Voskhod

The Soviet Union's Voskhod program succeeded in being the first to put a multiman craft in space, but it was done with the welfare and comfort of the cosmonauts as a second priority.

Voskhod 1, launched on October 12, 1964, was manned by Vladamir M. Komarov, Konstantin P. Feoktistov and Boris B. Yegorov. To be the first to achieve multiman spaceflight, a potentially dangerous modification of Vostok (The spacecraft used for the Soviet's first manned missions.) was made. The capsule didn't include ejection seats or an escape tower, and the cosmonauts themselves didn't wear spacesuits. One concession was that a backup solid retrorocket package was mounted on the nose of the spacecraft. The seats inside the capsule were positioned perpendicular to the position they had been in before the craft had been modified. This, however, made it hard for the crew to read the instruments without craning their necks, because even though they had changed the position of the seats, the position of the instruments remained as before. Land recovery was made possible by a rocket package suspended above the capsule in parachute lines; these lines ignited just prior to impact in order to cushion the craft's landing. Voskhod 1 had been in space for 24 hours and 17 minutes, and it orbited the Earth 16 times.

Voskhod 2 was launched on March 18, 1965, and was manned by Pavel I. Belyayev, and Alexei A. Leonov. In this mission the crew wore space suits. Leonove performed the first ever extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on this flight. He took a 24 minute space walk; however, because of the stiffness of his spacesuit he had some difficulty in reentering the airlock. When he did manage to do so, the primary hatch wouldn't seal completely. To compensate, the environmental control system compensated by flooding the cabin with oxygen. This created a dangerous fire hazard because the craft was only designed for sea level nitrogen-oxygen gas mixes. When landing, the crew didn't land right on target, but in the Ural mountains. The crew spent the night in the woods, surrounded by wolves. Before rescue could take place, the recovery crew had to chop down trees to clear a landing zone for a helicopter recovery of both crew and capsule.

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