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Space Tragedies

Mankind had celebrated the 50 th anniversary of space travel. It was a 50-year history of the triumph of human ingenuity and spirit, of great engineering feat and extraordinary courage. However, the history of space travel is not without its black moments, as space travel, being highly risky, had claimed its share of tragedies.

In fact even the first space flight carrying a being on Earth ended in death for its occupant. The dog Laika, first living being in space, also held the unfortunate record of being the first living thing to have died in space, when its oxygen ran out in Sputnik 2 on November 3 1957.

The earliest tragedy involving human fatalities was also the worst disaster in the history of rocketry, although not directly related to space travel. On 24 October 1960, at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, as a prototype of the R-16 ICBM missile was being prepared for a test flight, it exploded on the launch pad when its second stage motors ignited prematurely, killing many military personnel, engineers, and technicians working on the project. The launch-pad explosion, killed over 100 at the site including Soviet Union’s Strategic Rocket Forces Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin.

The Nedelin disaster

The first true space-related casualty was probably the death of Valentin Bondarenko while training in a special low-pressure chamber with a pure oxygen atmosphere. On March 23, 1961, while he was in the chamber, a fire accidentally broke out, and Bondarenko suffered burns leading to his death.

The first American casualties occurred in January 1967, when three American astronauts, Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffe and Edmund White perished in a fire during a simulated lift-off for the first manned Apollo program mission. The command module was destroyed by fire, and although the ignition source of the fire was never determined, their deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design hazards in the early Apollo command module such as its highly pressurized 100% oxygen atmosphere during the test, many wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials in the cockpit, a hatch which might not open at all in an emergency, and even the flight suits worn by the astronauts.

Apollo 1 crew portrait (L-R: Grissom, White and Chaffee)

Three months later on April 24, 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed on board Soyuz 1. His one-day mission had been plagued by a series of mishaps, and during re-entry his parachutes failed to open. Komarov was killed when the capsule hit the ground.

Like the first Soyuz, the first space station also resulted in the deaths of Soviet cosmonauts. After successfully working on the first space station, Salyut 1 for 16 days, the three man crew, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Victor Patsayev, returned to earth on their spacecraft Soyuz 11. But, tragically, a pressure-equalization valve in the reentry capsule opened when the service module separated and sucked out all oxygen, killing all three cosmonauts. The capsule reentered and landed normally, and their deaths were only discovered when it was opened by the recovery team.

On March 18, 1980, at Plesetsk Cosmodrome, USSR, another launchpad explosion killed 48 members of the Soviet Missile Troop. News of the event was only reported 20 years later.

The first U.S. multiple in-flight fatalities occurred in view of millions of people throughout the world on their television. On January 28, 1986, Space ShuttleChallenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off. It broke up in midair with the loss of all seven crew members aboard: Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee. NASA investigators determined they may have survived the initial explosion but, while possibly unconscious from hypoxia, any survivors of the breakup were killed when the largely intact cockpit hit the water at 200 mph (320 km/h).

he shuttle program suffered another high profile disaster nine years later. : OnFebruary 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was lost as it reentered after a two-week mission to the International Space Station. Damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system (TPS) led to structural failure in the shuttle's left wing and, ultimately, the spacecraft breaking apart. Investigations after the tragedy revealed the damage to the reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge wing panel had resulted from a piece of insulation foam breaking away from the external tank during the launch and hitting shuttle's wing. Rick D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon were killed.

Columbia disaster reported live by CNN

These unfortunately did not tell of all that had perished, although they remained the more well known tragedies. Others had also perished. Despite the risks, these people continue to risk their lives. And future programs, which will include traveling to the more distant bodies like Mars, involving lengthier time in space using even newer technologies, will be even riskier. We who stay here firmly rooted on earth can only pray for the well-being of these brave souls in their attempts to realize the dream of the human race.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2717535.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/705808.stm

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39540c8a276f.htm

http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html