This reminds me of an interview with former NASA astronaut (and current director of the Veteran Administration's National Center for Patient Safety) who related that most people don't realize that the astronauts who died in the Challenger accident didn't die in the explosion:
> There are still many people that don't understand that the crew of the Challenger didn't die until they hit the water. They were all strapped into their seats in a basically intact crew module; their hearts were still beating when they hit the water. People think they were blown to smithereens, but that's not what happened.
It seems that NASA's been willing to accept a fair amount of it, given the tragedies that have bedeviled our space program.
NASA has been terrible on this. Not because of how much risk they're willing to accept, and not because they don't do the work to understand it. They always know what the probability of failure is. But, historically at least, they haven't been honest and forthright in taking to the public about it. In the early '80s, before the Challenger accident, they would say—and this is where I think they actually lied, I don't think that's too strong a word—they would say, "Flying the shuttle is like flying a 727 to Disney World."
That's absurd. Not only are you more likely to get killed in the shuttle than in an airplane; you're more likely to get killed going up once in the shuttle than if you had flown combat missions for two years in Vietnam. That's a statistical fact, but NASA doesn't make it clear. They might tell the House [of Representatives] that there's a 1.5 percent failure rate, but most Americans don't understand what that means. I mean, 1.5, what is that? Is that a lot? You have to relate it to something that means something to somebody. Otherwise, people have the perception that space flight is safe, and when there's an accident, they're shocked. It's like, "We gotta stop flying." If we want to add additional safeguards because now we're feeling emotional about it, okay, we can do that. But if we're still meeting our design specs for loss, why would we stop flying?
If you haven't seen it here's R. P. Feynman's Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle. I think the reason that additional safeguards were added was not because they begun to feel emotional about it, but rather NASA had underestimated the failure rate in the first instance. The emotional factor is what prompted the investigation.
Engineers at Rocketdyne, the manufacturer, estimate the total probability [of catastrophic failure] as 1/10,000. Engineers at Marshal estimate it as 1/300, while NASA management, to whom these engineers report, claims it is 1/100,000. An independent engineer consulting for NASA thought 1 or 2 per 100 a reasonable estimate.
— Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle by R.P. Feynman
Empirical post script (as of STS-133 24 February 2011)
Total launches 132
Failures 2
Successes 130
Failure rate: 1.5%
The reason for appalling and wildly inaccurate estimate of the failure probability is because the failure probability was a top-down "estimate." Someone Important apparently said "the space shuttle needs a reliability of 1/100,000". This mandate was pushed down on all the suppliers. The result was that the probability of failure was divided out onto all the systems, subsystems, subsubsystems... ad nausium all the way down to the bolts. The result was that all the subsystems had reliability numbers that could not be refuted (e.g. bolts at 1/10^12 IIRC), but could not be realistically substantiated either. Unfortunately, some of the probabilities of the major subsystems (SRB and ice damaging the heat shield tiles) were not accurate. The most accurate estimate was the engineer with a lot of experience in extremely complicated systems who gave an experience-based estimate, not a top-down (dictated) numerically derived estimate.
I think Feynman also identified how rationalizations due to schedule or political pressure were creeping in to safety assessments. When o-ring erosion was initially found they examined it and claimed that since the burn through was x%, that implied they still had y% of "margin" and used that to justify continuing flights. But this was never how the o-rings were designed to operate, 0% burn through is what was expected and now they were using engineering safety margin as operational margin, on a process (burn through) that was not fully understood.
I forget where I learned this from, but the astronauts were also very likely to be unconscious very soon after the break up of the shuttle. They died when they hit the water, but they probably weren't conscious. Not that that makes it any better.
Some of them may have been conscious: "At least some of the astronauts were likely alive and briefly conscious after the breakup, as three of the four Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs) on the flight deck were found to have been activated. Investigators found their remaining unused air supply roughly consistent with the expected consumption during the 2 minute 45 second post-breakup trajectory."
It was mentioned in the MIT OCW 16.885/ESD35J lecture series that they were likely conscious briefly while still ascending, when they turned on those PEAPs, (after the shuttle had disintegrated); but they were later unconscious, because of the high altitude and low pressures the non-airtight cockpit was subjected to.
In former astronaut Mike Mullane's book Riding Rockets he details how some of the Challenger's controls had been moved from their standard launch positions. NASA tests would later confirm that they could not have been moved by the force of the initial explosion nor the impact with the ocean.
At least some of the Challener crew survived the blast, and died in panic.
What makes you think that's the case? In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe tells of test pilots in out-of-control aircraft who remained firmly in command of themselves, trying A, then B, then whatever they or the ground crew could think of, right up until impact.
This incident sounded familiar so I pulled my copy of James Bamford's Puzzle Palace[1] (1982) and managed to find it on page 215:
"Another high-priority target for the signal chasers at Karamursel [Turkey] is the Soviet space program. On April 23, 1967, a number of analysts were routinely copying the return of Soyuz I, bringing Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov back from twenty-six hours in space, when problems suddenly developed on re-entry. Recalled one of the intercept operators:
'They couldn't get the chute that slowed his craft down in re-entry to work. They knew what the problem was for about two hours...and were fighting to correct it. It was all in Russian, of course, but we taped it and listened to it a couple of times afterward. Kosygin called him personally. They had a video-phone conversation. Kosygin was crying. He told him he was a hero and that he had made the greatest achievement in Russian history, that they were proud, and that he'd be remembered. The guy's wife got on too. They talked for a while. He told her how to handle their affairs and what to do with the kids. It was pretty awful. Toward the last few minutes he began falling apart, saying, "I don't want to die, you've got to do something." Then there was just a scream as he died. I guess he was incinerated.'"
The bit about the translation is misleading. I speak russian.
The audio is very fuzzy, but I think at the end he says something that roughly translates to "the former cosmonaut is dead"
Before that he says something about the people, I can't make out anything about heat or temperature. Apparently the people on the ground couldn't either, which is why you hear "mission control" asking him to repeat himself. I couldn't make out the word they asked him to repeat either.
i am russian and i bothered to press the play button. what i heard was an obvious, poorly composed fake.
the calm and proud voice repeats about Komarov making the way to Comminism for the whole mankind [edit: apparently Komarov himself in official radio appeal]. this is intersected with some voices that could not be understood.
the way to communism mantra is obviously copy-pasted several times, some times partially, just to make some russian soudns, like this: "Komarov prokladyvaet put k Kommunizmu!" - "phshphs-bla!-bla!" - "-mmunizmu!" - pshshsh!blabla! - "prokladyvaet put k Kommunizmu!"
imagine how Russians watch movies where Hollywood tries to show something Russian, labels or written names. mostly it is just a meaningless set of letters. this is also looks like a bullshit that some CIA guys presented to their local Brezhnevs to justify their work
It's probably not fake, it sounds like pretty standard (in terms of stiltedness and bombast) Soviet verbiage, probably intended for quoting or retransmission later. There's a lengthy analysis of the flight here
by someone who doesn't seem like a tinfoil hat wearer. He seems to think intercepts of some of his other communication are likely but reports are 'embellished'.
I think I made out the entire thing, but I was fuzzy on the last word.
I hear: "K narodom nashe rodie, prakldavuyu chilvetchistvu put k Kommunizmu, bifshi cosmonaft umru?"
The first part translates roughly to: to the people of our homeland, I am laying the way for civilization to communism.
The last part to, this former cosmonaut is dead. But I could totally be mishearing that last bit (as the grammar doesn't really work if that is what he's saying).
Never mind you are totally right. Definitely nothing about crying or killed. He says his name very quickly which was throwing me off.
I don't know if its fake, to me it almost sounds like the the people on the radio are repeating what he is saying or asking him to repeat something, but one can be fairly confident that the people writing the article misunderstood what was being said.
> He says his name very quickly which was throwing me off.
surely i know that it's impossible to 'parse' words out of the speech without talking to language speakers all the time. when English speak i understand a half! actually I (as many Russians) appreciate that you know Russian and tried to understand what he was saying. i guess it's seldom for a native English-speaker to learn a language out of the list of Spanish and French :) Russian is the hardest of the wide spread Indo-European languages, i think, due to all it's flexes and stems, which you know ('umru'='i will die', etc), so you're cool :)
> the people writing the article misunderstood what was being said.
AND there might be something in that illegible part of the compilation, deciphered with the special techniques. for the show it was complied with the clear part.
actually i dont know what would i cry in this situation, definitely wouldnt greet the nation etc :)
I work with a russian and asked him to make out what he could of the audio and he pretty much said that he heard him say something about the temp. rising and then something glorifying the communist regime, some prideful statement more or less. What a brave son of bitch to go up in space knowing that he was going to die.
I've also read about the phantom cosmonauts before. These stories send a chill down my spine.
There are rumors that Vladimir Ilyushin, son of the airplane designer Ilyushin, was actually the first person to survive a space flight, but something went wrong in the landing (some say he landed in China which caused a political controversy). Some even go as far as saying that Yuri Gagarin knew of this and was killed because he knew too much. Go and figure.
The truth will probably never be uncovered. If the soviets had archives of what really happened, they might be lost and/or destroyed.
Wikipedia is pretty good starting point if you want to read about this. Put David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on the background with repeat.
FWIW there is also a popular conspiracy theory that Korolev - the man behind Soviet space program - lost his son that way. His whole life was and partially still is classified so there is no way to tell even if he had a son to begin with.
There was a post somewhere - I can't find it now - which stated that the Soviets were to send a cosmonaut to Mars, knowing full well he'd just wander around and die with no way to come back. They had volunteers.
Then the Berlin wall fell and it ceased to be an important pursuit to conquer the stars.
Encyclopedia Astronautica has the full list of Russian/Soviet Mars expedition concepts.
http://www.astronautix.com/fam/rustions.htm
They had ideas to do a lot of things related to Mars but never even came close to developing flyable spacecraft.
> I can't find it now - which stated that the Soviets were to send a cosmonaut to Mars, knowing full well he'd just wander around and die with no way to come back. They had volunteers.
What makes you think that it's just Soviets?
Lots of folks have knowingly made one way trips to "new territory".
Heck, I'd do it given reasonable resources for "just wander around".
I was fortunate enough to visit Star City while in Russia in 2004 or so. There is a statue of Yuri Gagarin there, and according to an engineer at the facility, it is a popular place to get married.
I don't have a hard time believing that either the USSR or the USA would have hidden space deaths if they or we could in order to build a national mythology.
It would have required both sides to agree to that mythology. As the article points out, we knew when things went wrong with them (via the NSA), and chances are sooner or later they'd find out when things went wrong with us (via the KGB). It would have required not only secrecy on their half, but secrecy on our half.
I don't find it that hard to believe that it was bilateral.
At first it gives too much up to show how much detail one knows about the other side. Then one doesn't want to announce your own deaths because the other side hasn't and you don't want to appear to be losing/weaker/less capable.
If you leak the deaths on the other side then they'll leak yours (like a sort of mutually assured destruction) and possibly cause an end to space exploration programmes - neither side that knows enough wants to do that surely?
tl;dr seems reasonable to me that both sides may have had more deaths they all kept secret about
To be fair this would've worked for the US military up to the Mercury program or the very early Vostok program. We know that the USSR did indeed hide deaths[1].
This is a chilling story. But such is the plight of man setting out on new frontiers of exploration: from Francisco and Columbus setting out across the seas, to Earhart's one way flight, so too will man flounder in his trek through the stars.
Look: explorers of all elements -- land, air, sea -- undertake their endeavors to accomplish a singular goal: the discovery of the unknown. An uncertainty of one's destination brings with it, therefore, an uncertainty of one's success and therefore of one's survival. And this is a risk that all explorers knowingly and willingly undertake -- it is a condition precedent to being such a brave traveller.
Accordingly, I think to shed so dark and negative a light on the several tragedies during mankind's nascent years of exploration is to miss the point and indeed forsake the very thing for which those pioneers lived: the furthering of our race, the advancement of our species.
Rather than mourn the loss of our fellow adventurers in their quest into the unknown, we should instead celebrate them, not only for their accomplishments in life, but additionally and especially in death.
After all, but for their risks, but for their selfless ability to consciously put their lives on the line both for their countries -- and indeed for our species as a whole -- and, certainly, to satisfy their thirst for knowledge and discovery, we would still be travelling the European continent on horseback.
As indecent as it may sound, I am certain our great explorers would be disappointed to see us saddened by their loss, and that they would far rather their memories be praised with all the pomp and circumstance worthy of their triumphant accomplishments, failures and successes alike.
Nice rhetoric, but exploration looks like setting out westward with three fairly decent ships to see if you can find something - it doesn't look like giving a man a canoe and telling him to paddle that way, or else.
First, I am in no way justifying the inexcusable actions and decisions that lead to this tragic conclusion.*
But is it really that different to the early years of sea exploration? I mean let's face it: certain -- most? -- of the ships were known to be marginally seaworthy at best, and if it wasn't the ship that cost seamen their lives, it was surely the inadequate food, water, and supplies that precluded many from a safe return.
My point is that either way, many, many adventurers knowingly and willingly embarked on their journeys to an all but certain doom. That this particular and more recent seemingly forced excursion happend as recently as the 20th century and under the circumstances described of course renders it more palpably disturbing, I agree, but I would suggest it is different only in degree, not in kind.
Again- I'm in no way intending to minimize this tragedy or others like it.* I'm just suggesting that for the sake of these great explorers' memories, it is better to remember them fondly rather than wallow in melancholic nostalgia of their (indisputably) unjust loss.
* I understand this particular tragedy is unique in that the cosmonaut knew with virtual certainty that he was being sent to his death. My focus here is not whether he knew death was certain, but the greater context in which this certainty existed, i.e., the inherently dangerous activity of (space) exploration which is "inherently dangerous" precisely because such deaths are foreseeable and indeed statistically likely to occur, just or unjust alike.
>But such is the plight of man setting out on new frontiers of exploration: from Francisco and Columbus setting out across the seas,
Columbus sent across the ocean on a wood rotten ship just to make it right on time to the celebration of 50 years of Revolut... err.. coronation. I guess, Columbia would have some another name and it would be some other, not 1492, year of America discovery.
"Explorers" don't usually set out for actual certain death.
If the story is true, then he went up in a space vessel that he knew would not survive because he knew it was poorly built. And he told them it was poorly built. And nobody fixed it.
That's not exploration, that's murder on one hand and self-sacrifice on the other.
There is something touching in these stories. Not sure if it's something that these guys "did that no one knew about" or the "brotherhood" or ... but .. Something I think was brave.
I'm sure some people disagree, but I would have left a vodka glass on this guy's grave. For sure! Spasibo!
There is something heroic about taking a bullet for your friend and not shying away from your duty for your country (even if it is run by evil maniacs). Couldn't help feeling sad.
and here's Ivanovich(middle name),
in his rocketship,
spinning helplessly up above the earth,
and though his heart is splintered,
all the girls of winter,
are buried in their coats anonymous....
> There are still many people that don't understand that the crew of the Challenger didn't die until they hit the water. They were all strapped into their seats in a basically intact crew module; their hearts were still beating when they hit the water. People think they were blown to smithereens, but that's not what happened.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/...