- 7 months ago
NOVA looks at life on the Russian space station Mir and investigates the recent series of mishaps that the station has encountered.
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00:01During the following program, look for NOVA's webmarkers which lead you to more information at our website.
00:09Tonight on NOVA, 250 miles above Earth, disaster strikes the Russian space station.
00:17I could see a very large flame, smoke billowing out.
00:22I knew we had been hit. I was totally ignorant of what they were doing.
00:27No one at NASA knew what the Russians were doing.
00:30Four men survive to tell the truth about Mir.
00:35Terror in space.
00:37Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
00:42Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
00:52This program is funded in part by Northwestern Mutual Life, which has been protecting families and businesses for generations.
01:02Have you heard from The Quiet Company? Northwestern Mutual Life.
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01:50Nearly 250 miles above the Earth's surface is the Russian space station, Mir.
02:03Mir is one of the oldest spacecrafts still in use.
02:07And Russians have been living there for over a decade.
02:13In 1995, NASA began sending American astronauts to Mir to work side by side with Russian cosmonauts.
02:28But on one recent mission, a series of disasters struck Mir,
02:33jeopardizing that collaboration and the lives of Americans and Russians on board.
02:39I would not go back again. I've done it. I'm done.
02:44I got out of it alive.
02:48What will be remembered as one of the most terrifying chapters in the history of space flight,
02:53began with high hopes.
02:58In February 1997, two Russian cosmonauts were departing for a routine tour of duty on Mir.
03:05I just want to give you a little tour of Mir.
03:08I'm Jerry Lininger, of course, and I'm in the base block.
03:11They were joining American astronaut Jerry Lininger, who had been sent to Mir about a month earlier.
03:17When the time's available.
03:21Jerry's new commander would be Vassily Sibleev,
03:24who had spent almost seven months on Mir on a previous mission.
03:28When I was a little boy of seven, I heard that Yuri Gagarin had gone into space.
03:35And I was immediately infected with the idea.
03:39It started off as an impossible dream.
03:45Engineer Sasha Lazutkin was visiting Mir for the first time.
03:48In kindergarten, I once jumped from a high wooden tower.
03:56And someone called me Sasha the cosmonaut.
03:59That was it for me.
04:01I don't remember ever dreaming of being anything else.
04:06Vassily and Sasha were the 23rd Russian crew to fly on Mir.
04:09For luck, Vassily had taken his daughter's pink plastic rabbit with him.
04:24And on this ill-fated mission, he would need all the luck he could get.
04:28Traveling about 18,000 miles an hour around the Earth, it takes two days to catch up to Mir.
04:41Vassily and Sasha were replacing two other cosmonauts.
05:00Jerry Lininger still had another three months on Mir.
05:05Just a good feeling to know other people are coming on board.
05:08The same two faces, you start looking forward to some visitors.
05:13We opened the hatch, it was very joyous.
05:16We were very glad to see each other.
05:21You still?
05:23You still, Priya.
05:25And Vassily says hello to everybody.
05:27I guess I had a sense that I was doing something good for the country.
05:30I was a U.S. Navy officer.
05:33And I always felt a sense of duty and patriotism.
05:35I think I was about 14 when I saw the moon landings and I said,
05:40man, I'd like to do that someday.
05:42You get lucky sometimes.
05:45Vassily's previous tour on Mir meant he quickly adapted to living in space.
05:51Sasha was not so fortunate.
05:53I was absolutely amazed when he started to do somersaults in front of us.
06:00As far as I was concerned, to hell with this weightlessness.
06:04Me, I just felt sick.
06:06I just felt sick.
06:11Mir is a complex feat of engineering.
06:16It is actually seven individual modules launched separately and docked together to form one large space station.
06:23The first building block, the core module, was placed in orbit in 1986 and contains astronauts living quarters and the station's controls.
06:35Then modules called KVANT-1 and KVANT-2 with scientific instruments and a shower were installed.
06:48In 1990, another scientific laboratory called CRYSTAL was added.
06:53American astronauts usually live and work in the SPECTRE module, launched in 1995.
07:00Mir was completed with the addition of the PREROTA module and a docking module for the space shuttle.
07:08Every few months, supplies are sent up to Mir and trash is removed in unmanned cargo ships called PROGRESS.
07:16Cosmonauts arrive and depart in Soyuz capsules.
07:19Mir weighs over 200,000 pounds and is the size of half a dozen school buses stuck together.
07:33Designed to last five years, it has far exceeded its life expectancy, though not without developing some quirks.
07:41The station has become like a living creature.
07:45It really does have a life of its own.
07:46Things switch on, switch off, dials register and so on.
07:51It's like a living being.
07:53I think I would describe Mir as a spider.
07:57And it's got all these little legs sticking out in all different directions.
08:01It's sort of gangly-looking thing.
08:03The joints don't all move properly, so it's splayed out in different directions.
08:08But out in space, it doesn't matter.
08:11You don't have to be aerodynamic or anything.
08:13You just kind of hang out in any shape you want to hang out in.
08:17I'm amazed that we managed to build such a station.
08:21I think it's practically perfect.
08:24Of course, there's surprise and pride.
08:26For goodness sake, let's call it pride.
08:30That we can build such a complicated structure.
08:39But pride does not pay the bills.
08:42After the Soviet Union crumbled, the Russian Space Agency fell on hard times.
08:46The space shuttle they built as a taxi to Mir flew only once before being canceled.
08:57Realistically, they had almost nothing after about 1991.
09:01Their program spending was severely reduced.
09:04Their big dreams were all being put on hold.
09:08And the Mir station was being maintained, but barely.
09:11And they were not able to launch the new modules to it.
09:14So I think it was an economic reality to them that they needed a partner, someone to work with.
09:19And with our space heritage and theirs combined, it made perfect sense.
09:23To raise cash, the Russians invited paying guests on board.
09:27This is a historic moment that I'm just very excited.
09:30Mr. Kopchev, I want to give you a hug.
09:34NASA paid Russia $400 million to send its astronauts to Mir.
09:42Driving this deal was the new International Space Station, or ISS,
09:47now being built by the United States with the help of Russia and other countries.
09:53ISS will be a $20 billion orbiting laboratory, more than five times the size of Mir.
10:02Astronauts from all over the world will live and work here for months at a time.
10:06To prepare for this high-stakes venture in space, NASA wanted to train its astronauts on Mir.
10:16Commander, sleep station.
10:18Jerry Leninger was the fourth U.S. astronaut to be sent to Mir.
10:23The crews are really there to study long-term endurance in space.
10:28But it's not all work.
10:29Shortly after Sasha and Vasily arrived, the departing crew decided to hold a party.
10:38There was caviar, red caviar, which we brought along ourselves.
10:46You didn't get it in your rations, it's too expensive.
10:51But we treated ourselves.
10:54Let's just say it was a festive evening, and all six of us were sitting around this table.
11:02They brought some lemons, and the aroma is just wonderful.
11:10And it kind of gets you in the heart when you smell the things of the earth.
11:15With two crews on board, oxygen was being used up more quickly than usual.
11:26So Sasha left the party and flew to another part of the station to turn on a supplemental oxygen canister.
11:33This is what it looks like when we receive it at the station.
11:44Here's the lid, and everything is sealed.
11:49We break the seal, and then we open the lid, and then we slide it into this generator.
11:57It reminds me of the Napoleonic War, when they'd have to insert a cannonball into a cannon by hand.
12:08This routine task would have unforeseen consequences.
12:13I looked down the passageway, and I could see a very large flame bursting out of the canister, smoke billowing out, and I knew we had a big problem.
12:33Fire is especially dangerous in a spacecraft.
12:36A leak had caused a chemical reaction in the oxygen canister, and turned it into a giant blowtorch.
12:43Molten metal was flying across, splattering on the other bulkhead, which meant it was hot.
12:49The flame was at least this big, two, three feet, directional, had oxygen, had fuel, had everything it needed.
13:00The fire was also billowing dense black smoke, which was rapidly filling the module.
13:04When I saw the ship was full of smoke, my natural earthly reaction was to want to open a window.
13:13And then I was truly afraid for the first time.
13:18You're in such a small space that you can't escape from the smoke.
13:22You can't just open a window to ventilate the room.
13:24I grabbed the respirator off the wall, activated it, took in a breath, and I didn't get any oxygen.
13:33At that point there was a lot of smoke. I took the mask off.
13:37Again, earth instinct made me look low to try to find a clear spot where I could get a quick breath, because I was getting very short of breath at that time.
13:46But it was solid smoke. The smoke does not rise in space like it does on the ground. It's just everywhere.
13:55I went to the other respirator on the other wall, opened it up. At that point Vasily was there. He saw I was getting into trouble.
14:08He helped me get the thing out. I activated it again, put it on, breathed in, and luckily got oxygen at that point.
14:16The fire was blocking one of the two Soyuz escape ships that were docked to Mir.
14:25Each ship could carry three men. If the fire couldn't be put out, some of the crew would be left behind to die.
14:34The fire extinguisher functions in two ways, foam and water.
14:41When I started spraying foam on the hot canister, the foam didn't stick and had little effect.
14:49So I switched to water and started using that.
14:52We went through two, three fire extinguishers, and they really didn't do much to stop anything.
15:01But the water did keep the fire from spreading.
15:04Jerry Lininger kept tugging my leg and asking,
15:13Valeri, how do you feel? Are you alive? I answered, I'm alive, Jerry. Everything's okay.
15:20After 14 minutes, the fire burned itself out.
15:23The next morning, Jerry's NASA support team arrived for work at Russian Mission Control near Moscow, with no idea there had been a fire on Mir.
15:40The Russians had never informed them.
15:45I noticed there was a lot of people down there.
15:47A lot of the life support people that I worked with, and that really told me something is wrong.
15:53And the big ship flight directors were there, and the flight director was there, Silovia.
15:58And he comes up to me and says, we have a problem.
16:01So I said, okay.
16:03So I sit down there and I listen, and I knew some Russian, and I pick up the word fire, pajar.
16:09And I did a double take. So I called up to my interpreter and asked him, did he really say they had a fire on board?
16:16I said, yes, Tony, they had a fire on board, but everybody's okay.
16:19Well, actually, Tony Singh phoned me, if I remember right, and it was about 2, 2.30 in the morning, something like that.
16:25And it had happened about 12 hours before.
16:28And I remember mentally calculating, why didn't they call me in the afternoon when it happened, when I was awake?
16:34Russian Mission Control had not informed the families of the crew, either.
16:38The first Sasha Lazutkin's wife heard was on the radio.
16:44There were colleagues who also heard the news.
16:47They tried to be supportive and help me out of the state of shock I was in.
16:52They started telling me, everything's okay.
16:55Why are you so pale?
16:57Everything's fine.
16:59Everybody's alive.
17:04Soon after the fire, the old crew departed.
17:06Smuggled in their luggage was a letter from Jerry to his wife.
17:11That's the first thing I really had heard from Jerry.
17:14I mean, true, his real thoughts down on paper, you know, that no one could open up.
17:19So I knew he was being completely honest with me about, you know, what was happening.
17:23And I didn't realize how serious it was until I got that letter.
17:28I really didn't care what the press said, but my wife did send me, in the middle of a letter, she snuck in a line.
17:33I'm surprised they even sent it up to me because everything had to get approved by the Russian side.
17:38But it had a one-line quote that said there was a small fire on Mir, non-life-threatening, the crew put on respirators as a precaution, everything's normal.
17:48And when I read that, I just said, that's a different space station and that's a different fire than the one I just barely survived.
17:57For the Russians, the important thing was that the fire was out and the crew had survived unhurt.
18:10To this day, they believe the event was insignificant.
18:18It was like a cigarette lighting up, but it gave off flame rather than smoke as it should have done.
18:23Nothing else caught fire, not the chair, not the cable, no bit of rag, not a hat or a jacket, nothing else burned.
18:31That's the truth. Ask anyone you want.
18:34That, I think, is indicative of the compartment they've operated in for so long.
18:40They didn't have to explain these things to the outside world for a long time.
18:43And as long as they kept the Mir flying and everybody alive and the operation going, the details of it really were not that important
18:49because all the government cared about early on was that they had this symbol in orbit and that they were continuing the program.
19:02As for the fire, the term fire itself, I don't like it and I don't think it applies here.
19:07We just called this unfortunate incident the unplanned burning of an oxygen canister.
19:16They just didn't want to talk about the fire.
19:18As a matter of fact, during one communication session, we actually, I had it out with the ground because I finally just blurted into the conversation saying I need to talk to somebody.
19:27And they said they basically ignored me and would not let me talk to anybody about the fire.
19:35While the disagreements continued on Earth, life returned to normal on Mir.
19:43Jerry, Vasily and Sasha divided their time between scientific experiments and maintenance of Mir's aging equipment.
19:50We had many system failures and they were in need of your constant attention.
20:01And, you know, many days I'd start an experiment in the morning to get it running.
20:05Then I'd run over, help hacksaw through a pipe and plug the ends and then run back to my experiment.
20:12I'd have three or four watches on with alarms set to different things that I had to run back to.
20:17So I was multitasking in order to try to get everything accomplished.
20:24Sasha had his own problems.
20:26The oxygen generators kept breaking down and he was having a hard time keeping the upper hand.
20:35It's like when the tamer goes into the tiger's cage and says,
20:39I'm going to tame you. I'm the human. I'm in charge.
20:42The problem was at the same time that that occurred, we also had cooling problems and the inside temperature of Mir was over 90 degrees for about a month Fahrenheit.
20:56We're into the toilet area now.
20:59At the same time, our toilet broke and, of course, the ground says fix the oxygen generator.
21:02Well, after that comp passed, we all snuck away and started working on the toilet.
21:08Because, you know, when you got to go, you got to go.
21:11In the middle of these problems, the progress arrived.
21:20The progress is normally a great sight. The progress launches from Earth, comes up, brings all the resupplies that you need, critical parts, food, totally automatic, docks onto the Mir space station.
21:31You then take maybe two or three weeks to unload it.
21:36At that point, you now have an empty vehicle and you use that space to put your garbage in.
21:43When it's full, progress undocks, re-enters the atmosphere in sort of an uncontrolled fashion and burns up during re-entry, never to be seen again.
21:54But this time, Mission Control wanted to do things a bit differently.
22:01Instead of jettisoning the progress, they wanted to send it out into space, turn it around, and bring it back to Mir to test a new docking system.
22:14It was a procedure that would have grave consequences.
22:17The Russians have been using an automatic system to dock progress cargo ships successfully for years.
22:25Now they wanted to replace it with a much cheaper manual system called Toru.
22:32Vasily had practiced manual docking using the Toru simulator, but never in real life.
22:38The way Toru works is a camera mounted on the front of the incoming cargo ship transmits an image of the Mir's docking port to the commander's screen.
22:49The commander steers progress as he watches an image of his own ship.
22:56But the system didn't work as planned.
22:59The camera on board the cargo ship failed and we couldn't see anything on the monitor.
23:09With no image to guide him, Vasily still had to steer the progress or it might collide with Mir, causing a dangerous puncture and loss of pressure.
23:18As the progress drew closer and closer, Sasha and Jerry desperately raced from porthole to porthole, trying to see the approaching cargo ship.
23:27I'm looking. There was nothing. There was nothing.
23:32And then suddenly it's there. And I say, Vasily, there it is.
23:36Vasily could only look through this porthole.
23:39He said, which way do I steer?
23:41And I'm pointing it out to him. There it is, the cargo ship.
23:47All of a sudden I get a very frantic call saying, Jerry, get back in here, get ready to jump into Soyuz, get ready to evacuate.
23:55I throw the headset off. I go flying back in, glance out the window and I see a vehicle coming very quickly at us, similar to a car coming onto a freeway.
24:08You know, 70, 80 miles an hour. Of course, the speed was much greater, but that sort of feeling where, is this guy going to hit me or not?
24:15My life didn't flash before my eyes, nothing like that. I was just battling to the last, trying to avert what was happening.
24:23Vasily was basically standing like this, firing a thruster with a look of, am I doing the right thing? Not really sure if he was firing the correct sequence because he did not have a view in the television screen.
24:38The only feedback he had was to yell to Sasha, what did he do to it? Did it turn it to the left? Is it doing what I think it's doing? He'd fly back, take a look again, fly back, fire a thruster. It was totally in the blind.
24:53The picture suddenly appeared on the screen, out of the blue. Vasily saw it, fixed on it. I saw the cargo ship was passing next to the Spectre module. I thought, God, please don't let it hit Spectre.
25:13I'm watching. It flew past us.
25:24Narrowly missing Mir, progress burned up as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.
25:30Vasily, the next compass, he told the ground what he thought about it. He said, you've set me up for failure. This is a terrible operation. That was not a good situation.
25:42Among the crew, we had a little conference. I said, do you mind if I tell our side that I am not comfortable doing that progress docking? And they said, absolutely not, Jerry. Go ahead and tell them.
25:57Jerry reported the near miss to his American ground support in Moscow. But it would not be the last time the Russians would test this risky maneuver.
26:11After four months and two close calls, Jerry's tour on Mir was finally drawing to an end.
26:19The space shuttle was delivering another American astronaut, Michael Fole, to take his place.
26:26NASA says Fole was aware of the problems, but was still eager to fly to Mir.
26:36We have booster ignition and liftoff of this space shuttle Atlantis, maintaining America's constant presence in space.
26:43When I got launched, I was in a very relaxed mood. I was in a holiday mood. Nothing really bothered me about it at that point.
26:50This is a special mission for Michael Fole. He's flown three times before, but on this particular flight, of course, he will be staying on board the Mir space station.
26:57I really had very high hopes that things were going to be very easy.
27:04You know, watching the shuttle coming up underneath us at 18,000 miles an hour was the most beautiful sight in the world.
27:14I was ready to go home. I had done my duty. My time was up in my mind. I knew I had this much time. I had maintained my efficiency throughout that time.
27:35And for me, it was a moment of triumph. The shuttle's there. I made it. And when the shuttle came and docked, it was glorious.
27:45In addition to an on-camera tour of Mir for mission control, Jerry briefed Michael in confidence about his experiences on board.
28:07Jerry and I talked for a long time, maybe a total of six hours or so over three or four days.
28:14Just privately between the two of us. And he told me a lot of things. He described the fire, for example, they'd experience.
28:20The fire was basically in this region here, with the flames shooting across this way.
28:27So, my eyes were wide open and I understood what I was getting into.
28:31We had one other body in front of me. I was passing the fire extinguisher. But we could only get one person in here.
28:38Jerry was being very careful to tell me,
28:41Don't be fooled by the illusion that this is all okay while shuttle's here. It will change.
28:47I think Jerry might want to say something to you guys there in the control center.
28:51Brought it right in, steady as can be. It was great to see him. And it's going to be a great celebration here.
28:56Jerry, it's great to see you. And we're looking forward to having you back at Ellington.
29:00And we had to say goodbye. And that's what I did. I said goodbye, good luck. We've had a great stay together and I'll see you back on the planet.
29:14It's kind of sorry to see them close the hatch on ourselves here.
29:18My time was up. I was leaving. And I did not have any terrible overwhelming emotion other than pure joy to be heading home.
29:31As the shuttle departed, everyone hoped that Michael Fole's stint on Mir would be less eventful than Jerry's.
29:42When Michael arrived, the atmosphere did change a little. A new person had arrived. And we felt we had to look after him.
30:10We had to show the new man around. Tell him everything. Make a fuss over him.
30:19They think Americans and Westerners generally are soft.
30:22They believe that Russians have a natural ability to suffer, to take hardship and surmount it.
30:31They think, oh, we have got to make this easy for that person.
30:35This person is going to be unhappy, miserable, if it's not easier for them than it is for us.
30:42And it's a feeling of condescension and patronage.
30:47And Sascha, I mean, I love him, but I had to always laugh. He would always try and shelter me from anything that was going on on Mir.
30:55And the institution is trying to shelter the foreigner from anything that's going on.
31:02Life on Mir settled into an established pattern.
31:15But the calm of Michael's first few weeks on board would soon be shattered.
31:31A hint that trouble was on the horizon came when Vasily talked with his astrologer, not an uncommon practice in Russia or among cosmonauts.
31:44How are you, my little rabbits?
31:49Everything seems okay.
31:51Yes, but you are about to enter a strange new period.
31:57Several weeks after Michael Foll arrived, Russian Mission Control delivered some bad news.
32:03They wanted Vasily to try to dock another progress using the manual system.
32:09He wasn't happy with the first attempt they'd made.
32:14He said this was a terrible event. He uses the word straussion.
32:17It was a nightmarish event that haunted him in a way.
32:21He wasn't any longer sure in his ability to pull this off.
32:25And it wasn't just Vasily's reputation that was on the line.
32:30They have come up with the idea of a contract for the cosmonaut to be paid a certain large sum,
32:37basically a salary, at the end of the flight, should everything have gone well.
32:46The way they determine what's gone well is the controllers, who are also the judges of this process,
32:52come up with a list of what they hope will be achieved during the flight,
32:56and they assign a value to each item.
32:58And then, as the flight progresses, if something is not achieved, a black mark is assigned.
33:03They call it a zamachanya.
33:06At the end of the flight, the control team has the right to say,
33:11you did not carry out this plan as we desired.
33:16We are going to lop so much money off.
33:18Vasily could not afford to fail again.
33:20After loading a progress with trash, the crew was to send it out into space,
33:27turn it around, and redock it manually,
33:30the same procedure that had nearly caused a crash before.
33:34I was totally ignorant of what they were doing.
33:39I had no idea what they were doing.
33:40No one at NASA knew what the Russians were doing.
33:43What we didn't pay attention to enough was that the Russians were doing something new.
33:48We didn't know that that was going to cause them to not work this thing out properly
33:53and take risks that we don't think they would normally have entered into.
33:57Russian mission control thought the radar on the automatic docking system
34:03might have caused the video monitor to fail on the previous manual attempt.
34:07So they made a crucial decision.
34:11They switched the radar off.
34:12I'm still thinking everything's normal because no one has told me anything about what systems were turned off or on.
34:27Without the radar, Vasily wasn't given the cargo ship's speed or position.
34:32His only guide was the image of Mir taken from Progress,
34:36an image that was almost impossible to see.
34:38It was very difficult to make out the station.
34:42It looks very similar to the clouds.
34:49Sasha and I, meanwhile, tried to look out a window and find this thing.
34:54They had laser rangefinders that gave distance and speed,
34:58but until they could pinpoint the cargo ship,
35:01Vasily would have to make the judgments on his own.
35:03Vasily now was showing a little impatience for us to find it and see it and give him a range mark.
35:14Sasha left his camera pointed at the video screen,
35:18showing the view of Mir from the incoming progress.
35:21Things had gone wrong, very badly wrong.
35:23The range and the speed had been horribly misjudged.
35:25When I saw that the progress was approaching too fast, I wondered why.
35:36I fired the braking rockets, but it did not slow down.
35:39Through the porthole I could see the cargo ship gliding below us.
35:48Sasha looked extremely agitated, stood up and came erect and said,
35:59Michael, to the spacecraft.
36:02I said, Michael, get in the escape ship.
36:06And he flew across there.
36:08That order that Sasha gave me,
36:10the carabal, don't stay and try and help us.
36:13Don't let us use your expertise.
36:15Don't let us do anything with you.
36:17Just get out of our way to the spacecraft.
36:19There wasn't enough time and braking power to direct the cargo ship away from the station.
36:38It was full of menace, like a shark.
36:42I watched this black body, covered in spots, sliding past below me.
36:47I looked closer, and at that point there was a great thump, and the whole station shook.
37:06I felt through my fingers a shudder, a thump on the station,
37:10and I heard what seemed to be far off, a kathump.
37:13At that point, I knew we had been hit by the progress.
37:21The decompression alarm system immediately went off.
37:25The pressure began to fall, and the station started to spin.
37:29The progress had smashed a hole in the solar panels, and air was leaking out of the ship.
37:35We had to calculate how much time we had left.
37:43540 millibars pressure is critical.
37:49Below that, and anyone left on the station can lose consciousness at any moment.
37:55Air was leaking because progress had punched a small hole in the Spectre module,
38:03where American astronauts usually sleep.
38:05If they didn't seal off the module, the loss of air would kill everyone.
38:09We knew time was running out. There was a battle going on.
38:14We had to work as fast as possible. We had to beat time.
38:19Vassili was basically monitoring the pressure fall on a very sensitive instrument of barometer
38:25in the base block, and had stayed at his central post there.
38:28While he was doing that, we came into the range of the ground stations,
38:33the Russian ground stations. He told them that we had been hit.
38:37They asked him, is there a problem? He said, yes, we are leaking air.
38:41When we heard the words, decompression on station, I felt a sense of detachment.
38:58It wasn't me hearing this, it was some other person.
39:02Then I shuddered, like waking from a terrible dream,
39:06because something like this is not supposed to happen.
39:09The interpreter gets a funny look on his face and just looks at me and says,
39:13they hit something. Just a very plain of day, ordinary tone.
39:17So I'm thinking, you know, maybe the crew hit their hand with a hammer,
39:20or something plain like that.
39:22But then, of course, I ask him, you know, what do you mean they hit something?
39:24Explain a little bit, and he says, oh, well, the progress hit the space station.
39:28I was asleep again, and another one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls,
39:33which had seemed to be coming too regularly.
39:35And this time, they said that the progress hit the mirror.
39:40And they said, there's a leak.
39:42They think it's Inspector, they're closing the hatch.
39:44And, of course, my next question is, how in the world could this possibly have happened?
39:47When I was back on the ground and heard of that accident, it was about a month after I got back.
39:54You know, it was terrible news.
39:57I remember how my children immediately went quiet.
40:09Maybe they didn't understand the full extent of the danger.
40:13Maybe my reaction affected them.
40:16But they went as quiet as mice.
40:18On mirror, Sasha and Michael were trying to close the hatch to the Spectre module to stop the decompression.
40:28But first, they had to cut all the power cables from Spectre's solar panels, which run through the hatchway.
40:33Sasha was working so fast and so furiously that I was not going to stop him in the slightest.
40:42All I did was I would gather up the cables as he would clear them, and I would tie them off so that they wouldn't fall back once again across the hatchway.
40:50And it was when we got to one thin cable that had no obvious plug on either side, and it was the last one left that was stopping us from closing the hatch.
41:03And Sasha says, is there a knife?
41:05And I looked around, and there was no knife apparent in the node.
41:08Sasha had to go and get one from the kitchen table, and we brought back a kitchen knife and started sawing on it.
41:13And we got sparks coming out of it.
41:15So I said, Sasha, I don't think we should try and saw this. This is too bad.
41:18So we then had wasted already another minute probably trying to cut this remaining thin cable.
41:23We then hunted around to try and find the plug where that cable went to, somewhere else in the node.
41:28It was hidden under a mass of other cables.
41:31We found that, disconnected it, and then threw that cable into the Spectre.
41:35They succeeded in closing the hatch.
41:39But they reported that their situation was continuing to deteriorate.
41:43The impact had knocked Mir into a slow tumble.
41:59Its solar panels out of alignment with the sun, the batteries drained, and critical systems shut down.
42:04For the first time, I experienced a totally silent, still space station, where there are no fans moving.
42:14There is no light on. Nothing is alive. Just our breathing is causing any sound.
42:20Almost everything on Mir had died or been switched off to conserve energy, even radio contact with Earth.
42:35The silence is deafening. You want to close your ears so you can't actually hear the sound of silence.
42:50It's painful. You experience flight in a completely different way.
42:56Now suddenly, there was silence.
43:00We watched the polar lights and the stars in complete silence.
43:13I said to Vassili, in spite of how bad a day this has been, this is a beautiful moment. Don't you think so?
43:20And Vassili just said, it's been a terrible day.
43:31Vassili said, oh, they're just going to kill me. My career's over. It's all over.
43:37And I said, oh, Vassili, I don't think that's necessarily the case.
43:40Americans are involved. The fact that Americans are involved in this program means that they can't just push you aside.
43:45And he said, no, Michael, you don't know our system.
43:52But the crew was facing more than the death of their careers.
43:57To save Mir and themselves, they had to get the station realigned to the sun.
44:02So Vassili used the rocket thrusters belonging to the Soyuz escape ship to nudge Mir back into position.
44:16Slowly, Mir began to catch the sunlight again.
44:19Over the next few hours, the station flickered back to life.
44:33One instrument at a time.
44:40Back on Earth, the inquests had begun.
44:44It wasn't equipment failure. No.
44:49Apparently, though it is too early to say for certain, it was human error.
44:54There certainly were mistakes made on board.
44:59There were some mistakes made on the ground.
45:02There were mistakes made on our side.
45:03I still blame myself for not being more inquisitive about the details of what they were doing and what the safeguards were.
45:11In Moscow, the finger-pointing started in earnest.
45:16Vassili's instruction manual said he was to stop the progress 50 meters away from Mir,
45:22wait for mission control's go-ahead, and then proceed to dock.
45:25Why didn't he stop at 50 meters but kept flying the progress by the book as if nothing was wrong when it could clearly end in tragedy?
45:40A combination of circumstances and factors aggravated the situation.
45:44All the same, the main reason for the accident was incorrect technique on the part of the commander.
45:54The commander did not act according to the expert's instructions.
46:00That's the whole point. I followed the instructions exactly. But why didn't it slow down? That's what I asked myself. Why?
46:13To find out why Vassili couldn't stop the progress as it approached Mir,
46:19experts were called into Star City, Russia's cosmonaut training center.
46:25They thought that Vassili might have been unable to break because trash in the progress had been loaded off-center.
46:36They tested this idea using a simulator flown by eight of Russia's top cosmonauts.
46:44Some cosmonauts collided with the station when carrying out the same maneuver.
46:50Others flew safely by the station at high speed.
46:53I think only one managed to break as Vassili was instructed to do.
46:59And that was because, to some extent, he ignored the instructions.
47:05If Vassili couldn't break the progress, why didn't he simply steer it away or abort the docking?
47:12The reason why I think Vassili didn't abort is because he is a military officer who has always carried out orders.
47:20The relationship of Vassili to the control center is what I consider to be the sort of the master-slave culture that has existed in Russia and the Soviet Union for a very long time.
47:33It's still there, and it's present in the Soviet system that is still now controlling the space program.
47:44Mir has been a dress rehearsal for the next phase of space exploration, the new International Space Station.
47:51The success of ISS now depends to some extent on how well Russia and America can work together.
48:00You cannot have two bosses when you've got a critical operation going on, and if something's going wrong, you have to have one person calling the shots and making the decisions.
48:10Right now on ISS, the leader is the US.
48:13The ISS is going to be dominated by America.
48:17America is putting in many, many billions more than Russia is into that program.
48:22The Russians feel that what they have done is not valued. Pride is their issue.
48:28All I can say is it is greatly valued, but we must do things that are different.
48:33It has got to work exactly right or somebody's going to get hurt.
48:36For the exhausted crew aboard Mir, the problems were not over.
48:44Three days after the collision, a computer problem disabled the steering.
48:49Four days later, the oxygen generators failed again.
48:53Vasily developed an irregular heartbeat from all the stress.
48:57He was put on sedatives and ordered to rest.
49:01We simply had to work.
49:03There was no point in thinking about tiredness. We had work to do, so we worked.
49:10To make matters worse, Sasha accidentally disconnected a vital computer cable, and Mir fell out of alignment with the sun.
49:19Once again, the station was adrift with almost no power.
49:24Oh, my feelings. Shooting yourself would be easier.
49:30It was terrible.
49:34As soon as the station emergency alarm went off,
49:38I realized instantly that I'd made a mistake.
49:44Mir drifted for about 18 hours before they were able to get power back.
49:53Over the next month, the crew continued to struggle with repairs.
50:04The press picked up rumors that Vasily was to lose six months' salary and his docking bonus.
50:09Critics were questioning Mir's safety and whether another American astronaut should replace Michael Fole at the end of his tour of duty as planned.
50:23There were lots of questions about Mir, and then the question came down to, should we send anybody at all?
50:27Congress asked NASA to guarantee that Mir was safe for its astronauts.
50:34And we went through our normal safety reviews, we went through additional reviews, we went through independent reviews, we talked to the Inspector General, the General Accounting Office, the Congress, several independent panels that headquarters set up.
50:48Almost too many people to count. And the consensus was that, yes, we should continue.
50:55Two more Americans were sent to Mir, but not before a Soyuz was dispatched in August 1997 to bring a new Russian crew to Mir and take Vasily and Sasha home.
51:07I didn't want to leave the station because I felt it was like a living creature.
51:29No one who has been there thinks of Mir simply as a pile of metal. It's as if it touches you inside and you feel you're a part of the station.
51:53Vasily and Sasha returned safely to Earth and did not have their pay docked. They are unlikely to be sent into space again.
52:06After all the dirt that was thrown at us, nobody ever apologized to us, not on television or in the air.
52:26Absolutely nobody apologized.
52:40Sasha Lazutkin made a guest appearance on QVC, a television shopping channel, explaining the components of a Russian space suit.
52:47Alexandra Lazutkin is again with us. Thank you so much for joining us. Now we have something that's also very, very special.
52:54This is a cosmonaut space suit. This is an actual cosmonaut space suit.
52:59Michael Fole spent the next month on Mir without incident and still works for NASA as an astronaut.
53:08Jerry Lininger resigned from NASA. It is doubtful he will ever go into space again.
53:21Jerry Lininger resigned from NASA. It is doubtful he will ever go into space again.
53:23I think one of the hardest things people have is knowing when to close a chapter.
53:28The Mir is one fantastic accomplishment. Putting that thing together over the last 10 or 11 years is tremendous.
53:38But I think you can safely say that it's time to retire Mir with dignity and move on to the next generation space station.
53:49The last American astronaut returned safely from Mir in June of 1998.
53:56The Russians continue to send crews to Mir. There are plans, still indefinite, to retire the station in the near future.
54:06Mir will soon have company. Preview the new International Space Station on NOVA's website.
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