Soyuz 1 – An Addendum

The Soyuz 1 mission, which I discussed in great detail yesterday, flew, amazingly, for just about 24 hours – it was a day after launch that Komarov finally made his landing attempt, which of course as we know ended in disaster, on April 24th.

Something I forgot to mention is, had everything gone perfectly with the actual flight, it was doomed regardless – the parachute system was flawed, and had Soyuz 1 and 2 launched, and had they conducted their mission as planned, we might well have had 4 cosmonauts dead, instead of just the one. I don’t say this to down play the tragedy as it was, but only to highlight the doomed nature of the flight as it was – even with Komarov doing everything right to get the craft back to Earth, it still failed him at the final few miles.

I also thought to add this addendum for the sake of sharing a link to Russian Space Web, an absolutely fantastic source on Russian and Soviet space history and current happenings, and that sites detailed telling of the story of Soyuz 1.

I hope you will spend some time reading up and gathering more information on this event – I’m certain something here may conflict with information I have provided – I leave it to you, the reader, to form the details of this story in your mind, as many elements seem lost to time and no one can agree on details.

http://russianspaceweb.com/soyuz1.html

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