1971, June 30 - depressurization of the Soyuz-11 descent vehicle occurred in the upper layers of the atmosphere. All crew members - Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, Viktor Patsaev - were killed.
1971, April 19 - The world's first long-term orbital station Salyut-1 was launched into space in the Soviet Union. The history of this station is full of drama. It began with the fact that when it was launched into orbit, the compartment with the scientific equipment, which contained the solar telescope and other astrophysical instruments, did not open. The compartment could not be unlocked.
Then it was necessary to work out the technique of docking the station and the Soyuz transport vehicle. The first such flight took place on April 23, 1971. V. Shatalov, A. Eliseev and N. Rukavishnikov moored to the station on the Soyuz-10 spacecraft, but after five and a half hours of joint flight, the devices had to be pulled apart: due to malfunctions in the docking station the cosmonauts failed to board the Salyut, they returned to Earth.
It was the turn of the next crew - A. Leonov, V. Kubasov and P. Kolodin. Their backup was G. Dobrovolsky, V. Volkov and V. Patsaev. In May 1971, the preparation of crews for the flight - its duration should exceed the famous, 18-day, A. Nikolaev and V. Sevastyanov - came to an end. Everything went well: the cosmonauts left for Baikonur, "settled down" on the transport ship and the real ship.
Crew replacement
Three days before the start, the crews had to undergo a pre-flight medical examination. And here the unexpected happened: doctors discovered a small inflammatory focus in the lungs of Kubasov. The astronaut felt fine, there was no sting, so he met the doctors' verdict with hostility - after all, he had to go in the main crew and already “felt” the start, and now he was, in fact, removed from the flight.
The chairman of the State Commission, Kerim Kerimov, listened to the report of the doctors, to put it mildly, without enthusiasm: the removal of one cosmonaut from the flight meant, according to unwritten rules, the replacement of the entire crew, and this, in turn, entailed a whole range of work on the spacecraft, which had already been prepared for the prime crew. A. Leonov was also annoyed; he demanded that flight engineer Volkov should fly instead of flight engineer Kubasov. But the chief designer Mishin did not agree with him. In the end, it was decided that understudies would fly - Dobrovolsky, Volkov, Patsaev.
Promotional video:
According to Vera Alexandrovna Patsaeva, her husband was very happy to learn that he was flying to the station. “He really wanted to go to space. But their crew was the main one for the second flight to the Salyut station, and on this basis there were disagreements with Volkov. After all, Vladislav already had a flight behind him, wrote a book about it and did not want to rush."
Approximately six months before the tragedy, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev, together with their wives and children, rested together in a boarding house in Istra. Vera Aleksandrovna recalled how one day they sat up late into the evening, opened their hearts, and Vladislav admitted: "I'm glad I won't fly to the first station." - "Why?" - Patsaeva was surprised. “I was foretold that I would die,” he replied.
1971, June 5 - on the eve of the flight, at the traditional meeting with the launch team of the cosmodrome (many traditions, like this one, were laid by S. P. Korolev from the first flights into space) the spacecraft commander Dobrovolsky spoke. A. Leonov's crew took the position of backup.
Let's pay tribute to the Baikonur team: three days before the start, they were able to carry out the whole range of work for a new crew.
Start "Soyuz-11"
June 6: a short report from the commander - and now the cosmonauts appeared on the upper platform of the service farms. Lastly, farewell wave of hands, last glances at the Earth before the start. Soyuz-11 took off exactly at the scheduled time - at 7.55.
Soyuz 11 at the launch site
A day later, Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsaev, already at the Salute, began to carry out the program. And she carried away: for the first time, the crew created, in fact, a long-term orbital laboratory. Moreover, the main task - automatic rendezvous with the Salyut-1 station, docking and transfer of the crew to the orbital station - has already been completed.
Flight
The crew is not destined to tell about their flight. But the surviving documents make it possible to recreate day after day the events and the very atmosphere of the star voyage. Behind the usual "Everything is fine", "Full order aboard", invariably sounded in radio and television reports from orbit, there was exhausting work, sometimes on the verge of a possible.
The cosmonauts carried out a rich program of scientific, military, medical and technical experiments. At the same time, as it was written later, something did not work out in the crew. In Dobrovolsky's notebook, in particular, an entry was found: "If this is compatibility, then what is incompatibility?" True, the commander made it in the first and most difficult week of his stay at the station: extreme conditions of weightlessness, annoying extraneous odors on board the station that was not yet inhabited, a program written literally every minute. The cosmonauts worked around the clock, "in shifts." And the overstrain of those days, as you can see, had an effect.
Not without incident. A fire occurred at the orbital station - power cables caught fire, pungent smoke poured down. The cosmonauts barely managed to get into the descent vehicle and have already begun preparing for an urgent evacuation.
“Dobrovolsky had a wonderful character: he could turn everything into a joke,” says V. Patsaeva. - Probably not everyone knows that there was an emergency on board the Salyut station - the wiring caught fire. Then Volkov transmitted a message to Earth: they have a fire, and they will descend. George did not argue, although together with Vitya he did not stop looking for the cause of the fire. Finally they found her and eliminated her. The flight continued."
Return to Earth
By the end of June 29, everything is ready to return to Earth; the crew was congratulated on the successful completion of the program. After control checks of the descent vehicle's sealing prior to undocking, Soyuz-11 received the go-ahead to “set off” from the station. At 21.28 Moscow time, the Soyuz undocked from the Salyut.
Fragments of some communications between the land (call sign "Zarya") and the crew (call sign "Yantar") were first published on the pages of the "Government Gazette":
"30 June. "Dawn": "Amber" - to everyone; From undocking to landing, be sure to continuously report on your well-being and observation. Continuously - reportage. Got it?
"Yantar-2" (V. Volkov): Understood, understood … I see rain, I see rain! I saw it perfectly. Shines.
Zarya: Write down the time - 01.47.27.
Yantar-2: While the Earth is not visible, it is not visible yet.
Zarya: How is orientation going?
"Yantar-2": We saw the Earth, we saw!
Zarya: Okay, take your time.
"Yantar-2": "Zarya", I am "Yantar-2". We started orientation. Rain is hanging on the right.
Yantar-2: Flies great, beautiful!
"Yantar-3" (V. Patsaev): "Zarya", I am the third. I can see the horizon at the bottom of the window.
"Zarya": "Amber", once again I remind the orientation - zero - 180 degrees.
Yantar-2: Zero - 180 degrees.
Zarya: Understood correctly.
"Yantar-2": The "Descent" banner is on.
Zarya: Let it burn. All perfectly. Burns correctly. The connection ends. Happily!"
Landing
The flight was still in progress. On June 30, at 1.35, after the orientation of the Soyuz, the braking propulsion system was activated. After working out the estimated time and losing speed, the ship began to de-orbit. After aerodynamic braking in the atmosphere, the parachute opened normally, the soft-landing engines worked, the descent vehicle smoothly landed in the steppe of Central Kazakhstan, west of the Munly mountain.
The instruments of the measuring complex dispassionately recorded the duration of the expedition - 23 days, 18 hours, 21 minutes, 43 seconds. New world record.
Doctor Anatoly Lebedev, who was then working at the Cosmonaut Training Center, says:
“On June 30, at 1.35, Soyuz-11 switched on the braking propulsion system and began its descent to Earth. On our helicopter, we listened attentively to the radio communications of other search groups - who would see the ship first?
Finally, a laconic: “I see! Accompanying! - and an explosion of voices on the air. All voices, except … Yes, for sure: one thing was surprising - none of the crews of the search service could contact the cosmonauts. We thought back then: probably the sling antenna is not working, and therefore it is impossible to establish contact with the Soyuz crew.
In the end, we, doctors, through the windows of the helicopter saw the white-orange dome of the ship's parachute, slightly silvery from the rising sun. We flew exactly to the landing site.
Silently (for us!) The soft-landing engines of the Soyuz whipped up a cloud of dust, the silk “foam” of the parachute system smoothly faded. We sat down after the ship, about 50 - 100 meters away. How does it happen in such cases? You open the hatch of the descent vehicle, from there - the voices of the crew. And here - the crunch of scale, the clatter of metal, the noise of helicopters and … silence from the ship.
I had to be the first to retrieve its commander, Georgy Dobrovolsky, from the ship. I knew that he was sitting in the middle chair. I will not hide, I did not recognize him: the cosmonauts grew beards during the flight (they had difficulties with shaving), and the unusual conditions of the descent also, as you can see, influenced their appearance. Following Dobrovolsky, we took out Patsaev and Volkov.
Volkov was generally very handsome, his friends in Zvezdny called him Marcello, in honor of Mastroianni, the then, and even the present, film idol. Later, with a kind of almost mystical feeling, I found his note in my home "archive" - we played before the flight, the game was not completed, and he wrote on a piece of paper: "I'll be back and finish playing." "I'll be back" … But all this after.
The crew landed with no signs of life
In the first moments, nothing is clear; A quick inspection also did not make it possible to immediately give a conclusion about the state of the crew: what happened during the seconds of radio silence, while the ball of the descent vehicle was piercing the atmosphere ?! All astronauts have almost normal body temperature.
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Victor Patsaev and Vladislav Volkov
And, to be honest, this is not so much a misunderstanding - the thought of a tragedy simply did not come close to anyone in those seconds. Our entire medical team deployed instantly. The presence of an experienced resuscitator from the Sklifosovsky Institute immediately determined the nature and means of assistance. Six doctors started artificial respiration, chest compressions.
A minute, more … General Goreglyad, the head of the search and rescue group, asked me, I remember, briefly: "Well ?!"
However, there is no need to decipher: he, Goreglyad, needs to report something to the chairman of the State Commission … This has not happened before: the ship is on Earth, all communication lines are working right up to the Kremlin, and we are silent.
What could I say ?! I remember asking: "Give the doctors a few more minutes." And for some reason he added: "For evaluation."
We continued to work using everything we could.
One after another, helicopters landed near the ship, people froze in painful anticipation of news from the working doctors. There was an amazing silence. Impossible, absolutely impossible for such a moment with a normal landing!..
And again General Goreglyad more strictly and loudly demanded from the doctors a conclusion on the condition of the crew: "It is necessary to report to the government!"
As if you have to repeat!
Even now I cannot forget the minute when my lips uttered a phrase that frightened me myself: "Tell me that the crew … that the crew has landed without signs of life!" It sounded like a verdict to my dear friends astronauts! Who knew that this particular tragic formula would later be included in TASS messages. And yet another hour and a half ago we heard the radio communications of the crew; then everything went well until the landing!
Causes of the death of astronauts
What could have happened? Long before the start, medical specialists assumed that after a flight of such duration, during descent, there could be "difficulties in transferring overloads." But not such a final flight. All medical personnel continued to carry out their duties until the appearance of absolute signs of death of the crew …"
A few days later, the results of the decryption of the "black box" records became known. An analysis of the records of the autonomous recorder of the on-board measurement system showed that from the moment the utility compartment was separated - at an altitude of more than 150 km - the pressure in the descent vehicle began to drop and after 30-40 seconds. became practically zero. After 42 sec. after depressurization, the hearts of the astronauts stopped.
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov says: “The mistake was in the design. The cabin was depressurized during the shooting of the orbital compartment. When installing ball valves, the installers, instead of using a force of 90 kg, tightened it with a force of 60-65 kg. During the shooting of the orbital compartment, a large overload occurred, which forced these valves to work, and they crumbled. A hole with a diameter of 20 mm was found. After 22 seconds. the cosmonauts lost consciousness."
A valve that equalizes the pressure in the cockpit with respect to the external atmosphere is provided in case the ship lands on the water or lands with the hatch down. The reserve of life support system resources is limited, and so that the astronauts do not experience a lack of oxygen, the valve "connected" the spacecraft to the atmosphere. It was supposed to work during landing in the normal mode only at an altitude of 4 km, but it worked in a vacuum.
Why did the valve open? After lengthy tests and simulation of different situations, the commission put forward a version of spontaneous discovery, which became the only one. On this, the investigation, in fact, was completed.
The pressure in the astronauts' cabin dropped to almost zero in seconds. After the tragedy, one of the chiefs expressed the idea: they say, the hole formed in the shell of the descent vehicle could be closed … with a finger. But this is not as easy as it seems. All three were in chairs, fastened with seat belts, as it should be according to the instructions during landing. Together with Rukavishnikov, Leonov participated in the imitation of the landing. All conditions are modeled in the pressure chamber.
It turned out that in order to unfasten the belts and close a hole the size of a five-kopeck coin of Soviet times, the astronauts would have needed more than 30 seconds. They lost consciousness much earlier and could do nothing. Dobrovolsky, apparently, tried to do something - he managed to pull off the seat belts; alas, there was not enough time for more.
The crew descended to the ground without space suits. This decision was made personally by Korolyov before the launch of Voskhod. And three people in spacesuits cannot be accommodated in the Soyuz. However, there were no problems with airtightness before in any of the flights of Vostoks, Voskhod, unmanned and manned Soyuz.
After the death of Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsaev, the cosmonauts began to fly in special suits. Recommendations were urgently developed to guarantee the safety of people in the event of depressurization of the descent vehicle.
Georgy Timofeevich Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Nikolaevich Volkov and Viktor Ivanovich Patsaev went down in the history of cosmonautics as the first crew of the first orbital station Salyut.
The heroes-cosmonauts were buried at the Kremlin wall.
I. Muromov