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Cohetero-negro
03-24-2011, 02:34 PM
Group,

Thought I would post this ... interesting reading and it is facsinating and makes one wonder about what was REALLY happening with the Soviet Space Race ... how many of you have seen the Soviet Lunar Lander? Even if they made it too the Moon, the Cosmonauts would have died trying to land that thing ... the Cosmonaut would actually turn mechanical wheels and pull levers to land ... I KID YOU NOT!!! :eek:

http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html


Uncovering Soviet Disasters
James Oberg
Random house, New York, 1988
Notes labeled "JEO" added to electronic version in 1998
Chapter 10: Dead Cosmonauts
Page 156-176


http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/russia/lk-lander.jpg

dlazarus6660
03-26-2011, 03:52 PM
I found this in another forum.

A VERY interesting article on cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov
who crashed in a failed spacecraft back in 1967.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/23/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

A Russian secret until now,
it also makes you wonder about Gagarin's death a year later.

cas2047
03-26-2011, 04:17 PM
I found this in another forum.

A VERY interesting article on cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov
who crashed in a failed spacecraft back in 1967.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/23/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

A Russian secret until now,
it also makes you wonder about Gagarin's death a year later.


That's an amazing account. The audio is heartbreaking to listen to. You can hear in Komarov's voice the agony he suffered those last few moments as the temperature rose. They knew that the spacecraft was likely to fail and yet they still sent it up. What a waste of a life.

Bill
03-27-2011, 12:46 AM
That's an amazing account. The audio is heartbreaking to listen to. You can hear in Komarov's voice the agony he suffered those last few moments as the temperature rose. They knew that the spacecraft was likely to fail and yet they still sent it up. What a waste of a life.


Good thing we did not have an open mike or a voice recorder (or did we?) aboard Challenger. The circumstances were similar - words of warning that the kinetic rocketry action should be scrubbed, but were overruled.


Bill

Doug Sams
03-27-2011, 09:08 AM
A VERY interesting article on cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov who crashed in a failed spacecraft back in 1967. (http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/23/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage)This is a perfect example of my earlier claim (in another thread) that the Soviet space program then was largely comprised of stunts to one-up the Americans rather than being a methodical sequence of events to achieve the goal of reaching the moon.

At the time this was tried, we had already achieved rendezvous and docking, but had not yet transferred a man from one spacecraft to another (as would soon be required for the Apollo missions), so the Russians had a chance here to beat us to the punch, to steal some thunder.

I'm sure that greatly influenced their decision to try this before their spacecraft was fully debugged and ready.

Also, keep in mind, Korolev had died the year before and was thus not around to talk sense to the guys attempting this.

They lacked their best rocket man and were desperate to get some headlines, and were willing to lose Komarov in the process.

Ironically, with the Apollo 1 fire only a few months prior, the American program was delayed, so the Soviets had more to time work out the wrinkles before attempting this. Our next flight, Apollo 7, was still a year and a half away. And we wouldn't perform the docking maneuver of Apollo 9 for nearly 2 years. So they still had ample time to achieve some sort of space race first without taking such a huge safety risk.

Doug

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Bill
03-27-2011, 10:19 AM
At the time this was tried, we had already achieved rendezvous and docking, but had not yet transferred a man from one spacecraft to another (as would soon be required for the Apollo missions), so the Russians had a chance here to beat us to the punch, to steal some thunder.



I think we had considered swapping Gemini crew members in orbit. OK guys, time for musical ejection seats...or a Chinese fire drill...

At one time, NASA considered an external crew transfer (via EVA) for Apollo. It would have made for simpler and lighter spacecraft, but it might also have led to a scenario:

Aldrin: Oops!
Armstrong: Buzz, what did you just do with that bag of lunar samples?

They would be smart enough to have a tether on it, but accidents do happen. And Apollo 13 would not have ended happily because there was not enough oxygen to air the CM back up, not to mention the small problem of fitting three pressure suits into the LM.


Bill