Zurück in den Weltraum - A partial success
Peenemünde, 7.3. 1961, 1:30 a.m
Kermany today launched its A4 rocket, and although the capsule was temporarily stranded and nearly lost, the test of the main rocket has been mostly a success.
As a precaution against enemy infiltration, all Kerman launches take place at a secret location, under the cover of night.
Achtung: Zündung - START!
The A4 takes off from the launchpad
and zooms into the night sky, leaving behind a concussive grumble.
Problems with the attitude control force the Kerman controllers to switch on the RCS thrusters, and guide the rocket into orbit earlier than planned.
The course is the most important thing now - the rocket has plenty of fuel reserves in the second stage and can reach a much higher altitude.
The first stage is separated.
Without problems as it seems.
But in a series of mishaps ..
.. the second and third stage separation fire simultaneously.
this leaves the spacecraft in a very dangerous situation, because the powerful second stage is now pushing without control.
Precious time is lost before Mission Control is able to point the two intermingled stages towards the Earth
This would be the only chance to escape from a no-return trajectory.
The emergency maneuvre is only partially successful.
As the second stage finally burns out, it leaves the spaceship on an elliptical orbit far out into space.
Since it has no engine of it's own, there seems not one chance now to retrieve the capsule with its precious data.
The spaceship will first fly out far beyond the orbit of the Moon, and then approach the Earth at about 55km height.
There is however, still a lot of time.
A call from Berlin:
"Ja, die Kapsel has a small retro engine, but it can only burn for a few seconds."
"Zere is a chance, but only a small chance, to use it for a brake maneuvre. But we must try zis before ze components get too cold."
Days into the mission, about halfway to the Earth.
The burn is initiated.
This gives also a rare look at the Earth and Moon from considerable distance.
The retro burn was not succesful, and the capsule passes the Earth at 50.000 m height.
It has become a comet that circles the Earth and Moon.
Later ..
The mission was continued at high time compression.
At this point, Peenesmünde had already written off chances to retrieve their spacecraft and its valuable data.
However, on a subsequent pass of the Moon the capsule got a gravity pull, and the new trajectory would eventually bring it to the surface!
The new trajectory after the Lunar gravity assist.
Unfortunately the images from this point went missing, so they were reconstructed at Bavaria Filmstudios.
After an epic journey, the nearly stranded spaceship re-entered the athmosphere.
The parachute, deployed at insane speed.
And it held!
The spaceship came down in friendly Mongolia.
A few days later agents from Mongolia reached the battered capsule and are currently smuggling it back to Kermany.
The Kermans talk of a 50% success. The mission went through a lot of problems, and the upper stage was a complete failure. But the rocket has impressed a first glimpse of considerable power, in spite of the difficult circumstances. The specialists at Focke Wulf are absolutely optimistic that the few remaining problems will be ironed out until the next launch.