Accidents Connected With Space Space is a dangerous place, and people have died trying to advance that frontier. Some people we are sure about, while there are rumors of others, mostly Soviets dying. While all deaths are sad, some are sadder than others, especially those deaths which involve several people at once. When we look back at some of these deaths we can see how wrong the mission of those who died was being carried out. I am thinking about how Grissom, White and Chaffee died. They weren’t even in space when tragedy struck. The three astronauts were doing a test run inside of Apollo 1, which was on the launch pad when a fire broke out and killed them all. We tend to think NASA can do no wrong, but when we examine the circumstances of the fire we begin to see the mistakes which were made. The first big mistake was the atmosphere inside the capsule. It was pure oxygen, which make it a deadly fire hazard. It was thought a spark set the atmosphere on fire. Another mistake was a wrench was left inside the capsule, and it is thought it caused the spark. How come no one thought about the dangers of an all oxygen atmosphere? Why wasn’t there a check list to make sure what was taken inside the capsule by engineers was removed when they left, such as tools and other equipment? There have been many conspiracy theories connected with this accident, but I personally do not believe any of them. In 1967 a cosmonaut named Vladimir Komarov was aboard Soyuz 1. The mission was said to have experienced multiple problems. This was a new type of spacecraft at the time. When it came time to leave orbit the ship began to descend, but then something else went wrong. It was one of the worst things which could have happened, the chute didn’t open and the capsule made it through the atmosphere, but crashed into the ground at high speed killing Komarov. Today Soyuz is used to ferry both astronauts and cosmonauts back and forth from and to the International Space Station. This was not the only Soyuz disaster. Four years later Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov were aboard Soyuz 11. The crew had just finished undocking from the Salyut 1 space station, when the capsule experienced decompression after a valve accidently opened and all the cosmonauts were killed. The United States used to fly the X-15 rocket plane, and one flight in 1967 which had reached over 50 miles into space turned deadly. Michael J. Adams was the pilot. The plane experienced electrical problems and the controls went out. The plane went into a spin at five times the speed of sound and dove back to earth. The force of the dive broke up the plane and Adams was killed. The first space related death was thought to be that of a cosmonaut named Valentin Bondarenko. He was inside a low-pressure altitude chamber in a fifteen-day experiment. The atmosphere inside was about 50% oxygen. For some reason he put alcohol on a cloth and then it fell onto a hotplate he was using. He was burned so bad after a horrific fire broke out that he died sixteen hours later in the hospital. In 1993 a cosmonaut died during training. His name was Sergei Vozovikov. The Soviets were doing water recovery training when Vozovikov drowned during exercises in the Black Sea. One of the worst space disasters was that of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The people aboard were Gregory Javis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith and Dick Scobee. This disaster was a disgrace, because it could have easily been prevented. In 1986 when the Challenger was prepared for takeoff, engineers from the company which built the strap-on boosters notified NASA the weather was too cold for takeoff because a part known as an “O” ring wouldn’t hold. NASA disregarded several warnings about this as the engineers kept calling them, and launched anyway. Seventy-three seconds after launch the shuttle exploded killing all aboard. In 2003 the space shuttle Columbia was launched and made its orbits around the earth. The crew was Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Lian Ramon. The shuttle had been in space for two weeks and was returning to earth. The crew didn’t know it, but there had been damage to the thermal protection system known as the TPS. When the shuttle was entering the atmosphere its left wing, along with part of the shuttle broke off. All aboard died. Not every astronaut or cosmonaut died when there was a space related accident. In 1961, early in the space program, Vostok 1 wouldn’t detach from the reentry module. A bundle of wires snagged. For ten minutes the cosmonaut sweated as the two pieces stayed together, but finally separated. They were supposed to separate after ten seconds after retro fire. We also had a problem in 1961. It was with the Mercury-Redstone 4. Gus Grissom was aboard. Everything seemed to go fine as the capsule descended to earth and landed in the ocean. At this point something totally unexpected happened. The hatch blew letting water into the capsule. Grissom was almost drowned, but survived. Alexei Leonov who is famous for performing the first space walk almost died. In 1965 he went outside of Voskhod 2. He remained out in space for twelve minutes, but when he went to return inside the craft his space suit had inflated so much he couldn’t fit back through the airlock. He had to bleed off some of the pressure in the suit and barely made it back inside. He did suffer the bends from this. The second problem was the craft landed off course and was deep in the forest, and the crew had to remain in the craft to protect themselves from the cold. When they were rescued the had to remain another night in a temporary shelter built by the rescuers before being able to move to a clearing so a helicopter could pick them up. Gemini 8 went into an uncontrolled spin in 1966. Neil Armstrong was aboard. He managed to switch on the reentry thrusters and was able to land. There were problems with Soyuz 5, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 15, Soyuz 18a, Apollo-Soyuz test project, and many more spacecrafts. Unfortunately, things go wrong in most endeavors humans are involved in, and space travel certainly is no exception to these events.
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