WI the Soyuz III crew survived?

Blair152

Banned
How many of you on this board are old enough to remember the disastrous
Soyuz III mission in 1971? A little background: In March 1971, I think, the
crew of Soyuz III, the first Soviet capsule to have a three-man crew, left the
Salyut I space station. Their pressure suits were too big to fit through the
hatch, so they left them behind. Upon reentry, they suffered from the bends.
(If you've been scuba diving, you'll know what it is. No need for me to explain it), and when their capsule landed, and the ground crew opened the hatch so they could get out, they were dead. What if the Soyuz III crew hadn't left their pressure suits behind and survived?
 

Thande

Donor
That was Soyuz 11, not Soyuz 3.

Well, in the short run it's better for the Soviets of course, but in the long run these disasters make safety protocols better in reaction - hence why the Soyuz is now easily the most reliable and safe spacecraft in history. Ultimately I suspect the same disaster would happen a few more missions down the line, though it would probably be less high-profile if it hadn't happened to the first crew to (successfully) visit a Salyut station.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Three brave men wouldn't have died a fairly painful, albeit quick, death?
 
How many of you on this board are old enough to remember the disastrous
Soyuz III mission in 1971? A little background: In March 1971, I think, the
crew of Soyuz III, the first Soviet capsule to have a three-man crew, left the
Salyut I space station. Their pressure suits were too big to fit through the
hatch, so they left them behind. Upon reentry, they suffered from the bends.
(If you've been scuba diving, you'll know what it is. No need for me to explain it), and when their capsule landed, and the ground crew opened the hatch so they could get out, they were dead. What if the Soyuz III crew hadn't left their pressure suits behind and survived?

This is kind of wrong, but gets the gist of it.

First off, as Thande noted, it was Soyuz 11, not Soyuz 3. Second, the pressure suits were actually deleted ahead of time as there was not enough room in the reentry vehicle to accomodate three people in space suits. In fact, Soviet space design theory had long considered space suits during launch not really necessary. Third, it wasn't that they suffered from the bends, it was that a relief valve designed to open at low altitudes to allow fresh air into the cabin accidentally opened much higher, causing the cabin to become evacuated, and the cosmonauts died of decompression sickness.

However, in the end, the question remains more or less valid. WI the Soyuz had been designed from the start to have three pressure-suited cosmonauts? Well, three men wouldn't have died. Other than that, there isn't really a lot of difference that I can see, to be entirely honest. Soviet space stations in that period were hampered more by launch vehicle failures and station failures than Soyuz failures.
 

Blair152

Banned
That was Soyuz 11, not Soyuz 3.

Well, in the short run it's better for the Soviets of course, but in the long run these disasters make safety protocols better in reaction - hence why the Soyuz is now easily the most reliable and safe spacecraft in history. Ultimately I suspect the same disaster would happen a few more missions down the line, though it would probably be less high-profile if it hadn't happened to the first crew to (successfully) visit a Salyut station.
Thank you. I remember the event. I forgot the number of the mission.
 

Blair152

Banned
Three brave men wouldn't have died a fairly painful, albeit quick, death?
That's right. Unfortunately, it's not the only tragedy to affect the Soviet
space program-----the first one was similar to Apollo I here. Apollo I was a fire the resulted in an oxygen rich environment. Guess what? A Soviet cosmonaut died in the same accident a few years before the Apollo I crew of
Grissom, Chaffee, and White. His name, unfortunately, escapes me at the moment.
 
That's right. Unfortunately, it's not the only tragedy to affect the Soviet
space program-----the first one was similar to Apollo I here. Apollo I was a fire the resulted in an oxygen rich environment. Guess what? A Soviet cosmonaut died in the same accident a few years before the Apollo I crew of
Grissom, Chaffee, and White. His name, unfortunately, escapes me at the moment.

Valentin Vasilyevich Bondarenko.

That was his name. This is why the Russians used sea-level pressures and earth-type atmosphere mixes instead of the US low-pressure pure oxygen system. He died in '61, so of course the US had never heard of him.
 
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