Anatoly Zak

When the Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasted into orbit for the first time, Lyndon Johnson was the president, the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," and Star Trek made its television debut. Fast-forward 50 years and Russia's most famous spacecraft is still in business, outliving all of its contemporaries—and even some of its much more capable successors.

Today, Russia's space workhorse remains the only available taxi to the International Space Station, with agencies like NASA paying millions of dollars for their astronauts to ride on the venerable design. Yet the Soyuz spacecraft almost died before it was born.

A Close Call With Oblivion

The Soyuz was first conceived at the turn of the 1960s, as a part of the complicated multi-launch plan to send a pair of Soviet cosmonauts on a quick record-setting dash behind the far side of the Moon. But in May 1961, President John F. Kennedy set the bar much higher, challenging the USSR to an actual Moon landing. Within just couple of years, NASA proved it meant business by launching its burgeoning Apollo program. The USSR's needed to play catch up. By 1964, the Soviet rocket industry finally built the code-named L3 lunar lander, and a mammoth N1 rocket to go with it, designed to put a single cosmonaut on the Moon ahead of the Americans.

The original Soyuz, the 7K-OK spacecraft. This is digital recreation using available rare imagery, historical descriptions, and rare technical drawings of the ship's various components. The author's own photographs of surviving hardware helped finish this recreation. Anatoly Zak

At the same time, the founder of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, directed a small group of his associates to brainstorm possible tasks for the original Soyuz design before scrapping it entirely. Prophetically, the team argued for saving the vehicle as a test bed for future orbital Earth missions. The ship was repurposed for rehearsing rendezvous and docking in space.

After a torturous marathon development, a pair of Soyuz ships prepared for launch in November 1966, exactly 50 years ago. They were set to blast off within 24 hours of each other to demonstrate the world's first fully automated rendezvous and docking in space. Another pair of Soyuz ships would follow a few months later, this time with cosmonauts onboard. Once docked, two of the three crew members on one spacecraft would spacewalk along the handrails to join their lone colleague in the first ship, practicing future transfers between a lunar lander and an Earth return vehicle.

Countless technical problems and the tireless race to fix them became a hallmark of Soyuz's early history

The very first unmanned Soyuz launched on November 28, 1966, and immediately ran into trouble, making the planned joint mission impossible. The landing attempt was also botched when the empty crew module self-destructed after entering a wrong descent trajectory.

Valentina Komarov, the widow of Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, kisses a photograph of her dead husband, 26 April 1967 during his official funeral, on the Red Square in Moscow. AFP Getty Images

Countless technical problems and the tireless race to fix them became a hallmark of Soyuz's early history, culminating with the death of Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov who volunteered to pilot the troubled ship during its first manned mission in April 1967. Despite all the tribulations, Soviet engineers persevered and succeeded in transferring cosmonauts between two Soyuz ships. Luckily for future space-faring generations, captains of the Soviet rocket industry put the Soyuz into mass production long before it completed its flight testing.

Although Soyuz was eventually a success, the Soviet effort to land cosmonauts on the Moon failed to outpace NASA's Apollo project. The Soviet program scrapped the N1 moon rocket in 1974 along with all the lunar ships. Instead, the USSR focused on the development of the Earth's orbiting space station. That's when the Soyuz suddenly came in handy as a very suitable vehicle for transporting crews to orbital outposts.

What was once an an engineering afterthought became man's long-lasting spacecraft to the stars.

Roscosmos

A Blessing and a Curse

Since the 70s, the Soyuz has carried crews to and from Earth's orbit relatively cheaply, and without any deaths since 1971. At the same time, the reliance on Soyuz left Russian cosmonauts little room to maneuver—literally and figuratively. To fit into the ship's cramped descent module, its three occupants have to take the fetal position during each launch and landing, making a ride on Soyuz not for the faint of heart.

Soyuz touches down in Kazakhstan with a help of a parachute and soft-landing rocket engines. Roscosmos

Because of these cramped quarters, it's impossible to squeeze any extra passengers into the Soyuz. As a result, the size of the Russian cosmonaut corps fell behind its American counterparts, who were flying in the seven-seat Space Shuttle until its retirement in 2011. Also the Soyuz is incapable of bringing much cargo back to Earth, making Russia's space station operations mostly a one-way street.

Although these tight spaces and uncomfortable positions makes takeoff a headache, it's the Soyuz's return landing that's real hell. The tiny capsule descending under a parachute is at the winds' mercy limiting accuracy of its touchdown to around a dozen miles.

Not surprisingly, a number of attempts to replace Soyuz with a bigger, better ship have been made over the years. The latest Russian effort is a roomier four-seat spacecraft known as Federatsiya (Federation), which can make more precise landings and bring cargo back to Earth. However, the progress is hampered by financial problems and the ever-changing priorities of the Russian space program.

For better or worse, the Soyuz remains our sole human taxi to the stars—fifty years and beyond

A modern version of Soyuz docked at the International Space Station. Roscosmos

Anatoly Zak is the publisher of RussianSpaceWeb.com and the author of Russia in Space, the Past Explained, the Future Explored

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