What caused the death of Soyuz-11, and how fate saved cosmonaut Leonov

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Soviet space program stalled. In a short time, the Americans not only managed to catch up with the USSR, but also overtake it. A successful operation was required to restore parity. And it seemed that flying to a manned orbital station was the best option. The first expedition was successful. But the second ended in disaster. The Soyuz-11 launch vehicle failed. The crew fought for their lives to the last, but there was not enough time. After a couple of tens of seconds, the consciousness of people simply turned off. There was a version that sabotage led to the death of the crew, but the real reason turned out to be very commonplace.

The flaws of the space race

After the enchanting success of the space program in the early 60s, the Soviet Union was forced to keep the bar. The flight of Yuri Gagarin hit hard on the Americans' pride and they rushed in pursuit. Accordingly, the manned space program received colossal money. And soon the Stars and Stripes were ahead.

The Soviet Union tried with all its might to catch up with the rival. But it was extremely difficult to do this. And it became even more difficult when Sergei Pavlovich Korolev died in 1966. A year later, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died tragically while testing the raw and unfinished spacecraft Soyuz. Then the pioneer Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was gone. The project of the lunar rocket N-1 also failed to be realized. In general, the picture was the most depressing. At the same time, the astronauts themselves did not want to give up the lunar program. They sent letters to the Kremlin asking them to continue working and taking responsibility for themselves. But the authorities did not take the risk. The result is known to everyone: the Americans landed on the moon, and the USSR retired.

All the astronauts who were involved in the lunar program were involved in another project. The Soviet Union ventured to compensate for the lunar failure by flying to a manned orbital station. It was planned that three crews would go there, replacing each other. Just in case, the fourth was completed. But the likelihood of his being sent to the station was minimal.

Life has made its own adjustments. One by one, the astronauts dropped out of the program (the reasons were different, from a violation of the regime to illness). In the end, on April 19, the Salyut station nevertheless entered low-earth orbit. Soon the ship "Soyuz-10" went to her, the crew of which was Shatalov, Eliseev and Rukavishnikov. But the task did not work out. There was a technical failure and the ship was unable to undock from the station. With difficulty, but the crew managed to detach without damaging the docking station.

This was the first wake-up call. But the stakes were too high to back down. Designers urgently began to work on the Soyuz-11, paying special attention to its docking mechanisms. While the work was going on, the authorities decided on the composition of the crew. It includes Alexey Leonov, Pyotr Kolodin and Valery Kubasov. They were supposed to go to Salyut in early June 1971. But … there was another chance intervention.

A few days before the start, doctors suddenly discovered that Kubasov had a lung problem. It was decided to remove him from the flight, replacing him with a backup. The crew commander insisted on this option, but the state commission doubted. The fact is that in such a situation, all the astronauts were changed. This was also what the understudies wanted: Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev. A conflict arose between the cosmonauts, which was only a little smoothed out, but not resolved. Kubasov was especially worried, because because of him there was a change of crews.

Soyuz-11 took off from Baikonur exactly on schedule: June 6, 191. The flight passed without incident. Docking of the spacecraft with the orbital station also took place without any problems. The cosmonauts ended up in the "Salute" and began to perform various tasks.

The management was delighted. The space program began to come to life. And nothing, as they say, foreshadowed trouble. After completing the entire program, the astronauts went to Earth. It happened on June 29th. And at Baikonur the next crew was waiting for their turn, ready to go to the "Salute".

Sabotage or factory marriage?

Everything went according to plan. Soyuz-11 safely undocked from the station and headed for Earth. Suddenly, at an altitude of 150 kilometers, communication was lost. The alarm call was attributed to a technical problem. The ship entered the atmosphere, the parachutes deployed in time and it landed. Soon a search group with medics arrived in time for the mute. They opened the capsule and found the bodies of the astronauts.

At first it seemed that they had simply passed out. But no, the efforts of doctors have not yielded results. Doctor Anatoly Lebedev stated the death of all crew members.

At first there was a shock. The euphoria was instantly replaced by apathy. It seemed that the last nail had been driven into the coffin of the Soviet space program. The cosmonauts, having learned about the death of their colleagues, gloomily joked that now they are being buried not one by one, but immediately by crews.

A special commission has launched an investigation into the causes of the deaths of Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsaev. It soon became clear what had happened. It turned out that the astronauts died due to a sharp drop in pressure in the spacecraft. Simply put, there was a depressurization. And it was caused by a technical malfunction of one of the ventilation valves. Because of this, a hole of a couple of tens of millimeters was formed, but that was enough.

The astronauts fought for their lives. In the conditions of fog (it arose due to depressurization) and the whistle of decompression sickness, they had only 20-25 seconds to find the malfunction and fix it. Naturally, it was unrealistic to do this. But the astronauts tried. According to the state commission, they even managed to find the faulty valve and tried to fix the problem. They ran out of time. Only a few seconds separated people from salvation.

Now - in spacesuits

Later, a special commission reproduced the Soyuz-11 disaster. It is no coincidence that the role of cosmonauts in an emergency situation went to Alexei Leonov. And he was accompanied by Nikolai Rukavishnikov. The cosmonauts, who knew the place of the malfunction and understood that nothing threatened their lives, coped with it in a few tens of seconds. That only confirmed the verdict of the commission: Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsaev did not have a single chance to escape.

By the way, even representatives of the KGB were investigating the death of the cosmonauts. The fact is that the sabotage hypothesis was very popular. But she was not confirmed. It was possible to find out that the problem turned out to be the most commonplace - a marriage in the manufacture of the valve.

The death of the crew returned the spacesuits to the ships, which Korolev had refused in due time. The point is that they took up too much space. Now it was decided that their presence is mandatory. If they were on the Soyuz-11, casualties could have been avoided.

The accident led to the fact that more cosmonauts did not fly to Salyut. This program was declared obsolete and sent to the dustbin of history. The ashes of the deceased cosmonauts were buried in the Kremlin wall.