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.