"Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage'"

**airdave** · #1 03-21-2011, 04:09 PM

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

Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage' : Krulwich Wonders? : NPR

Gagarin and Komarov

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

**APA-168** · #2 03-21-2011, 04:30 PM

I saw that article, very sad. It's interesting to note how the tragedy compares with the Apollo 1 disaster. Both were poorly designed, and in both cases the astronauts/cosmonauts knew it.

**Jim Nunn** · #3 03-21-2011, 08:55 PM

Having worked on the Apollo Space Ship I can truly say it was not poorly designed.

Two issues first was the time limit to get to the Moon everything was designed on the fly. Keep in mind that today we have taken 2 decades to design and develop the Joint Tactical Fighter which uses well known technology and it is still having problems. With few exceptions every thing in the Apollo was new technology. The second issue was the choice for the atmosphere in the module initially it was at a high oxygen level at a relatively high pressure. What mainly burned in the capsule was the plastic insulation on the wire which produced a deadly gas. This is the reason we have Teflon wire insulation today. After the fire my job involved testing for combustibility. Everything was tested including a plastic bag of human excrement now that was a s----y job... and it did not burn but it did smolder.

Jim Nunn

**Daedalus** · #4 03-21-2011, 09:58 PM

Eeew. Yuck. I suppose someone's gotta do it. I work for a Planetarium and we have in our collection one of those bags. I love to bring it out to show people. Now I have another story to tell people about it...if it comes up.

Very sad story, BTW. Again, I suppose someone's gotta do it. I know the men of Apollo 1 hung a lemon on the hatch of their capsule. They were ready to fly anyway. They knew many of the dangers and understood the necessity. Many others said that they, too, would make the ultimate sacrifice to propel our civilization into the new era. After the fire that claimed the lives of Grissom, Chaffe, and White the Apollo capsule was almost completely redesigned. It's a sad but very important aspect of human space exploration that is sadly overlooked, obscured by the light of some amazing achievements and discoveries

Zathros · #5 03-22-2011, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Nunn

and it did not burn but it did smolder.

Jim Nunn

Taco night can yield the same results. It is sad, they both should have refused. I'm sorry but I'm not going to get into something that's dangerous and not fly because my buddy will have to? Why wouldn't your buddy refuse also? Something about this seems a little "propaganda" like. There is a spin on this story. Take out the emotion, and you have a bunch incompetent people doing things for the wrong reasons, and that was, and still is not, confined to any one particular country. Yeah, he swore like H@ll going down, who wouldn't. I was 10 years old when all that happened, a stupid era, a stupid time, in most of the world. I'm sure happy that things have changed so much.

**Whitejd** · #6 03-22-2011, 10:55 AM

I think that it was John Glen that said, after his first flight, when a reporter asked if he was ever afraid during his mission, that he was while setting on the launch pad and looking around the ship thinking that everything he could see was a government low bid....