A miracle in space - Apollo 13 got into serious trouble and returned safely. A similar miracle did not happen to Colombia
The first flight into space, by the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961 and then by his successors, Russians and Americans, infected the world with endless enthusiasm. Here space has been conquered, here man has broken out from the borders of the earth into the vastness of the universe. No one stopped then to ask, at what price the space will be occupied. Accidents happen, always - in the air, at sea and on land. It was only a matter of time before accidents would also occur in space, but human nature, curiosity, and above all faith in the power of science, which had reached its peak, defeated the anxiety, or at least pushed it into recognition.
Yesterday's Columbia shuttle disaster, with the Israeli Ilan Ramon on board, was not the first in space. The first accident, of Apollo 1, at least the first "official" accident, because in the Soviet Union at the time they used to hide accidents. Today it is already quite clear that some serious disasters must have happened there, but the fog has not yet been lifted. Ironically, the Apollo 1 disaster occurred on the ground, on January 28, 1967, not even during the countdown to flight, but during practice for a flight that was to take off on February 21, 1967.
Two veteran astronauts, Virgil Grissom and Edward White, and rookie Roger Chaffee perished in the disaster. "Fire in the spaceship", one of the three managed to shout on the internal communication system, before a red flame enveloped Apollo. When the fatal fire broke out, the three were tied to their seats. Their only chance of escape might have been if they quickly released themselves from their seats and opened the spaceship's portholes, but the fire broke out so quickly that they didn't have time to move.
Firefighters felt for the spaceship in the elevator of the shipping tower, but could not save the trapped. Only after the smoke cleared did the rescue teams manage to open the portholes and saw a horrible sight: the charred corpses of the three astronauts, tied to their seats. A few more hours passed before the bodies could be removed. The cause of the disaster was apparently the conditions for the launch - clean oxygen, and a spark from one of the electrical systems was enough to cause a general flare-up.
The whole world was amazed. Also the Soviet Union, which sincerely mourned the United States, in the fraternity of space pioneers. The US was in shock, commissions of inquiry were established, state funerals were held, the dead astronauts and the grieving families became the nation's heroes. And although questions were asked about the future of space programs, it soon became clear that the conquest of space would continue, just as plane accidents at the beginning of aviation did not prevent the development of air transportation.
Edward White was the first to float in space, in June 1965 on the Gemini flight. Virgil Grissom was better known. Until his death, he managed to fly into space twice. Before that he was a hero of the Korean War and an outstanding test pilot.
Only four months passed, and before the shock of the Apollo disaster had worn off, a second disaster occurred, this time for the Russians. Today: 26.4.67 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was about to finish his mission in space, in the Soyuz 1 spacecraft. The disaster occurred during the return to Earth, but unlike in the case of the Columbia shuttle, the malfunction did not occur at the moment of entering the atmosphere, but at a low altitude, about seven kilometers above Ground. It turned out that the parachute, which was supposed to slow down the speed of the spacecraft's fall, had its cables tangled and the spacecraft accelerated at a tremendous speed and crashed. Komarov had previously managed to fly into space and return safely, with the giant spaceship Vaskhud 1.
Four years of kindness passed over the space pioneers, four years that are enough to forget, if only a little, the records of the disasters. Then on 30.6.1970 came another shock. The Soyuz 11 flight ended in disaster, after the cosmonauts had spent 24 days in space. Soyuz 11 launched from the space base in Kazakhstan and was attached to the unmanned space station Sally and T. The spaceship did indeed land on the ground, but when the rescue team entered the space of the cosmonauts, Giorgi Dobrovlski, Viktor Pachaev and Vladislav Volkov were found lifeless. They were still strapped to their seats. Since the Russians did not release details about the disaster, scientists in the West speculated that the cause of death was a malfunction in the heat shield, which was supposed to protect the three during their return to the atmosphere.
According to reports from the landing zone, no mechanical malfunctions occurred during the spacecraft's return to Earth. According to other hypotheses, the body systems of the three could not withstand the great effort after 23 days of weightlessness in space. The assumption was that the three lost consciousness in a fraction of a second. After four minutes of wireless silence, during which the spaceship passed the sound barrier and re-entered the atmosphere, contact was not restored and it was clear that something terrible had happened. The three received a state burial, like their predecessor, Vladimir Komarov.
Then there was a rather long lull in space disasters - 16 years. Space flights have already become commonplace, although they were broadcast live, but the world no longer held its breath during the launch or landing. The world just got used to it. Then came the most terrible day of all, a tragedy that everyone who witnessed it will never forget. Today, 6, the space shuttle Challenger is about to launch a mission from Cape Kennedy. Until that day, the US registered 28.1.198 successful manned flights. The only disaster until then happened on the ground and the Americans had no doubt that the lesson was learned, and every screw was checked a thousand times, and another accident was avoided. Thousands nevertheless came to the launch site, as if to a picnic, to witness another chapter in the glorious space history of the USA. This time, seven astronauts were about to take off, including astronaut Judith Resnik, the first Jew in space, who two years earlier had flown on the shuttle Discovery.
It all happened in the blink of an eye. Thousands at the launch site and millions of others in front of the television screens watched comfortably as the huge shuttle, to which the missiles and fuel tanks are attached, takes off to Al. Applause, shouts of enthusiasm were heard. Another moment or two and the crowd was about to disperse. At that second the spaceship reached an altitude of 16 km, then suddenly it was surrounded by a huge ball of fire and the disintegrating shuttle dived into the ocean.
The next day the headline in "Maariv" was "Horror in Space: Millions Watched Death by Fireball". A slow projection of the television footage from the moment of launch to the fraction of a second in which the disaster occurred revealed that exactly 70 seconds after zero time, flames or hot gases, probably from the left booster rocket, were seen surrounding Challenger. Apart from Resnick, six more perished in the horrific disaster: Francis Scobie, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Alison Anzoka, Gregory Jarvis and Christy McAuliffe.
McAuliffe's death especially touched everyone's heart, as she was not an astronaut or a scientist at all. She was a school teacher and her inclusion on the flight was, to some extent, a media gimmick. She, as the representative of the common people, was then to tell about her impressions to the youth of America, as well as to all the students around the world.
The Columbia disaster, yesterday, reminded again of the limitations of man's power, his helplessness in the event of an unexpected malfunction, far from the earth. In the past, a miracle once happened to the Apollo shuttle that was in trouble. That ferry managed in a miraculous way, which was recreated in the film, to return safely. A similar miracle did not happen to Colombia.
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Death on the way to glory - this is how Gagarin got to space
This was never officially confirmed, but the scientific community dealing with space has always pointed out that even before the first man was launched into space, aka the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took off on April 12, 1961 in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, for a stay of only 109 minutes outside the Earth - Several Russian test pilots were killed, still during their training.
The details of this are unknown even today, but in 1973 someone who probably had a rather central part in making the history of space flights arrived in Israel: he designed Gagarin's space suit. In an interview he gave five years later, seven disappointments from the absorption difficulties he experienced in Israel, chemistry professor Vitali Raevski, who holds dozens of patents, who was then a lecturer and researcher at the Technion in Haifa, said that at least two Russian pilots were killed before Gagarin was launched.
"Three suits made of special fabric were planned for the first flight. They were sewn in a rubber laboratory of a factory of the Soviet military industry, 200 km from Moscow. The suit had to withstand all heat conditions, not be permeable to gases. Within seven months of the landing of the instruction from above, the suit was ready. It was made of synthetic rubber, light gray in color, made of several layers including an insulation and connection layer. It was lightweight, hermetic, incredibly flexible and indestructible. It was a material specially developed for this purpose, there was nothing like it in the world at the time."
During the experiments that preceded Gagarin's flight, she was tested in conditions of a descent from a considerable height (she was intended to be used by a cosmonaut who had to return from a height of 20 km from the Earth). The landing was supposed to be slow, "soft". But the disasters happened in the experiments. At least two of the Russian space pilots took their own lives when they burned up in the spacecraft cabin.
In one case, Raevsky said, one of the pilots did not wear his suit correctly, did not take care of its airtightness - he dried up and died, when he was parachuted from a great height and passed through several layers of the atmosphere. But this disaster is not counted in the number of Russian space disasters.
"Gagarin was actually candidate number 3 for the historic flight. The first person designated for this task was actually the son of one of the leaders of the Soviet space industry at its inception, his name was Kuiknaki, who was of course close to the party leaders. He perished in the last experiments. Gagarin was actually a duplicate of number 2, who fell ill at the last minute.
Only a handful of scientists were in on the secret of this space operation and they were under 24 hour surveillance by KGB agents. Even during M's experiments with the materials of the suit itself, several disasters occurred - explosions of flammable materials in which seven people were seriously injured. None of them remained healthy."
Alex Doron
