A tale of two rockets ... with a happy ending

Darth Vaderovitch almost strikes back
In contrast, only one space mission ever occurred for the Skif-DM — and that was nearly enough to outweigh all the many hundreds of peaceful "Semyorka" missions.

All of the publicity photographs released after the successful test launch of the Soviet Energia super-booster on May 15, 1987, showed the same side of the massive booster and its two pairs of liquid strap-on boosters. One such view is on a giant 1990 calendar on my study wall, emblazoned with the slogan, "To Space with Peace."

But gradually, descriptions of a dark black side-mounted cylinder, strapped to the other side of the booster, leaked out. It was said to be a mass-scale model of a future space vehicle, or a dummy payload that had merely been carried to stress the ascent profile test — no orbit had been intended.

Years later, Western suspicions about the payload were fanned by photographs that were gradually released, first under Gorbachev’s glasnost ("openness") campaign and later once the Soviet Union had collapsed. Secret Pentagon reports puzzled over the spectacular explosion of the payload when it had fallen back into the atmosphere over the southeastern Pacific—“the biggest infrared signature ever detected by U.S. satellites,” they called it. There were rumors that Gorbachev himself came to watch the launch and was appalled to learn only then of the weaponry being carried. But the ultimate illumination of the project came, fittingly enough, from an independent Russian space historian in Moscow.

Konstantin Lantratov gathered all the bits and pieces of the stories leaking out and visited the factory where the object had been built. He wrote up his results, in Russian, and posted them on a private Russian Web site. Translated by ace American space historian Asif Siddiqi, who specializes in Russian activities, the report is at last being published in a 12,000-word report in two issues of Quest, a quarterly journal on the history of spaceflight.

Orbital battle stations
In illuminating detail, Lantratov chronicles how the payload was thrown together from components of two orbital battle stations already in development. One, the Skif, was to carry a carbon dioxide laser; the other, the Kaskad (as in a "cascade" of rocks) was to carry kinetic kill warheads.

RKK Energia A grainy picture from the Russian rocket company Energia shows an Energia super booster on the launch pad in 1987, with the black Skif-DM military payload mounted on its side.

Aiming, stabilization, and power systems were installed inside a hollow Buran fuselage, along with a target dispenser for tracking tests. A special space station module was bolted on the front to maneuver the payload in space. These payloads had been in development since the late 1970s, along with a space shuttle system specifically tasked to service the fleet of orbiting weapons platforms.

Lantratov makes clear that the carbon dioxide laser itself was not flight-ready, so was not installed — for the first flight. But it was scheduled for an orbital test a year or two later.

He also makes clear that Soviet leaders, up to Gorbachev, were thoroughly familiar with the weapons-in-space nature of the payload. They extensively debated how much to actually test in space, with the prospect of detection by American sensors. The main goal of these strategies was to perform as much of the weapons testing as possible while not revealing the nature of the payload — and to allow Soviet diplomats to continue to denounce the American "Star Wars" plan as illegal, immoral and dangerous.

Close call for space warriors
In hindsight, the elaborate Soviet plans to "slip one past" the U.S. sensors look clumsy and ineffective. The suspicious nature of the payload would have been overwhelmingly clear. The American response would have been unavoidable. Such clear-cut and hypocritical "Soviet space treachery" would have irremediably discredited Gorbachev and his reconciliation and reform agenda.

As a result, the Western debate over the desirability of developing space-based weapons would have, for all intents and purposes, ended — in the affirmative. The Freedom space station would have become Fort Freedom, not the international space station. For years to come, Mars would not have been the symbol of a planetary target, but of a classic God of War.

INTERACTIVE National missile defense system How would it work?

With the stakes that high, there always has been some suspicion that the guidance failure that crashed the payload was no accident, but a deliberate self-destruction to avoid international opprobrium. Yet in his report, Lantratov again delves to an unprecedented depth of new information to explain that the error was in fact entirely unintentional, the result of inadequate checking of control software on a project that was rushed far beyond the bounds of sound space practice. Soviet officials had always intended to orbit the payload, and then to lie about it.

But their intentions, and soon their entire regime, collapsed. Today's web of international space cooperation, however strained and awkward from time to time, is a consequence of that blessed accident. And in almost unbelievable irony, the propulsion unit that doomed Skif-DM was later redesigned as the propulsion unit and base module for the international space station (NASA Web sites reveal no clue about its origin). The module flies on today as part of the home for the latest in a long string of international space crews. And Mars remains a distant target of promise, not of threat.

James Oberg, space analyst for NBC News, spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer. He is also an expert on Soviet and Russian space policy and author of the book "Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance."

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