Cosmonauts

The joint Russian-American space flight aborted when an engine blew up and the two managed to return to Earth safely. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are in what NASA director Jim Bridenstine described as "good condition" after surviving an emergency landing after a booster failure on a Russian Soyuz rocket Thursday.

The Russian space problems are rarely this public.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

 

It is said that eighteen cosmonauts died in the Russian space effort. (Gagarin himself was said to have died in a "jet accident.")  

Starman, The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, is a book about Gagarin that contains some information about e Russian program,Gagarin, his friend Vladimir Komorov and the launch in April, 23, 1967. 

 

The men were both assigned the doomed Earth-orbiting mission Soyuz 1 and both knew the space capsule was not safe, according to Starman. Komarov, who was married with two children, knew he would die but refused to back out of the mission. Gagarin would be his replacement and Komarov didn't want his friend to die. When asked why he couldn't just refuse to go, Komarov said: 'If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead."

'That's Yura,' he said referring to Gagarin. '...and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him.' Komarov then burst into tears.

On inspection the Soyuz 1 had 203 structural problems - problems that would make it dangerous to navigate in space. But..first things first.

No one dared tell then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev about the faults however for fear of being demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. The mission went ahead as planned.

It was planned a second rocket would go up with two cosmonauts and Komorov would transfer to the second ship and all three would return together. When the antennas didn't open properly, power was compromised and navigation of the ship proved difficult, the following day's launch was cancelled. Komorov was doomed.

 
When the capsule did began its eventual descent the parachutes failed to open - a small canopy came out but failed to pull the larger one from its storage bay. A backup parachute then became entangled with it.

The final words of doomed Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, were picked up by U.S. intelligence, according to the book. As Komarov hurtled towards earth and certain death in the stricken Soyuz 1 craft, he could be heard screaming and cursing the 'people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.'

First things first.