Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Tragic Flight of Vladimir Komarov and Soyuz 1

Starting point is 00:00:00 Traveling to space is an inherently dangerous thing to do. In the first years of the space race, both the Soviet Union and the United States, were fortunate in that none of their missions resulted in a loss of life. However, 1967 saw that luck run out for both countries. NASA saw the death of three astronauts in Apollo 1, and the Soviets lost their first cosmonaut during the Soyuz 1 mission. The Soyuz 1 mission is one that few people are aware of today, and it changed the entire course of the space race.

Starting point is 00:00:27 Learn more about Vladimir Komarov and the 3rd. Fateful Mission of SoYos One on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

Starting point is 00:01:09 The beginning of the space race went really well for the Soviet Union. They put the first satellite into orbit, the first dog into orbit, the first man into orbit, the first woman into orbit. They sent the first human object to the moon and had the first spacewalk. However, that string of first in space ground to a halt in 1965. The first six Soviet manned space flights were the vehicle known as the Vostok capsule. This was the Soviet equivalent of the American Mercury capsules. They could hold a single person and orbit the Earth for a few days. In hindsight, it probably wasn't as sophisticated as the mercury capsule, but it worked, and with it they were able to accomplish so many of their space first.

Starting point is 00:01:52 The Vostok flights lasted a little over two years from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, they launched a new capsule, which was really just a modified Vostok capsule called the Voskhod. The Voskode removed the emergency ejection equipment and some other things to add a second and third seat. There were only two Voskhod flights, one in October 1964 with three crew members, and one in 1965 with two crew members. After that, there was a halt in Soviet human spaceflight for more than two years. The Vostok Voskhod capsule wasn't really cut out to do anything beyond going into orbit for a few days and coming back. The Soviets needed a new generation of vehicle to get to space, and so they began the development of the Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz spacecraft would be designed for a crew of three, unless.

Starting point is 00:02:39 like the Voskhod, which was really just a single-person capsule with extra seats crammed in. The Soyuz would have a radically different design from the previous capsules. There would be three different segments to the spacecraft, an orbital module, a service module, and a re-entry module. The orbital and service modules would be jettisoned upon re-entry and burn up. And the other big design change was that the Soyuz capsule was designed to land on the ground with the cosmonauts still inside. Prior to this, the cosmonauts had to eject before hitting the ground and parachute to the surface, because the landing would have been too rough otherwise. The new Soyuz would have retro rockets that would fire just before landing to soften the touchdown.

Starting point is 00:03:16 Looking backward from the third decade of the 21st century, the Soyuz has proven to be one of the most reliable spacecraft in history. It's still in use today, as of the date I am recording this, and it has flown over 140 successful missions over the last half century. However, it wasn't always like that. The Soviet space program was hit with a massive setback on January 14, 1966, when Sergei Korolev, the father of Soviet spaceflight, died on the operating room table during what should have been a routine procedure for hemorrhoids. Korolev was the equivalent of Werner von Braun for the Soviets. He had designed the rockets and all the capsules used at that point by the USSR. Moreover, no one outside of the Soviet Union

Starting point is 00:03:57 really knew who he was. He was never publicly mentioned in the Soviet press for fear that he could be compromised by foreign agents. The initial Soyuz design, was Korolev's design, but now that he was gone, the Soviet space program lost the rudder which had been steering them since its inception. The Soviets launched an unmanned Soyuz capsule on November 28, 1966. Everything seemed to have gone well. However, all was not well. There were many concerns inside the Soviet space program about the development of the new spacecraft. Soyuz was still riddled with problems and wasn't considered spaceworthy. An initial report detailed a list of two 103 different problems with the spacecraft that needed to be addressed. Had Sergei Korolyov been around, something might have been done about it.

Starting point is 00:04:44 And responsible for every single Soviet space achievement had a lot of clout and power. His replacements, however, did not. Eventually, the order came down that the first manned launch of a Soyuz spacecraft was to take place in April of 1967. It wasn't just going to be another test launch. This was going to be another space spectacle that could be used for propaganda purposes. Soyuz 1 was to be launched with a single cosmonaut. The day after, Soyuz 2 was to be launched with three cosmonauts.

Starting point is 00:05:12 The two craft would then rendezvous in orbit. A cosmonaut from Soyuz 1 would don a spacesuit and go to Soyuz 2, while a cosmonaut from Soyuz 2 would then go to Soyuz 1. Having switched around the cruise, the two spacecraft would then return to Earth. There was one other thing. The space rendezvous was to take place on May Day, the biggest day on the Soviet calendar. and this supposedly came down from the General Secretary of the Communist Party himself,

Starting point is 00:05:38 Leonoyd Brezhnev. The concerns about this mission were widespread, and most of the cosmonauts and engineers felt that a late April launch was simply too soon. The outstanding issues on the Soyuz spacecraft had to be fixed before they could launch. The cosmonaut, who was assigned to Soyuz 1, was Vladimir Komarov. Komarov was an accomplished test pilot and engineer. He took an active role in the Soviet space program. He wasn't selected as one of the first six guys.

Starting point is 00:06:03 cosmonauts due to age and height restrictions, but he was in the next group. He originally was scheduled to fly in one of the earlier Vostok missions, but was grounded due to a heart irregularity, but he eventually lobbied until he was let back into the program. He was arguably the smartest and most academically gifted of the cosmonauts at the time. He ended up being assigned as the commander of Vostkod 1, which launched in October of 1964. His assignment to Soyuz 1 would make him the first cosmonaut to travel to space twice. While in the cosmonaut program, he became very good friends with another cosmonaut and one whose name you've probably heard of, Yuri Gagarin. More on that in a bit.

Starting point is 00:06:41 An engineer was probably more aware of the problems with Soyuz than any of the other cosmonauts. He and the other cosmonauts expressed their concern to hires up, but nothing was done. The backup cosmonaut for Soyuz 1 was none other than Yuri Gagarin. Given his status as a Soviet hero, having been the first person in space, Gagarin wrote a 10-page letter which he addressed to Leonoyd Brezhnev, documenting all of the problems with the Soyuz program. Gagarin gave the letter to his KGB handler, Venyemin Roussayev, to pass up the chain of command, but nothing happened. In fact, the only thing to actually come about from the letter was that Rusayev was eventually reassigned. No one in the space program had the will to cancel or

Starting point is 00:07:22 postpone the launch, lest they anger Brezhnev. As the date of the launch grew closer, there was a growing suspicion that this was going to be a suicide mission. In fact, Comeron supposedly told Ruseyev bluntly, quote, I'm not going to make it back from this flight. Komorov was asked why he didn't just decline to fly the mission, which he could have done. And the answer was, if he declined, then Gagarin would have flown instead. Gagarin was his friend and far more important to the country than he was.

Starting point is 00:07:51 On the day of the launch, Gagarin was behaving oddly. He wasn't supposed to escort Komarov to the capsule, but he did, and he also requested a pressure suit. No one is exactly sure why he did this. One theory is that he was trying to muscle Komorov out of the mission to save him. Another theory is that he just wanted to sneak a pressure suit into the capsule as another layer of protection for Komorov. And yet another theory holds that he was just trying to cause chaos to disrupt and cancel the launch. Soyuz 1 was launched early on April 23rd, 1967, from the Balkanor Cosmodrome in what is today Kazakhstan.

Starting point is 00:08:24 The launch went fine, but as soon as Komarov was in orbit, things began to go wrong. Immediately one of the solar panels failed to unfold. This alone would have been enough to scrub the mission because the spacecraft just didn't have enough power. Floyd's solar panel was blocking the sensor that could see the sun, which was necessary for stabilization and altitude control. Komorov tried everything he could from using the thrusters to actually kicking the sides of the capsule, but nothing worked. Moreover, because only one solar panel was deployed, the spacecraft was now asymmetrical, which made it more difficult to control. Ground control eventually gave the order to abandon the mission on the 13th orbit. They would try to de-orbit on the 17th orbit, which gave them a margin of error to do the de-orbit on the 18th or 19th orbit if necessary.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Back on the ground, the Soyuz two craft that Komarov was supposed to have been with was never launched due to a thunderstorm which caused the electrical system to fail. Komorov needed the extra orbits because nothing was working. He had a difficult time orientating the spacecraft and the high-frequency antenna had failed, which meant that he could only communicate using UHF, which was intermittent. Komarov, being the skilled pilot and engineer he was, managed to orient the spacecraft by the 19th orbit, which was his last chance to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. He managed to skillfully do a manual re-entry at just the right angle

Starting point is 00:09:41 to bring Soyuz 1 back to Earth. However, his problems weren't over. The drogue chute deployed, but the main braking parachute did not deploy. And when he tried to deploy the backup parachute, it got tied up with the drogue shoot. Soyuz 1 was now a man-made meteor that was hurtling to the earth. Vladimir Koramov was going to die. He and everyone else on the mission knew it.

Starting point is 00:10:04 What happened next has been the subject of great debate. According to legend, the last radio transmission of Soyuz 1 was picked up by an American NSA radio outpost in Istanbul, Turkey. Supposedly, in the last few minutes that Komarov was plunging to the surface, he managed to talk to his wife on the radio, as well as the former Soviet Premier Alexei Kasigin, who was in the mission control room. Everyone was crying as they spoke their last words. But the last words of Vladimir Komarov were him screaming. Not screaming in fear or panic, but screaming at the politicians and people who ran the space program for the incompetence that had

Starting point is 00:10:41 gotten him killed. The impact of Soyuz 1 killed Komarov instantly. The force when it hit the ground was so great that it flatten the two-meter steel sphere down to just 80 centimeters. When it hit the ground, the retro rockets that were supposed to fire to cushion the landing exploded, incinerating everything inside. The body of Vladimir Koramov was unrecognizable as even having been human. It was described as a lump that was 12 inches by 31 inches and completely burnt. Believe it or not, an open casket funeral was held for him, and there were photos taken of military officials standing around the body. Incredibly, these images are online, and the body just looks like a piece of burnt driftwood, you would never recognize it as having been a human being.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Komarov was buried with full honors, and today his ashes are interred in the wall of the Kremlin. An investigation found that the problem with the parachutes on Soyuz 1 was also found in Soyuz 2. If Soyuz 1 hadn't had the problems that it had in orbit, the other spacecraft would have eventually been launched, and both spacecraft would have been lost on re-entry. Yuri Gagarin was furious. He supposedly said to another cosmonaut Quote, I'll get through to Brezhnev somehow, and if I ever find out he knew about the situation and still let everything happen, then I know exactly what I'm going to do. End quote. According to some legends, Gagarin eventually did meet with Brezhnev and threw a drink in his face.

Starting point is 00:12:07 It would be a year and a half before another Soyuz flew again. By the time that finally happened, the Americans had recovered from their own space disaster, which took place just a few months before Soyuz won, Apollo won. However, NASA was able to bounce back much faster. By the time Soyuz 3 flew a successful mission, Apollo 8 was just a few weeks away from traveling around the moon and back. In a very real way, you could say that Soyuz 1 lost the space race for the Soviets. The tragedy of the death of Vladimir Komarov was that it was totally preventable. If the Soviets had just taken a bit more time to make sure that everything worked, the tragedy could have been avoided, and it could have changed the entire course of the Soviet space program.

Starting point is 00:12:49 Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thornton and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Tragic Flight of Vladimir Komarov and Soyuz 1

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