15 ms·

Cosmonaut Crashed into Earth 'Crying in Rage' (2011)

110 points by vinnyglennon 11y ago

petewailes 11y ago
As noted in the amended post (link below), this isn't actually true. http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-fiery-death-retold http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-...
- goodcanadian 11y ago
  I think the update puts some context around events and calls some of the details into question, but it does not really dispute the basic thrust of the story. I think that it is categorically unfair to say, "This isn't true," but it is also inappropriate to put too much stock in this version of events.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  That isn't a debunking as much as a refinement of the claims. The USSR's early space program was really this dangerous. Soyuz 1 was a failure that lead to a death and Komarov knew he was going to die before he stepped into the craft. Komarov was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight. Just four years later the Soyuz program killed three more cosmonauts as well.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    I'm not sure it's helpful to rattle-off number of fatalities when discussing whose space program might have been more 'dangerous'. Both 'sides' were running at break-neck speed to achieve the most the first. Both were using essentially the same technology in the same manner. Who died when was more a case of chance than anything systematic to either the USA or USSR's philosophy. The Apollo program killed three astronauts before they even left the pad. Apollo 13 was a failure that very nearly killed three more. And we'll not mention STS. But all that pales into insignificance compared to the number of test-pilots who quietly died in the advancement of aviation in the same era. That's how Yuri Gagarin died, for example.
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      My point isn't a us vs them as much as it was showing that the early Soyuz program did results in fatalities and as such posting a curt "No, this is wrong" is fairly disingenious. Also, the USSR engaged in cover-ups fairly routinely. The Nedelin disaster was covered up for 39 years, for example. This cost nearly 200 ground crew lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe >The Apollo program killed three astronauts before they even left the pad. Again, this is public record. Again, the USSR was very dishonest with its space program. Having people still parrot their propaganda is ridiculous in this day and age. There is still a lot we don't know about the daily ins and outs of their program and pretending none of this happened is extremely disingenuous.
      - conistonwater 11y ago
        This is one of those cases where you can study the processes, which people set up, because the structure of the outcomes invariably resembles the structure of the processes that produced them. The difference in processes here (US v USSR) is quite striking.
- chillingeffect 11y ago
  This is another great example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. [1] You're an expert in a field, read an article about it, realize how wrong people are, then read another article and think the author is an expert. Lots of people read this article, thinking the author and the novelist were correct. Then the actual experts wrote in and pointed out where it was wrong. I think this is a great example of media bias toward drama without having the proper time to track down and research the truth. I expect, as the news cycle speeds up even more, articles will continue to be this wrong and worse. It's going to be ever harder to tell what is true and what is not. Anything pertaining to be true will require numerous citations and evidence. We can no longer rely on the brand ("NPR" or "NYT") to determine if something is true. [1] https://embracepith.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/on-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-or-how-crichton-pens-more-than-a-novel/ https://embracepith.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/on-gell-mann-am...
  - thrwaway210 11y ago
    In an interesting twist, this story is plagiarized in the book Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offil. It appears on page 61 of the book.
- chengiz 11y ago
  The fact that this was reported by "Starman" was enough for me to question its veracity. That is one tall book, written in a conspiratorial tone, telling Soviet tales with no questioning or radar for right and wrong. It is impossible to trust right from the preface.
kogus 11y ago
An image of the actual charred remains, and audio of Komarov as he died? I love NPR, but this is bordering on snuff. It seems far more graphic than is necessary.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Personally, I appreciate the author's focus on telling Komorov's story with Komorov at the center and the corpse as meteorite knifed the romantic abstractions that let me be comfortably unempathetic when reading about people dying.
  - zymhan 11y ago
    For me, imagining knowing that your parachute won't deploy as you hurtle toward the earth is pretty good at making me empathize with someone's death. I don't need to the photo to haunt me as well.
    - brudgers 11y ago
      The interesting thing as I was replying was that it's the caption that matters. If it was "commissars inspect moonrock" suddenly it would be science. With the caption, the photo creates the potential to empathize with the people who might have made better decisions...if not the actual decision makers, the people in uniform are a good representation. The audio is consistent with the tradition of space flight documentary. "Houston we have a problem," doesn't always work out to a Hollywood ending. None of which is to diminish someone's reaction. There are many news stories I forgoe because I don't want to go to the place they are likely to to take me, too.
- gdubs 11y ago
  Had a similar thought – definitely qualifies as graphic content and could have done with a fair warning. Tough image to confront first thing in the morning.
rwhitman 11y ago
I'm normally very much a skeptic and not prone to conspiracy theories, but one that's always really fascinated me is the "lost cosmonauts" theory. The idea that Yuri Gagarin wasn't the first human to travel into space, he was just the first human to return safely from space is haunting. The concept that the USSR got ahead in the space race by a willingness to sacrifice a number of souls to the perils of space, and went to great lengths to cover it up, still seems plausible in my mind. Putting humans into space is incredibly dangerous, and there are so many ways for a human to die in space. I've always felt there was a curious lack of death-in-space in the history of the early days of the space race, on both the Soviet and American sides. Even though it is almost certainly warped by Cold War fear mongering, the idea that the Soviet Union shot capsules out of orbit, frequently had cosmonauts burn up on reentry etc just seems to fill in the gaps nicely. Anyhow mostly conspiracy theory nuttiness, but I still believe there are nuggets of truth in there somewhere... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judica-Cordiglia_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judica-Cordiglia_brothers
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Some of these aren't conspiracy theories. The Soyuz 1 pilot knew he was going to die and, well, he did. The 1960 R-16 rocket explosion at the Baikonur Cosmodrome killed something like 200 ground crew. This was covered up for decades and only officially acknowledged as the USSR was beginning to fall apart in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe I also believe the Polyus anti-satellite weapon platform intended to militarize space was a secret to the West until it failed to achieve orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_%28spacecraft%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_%28spacecraft%29 Pretty much every space mission in the USSR was a secret. The West would detect a launch, or sometimes be told in advance a launch was happening to lower nuclear tensions, and then days later we'd see in Pravda what mission it was.
- peter303 11y ago
  NOVA episode talked about first "secret" Soviet space station- mainly a cylinder for extending spy photography missions. A human in space was a more efficient photographer than a robot in the 1960s.
jt2190 11y ago
(2011)
brudgers 11y ago
Date: 2012
- zymhan 11y ago
  Thanks. Might as well say "Date: 1967" as well. /s This is obviously a historical piece.
  - r3bl 11y ago
    Well, it's not that obvious to someone who hasn't heard about this in 2012. Adding the year next to the title would definitely help people to make a decision to click on it or not.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    It's conventional on Hacker News to add the publication year to stories that have been around for a while. I suspect this is because by editing the title, it avoids needless "This is old" comments.
peter303 11y ago
The sad thing too is that both space shuttle accidents the astronauts knew for seconds to minutes what was happening. NASA isnt making full reports to protect relatives. In either accident the astronauts could not do anything. The new Orion system changes this.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  In what way does the new Orion system change that?
  - RIMR 11y ago
    Orion and Dragon capsules have a pad-abort system. In the event of a malfunction, the crew capsule will jettison fast enough to escape any explosions. The acceleration will probably knock out the astronauts and cause internal bleeding, but that's still better than immolation. Failed re-entry is still going to be fatal, but the Dragon can theoretically recover from a failed parachute with its Draco engines.
  - zymhan 11y ago
    The issues with having the Space Shuttle slung on the side of the fuel tank, where falling foam could (and did, many times before Columbia) strike the Shuttle.
- secstate 11y ago
  Oh, for Columbia's crew it could have been far worse than that. There's reasonable evidence [0] that the director of NASA and ground crews knew the Columbia's wing damage was bad enough to make re-entry impossible. But they had two options, tell the astronauts they were never coming home at the start of their mission, or wait until they discovered it minutes before their vehicle disintegrated. The director chose the former path, and ended up getting fired as it looked like a cover up. It was really just being compassionate. No pad abort system would have saved Columbia. But on the flip-side, while everyone is up and arms over the loss, NASA's astronauts are trained to WANT to fly. We can hem and haw and say what a tragedy, but there is a class of people who know the risks, who know the possibility of death always exists and will still pilot or crew the vehicles that we send into space. 0: http://goo.gl/vdagzb http://goo.gl/vdagzb
andrewtbham 11y ago
title should probably have in parenthesis that it was published in 2011. i know i read this a long time ago.
blarneyman 11y ago
Known to be false. Stop posting such crap.
elbigbad 11y ago
It's creepy and tasteless to make the sound clip of his last words available for sale: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SHRCYU?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SHRCYU?ie=UTF8&*Versio...
jkot 11y ago
I am surprised nobody mentioned why it crashed. Technical flaws could be expected on prototype aircraft. And Soyuz mostly worked fine without major redesign for several years. Sojuz program was postponed, while soviets worked on Voschod. In result Soyuz 1 was put into storage for several months. Parachutes were rolled into capsules all that time, and nobody repackaged them before start. Parachutes failed to open on landing. My source is Karel Pacner. Well known Czechoslovak journalist who writes mostly about space exporation. He was only journalist from soviet block who covered Apollo 11 launch onsite from Florida. After soviets opened archives he studied their records and wrote several books.

110 points by vinnyglennon 11y ago

As noted in the amended post (link below), this isn't actually true. http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-fiery-death-retold http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-...

goodcanadian 11y ago
I think the update puts some context around events and calls some of the details into question, but it does not really dispute the basic thrust of the story. I think that it is categorically unfair to say, "This isn't true," but it is also inappropriate to put too much stock in this version of events.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
That isn't a debunking as much as a refinement of the claims. The USSR's early space program was really this dangerous. Soyuz 1 was a failure that lead to a death and Komarov knew he was going to die before he stepped into the craft. Komarov was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight. Just four years later the Soyuz program killed three more cosmonauts as well.
- dingaling 11y ago
  I'm not sure it's helpful to rattle-off number of fatalities when discussing whose space program might have been more 'dangerous'. Both 'sides' were running at break-neck speed to achieve the most the first. Both were using essentially the same technology in the same manner. Who died when was more a case of chance than anything systematic to either the USA or USSR's philosophy. The Apollo program killed three astronauts before they even left the pad. Apollo 13 was a failure that very nearly killed three more. And we'll not mention STS. But all that pales into insignificance compared to the number of test-pilots who quietly died in the advancement of aviation in the same era. That's how Yuri Gagarin died, for example.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    My point isn't a us vs them as much as it was showing that the early Soyuz program did results in fatalities and as such posting a curt "No, this is wrong" is fairly disingenious. Also, the USSR engaged in cover-ups fairly routinely. The Nedelin disaster was covered up for 39 years, for example. This cost nearly 200 ground crew lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe >The Apollo program killed three astronauts before they even left the pad. Again, this is public record. Again, the USSR was very dishonest with its space program. Having people still parrot their propaganda is ridiculous in this day and age. There is still a lot we don't know about the daily ins and outs of their program and pretending none of this happened is extremely disingenuous.
    - conistonwater 11y ago
      This is one of those cases where you can study the processes, which people set up, because the structure of the outcomes invariably resembles the structure of the processes that produced them. The difference in processes here (US v USSR) is quite striking.
chillingeffect 11y ago
This is another great example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. [1] You're an expert in a field, read an article about it, realize how wrong people are, then read another article and think the author is an expert. Lots of people read this article, thinking the author and the novelist were correct. Then the actual experts wrote in and pointed out where it was wrong. I think this is a great example of media bias toward drama without having the proper time to track down and research the truth. I expect, as the news cycle speeds up even more, articles will continue to be this wrong and worse. It's going to be ever harder to tell what is true and what is not. Anything pertaining to be true will require numerous citations and evidence. We can no longer rely on the brand ("NPR" or "NYT") to determine if something is true. [1] https://embracepith.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/on-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-or-how-crichton-pens-more-than-a-novel/ https://embracepith.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/on-gell-mann-am...
- thrwaway210 11y ago
  In an interesting twist, this story is plagiarized in the book Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offil. It appears on page 61 of the book.
chengiz 11y ago
The fact that this was reported by "Starman" was enough for me to question its veracity. That is one tall book, written in a conspiratorial tone, telling Soviet tales with no questioning or radar for right and wrong. It is impossible to trust right from the preface.

kogus 11y ago

An image of the actual charred remains, and audio of Komarov as he died? I love NPR, but this is bordering on snuff. It seems far more graphic than is necessary.

brudgers 11y ago
Personally, I appreciate the author's focus on telling Komorov's story with Komorov at the center and the corpse as meteorite knifed the romantic abstractions that let me be comfortably unempathetic when reading about people dying.
- zymhan 11y ago
  For me, imagining knowing that your parachute won't deploy as you hurtle toward the earth is pretty good at making me empathize with someone's death. I don't need to the photo to haunt me as well.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    The interesting thing as I was replying was that it's the caption that matters. If it was "commissars inspect moonrock" suddenly it would be science. With the caption, the photo creates the potential to empathize with the people who might have made better decisions...if not the actual decision makers, the people in uniform are a good representation. The audio is consistent with the tradition of space flight documentary. "Houston we have a problem," doesn't always work out to a Hollywood ending. None of which is to diminish someone's reaction. There are many news stories I forgoe because I don't want to go to the place they are likely to to take me, too.
gdubs 11y ago
Had a similar thought – definitely qualifies as graphic content and could have done with a fair warning. Tough image to confront first thing in the morning.

rwhitman 11y ago

I'm normally very much a skeptic and not prone to conspiracy theories, but one that's always really fascinated me is the "lost cosmonauts" theory. The idea that Yuri Gagarin wasn't the first human to travel into space, he was just the first human to return safely from space is haunting. The concept that the USSR got ahead in the space race by a willingness to sacrifice a number of souls to the perils of space, and went to great lengths to cover it up, still seems plausible in my mind. Putting humans into space is incredibly dangerous, and there are so many ways for a human to die in space. I've always felt there was a curious lack of death-in-space in the history of the early days of the space race, on both the Soviet and American sides. Even though it is almost certainly warped by Cold War fear mongering, the idea that the Soviet Union shot capsules out of orbit, frequently had cosmonauts burn up on reentry etc just seems to fill in the gaps nicely. Anyhow mostly conspiracy theory nuttiness, but I still believe there are nuggets of truth in there somewhere... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judica-Cordiglia_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judica-Cordiglia_brothers

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Some of these aren't conspiracy theories. The Soyuz 1 pilot knew he was going to die and, well, he did. The 1960 R-16 rocket explosion at the Baikonur Cosmodrome killed something like 200 ground crew. This was covered up for decades and only officially acknowledged as the USSR was beginning to fall apart in 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe I also believe the Polyus anti-satellite weapon platform intended to militarize space was a secret to the West until it failed to achieve orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_%28spacecraft%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_%28spacecraft%29 Pretty much every space mission in the USSR was a secret. The West would detect a launch, or sometimes be told in advance a launch was happening to lower nuclear tensions, and then days later we'd see in Pravda what mission it was.
peter303 11y ago
NOVA episode talked about first "secret" Soviet space station- mainly a cylinder for extending spy photography missions. A human in space was a more efficient photographer than a robot in the 1960s.

jt2190 11y ago

(2011)

brudgers 11y ago

Date: 2012

zymhan 11y ago
Thanks. Might as well say "Date: 1967" as well. /s This is obviously a historical piece.
- r3bl 11y ago
  Well, it's not that obvious to someone who hasn't heard about this in 2012. Adding the year next to the title would definitely help people to make a decision to click on it or not.
- brudgers 11y ago
  It's conventional on Hacker News to add the publication year to stories that have been around for a while. I suspect this is because by editing the title, it avoids needless "This is old" comments.

peter303 11y ago

The sad thing too is that both space shuttle accidents the astronauts knew for seconds to minutes what was happening. NASA isnt making full reports to protect relatives. In either accident the astronauts could not do anything. The new Orion system changes this.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
In what way does the new Orion system change that?
- RIMR 11y ago
  Orion and Dragon capsules have a pad-abort system. In the event of a malfunction, the crew capsule will jettison fast enough to escape any explosions. The acceleration will probably knock out the astronauts and cause internal bleeding, but that's still better than immolation. Failed re-entry is still going to be fatal, but the Dragon can theoretically recover from a failed parachute with its Draco engines.
- zymhan 11y ago
  The issues with having the Space Shuttle slung on the side of the fuel tank, where falling foam could (and did, many times before Columbia) strike the Shuttle.
secstate 11y ago
Oh, for Columbia's crew it could have been far worse than that. There's reasonable evidence [0] that the director of NASA and ground crews knew the Columbia's wing damage was bad enough to make re-entry impossible. But they had two options, tell the astronauts they were never coming home at the start of their mission, or wait until they discovered it minutes before their vehicle disintegrated. The director chose the former path, and ended up getting fired as it looked like a cover up. It was really just being compassionate. No pad abort system would have saved Columbia. But on the flip-side, while everyone is up and arms over the loss, NASA's astronauts are trained to WANT to fly. We can hem and haw and say what a tragedy, but there is a class of people who know the risks, who know the possibility of death always exists and will still pilot or crew the vehicles that we send into space. 0: http://goo.gl/vdagzb http://goo.gl/vdagzb

andrewtbham 11y ago

title should probably have in parenthesis that it was published in 2011. i know i read this a long time ago.

blarneyman 11y ago

Known to be false. Stop posting such crap.

elbigbad 11y ago

It's creepy and tasteless to make the sound clip of his last words available for sale: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SHRCYU?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SHRCYU?ie=UTF8&*Versio...

jkot 11y ago

I am surprised nobody mentioned why it crashed. Technical flaws could be expected on prototype aircraft. And Soyuz mostly worked fine without major redesign for several years. Sojuz program was postponed, while soviets worked on Voschod. In result Soyuz 1 was put into storage for several months. Parachutes were rolled into capsules all that time, and nobody repackaged them before start. Parachutes failed to open on landing. My source is Karel Pacner. Well known Czechoslovak journalist who writes mostly about space exporation. He was only journalist from soviet block who covered Apollo 11 launch onsite from Florida. After soviets opened archives he studied their records and wrote several books.