- MOSCOW (Reuters) - By the time legendary Soviet spaceman Aleksei Leonov
confidently shook hands with an American astronaut in orbit during the
Cold War he had narrowly escaped death five times -- thanking God each
time for his good luck.
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- These brushes with death and the faith
in God's intervention remained secret during the Communist era, when Leonov
was a symbol of Soviet power in its space rivalry with America.
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- Leonov was a member of the Soviet Union's
original 1960 team of cosmonauts who made the first space walk in 1965
and later led the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975.
-
- The highlight of Leonov's career, man's
first walk outside a space capsule, showed that a cosmonaut could work
in the barren unknown of space. But the experience nearly cost him his
life.
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- "There were many problems. One was
impossible to test on Earth, namely, how would the space suit react in
the vacuum of space?" 64-year-old Leonov told Reuters.
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- After his 12-minute space walk, he learned
what engineers had not predicted: the suit had expanded so much that he
could not fit back into the Voskhod 2 capsule orbiting Earth.
-
- "I had to take a decision to lower
the pressure inside the space suit, but by how much? Too much would have
led to a boiling of blood in the body, which would have finished me off.
But I had to do it," he said.
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- "I didn't report this down to Earth,"
said Leonov, who now favors collarless Nehru-style jackets to spacesuits.
"I knew the situation better than anyone else."
-
- As he worried whether his supply of oxygen
would run out, Leonov gradually lowered the pressure in his suit to dangerous
levels, and was able to squeeze back into the ship.
-
- "I had to crawl in on my knees,
which was very difficult physically. I expended practically my last bit
of energy," said the 1.64 meter (5.4 feet) cosmonaut turned investment
banker.
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- Yet the worst still lay ahead after his
return inside. Spinning a glass ball paperweight on his desk, Leonov explained
that during his space walk the ship did not rotate normally to spread the
sun's warmth across the station.
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- As a result, there was a major failure
in the life-support systems and air started leaking from the station. To
compensate for the loss, oxygen grew to critical levels.
-
- "If there had been a small spark,
the entire ship would have simply exploded like a bomb," Leonov said.
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- "It was catastrophically dangerous,"
he said. "I believe that someone above helped us, was watching out
for us and decided that it was too soon for us to perish."
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- The two-man crew succeeded in gradually
lowering pressure to acceptable levels, but the mission ended with a landing
far off course and three days alone in the Ural mountains.
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- Escaping Death
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- Leonov, who was noted for his athletic
devotion and winning personality during his years as a cosmonaut, escaped
death twice before even leaving the Earth.
-
- He once swam to safety after his car
crashed into a frozen pond. On another occasion he had to bend parts of
an airplane to escape from a failing jet when an ejector seat failed.
-
- In 1969, pure luck saved him. While he
was riding with other cosmonauts in front of a car carrying Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev, a young officer started firing off two guns wildly in
an assassination attempt.
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- "I saw how blood started coming
out from the driver 50 cm (20 inches) ahead of me, and then I turned my
head. The next bullet whizzed by like this, another behind my back. Had
I not turned my head it would have hit me," Leonov said.
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- "An investigator later told me 'you're
a very lucky person,'" he said. "'You should be dead.'"
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- "God was probably with me. God again."
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- Leonov was due to fly in 1971 on Salyut
1, the first space station put into orbit, but officials changed the entire
crew 11 hours before the flight because of concerns for cosmonaut Valery
Kubasov's health.
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- The new crew set a record of 23 days
in orbit, but a leak in the capsule killed the three men as they returned
to Earth.
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- "We can say I stayed alive because
of Kubasov's illness," said Leonov, who eventually held the Soviet
military rank of major general. "I should say prayers to God."
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- Dramatic Missions
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- For all his success in avoiding disaster,
Leonov failed to fulfil his dream of becoming to first man on the moon
-- the honor he would have earned if the manned Soviet moon program had
succeeded. "I often ponder on what we should have done. I find many
mistakes of the past leadership."
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- "Because of bureaucratic stupidity,
half the national program failed," he said, referring to the manned
effort to reach the moon.
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- "We had everything to fly around
the moon, but we needed only (space program leader Sergei) Korolyov,"
he continued emotionally. "But even with Korolyov we would not have
beaten the Americans to be the first on the moon."
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- After the failure of the manned moon
effort and the 1971 Salyut disaster, Leonov in 1975 helped boost Soviet
pride when he shook hands as an equal with American astronaut Tom Stafford
when the Apollo-Soyuz docked together in orbit.
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- "I understood the immense responsibility,"
he said. "In the eyes of all of humanity we showed the best side of
man.
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- "No crew to this day has the same
rapport I have with Tom," Leonov said. "Our children are friends.
Tom named his grandson Aleksei. I named a grandchild Karina, the name of
Tom Stafford's daughter."
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- After the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Leonov, the country's most famous cosmonaut since the death of first man
in space Yury Gagarin, quickly adjusted to the new times and became the
president of Alfa Kapital, an investment company.
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- "As experienced as a cosmonaut may
be, there comes a time to leave," he said. "But I didn't want
to just drink beer or play golf. I'm a different kind of person.
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- "Both space exploration and business
are creative jobs," he said in his office decorated by tiny Soviet
and U.S. flags flown to the moon. "There are no written rules on how
to act. You have to think constantly on your feet and solve many problems."
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- Leonov rarely arrives in the office before
noon -- he is an avid artist in his spare time -- but when it comes to
meeting top officials, he rarely has trouble gaining an audience.
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- "When I go somewhere to visit an
enterprise they do have a different relationship to me," he said.
"It's because of the fame and because in my entire life I never discredited
myself in anything, so it's easier when I come to do business."
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- Even after his embrace of capitalist
business, Leonov still has his eyes on the stars.
-
- "I dream about it a lot," he
said.
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- He thinks he stands a chance of breaking
American John Glenn's record as the oldest person to go into space at age
77.
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- "What sense would there be in flying
now? I wouldn't set any world records" Leonov said. "In 15 years,
I will fly but not just for a week, I'll fly two or three weeks. ( (c)
1999 Reuters)
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