Rocket Explosions and People Killed Getting into space and exploring is very exciting. It is a shame it takes years to reach different bodies in our solar system, except for the moon. One thing we shouldn’t forget is sometimes rockets fail and in the case of manned space flight it can be very dangerous. There have already been accidents which have killed astronauts, and cosmonauts. These brave people knew before they ever boarded their ship there was the chance of death, but they were very brave and believed pushing the frontier was more important than the risk. The most disastrous flights in the United States were on the Space Shuttle. Let’s look at the construction of the shuttle first before going into the accidents. Originally the shuttle was supposed to be much smaller and launched without those external rockets attached. One design had it sitting on top of a booster rocket, but money was tight and efforts were made to interest the United States Air Force in the project. They said the shuttle had to be much bigger and this would necessitate more power at liftoff, thus the two external rockets, one on each side. This made the shuttle a much more dangerous machine, but allowed for much bigger secret payloads by the military. Other countries besides Russia and the United States have had failures in launches. We usually don’t think of Brazil when we think of rocket launches, but as they were trying to become a spacefaring country, they had a tragedy in 2003. It turns out Brazil is perfect for launching rockets because the country is located on a perfect spot on the equator giving more oomph to a launch. A rocket they had lined up for a launch in the next few days blew up and killed 21 people and injured far more. Somehow an electrical charge had ignited one of the rockets. It has been estimated as of 2020 15 astronauts and 4 cosmonauts have lost their lives. Some say the cosmonaut figures are wrong and there were more deaths than was reported due to the secrecy of the old Soviet Union. When Germany was developing the V2 rocket they had failures all the time and for awhile it looked like they wouldn’t succeed. A lot of times the engine would start then cut off far too soon, causing the rocket to fall back to earth. Some other crashes and explosions were caused by guidance problems, of which there were many different ones. The first person to die in a modern rocket explosion is said to be Max Valier in 1930. Valier had belonged to a rocket society and worked for Opel, the car company helping Fritz von Opel build rocket powered cars and aircraft. He wanted to get the public more interested in rocketry. While attempting to launch a liquid powered rocket, it blew up on the test pad killing him. Quite a few people died from rocket explosions in the 1930s. Most were in Germany, but one explosion occurred when an American physicist was launching a rocket in 1931, near Milan, Italy. The rocket exploded and killed a mechanic and injured three other people. One disaster which took place occurred at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1960 in Soviet Russia. The explosion killed some military leaders which were unnecessary deaths. I say this because Chief Marshal of Artillery Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin decided to sit in a chair near the launch pad, and his subordinates didn’t want to look like cowards so they did also. The resulting explosion in 1960 wiped them all out. The disaster became known as the Nedelin Disaster. As strange as this sounds, on the same day at the same place a second disaster took place when evaporation of fuel and a short circuit caused an explosion of a rocket which is said to have killed 8 people. It is said because of this no rocket is ever launched on that day. In 1964 a test was taking place on the third stage of a Delta rocket at Cape Canaveral. Eleven workers were in the room. As the test was proceeding the rocket ignited. Three people were badly burned and died from their burns and eight others injured. Static electricity had set the fuel off. In 1967 NASA decided to test the Apollo 1 when the crew were onboard. The astronauts inside the vehicle were Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The Apollo’s atmosphere was pure oxygen. Suddenly a spark set off a flash fire killing all three men inside the capsule. An investigation found a metal tool was left inside the capsule and it is believed this caused a spark and the pure oxygen atmosphere fed the raging fire. The test had been conducted before and was considered non-hazardous. This accident delayed the Apollo Program and caused numerous changes to the capsule including changing the atmosphere from pure oxygen. Vladimir Komarov was the first person to become a fatality flying here from space. In 1964 he had been sent in the Soyuz 1 and was to rendezvous with another Soyuz spacecraft and exchange crew members. His flight was the first to contain more than one crew member. Even though it was early in the space program he had already flow once before. The flight had a lot of problems and things didn’t go as planned but he made it to the point after 18 orbits of the earth where he could return. A parachute which was needed to slow the craft down on reentry didn’t deploy and killed him. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the two worst space disasters in history. Both involved space shuttles. In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger was launched against the advice of the company who made the external rockets for it. That company said it was too cold for the seals to hold. The seals were called O rings. The company was overruled by NASA and a launch took place and the shuttle Challenger blew up 73 seconds later killing seven crew members. In 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia was returning to earth, but unknown to the crew a piece of insulation had broken off. This caused the shuttle to break apart in the atmosphere also killing a crew of seven. It is said the Soviet Union had launched other cosmonauts into space before Yuri Gagarin. There was even a story about a cosmonaut named Vladimir LLyushin. It was said he landed off course and was captured by the Chinese and held in prison and the Soviets kept this secret. We may never know the truth about this.
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