Very Timely Space History for April 24: Soyuz 1

[CalliArcale]

<p>On this day in 1967, the first death during a space mission occurred.&nbsp; The Apollo 1 fire had occured a few months previously, but this death occured during an actual flight.</p><p>It was the height of the moon race.&nbsp; Apart from Apollo 1, the Americans had had a string of highly successful missions.&nbsp; The Gemini missions had been much more successful than Vostok or Voskhod, setting endurance records while acheiving important milestones for a future lunar flight, such as making substantial orbital adjustments and performing rendezvous and docking missions.&nbsp; The Saturn family was proving highly successful in unmanned flights, and the Saturn V moon rocket was nearly ready for its maiden test flight.&nbsp; (AS-501 would fly in June.)&nbsp; It was looking increasingly like the Americans might win.&nbsp; Apollo 1 came as an unlooked-for blessing to the Soviets -- it set the Americans back enough that they could still get their moon spacecraft up in space before the Americans could fly theirs.&nbsp; But Soyuz really wasn't ready yet.</p><p>Soyuz had been delayed by politics and ambition.&nbsp; Politically, the development effort was constantly being shuffled around to suit the shifting winds of political favor, with this problem aggravated by the fact that a competing project existed as well.&nbsp; In the end Soyuz ended up getting the go-ahead, but right up until 1967 this wasn't a sure thing.&nbsp; Meanwhile, the designers were adamant about making Soyuz a fully automated vehicle.&nbsp; This was something the Americans would never attempt with a manned vehicle until the CRV project in the 1990s (which wound up getting cancelled anyway), due to the different philosophies of the two programs.&nbsp; To the Soviets, the human crew were payload, not pilots.&nbsp; There are pros and cons to both approaches, but&nbsp; in the Soviet case, it demanded a much greater emphasis on sophisticated computer systems and, ultimately, a much more complex spacecraft.</p><p>When the green light was given for the Soyuz 1/2 mission, there was considerable unease, but the flight had to go ahead.&nbsp; It was a showpiece mission meant to one-up most of the acheivements of Gemini in a single mission.&nbsp; Soyuz 1 would launch, then, a day later, Soyuz 2 would launch.&nbsp; (The Soviets had already demonstrated the ability to launch two or three manned spacecraft from the same pad in just a few days, with several Vostok missions.)&nbsp; They would rendezvous in orbit and dock, then set a world first by transferring two crewmen from Soyuz 2 to Soyuz 1 via spacewalk.&nbsp; It would be the first time anyone ever went up in one spacecraft and came down in another.&nbsp; Though the lunar spacecraft complex was far from ready, this was important for one of the competing lunar plans, in which crew would transfer into the lunar lander via spacewalk. </p><p>But it was not to be.</p><p>Problems began immediately after launch.&nbsp; Soyuz was the first manned spacecraft to be solar powered.&nbsp; (Vostok and Voskhod were battery powered, like Mercury, and Gemini and Apollo were both fuel-cell powered.)&nbsp; One of the two solar panels on its service module failed to unfold and remained wrapped around the spacecraft.&nbsp; This dropped power output by 50%.&nbsp; The sole crewman, Vladimir Komarov, attempted to perform the spacecraft maneuvers that were in the flight plan, but this revealed a design flaw: the exhaust from the RCS thrusters confused the ion flow sensor that was used to provide orientation data.&nbsp; This would prevent the automated system from maneuvering during the critical docking sequence.&nbsp; The Soyuz 2 crew, awaiting launch, was told to stand down, and the mission was aborted.</p><p>Mission controllers tried to get Komarov home using the automated system, but the vehicle passed through an ion pocket in the upper atmosphere, again confusing the ion flow sensor.&nbsp; It was unable to orient for retrofire, and the onboard computer cancelled the reentry.&nbsp; Komarov would have to attempt a manual retrofire on the next revolution.&nbsp; But manual retrofire required visual orientation off of ground landmarks, and Komarov's reentry would have to start on the nightside of Earth.&nbsp; Mission controllers hastily worked out a procedure for aligning the spacecraft based on lunar observations and instructed Komarov to proceed.</p><p>Komarov was able to orient the spacecraft properly and performed a nominal retrofire exactly as planned.&nbsp; But his problems weren't over.&nbsp; Once through atmosphere interface, the drag chute deployed correctly, slowing him down to a subsonic speed.&nbsp; But a pressure sensor designed to trigger the main chute failed.&nbsp; Komarov triggered the reserve chute deploy, but the faulty sensor hadn't just prevented main chute deploy -- it also failed to jettison the drag chute.&nbsp; The reserve chute became fouled in the drag chute's lines.&nbsp; Komarov's fate was sealed.&nbsp; The vehicle impacted the Earth near Orenburg at great velocity, killing him instantly.&nbsp; US observers stationed at listening posts in Turkey claim to have heard him cursing his superiors the whole way down for sending him up in an unready vehicle.</p><p>Komarov was treated as a martyr and a hero of the Soviet Union.&nbsp; He was given a state funeral, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin wall.&nbsp; The incident shocked the Soviet space program.&nbsp; It would be a year and a half before Soyuz returned to flight, after a series of unmanned flights to prove the vehicle.&nbsp; Yuri Gagarin was taken off of the cosmonaut roster, lest the same thing happen to him and rob the USSR of its great space hero.&nbsp; (Ironically, he died in a training accident aboard a MiG the following year.)&nbsp; And the delay proved fatally costly to the Soviet lunar ambitions.&nbsp; By the time Soyuz 4/5 completed the mission originally envisioned for Soyuz 1/2, Apollo 8 had orbited the Moon. </p><p>The Soviet lunar program gradually trickled away, with the last vestiges dying in 1974 with the fourth and final N-1 test launch.&nbsp; The focus shifted towards military use of space, unmanned probes, space stations, and the recurrent dream of future Martian missions.&nbsp; The Soviet space station program would prove the most successful of these, with the Soviet Union lofting several space stations, establishing a continuous manned presence in space starting with Salyut 7 (which, unlike previous stations, could accomodate two Soyuz at once, be resupplied by Progress, and accomodate two soyuz crew simultaneously for a short period -- long enough to swap resident crewmembers).&nbsp; Soyuz, meanwhile, has gone on to be a very successful spacecraft with multiple variants.&nbsp; It has also spawned progeny.&nbsp; The Progress family of freighters has enabled marathon space tours, and the Soyuz service module has been used as a "space tug" to deliver small modules such as the Pirs docking module/airlock aboard the ISS.&nbsp; The Soyuz rocket has become the most famous of the R-7 family and well proven its worth in the commercial launch market; the next Soyuz rocket will launch this weekend with a commerical payload: GIOVE B, the second demonstration element of the Galileo navsat constellation.</p><p>And it all goes in the footsteps of Vladimir Komorov. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

<p>Thanx for the history lesson, Calli. While I was vaguely aware of these things, I was more tuned in to Apollo, and didn't recall all the details.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[fractionofadot]

<p>I read about this for the first time a few years ago, I had been completely unaware of the tragedies that had befallen the Soviet space program beforehand.</p><p>It's a lesson that I hope has been learned by all present and future space faring nations. Human lives are infinitely more important than propaganda victories, and the engineers and technicians involved in the manned space program must be listened to and be free to tell the truth about the shortcomings of a spacecraft.</p><p>Komarov did an amazing job getting that cursed vehicle down, but to be doomed by a faulty parachute after everything he did, is the ultimate insult.</p><p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Mikhaylovich_KomarovVladimir Komarov, rest in peace, your sacrifice will never and must never be forgotten. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[3488]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'><font color="#ff0000">Thanx for the history lesson, Calli. While I was vaguely aware of these things, I was more tuned in to Apollo, and didn't recall all the details.Posted by MeteorWayne</font></DIV></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Like MeteorWayne, I too had heard of something like this, but not in so much detail. Thanks Calli. I suspect the Soviet Union was not forthcoming with details like this concerning failures & fatalities.</strong></font></p><p>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'><font color="#ff0000">I read about this for the first time a few years ago, I had been completely unaware of the tragedies that had befallen the Soviet space program beforehand.It's a lesson that I hope has been learned by all present and future space faring nations. Human lives are infinitely more important than propaganda victories, and the engineers and technicians involved in the manned space program must be listened to and be free to tell the truth about the shortcomings of a spacecraft.Komarov did an amazing job getting that cursed vehicle down, but to be doomed by a faulty parachute after everything he did, is the ultimate insult.Vladimir Komarov, rest in peace, your sacrifice will never and must never be forgotten. <br />Posted by fractionofadot</font></DIV></p><p><strong><font size="2">Too true, his sacrifice must never, ever be forgotten.</font></strong></p><p><strong><font size="2">Andrew Brown.<br /></font></strong></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>