Talk:Soyuz 1

Komorov cursing
The link cited in the text says nothing about Komorov cursing anyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Furius (talk • contribs)

Yes it does:


 * ''Stories prevalent among those who worked at US listening posts in Turkey said that Komarov was infuriated by the balky spacecraft, and went out cursing those who had sent him in such an unready piece of equipment.

—Pengo 05:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The text here say "Komarov cursed the engineers and flight staff as he descended" and that is definitely incorrect. I am unable to say if he cursed while in orbit, but certainly not during decent. And the text here also states that Soyuz 1 crashed to Earth virtually unbreaked.

It did crashland, yes thats correct, but at a speed of 40-50 m/s. Thats the speed of a speedtrain, or one extreme car. But is is completely wrong to say unbreaked' since orbital speed are 200 times higher.

I could go on pointing out the errors of this text, but before I do so - please tell me this is the urban legend version and you got a correct one somewhere else - please?


 * Orbital speed is irrelevant, you can't go at that speed in the lower atmosphere, even if you have an insanely powerful engine on your back. Furthermore, the capsule is designed to have a stabilized and somewhat naturally braked descent thanks to its shape. But I agree that a parachute, even not deployed, would have provided some braking (I'm a skydiver), the terminal velocity of the capsule without parachute should be higher than 50 m/s Aesma (talk) 11:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Confusion in the second para
I think the article needs clean up in the second paragraph.

"Mission planners originally intended to launch a second Soyuz 2 into orbit on the next day carrying three cosmonauts - Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky, Yevgeny Vassilyevich Khrunov, and Aleksei Stanislavovich Yeliseyev - and two of those were planned to do an EVA to Soyuz 1. Shortly after launch, problems began when one solar panel failed to unfold, leading to a shortage of power for the spacecraft's systems. Also, problems with the orientation detectors complicated maneuvering the craft. The crew on the second Soyuz prepared to fix the solar panel of Soyuz 1, but heavy rain at Baikonur made the launch impossible."

I would suggest following paragraph with the kind of permission of the author:

" Shortly after launch of Soyuz 1, problems began when one solar panel failed to unfold, leading to a shortage of power for the spacecraft's systems. Also, problems with the orientation detectors complicated maneuvering the craft. Mission planners intended to launch another craft, Soyuz 2, into orbit on the next day carrying three cosmonauts - Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky, Yevgeny Vassilyevich Khrunov, and Aleksei Stanislavovich Yeliseyev - and two of those were planned to do an EVA to Soyuz 1. The crew on the second Soyuz prepared to fix the solar panel of Soyuz 1. But heavy rain at Baikonur made the launch of Soyuz 2 impossible."

Regards,

Pranesh Bhargava 05:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC) Pranesh Bhargava.


 * That's not better, because it implies that Soyuz 2 was a new mission planned as a rescue attempt. No, they were slated all along to go up the next day.  When S1 had problems, their mission changed. Also, I found more than 1 reference saying S2 was cancelled because of problems with S1, but none that mentioned the rain.  I'm not arguing.  I'm just wondering if that would have been the "official story" of why it was cut.  See if this is any better...Leesonma 06:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The First Fatality?
The possibility that Komorov was not the first in-flight space fatality is discussed in Talk:Soviet space program conspiracy accusations. This possibility is taken seriously by serious authors, such as James Oberg. Vegasprof 10:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It think it is more accurate to say that it was taken seriously, by Oberg and others, but the rationale for keeping such a secret up to the present day doesn't make much sense.--172.190.50.66 (talk) 21:41, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Crash site
The coordinates (51° 21′ 41.4″ N, 59° 33′ 43.92″ E) provided for the crash site at "3 km West of Karabutak, Province of Orenburg in the Russian Federation" actually place you in Cancun, Mexico. This is clearly wrong but I haven't a clue what the proper coordinates should be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.65.49.220 (talk) 13:15, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I can't vouch for the accuracy of these coordinates, but they are in Russia. You, apparently, tried to use google maps to view the location, and it doesn't understand coordinates in that format. 70.113.47.133 (talk) 18:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Pasting those coordinates into Google Earth places you right on the correct spot, within a metre or so of the monument. Pasting them into Google Maps also takes you to the right spot and also shows the monument (I just tried both). Cancun is at about 21° 10'N 86° 50'W. Old_Wombat (talk) 09:35, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Source for cursing
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/21/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?sc=fb&cc=fp

Is it still unproven? 131.107.0.69 (talk) 01:05, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Krulwich's blog post is getting blasted pretty heavily, for example http://www.space.com/11293-npr-russian-cosmonaut-death-book-gagarin-komarov.html
 * The Liveleak audio recording from Turkey doesn't appear to be cited anywhere else either, it seems highly likely (to me) that its a hoax. WolfyB (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of conflicting sources, and the NPR story should be considered an unreliable source now that they've updated it. All of the factual statements about going to certain death and cursing the crew should be changed to reflect that Russayev is the sole source of the assertions. SilverbackNet talk 22:06, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

40 m/s seems too slow
it says it was almost unimpeded but this is slower than the terminal velocity of a person falling in air.. plus the capsule started in space. this must be off by at least a factor of 10... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.162.253.44 (talk) 01:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * No way, 10 times faster would be fasterthan the speed of sound. 40m/s seems to be realistic, since the pilot chute brings down the descent rate down to 40m/s. That's all. --109.42.240.1 (talk) 17:46, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Main parachute
The info about main parachute and how it was hammered in its container was from tv-program where another cosmonaut explained it. --RicHard-59 (talk) 11:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes the actual reason for the parachute failure complete with relevant citations is well explained on this site: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz1.html Both the offical and unoffical crash investigation make no mention of the last minute parachute redisign or the "wodden hammers" (The commission also considered a theory about improper packaging of the parachute, which was dropped after an additional analysis.)

Source: — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.212.94.17 (talk) 00:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC) ''The Soyuz-1 accident investigation

Three days after the crash, most recovered debris from the Soyuz-1 were sent to Moscow.

V. V. Utkin, Chief of Flight Research Institute of the Aviation Industry, LII MAP, was appointed the head of governmental investigation commission. Vasily Mishin and K. Bushuev became its members. After several experiments, the commission had established that a pack containing the main parachute did not came out from its parachute container. The flight control system registered an excessive speed of the capsule and reacted by releasing a backup parachute. However the backup parachute abstracted by a smaller braking parachute, which remained attached to the unopened main parachute, failed to deploy as well. (52) Another source also says that spinning of the capsule prevented nominal opening of the parachute.

As a result, the reentry capsule hit the ground with the speed of around 26-30 meters per second or 200 kilometers per hour. (245)

Once the sequence of events was restored the commission attempted to determine the cause of systemic failures. The commission officially concluded that the braking parachute, which was responsible for pulling the main parachute from its container, did not provide enough force, necessary to do the job. This could be a result of the air pressure inside the reentry capsule, pushing against the cylindrical parachute container, which was exposed to a low-pressure environment of the upper atmosphere. Despite previous tests of the parachute systems, including four drops of the capsule from the aircraft, the problem had never manifested itself. The commission explained that by randomness of the situation.

The commission also considered a theory about improper packaging of the parachute, which was dropped after an additional analysis.

The commission made several recommendations to facilitate the release of the parachute system in future flight:

To change the shape of the parachute container from cylinder to a cone; To increase volume of the container; To polish the internal walls of the container; To install an additional emergency separation interface for the braking parachute; To introduce step-by-step photo-documentation of the parachute installation; Unofficial version of events

After the investigative commission formally ended its work, another unofficial explanation for the parachute system failure has emerged. Boris Chertok, a key figure at OKB-1 design bureau laid out this scenario in his memoirs (27) and it also made it into the official history of the design bureau. (52)

According to the theory, the parachute container onboard Soyuz-1 could've been contaminated by a glue-like polymer-based thermal protection material, which is applied to the exterior of the reentry capsule. According to Chertok, first unmanned Soyuz capsules were placed inside a special autoclave to polymerize the thermal protective layer without parachute containers, whose production lagged behind schedule.

By the time the reentry capsule of the Soyuz-1 went into the autoclave, parachute containers had been installed but their covers were still unavailable. As a result, Chertok hypothesized, a flight-ready parachute containers on the Soyuz-1 could be protected with a temporary covers during the polymerization process, which could let glue-like substance to get inside.

A fatal flaw had never had a chance to manifest itself during aircraft drop tests, since the capsules used in those tests had been covered with regular foam and never had to go through polymerization. (27)

Konstantin Feoktistov, one of leading Soyuz developers, in his memoirs expressed skepticism about such scenario, noting that production documentation did not provide any supporting evidence to support the theory. Feoktistov also questioned whether both internal control at the production plant and an outside military-run inspection could miss the issue. (196)

In any case, after the loss of Soyuz-1, new regulations required the removal of parachute containers from the reentry capsule, before its installation in the autoclave.'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.212.94.17 (talk) 00:10, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Soyuz 1. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090415160730/http://www.astronautix.com/sites/baiurlc1.htm to http://www.astronautix.com/sites/baiurlc1.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131603144500/http://www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz1.htm to http://www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz1.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 09:33, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Use of flag icons on early Soyuz flights
Read the MOS:FLAG guideline. We have a general policy against unnecessary, decorative use of flags, except for Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams. In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself. And also MOS:FLAGCRUFT: Do not emphasize nationality without good reason Wikipedia is not a place for nationalistic pride. Flags are visually striking, and placing a national flag next to something can make its nationality or location seem to be of greater significance than other things.

All Soyuz cosmonauts were Soviet on the early flights; flags are only appropriate for the era of international spaceflights, which came a bit later (mostly after the fall of the Soviet Union). JustinTime55 (talk) 01:23, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

ASTP in 1975 (Soyuz-19) CRS-20 (talk) 02:44, 20 October 2020 (UTC)


 * In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself. CRS-20 (talk) 02:51, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It is only relevant when people of different nationalities are flying on the same flight. This was not true until later missions of Soyuz, especially once the Space Shuttle was retired so that Americans and Russians flew together to and from the International Space Station. This was NOT true of the early missions, when the Soyuz cosmonauts were exclusively Soviet. As long as all the flags are the same, there is no reason to include them. This was also true of Vostok, Voskhod, and the American Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Flags are visually striking, and placing a national flag NEXT to something can make its nationality seem to be of greater significance than other things. Here it is BEFORE cosmonaut name. CRS-20 (talk) 00:42, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Unless there’s some reason to be believe that readers are unlikely to assume the cosmonauts wouldn’t have been Soviet citizens, either from content in the articles about their missions or the articles about the cosmonauts themselves, then I don’t believe the flag icons are needed per MOS:INFOBOXFLAG because they seem more decorative than contextual. If, however, you believe that to not be the case, then perhaps asking for feedback from some of the WikiProjects listed above at the top of this talk page by posting Please see templates on their talk pages would be a way to get others involved without running afoul of WP:CANVAS. — Marchjuly (talk) 23:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Just my 2 cents: use flags because the space race was very much a national endeavor for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Further, much has been made about the national origins of all spacefarers as there is a manner of representing one's country not unlike participating in quadrennial sports competitions. -- ke4roh (talk) 18:02, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

When was this known?
When did the information about this flight become generally known? The USSR was notorious for keeping information quiet, especially about failures, but the crew of Apollo 11 evidently knew something had happened. What information was available shortly after, vs. what information became known with Glasnost? -- ke4roh (talk) 18:04, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * It became known the day it happened. Look at the citation references on the page; notice number 4 is a BBC report dated April 24, 1967. Perhaps because of the Apollo 1 crew deaths, the Soviets felt they could not hide their first Soyuz crew loss, and the first death on an actual space flight. Also, read the "In Context" paragraph on the BBC reference web page for the short answer to your second question. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)