A Step Beyond

The Russian Attempt

Mission commander Colonel Alexander Titov, strapped loosely to the ceiling, hung suspended inside the billowing fabric of his sleep restraint. Beneath him was a small desk upon which he had taped a picture of his wife and two children. A faint glow from the computer display provided just enough light for him to see the pale blue sky of Kazakhstan and a silhouette of his family standing hand-in-hand upon its arid steppes. His gaze remained fixed upon the picture as he reached behind his head to adjust the volume of the communications channel. Cosmonaut Sergei Demin was transmitting the daily report. He could be heard sipping his coffee while he paused every few minutes to review the material he was about to read.

The silhouettes of Titov's children were half the size of his wife, and they were waving at him. His youngest child was only two years old. She would be four when he returned from Mars. The thought pained him, but he told himself--as he had countless times before--that the mission was too important to have passed up. His son had just learned how to ride a bike. He was about to turn five and wanted to be a cosmonaut, just like his father. Although Titov spoke with his family almost every night, the eleven-minute delay made it impossible to interact with them.

A rattling snore came from the adjacent compartment, where research engineer Boris Gorbatko was sound asleep. Commander Titov considered banging on the wall, but he knew from experience that it would do no good. Gorbatko would only stop until he fell back asleep, which never took more than a few minutes.

The habitat module contained six personal compartments identical in size and layout to Titov's, five of which were occupied. It was in the tight confines of these compartments that the cosmonauts enjoyed their only privacy. The module was located at the rear of the spacecraft. Above the hallway that separated the compartments hung the galley. There was no table or chairs, only an oven, a water dispenser, and several drawers of prepackaged food. At the back of the module was the personal hygiene facility. At the other end was a portal. It was secured. Beyond it lay the health and science module. Through a view panel in the upper quadrant of the portal, assorted equipment could be seen protruding from the walls. At the far end another portal, also secured, led to the flight deck, the foremost cabin of the ship.

At 3:43 a.m. Moscow time a meteoroid less than one inch in diameter, traveling at a speed of thirteen miles per second, pierced the hull of the flight deck and struck a liquid-oxygen tank. The tank exploded.

The blast ripped through the side of the hull and into the flight deck. Cosmonaut Demin had just finished his third cup of coffee and was reaching for his laptop, which was somersaulting arm's length from his nose, when he saw the flash. The explosion picked his body up and slammed it against the portal. His head struck the metallic rim of the view panel. He died instantly.

The environmental control sensors detected a drop in the oxygen level and opened the valve controlling the remaining tank several nanoseconds before the heat and smoke detectors alerted the main processor to the presence of fire. Before instructions to shut down the oxygen supply could arrive, a stream of pure oxygen had entered the cabin. Fueled by the fresh supply of gas, the fire raced voraciously toward the source. There was a second explosion. A swirling fireball engulfed the flight deck. The flight control panel burst apart, sending shrapnel into the surrounding walls and Demin's dead body. A closed-circuit monitor and two computer screens exploded. The circuitry for the main processor melted under the intense heat. A chair went up in flames. Wires stretched out from the naked consoles and shot sparks as they collided. Another chair caught fire. The entire compartment was in flames, and then suddenly the fire was drawn by the vacuum through the rupture in the side of the hull. The room went dark.