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Daina Bouquin: There is a birch
tree in the way.

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The two cosmonauts inside the
cramped capsule cannot see much

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of it.

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00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:40,320
Just a pale trunk pressed
against the hatch.

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00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:43,600
But it is enough to trap them.

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They have fallen out of the sky
into a forest, into deep snow,

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and the only door out will not
open because a tree is holding

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it shut.

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They fire the mechanism to open
the hatch anyway, and the

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explosive bolts go off.

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The cabin fills with the smell
of gunpowder, but the hatch just

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jerks hard against the trunk
and stays where it is.

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So they decide to rock the
capsule.

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Two men in stiff pressure suits
throw their weight one way and

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then the other, over and over,
until finally the hatch shifts

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enough to come loose.

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Then the air pours in and they
feel their lungs contract with

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the sudden blast of cold.

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Then they climb out and they
immediately sink into the snow

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up to their chests.

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A few hours ago they were in
orbit.

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They were never meant to be
here in a frozen forest in the

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Ural, hundreds of kilometers
from anyone who is looking for

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them.

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They were never really meant to
bring the ship down themselves

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at all.

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But something went wrong up
there.

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And now they are here, alive in
this exact wrong place, trying

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to get home.

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I'm Daina Bouquin, and this
is Found in the Machine.

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In 1961, nobody knew what space
would do to a person's mind.

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Soviet doctors worried about
something the literature of the

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era called space madness.

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A panic or a psychotic break
brought on by weightlessness or

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by the sight of the whole Earth
through a window.

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A cosmonaut who came apart up
there could take the whole

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mission with him.

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So the program put its trust in
the machinery and in the men

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running it from the ground.

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Soviet spacecraft would reach
orbit on their own, hold their

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attitude, turn themselves for
descent, and fire a break.

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All of it on a plan written
before launch.

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The cosmonaut was meant to ride
along and to monitor the

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control panel.

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The first control panel for
Soviet spaceflight was built in

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Zukhovsky, just outside Moscow,
in a branch of the Flight

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Research Institute called simply
Laboratory 47.

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It was run by an engineer named
Sergei Darevsky and focused on

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the place where the human meets
the instrument, a field called

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00:03:33,439 --> 00:03:35,360
aviation ergonomics.

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Among the most important
components needed for this first

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control panel were the devices
meant for an emergency, the ones

53
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that would allow the cosmonaut
to take control and fly the

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spacecraft manually.

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These tools needed to be able
to go on working in a vacuum.

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They needed to withstand
radiation.

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And they needed to be instantly
understood by someone traveling

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at 8 kilometers per second in a
tiny capsule while under

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unknowable duress.

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And the plan was for a man to
be in orbit within a year.

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So the engineers decided to
give them something familiar.

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They decided to give them the
world.

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Now there are roughly 30 people
in Laboratory 47, and the ones

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who took the lead were young.

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We don't know how young, we
don't even know their first

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names.

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But a much later account of
this work in English lists them

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as young engineers.

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Nosov, Marchenko, Makarov, and
Lavrov.

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They led the project.

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The designers weren't called
young, but maybe they were.

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Avarin, Safetkin, Simonenkova,
and Tsypin.

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The list of manufacturing
specialists is long and ends

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with the phrase and others.

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The young engineers and the
team in the lab built something

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00:05:08,399 --> 00:05:13,920
called the IMP, from the Russian
term indicator of position in

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flight.

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But everyone just called it the
globus because it was a globe.

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It was about the size of a
grapefruit, made of aluminum and

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wrapped in printed paper with
coastlines and rivers and

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00:05:27,199 --> 00:05:30,879
mountains and heavy colored
lines drawn around the borders

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00:05:30,879 --> 00:05:32,399
of the Soviet Union.

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00:05:32,399 --> 00:05:35,920
There were eight numbered
circles to show the position of

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radio sites.

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It sat in a box about the size
of a large toaster under a clear

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00:05:42,639 --> 00:05:46,480
dome with a fine crosshair
etched into the middle.

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00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:51,279
Beside it, they placed a small
counter like the odometer of a

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car to tick off the orbits as
they went by.

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00:05:54,319 --> 00:06:00,480
But the inside looks like it
was made by watchmakers.

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00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:05,839
It contains hundreds of metal
components aligned in complex

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00:06:05,839 --> 00:06:07,040
gear trains.

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00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:11,920
Every second, something inside
this machine gives a small push

93
00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:16,000
that travels outward through a
chain of brass gears until the

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00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:18,800
carefully angled globe begins to
turn.

95
00:06:18,800 --> 00:06:24,399
And it has to turn two ways at
once, because two things are

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00:06:24,399 --> 00:06:25,040
moving.

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00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:29,120
The ship is sweeping around the
earth, and the earth is

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revolving underneath the ship.

99
00:06:31,439 --> 00:06:35,360
There are gears that add those
two motions together

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00:06:35,360 --> 00:06:38,959
continuously, using the same
arrangement that lets the back

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00:06:38,959 --> 00:06:41,920
wheels of a car turn at
different speeds around a

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corner.

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00:06:42,560 --> 00:06:45,120
It's called a differential.

104
00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:51,120
And then there are the cams,
wheels with irregular edges.

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00:06:51,120 --> 00:06:54,480
Their shapes are where the
orbit lives.

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00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:59,360
A latitude over the course of
an orbit is translated into a

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curve, and then someone has to
grind that curve into the edge

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of a piece of metal.

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00:07:05,519 --> 00:07:09,279
Each of the cams has another
component pressed against its

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rim, and as the wheel goes
round, its movement falls with

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the shape of the edge.

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00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,279
You could feel the equations
with your fingertip.

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Here is the thing about it
though.

114
00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:24,160
Nothing reaches it from the
ground.

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No signal comes in from a
gyroscope or anything else to

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tell it where the ship actually
is.

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It is a dead reckoning device.

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It finds its current location
by using a set starting point

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and then measuring speed,
direction, and travel time.

120
00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:47,600
Everything it knows a person
has to put into it by hand.

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So before launch, someone sets
it to the coordinates the ship

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is supposed to reach.

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Then the ship goes up.

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And the orbit it actually ends
up in is not exactly the orbit

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00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:02,000
on paper.

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00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:06,160
So radar and radio on the
ground measure the real one.

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00:08:06,160 --> 00:08:09,920
People at desks work out the
difference and then they read

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00:08:09,920 --> 00:08:11,759
the numbers up to the crew.

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00:08:11,759 --> 00:08:15,120
And in the cabin, someone turns
the knob.

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00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:19,360
There is a knob for longitude
at the equator.

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A knob for where you are along
the orbit.

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The cosmonaut sets each of them
and then they do it again.

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Every time they come back into
radio contact, the ground tells

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them what it knows and they wind
the thing back into agreement

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00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:38,240
with the Earth whenever it's
needed.

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00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:41,759
But there were not many Soviet
ground stations.

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For most of every orbit, there
was nobody to talk to.

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No voice, no data.

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And for half of every orbit,
it's night.

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The ship has a sight in the
floor for looking at the ground,

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but at night there is no ground
to look at.

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00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:02,639
Clouds do the same thing.

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00:09:02,639 --> 00:09:04,960
Which leaves the globe.

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00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:09,200
Turning quietly with a
crosshair gliding over the

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00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:09,840
paper.

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00:09:09,840 --> 00:09:12,879
And the globist did one other
thing.

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00:09:12,879 --> 00:09:16,879
If you threw a switch, a motor
ran the globe forward about a

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00:09:16,879 --> 00:09:19,600
third of the way around and
stopped.

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00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:23,360
Now the crosshair was not over
where you were.

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00:09:23,360 --> 00:09:27,039
It was over where you would
come down if you fired your

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00:09:27,039 --> 00:09:28,720
brake right now.

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00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:37,279
In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin
went up, went round the world

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00:09:37,279 --> 00:09:40,399
once, and the ship did every
part of it alone.

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The little globe turned the
whole way and told him where he

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was over and over, and nothing
went wrong.

156
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For four more years it goes
like that.

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The ships fly, the machines
hold, the globus gets set and

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00:09:55,759 --> 00:09:57,600
reset and set again.

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00:09:57,600 --> 00:10:01,919
And every crew that goes up
knows where they are, even in

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00:10:01,919 --> 00:10:02,879
the dark.

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00:10:02,879 --> 00:10:06,000
But then came March 1965.

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00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:08,639
Voskhod 2.

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00:10:08,639 --> 00:10:12,720
The mission had two men aboard
instead of one.

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00:10:12,720 --> 00:10:19,039
Pavel  Belyayev, the commander,
and Alexei Leonov, the

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00:10:19,039 --> 00:10:20,000
navigator.

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00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:23,600
Early in the flight, Leonov
becomes the first human being to

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00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:24,960
do a spacewalk.

168
00:10:24,960 --> 00:10:27,360
And it nearly kills him.

169
00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:31,600
In the vacuum, his suit swells
so stiff that he cannot bend it

170
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:33,840
enough to get through the small
hatch.

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00:10:33,840 --> 00:10:38,399
He ends up having to bleed off
his own air and go in backwards

172
00:10:38,399 --> 00:10:40,159
to get himself back inside.

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00:10:40,159 --> 00:10:43,039
But that was only the first
problem.

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00:10:43,039 --> 00:10:47,120
Because to get home, the ship
has to point exactly at the

175
00:10:47,120 --> 00:10:50,559
right angle and fire its brakes
at exactly the right time.

176
00:10:50,559 --> 00:10:54,960
But the automatic system that
does this fails.

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00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:58,720
They need to bring the ship
home by hand.

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00:10:58,720 --> 00:11:04,639
Now the Voskhod was a
retrofitted one-man Vostok with

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00:11:04,639 --> 00:11:08,000
the ejection seat pulled out and
two seats put in.

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00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:10,720
They were turned 90 degrees so
they would fit.

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00:11:10,720 --> 00:11:15,200
And the control panel meant for
one man sitting in the other

182
00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:17,600
direction did not move.

183
00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:22,639
The sight was in the floor, and
it also did not move.

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00:11:22,639 --> 00:11:24,960
And it was small.

185
00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:29,919
A sphere with an interior
diameter of about two meters.

186
00:11:29,919 --> 00:11:32,320
And it was mostly full of
equipment.

187
00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:36,399
So when the automatic system
fails, getting to the site in

188
00:11:36,399 --> 00:11:38,559
the floor is a bizarre feat.

189
00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:42,879
Belyayev has to leave his seat
and stretch himself sideways

190
00:11:42,879 --> 00:11:47,759
across the cabin to look through
the site while Leonov holds him

191
00:11:47,759 --> 00:11:49,519
still in zero gravity.

192
00:11:49,519 --> 00:11:52,480
And remember, Leonov is the
navigator.

193
00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:56,799
He also has to decide where on
earth this ship is going down.

194
00:11:56,799 --> 00:12:00,080
He throws the switch and the
globe runs forward.

195
00:12:00,080 --> 00:12:04,159
It shows their orbit will take
them straight over Moscow.

196
00:12:04,159 --> 00:12:07,759
He writes later that they could
have sat down in Red Square,

197
00:12:07,759 --> 00:12:11,759
but he picks open country near
the city of Perm, west of the

198
00:12:11,759 --> 00:12:16,639
Urals, reasoning that even if he
is off, they will at least come

199
00:12:16,639 --> 00:12:18,480
down on Soviet ground.

200
00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:23,200
But Belyayev has to get back in
his seat before he can fire the

201
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:23,919
brakes.

202
00:12:23,919 --> 00:12:29,840
And it takes him 46 seconds in
his bulky, stiff suit.

203
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:35,360
A 46-second delay at nearly 8
kilometers per second will throw

204
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:36,399
you off course.

205
00:12:36,399 --> 00:12:39,039
But they do finally fire the
brakes.

206
00:12:39,039 --> 00:12:42,159
Only now something else is
wrong.

207
00:12:42,159 --> 00:12:45,120
The two halves of the
spacecraft that are meant to

208
00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:47,360
separate just fail to come
apart.

209
00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:51,840
A cable holds them together and
the whole thing begins to spin

210
00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:53,600
harder and harder.

211
00:12:53,600 --> 00:12:57,600
The force of it eventually
bursts small blood vessels in

212
00:12:57,600 --> 00:12:58,559
their eyes.

213
00:12:58,559 --> 00:13:02,399
But then the cable burns
through and the module comes

214
00:13:02,399 --> 00:13:02,720
free.

215
00:13:02,720 --> 00:13:04,399
The parachute opens.

216
00:13:04,399 --> 00:13:11,120
They can hear and feel the wind
whistling in the straps as the

217
00:13:11,120 --> 00:13:13,919
module swings on the landing
chute.

218
00:13:13,919 --> 00:13:19,759
Then they come down into the
deep snow and meet the tree.

219
00:13:19,759 --> 00:13:23,279
Nobody actually knows where
they are.

220
00:13:23,279 --> 00:13:25,679
They do not know either.

221
00:13:25,679 --> 00:13:30,000
But search planes spot the
capsule chute a few hours later.

222
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:33,919
They cannot land in that forest
though, so the first help to

223
00:13:33,919 --> 00:13:38,559
arrive is a scatter of supplies
dropped from the sky, most of

224
00:13:38,559 --> 00:13:41,519
which break or get stuck in the
tree branches.

225
00:13:41,519 --> 00:13:46,080
And the temperature that night
falls past 22 below Fahrenheit.

226
00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:50,639
Their suits are full of sweat
from the spacewalk and from the

227
00:13:50,639 --> 00:13:54,720
fight to get down, so they
strip, wring them out, and put

228
00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:58,320
them back on, hoping they won't
freeze to their skin.

229
00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:04,159
And then they wait in the dark,
listening to trees crack in the

230
00:14:04,159 --> 00:14:04,799
cold.

231
00:14:04,799 --> 00:14:08,960
Rescuers reach them on skis the
next morning, but it takes

232
00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:12,879
another full day to cut down
enough trees for a helicopter to

233
00:14:12,879 --> 00:14:16,080
land about 9 kilometers away
from where they landed.

234
00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:20,159
On the third morning, they ski
out and the helicopter lifts

235
00:14:20,159 --> 00:14:20,480
off.

236
00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:25,200
The globus kept flying.

237
00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:27,840
A person could read it at a
glance.

238
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:32,080
It was completely immune to
software crashes, cosmic

239
00:14:32,080 --> 00:14:36,240
radiation bit flips, and
electromagnetic interference.

240
00:14:36,240 --> 00:14:40,960
It was there in the radio
silence and in the dark.

241
00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:44,480
A larger version of it went
into Soyuz and stayed there

242
00:14:44,480 --> 00:14:49,679
through the Salyut stations,
through Mir, through the crews

243
00:14:49,679 --> 00:14:52,639
ferrying up to the International
Space Station.

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Until 2002, a small
paper-covered globe turned

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behind a domed window while
somebody in orbit kept it on

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track.

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But cosmonauts felt the
limitations.

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They complained.

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They had been given a perfectly
predictable world to operate in

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the real one.

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The engineers who built it
couldn't account for us.

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For the shape of a human being
trying to turn at a cramp space.

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For the things that inevitably
break because they always do.

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And yet, those two men who
landed in the snow landed in

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their own country.

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They didn't land in Red Square.

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They didn't land in a foreign
city or the ocean.

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And they were found.

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They were able to leave that
forest alive.

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They made it home.

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I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is
Found in the Machine.

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If you enjoyed this story,
please leave a rating or review

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wherever you listen.

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00:16:04,799 --> 00:16:09,279
And if you'd like more content
from me, I've started a Patreon.

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00:16:09,279 --> 00:16:13,919
Supporters get access to my new
mini-series, Found in the

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00:16:13,919 --> 00:16:17,200
Margins, where I'm telling
stories about things I come

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across while doing research for
the main feed.

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The most recent bonus episode
was about the escape key.

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And I have ideas for some
really fun things to come next.

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You can find the Patreon and
more ways to support the show by

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going to foundinthemachine.com
/support.

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Thanks so much for listening.