The Swan Song

To continue the hectic race with limited resources, Korolev came up with the idea of transforming Vostok from a single cosmonaut capsule into a small three-passenger spacecraft. Thus was born the Voskhods, whose first flight in October 1964 inaugurated the season of mixed crews, military pilots along with civilian technicians, and ended while a coup was being staged in the Kremlin: the deposition of Khrushchev, replaced at the head of the CPSU by Leonid Brezhnev. Undaunted, the chief designer had another ace up his sleeve: a spacewalk. The difficult exercise was entrusted to the son of a Siberian horse breeder, Alexei Leonov, who completed it despite deadly obstacles during the extravehicular activity and the continuation of the flight. Korolev had little time to enjoy another triumph. He died under the surgeon's knife in January 1966, leaving behind a prestigious legacy and a pool of brilliant colleagues, including Vladimir Chelomei, with whom he had fought but also collaborated on a new spacecraft. Unfortunately, the hastily arranged first flight of the Soyuz in 1967 turned into a tragedy with the death of the pilot, Vladimir Komarov. Another sign of the changing winds that were now blowing in favor of the Americans.