A hair from death: Cosmic catastrophes that almost happened

Read about the cosmic catastrophe occurred , frankly, sad. It is a pity for people, but the understanding that the efforts of designers with the backup of important systems, the work of the TsUP to control and manage the situation, the training and heroism of the astronauts themselves - all this could not prevent a catastrophe, spoils the mood. In this sense, much more positive are the catastrophes that could have happened, but were prevented by the talent of designers, the work of the MCC, decisive and skillful actions of the crews, or simple luck.

East-1

Yes, this is Gagarin, 1950. Memento mori.

It is hardly surprising that the incidents that put the mission on the brink of disaster, began in the first flight.
Failure of the reserve system from orbit . The ships "Vostok" had a non-duplicated single-start braking unit. That is, her refusal to launch a single attempt meant the impossibility of a regular return. Therefore, as a backup security measure, “Vostoky” were launched into orbits, from which they would have gone off in about a week, due to passive braking against the atmosphere. And this backup system failed. In order to be in the desired orbit, it was necessary to turn off the rocket engines after reaching the desired speed with very high accuracy. First, the radio-correction system failed, which measured the rocket speed according to radio communications with ground points. The backup was an autonomous system, which made an error of ~ 25 m / s. And these meters per second raised their apogee to ~ 80 km and extended the existence of "Vostok-1" in orbit from 5-7 days to unacceptable 15-20, for which there were not enough life-support resources.
Failure of the standard separation system . The ship "Vostok" consisted of two parts - the descent vehicle and the aggregate compartment, which were separated after braking. Due to the sticking of the valve, the fuel ended 0.5-1 second before the required one. The lack of braking impulse violated the regular logic of separation of compartments. However, after 10 minutes, the backup system worked, dividing the compartments according to the triggering of the thermal sensors, which detect heating from the beginning braking against the atmosphere. If this system had also failed, the descent vehicle would not have been able to take the correct orientation for braking in the atmosphere due to interference from the aggregate compartment dangling on the cables. However, even this would not lead to a serious danger - the cables would burn, the aggregate compartment would fall off, and the descent vehicle would take the correct position on its own, according to the Vanka Vstanka principle. The complete failure of the separation system was on the "East-2" in Titov and ended successfully.
But the greatest dangers began at the end of the landing. Some irresponsible people doubt the heroism and high preparation of Gagarin due to the fact that he did not control the spacecraft in flight. Indeed, the control system of the ship "Vostok" during normal operation did not imply active piloting. But if Gagarin, already descending on a parachute, had not acted on time and correctly, despite the experienced stress of space flight, the "carousel" after braking and the delay in separating the compartments, he would most likely have died.
Breather valve failure . After the parachute opened, the breather valve of the spacesuit refused to open (in some sources it is written that the straps of the parachute suspension system flooded it) through which the spaceman was supposed to get outside air for the astronaut to breathe. Gagarin noticed the problem and managed to free the valve (according to other data, opened the spacesuit without touching the valve) and avoided death from suffocation.
Risk to drown . The Volga flowed through the landing area, and Gagarin could well have splashed there if he had not done anything. It is hard to swim in a spacesuit, besides there is a risk of being covered with a parachute with almost certain death from suffocation. Gagarin underwent parachute training, and, skillfully operating the lines, landed 1.5–2 km from the river, despite the interference from the unauthorized opening parachute.
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Mercury-Redstone 4

The second space suborbital flight of the USA on July 21, 1961 came to an end. Astronaut Gus Grissom successfully splashed down and waited for the helicopter, which was supposed to lift the capsule and deliver it to the aircraft carrier. In anticipation, he wrote down the readings of the instruments, according to the instructions, took off the fuse of the emergency ejection system, and also took off his helmet and unbuttoned the seat seat belts (this accident probably saved his life). It took about ten minutes after landing, the helicopter was already preparing to pick up the capsule for lifting, as there was a dull explosion. This arbitrarily triggered emergency hatch system. Water began to fill the capsule, Grissom with all possible speed out of it. The helicopter pilots first of all begin to save the capsule - they have repeatedly worked with astronauts and know that you can swim in a spacesuit for quite a long time without the risk of drowning. But Grissom notes that it is harder for him to stay on the water - in the rush to evacuate from the capsule, he forgot to close one of the valves of the spacesuit, through which the spacesuit is now drawing water! The valve is closed, but there is already plenty of water in the spacesuit, Grissom hardly keeps afloat. Meanwhile, the helicopter pilot, who managed to pick up the capsule, realizes that he cannot pull it out - it has become too heavy from the water poured into it. The capsule is dropped, but the helicopter does not fly to pick up Grissom. On the contrary, he turns around and goes in the direction of the aircraft carrier! The fact is that the pilot sees on the instrument panel a “engine overheating” signal, which on this model of helicopter means approximately five minutes of flight to engine failure. Selecting Grissom in such conditions makes no sense. As a result, the astronaut picks up the second helicopter, after a few minutes, which, for sure, seemed very long to Grissom. After the astronaut had boarded the second helicopter, the first thing he put on was a life jacket. A subsequent investigation revealed that the most likely cause of the unauthorized activation of the emergency hatch reset system is the poor attachment of the external activation cord. The emergency hatch reset system could be activated both from the inside and outside of the capsule. A cord was installed outside, which was fastened on just one screw. Bad attachment could lead to the fact that the cord was released, and the excitement of the sea could create an accidental pull of the cord, which activated the system.


Video of the incident

Mercury-Atlas 6

February 20, 1962. The first American astronaut (John Glenn) went into Earth orbit. According to the plan, the flight was to last seven turns. But already at the beginning of the second round, telemetry from the ship’s side made the hearts of the flight management group go cold: the illuminated “segment 51” indicator said that the landing shock absorber and heat shield were not fixed.



This meant that after braking the heat shield would leave its place, and the landing shock absorber would turn around even in space. The thermal shield will not be able to protect the ship from heating when entering the atmosphere, and the astronaut is doomed to death. MCC Cape Canaveral, without naming the cause of his concern, asked Glenn if he had heard any unusual sounds. Glenn replied that he had not heard. The MCC team sent a requirement to the operators to monitor the “segment 51” at the communication station and began to look for a way to cope with the problem. The only thing that could come up with is to block the shooting of brake engines in the program of descent. The iron tapes with which the brake motors were attached to the ship could hold the heat shield at the beginning of the descent, and when they burn, the shield will already be held by the oncoming air. At the third turn, still not telling Glenn about the reasons for such a decision, they reported that his flight was reduced to three turns and recommended not to drop the brake motors. Glenn tried to inquire about the reason for such a decision, but received the answer “Not now. This is the decision of the MCC. ” The flight was stopped after three turns, the landing went smoothly. A subsequent investigation revealed that the “segment 51” signal was erroneous due to a sensor malfunction; there was no real danger.

Mercury-Atlas 7

This flight was the first in which the astronaut himself created his own life-threatening problems with which he heroically coped. The fact is that the fuel tanks for the orientation systems of the “Mercury” were very small, and, if not to save fuel on purpose, they would be enough for a very short time. And astronaut Scott Carpenter, working on a very loaded program of experiments and being in uncomfortable conditions (the temperature in the cockpit reached 42 ° due to poor operation of the temperature control system), constantly deployed the ship in different directions, not really watching the fuel consumption. Already on the first orbit, Carpenter spent almost all of the fuel from the auto-orientation tank, and when the MCC asked him to switch to the manual orientation tank, he spent most of the fuel for the second orbit and from there. As a result, the third turn had to be carried out in the drift, disabling the automatic system for maintaining orientation. Before braking, fascinated by photographing and “hunting for snowflakes” , Carpenter did not pay attention to the fact that the capsule had an orientation error of 20 ° in pitch and 27 ° in yaw. Automatic blocked braking, Carpenter turned on the brake motors manually. Due to an orientation error, inhibition was partially “sideways”, which reduced the total braking impulse. The ship flew over the landing point for 450 km. In addition, Carpenter forgot to turn off the use of a manual orientation tank, and the fuel in it ended immediately after the end of the brake engines! The astronaut remained a few percent of the fuel in the tank automatic orientation. If it runs out, the capsule will lose its orientation with the heat shield forward and will burn. Carpenter was lucky - the fuel ran out at an altitude of 24 km, when the loss of orientation was no longer terrible. But a flight of four hundred kilometers meant that the ships and airplanes dedicated to finding and evacuating the astronaut were in a different area. Carpenter was searched for almost forty minutes, and, given that the search operation took place on the air, the press had already begun speculating that the United States had suffered the first loss in the space program. Curiously, until the end of his life, Carpenter seemed confident that he had come out of a difficult situation with honor, not realizing that he himself had created it.

Mercury-atlas 9

The purpose of the mission was a long space flight - as long as 34 hours. The flight went according to the program up to the 19th turn (out of the planned 22), at which technical problems began to appear. At first, the “0.05g” indicator came on, which, during normal operation, signaled the start of entry into the atmosphere. This was an obvious malfunction because the items in the cabin remained weightless. Apparently, the sensor did not work properly due to a short circuit (Cooper had problems with spills of water and urine, the liquid could close the wires). The twentieth orbit went into the struggle with the automatic orientation system, which took the wrong signal "0.05g" as a guide to the construction of a landing orientation. The failure of the automatic program of descent meant that it was necessary to brake manually. Cooper read a modified sequence of operations for manual braking from Earth. In addition, at the twentieth turn, the artificial horizon failed - it became possible to determine the position of the ship only visually. At 21 orbits, an increase in carbon dioxide partial pressure was found — the absorber failed. Twenty minutes later, an alarm signal sounded in the cockpit - two short circuits in the automatic orientation system occurred at once. At 22, the last turn, the spare inverter of the orientation machine refused to turn on - it was only possible to fly the ship when returning from orbit. Cooper manually orienting the ship to drag on the stars and the night of Shanghai and turned on the engines by command from Earth. The astronaut manually kept the ship on the right course, tracking the brake engines for hours, manually shot the brake motor assembly, manually guided the ship to brake in dense layers of the atmosphere and manually piloted the ship all the way to Earth, maintaining the correct orientation and fending off vibrations. Despite fully manual control, Cooper managed to land with the smallest error - just 1.8 km from the calculated point.

Sunrise-2

Left - Belyaev, right - Leonov

Flight of Voskhod-2 turned out to be rich in deadly situations.
Blow up the spacesuit . The airlock was designed with a minimum clearance relative to Leonov's spacesuit - only 20 mm from each shoulder. Testing in the ground-based pressure chamber was successful. But it was impossible to create pressure below the conditional 60 km. In a real spacewalk, the spacesuit swelled harder than expected, and Leonov discovered that he could not get back into the airlock. I had to take the risk - to transfer the spacesuit to the low pressure mode. The danger was that if there was still a lot of nitrogen in Leonov's blood, such a decision led to a caisson disease, with the risk of loss of consciousness and death. Leonov remembered that he had been breathing pure oxygen for an hour already, there was almost no nitrogen left in his blood. The risk was justified, the "thinner" space suit got into the airlock chamber. Violating the next instruction point, Leonov climbed into the gateway headfirst (it was easier to get in that way) and turned around with his feet forward already in the airlock. Returning to the ship, Leonov tried to wipe his eyes and could not - the face was literally drenched later.
Violation of the atmosphere . During Leonov’s entry into open space, the ship did not turn. This led to the fact that the hatch was heated unevenly by the Sun. Uneven heating led to an uneven expansion of the hatch, and, after closing, a small gap remained between the hatch and the hull. A small air leak led to the fact that the system of maintaining the composition of the atmosphere began to supply oxygen to the cabin. Oxygen became more, the atmosphere of the ship became extremely flammable. The slightest spark - and even those materials that do not burn in ordinary air will catch fire. The actions of the crew to remedy the situation - setting the temperature and humidity to a minimum and turning off the oxygen supply valve did not correct the situation. The problem was aggravated by the fact that the increased partial pressure of oxygen led to the oxygenation of the astronauts. After a few hours, the astronauts fell asleep from stress and oxygen intoxication. It was an accident that saved - Leonov threw the air supply switch from reserve cylinders with a hose, pressurized the hatch, and the atmosphere began to normalize.
Failure of the automatic landing system . At the right time did not turn on the brake motors. For the first time in the history of Soviet cosmonautics, astronauts had to perform a manual landing. The matter was complicated by the fact that the controls were placed the same way as in the “East”, and the crew seats were turned. Leonov had to keep Belyaev by the legs while he was directing the ship to braking. Then the astronauts quickly took their places in the cradle and started the engines. The delay due to the need to get into the cradle led to an error regarding the planned landing site at ~ 80 km.
The last adventure for the crew of "Voskhod-2" was a cold overnight stay. It was not deadly, but it brought trouble. The fact is that the ship landed in a dense forest, where helicopters could not land. From the helicopter they threw warm clothes and food, rescuers quickly came up, but the astronauts left the landing area (early spring, -25 ° C, snow, forest) only on the third day. And the unhealthy secrecy surrounding the space program of the USSR led to the fact that while the astronauts were sitting in the taiga, the press wrote that they were resting at the party regional committee.


Film about Leonov


The popular science series "Open space". About "Voskhod-2" from 45 minutes.

Gemini-6A

December 12, 1965. The Gemini-6 ship with a crew of Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford is preparing for launch. The countdown of the last ten seconds before the start begins, the engines start to start, but, suddenly, with some unusual screeching, the engines stop:



According to the instructions, the astronauts had to eject. But, firstly, they did not feel any movement, which indicated that the rocket was not going to fall or explode. And secondly, they really did not want to eject. Even without the transfer of the mission to restore the ship after the ejection, a very powerful catapult made this event very risky. In addition, the astronauts saw an unsuccessful test of a catapult with a dummy - a very small delay in the shooting of the hatch led to the fact that the chair with the dummy knocked out the hatch itself. Some sources wrote that the mannequin had its head blown off. Yes, then, for sure, there were successful trials, but in any case, the risk was great. Risking not to eject (what if a rocket would have exploded after all?), The astronauts made the right decision.
The investigation showed that the reason for the cancellation of the launch was the cable, which departed from the rocket ahead of time. In parallel, a drop in thrust from one of the engines was detected by telemetry. The engine was sorted out and they found a plastic cork forgotten at the entrance to the gas generator. Ironically, the fallen off cable saved the mission - a drop in the thrust of one of the engines meant the impossibility of a normal launch, but if the rocket could even tear itself from the launch pad, its fall back would definitely mean an explosion of the launch vehicle, the destruction of the ship and the need to eject astronauts ( and if they had catapulted too late?).

Gemini-8

March 16, 1966. Gemini-8 with a crew of Neil Armstrong and David Scott successfully conducts the first ever docking in space. But 27 minutes after it, the combined “Gemini” and the “Agen” target begin to rotate. Armstrong shunting engines dampen the rotation, but as soon as it stops driving, the rotation begins again. Thinking that “Agen” is to blame, the crew makes an emergency disconnect:



However, the rotation not only does not stop, but begins to accelerate even faster. Rotation becomes life-threatening - the crew may lose consciousness and die due to overload. Having a few seconds left, Armstrong correctly identifies the cause of the accident (one of the orientation system's engines works abnormally), turns off the engines of the main OAMS orientation system, turns on the RCS orientation landing system and turns off the rotation already. The stabilization of the ship takes ten long minutes and most of the RCS fuel. The mission had to be prematurely interrupted, and the landing was carried out in the reserve area. A non-standard landing area meant a three-hour wait for rescuers, and, instead of a comfortable climb to an aircraft carrier, Armstrong and Scott had to climb into a destroyer on a cruise ship. But these were already trifles - the mission as a whole turned out to be successful (they managed to do the docking), and the deadly situation was avoided.

So what is next?

The volume of publication means the division into several parts - about the almost occurred catastrophes after 1966 there will be the next part. Approximately in a week - next week I plan to conduct an Internet broadcast of the lecture “History of Cosmonautics” , which will be on Saturday, September 27, at 17:00 Moscow time.

Little reasoning

About the instructions . Curiously, despite the fact that the instructions are usually written in blood, in these stories we see a not-so-rare violation of them. Leonov was instructed to "report everything." But at the same time, he clearly understood the risk and necessity of his actions: “a critical situation arose, and there was no time to consult with the Earth. As long as I told them ... as long as they confer ... " . The Gemini-6 astronauts also had good reasons to violate the ejection instructions - they did not feel the rocket movement, the risk of falling and an explosion was small.
About independent actions . In the case when there is no time, but it’s necessary to decide, a qualified crew can easily cope with an emergency situation - Leonov and Armstrong are an example of this.
On the importance of risk management . Most of these stories clearly show how useful it is to think ahead about possible accidents and take safety measures.
About false alarms . It is good to have enough information available to determine if it is a true or false alarm.

List of sources used:

In addition to Wikipedia ( there is an excellent list ), they used:

1. Chertok Boris Evseevich, “Rockets and People” in 4 books.
2. Kamanin Nikolai Petrovich, “Hidden Space”, diaries in 4 books.
3. “When We Left Earth”, Discovery Channel, TV series, 2008.
4. Encyclopedia "World Manned Cosmonautics: History. Equipment. People ”ed. Yu.M. Baturin.

For navigation: a series of "space catastrophes and accidents . "