G.N. Lepeshkin: That’s military service. Each unit has its own specific type of service, so I can’t answer for the unit commander as to what his subordinates do. I can tell you what my people do. What they did, I can’t say.
Slava Paperno: They didn’t report to you?
Lepeshkin: No.
Paperno: But after all, they did work for you. They existed for you, not you for them? They were there for you, right?
Lepeshkin: Well, they were working on their task, which they were supposed to. We didn’t have to drive a vehicle. We didn’t have to lug instruments. They did that. That was their job, and we had a completely different job. Our job was the lab.
Paperno: This division, this well-defined division was absolute, ironclad, right?
Lepeshkin: Well, think of it this way – we have people who service planes, and there are people who fly planes. They each have their own job. It’s the same thing here. In other words, everybody is responsible for his own part of the work. Some people are responsible for all of the work as a whole, while some are responsible for their own part.
Paperno: But there have probably been critical situations as well?
Lepeshkin: Like what? Well, a vehicle would break down, we would tow it with another vehicle... if the problem was related to the breakdown of the vehicle. Of course, there were all sorts of situations. But the human factor exists everywhere. We’ve talked about that a lot already.
Paperno: For example, what could happen?
Lepeshkin: For example, for example, well, what does "could happen" mean? Why, anything could happen. At least when the work was being done, everything was 100 percent tested, so that there were no breakdowns. There weren’t any. Even if something was malfunctioning, say some instrument wasn’t working, that was an isolated, isolated incident. It didn’t affect the overall progress of the work. All the work was completed.