearings Hughes returned to California ostensibly to run taxi tests on the H-4. On November 2, 1947 after a series of taxi tests with Hughes at the controls and a crew of 18 accompanied by nine invited guests the Hercules lifted off from the waters of Long Beath remaining airborne 21 m off the water at a speed of 217 km/h for just l.6 km. At this altitude the aircraft was still experiencing ground effect and some critics believed it lacked the power necessary to climb above ground effect.

Hughes had answered his critics, but the justification for continued spending on the project was gone. Congress ended the Hercules project, and the aircraft never flew again. It was carefully maintained in flying condition until Hughes’ death in 1976.

Hughes had his entire reputation wrapped up in the H-4 and often said that if the Hercules did not fly he would probably leave America and never return. In a transcript of a Senate hearing Hughes said:

“Hercules was a monumental undertaking. It is the largest plane ever built. It is over five storey tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

Confusion still exists as to whether or not the Hercules is in fact the world’s largest aircraft. To say it is the largest aircraft ever built is slightly inaccurate. An aircraft’s size can be judged bylength weight, or wingspan. The Hercules is certainly not the longest aircraft ever built. Indeed, several airships have surpassed 800 ft. Also, despite its immense size the Hercules weighes much less than many commercial jet liners. Measured by wingspan, however, the Hercules is greater than anything built before or since. It is the only airplane ever built with a wingspan in excess of 300 feet.

After years of storage, in 1980, the Hercules was acquired by the California Aero Club. It successfully put the aircraft on display in a large dome adjacent to the Queen Mary exhibit in Long Beach, California. In 1988 The Walt Disney Company acquired both attractions. Disappointed by the lackluster revenue the Hercules exhibit generated Disney began to look for another organization to take the exhibit off its hands. After a long search for a qualified buyer the plane was acquired by the Evergreen Aviation Museum in 1995. The aircraft was disassembled and moved by barge to its current home in McMinnville, Oregon, where it has been on display.