We traveled to Baikonur two weeks before the scheduled launch date. The last morning, we went through the process of getting suited up, doing our leak checks, and speaking to our loved ones through the pane of glass. We rode the bus out to Gagarin’s launchpad, peed on the tire, and climbed into the capsule. Among the things we had to do to get the vehicle ready was configure the oxygen system, a task that was the responsibility of the flight engineer 2—in this case, me. Toward the end of the launch countdown, I was manipulating one of the O2 valves when we heard a loud squeal. We guessed it was compressed oxygen leaking into the cabin, and we were right. I immediately closed the valve, but we had a massive oxygen leak anytime the valve was taken out of the closed position, which was a requirement during the flight.
At the direction of the ground, Sasha tried to get the situation under control by venting the O2 through the hatch valve into the habitation module above us, then overboard through a valve that led to the outside. He unstrapped himself from his seat so he could sit up to reach the valve directly over his head. I looked at the readings on our LCD screens, paying close attention to the partial pressure of oxygen compared to our total pressure. I did some mental math and calculated that there was close to 40 percent oxygen in the capsule, the oxygen concentration threshold at which many materials become easily flammable with an ignition source, like a small spark.
All astronauts knew that the crew of Apollo 1 had been killed by a fire in their capsule because it had been pumped full of pure oxygen and that a tiny spark caused a conflagration of the Velcro-lined capsule. NASA didn’t use high-pressure oxygen anymore in this way, and they also redesigned the hatch on the Apollo capsule to open outward—and so have all hatches on NASA human-rated launch vehicles since. Not the Russians. The hatch on our Soyuz opened inward, so if there was a fire, the expanding hot gases would put outward pressure on the hatch and trap us, just like the crew of Apollo 1. As Sasha struggled to reach the valves, flailing in his seat, the metal buckles on his straps struck exposed metal on the capsule’s interior. I thought distinctly to myself, This is not a good place to be right now.
Once Sasha was back in his seat and it seemed clear we weren’t going to catch fire, we talked about our predicament. I decided not to voice my concern about the flammability risk.
“It’s too bad we won’t launch today,” I said.
“Da,” Sasha agreed. “We will be first crew to scrub after strapping in since 1969.” This is an incredible statistic, considering how often the space shuttle used to scrub, right up to the seconds before launch, even after the main engines had lit.
A voice from the control center interrupted us. “Guys, start your Sokol suit leak checks.”
What? Sasha and I looked at each other with identical What-the-fuck? expressions. We were now inside five minutes to launch. Sasha raced to get strapped back into his seat properly. The emergency escape system had been activated, and if something had set it off, the rocket would have launched us away from the pad without warning. Sasha would have likely been killed if it had activated while he was not strapped in. We closed our visors and rushed through the leak check procedures. With less than two minutes to spare, we were ready to go. We settled into our seats for our last minutes on Earth.
The launch experience was different from the shuttle—the Soyuz capsule was much smaller than the shuttle’s cockpit, and less advanced, so there was less for the crew to do. Still, it was much more automated than the space shuttle was. Nothing could match the acceleration of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters pushing us away from the Earth with an instantaneous 7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, but anytime you rocket off the planet, it’s serious business.
Once we reached orbit, we were stuck in this cold tin can with very little to do for two whole days until we were to dock to the space station. As the spacecraft moved in and out of communication coverage, the sun rising and setting every ninety minutes, we quickly lost track of any normal sense of time and drifted in and out of sleep. The habitation module was cramped and spartan, lined in a dull yellow Velcro with an occasional exposed metal frame or structure, which quickly became covered in condensation. We didn’t even have a good view of the Earth because the Soyuz constantly spun to keep the solar arrays pointing at the sun in order to charge its batteries. I had brought my iPod, but the battery soon died. I spent most of the time floating in the middle of the habitation module, feeling like I did when I was a kid in after-school detention, staring at the clock, waiting for the day to be over. When docking day came, I was excited, but when I looked at my watch and realized the moment we were to float through the hatch was still eighteen hours away, I thought to myself, Oh, shit. What the fuck am I going to do for the next eighteen hours? The answer is: nothing. I just floated there. I’ve said that any day in space is a good day, and I believe it, but two days in a Soyuz is not that good.
This was also Amiko’s first time seeing me launch into space. She had witnessed three previous shuttle launches, including one of my brother’s, before I knew her well. (She remembered seeing me at a prelaunch party in Cocoa Beach, Florida, carrying around a sleeping baby Charlotte with her head of curly blond hair.) So she wasn’t new to the launch experience, but it was different traveling to Baikonur and seeing the Russian way of doing things. And of course it was very different seeing a launch with someone she cared about on board. My brother told me later, once I was safely in orbit, that she cried while watching my launch. I was surprised to hear that because, despite the fact that we had been together for more than a year, I had never seen her cry. When I asked Amiko about it, she said she hadn’t been expecting to be so emotional, but she was moved by the beauty and awe of the launch and by her happiness for me. She knew what it meant to me to get to fly in space, and she knew how hard I had worked to get there.
Years later, I learned more about what went on that day in the launch center in Baikonur. Someone in launch control had said that they understood this anomaly, and that there was a workaround: cycling the oxygen valve partially open, then closing it before opening it fully to reseat a sticky valve. In the minutes before launch, officials were passing around a piece of paper they needed to sign indicating that they were go for launch in spite of the oxygen leak and Sasha’s struggle to equalize the pressure as time ticked away. As a crew member getting ready to ride the rocket to space, I found this to be troubling.