The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Komarov finally completed his retrorocket burn on the eighteenth orbit, even though he didn’t have sufficient fuel to steer the reentry module. Just after 3:00 am Greenwich time on April 24, Soyuz 1 plunged back into the atmosphere, spinning wildly; Komarov abandoned all attempts at a controlled reentry path for a normal touchdown near Tyuratam. The cosmonaut imparted a spin to the module that was probably a last-ditch effort to keep the heat shield pointed along the flight path and prevent end-over-end tumbling, which would have incinerated the spacecraft.

The Soyuz module plunged on a ballistic trajectory almost 400 miles short of the designated landing zone, and Komarov was unable to stop the violent spin in the lower atmosphere. When he reached an altitude of about 30,000 feet, he deployed his small drogue parachute, which was quickly followed by the main chute. But the parachute lines fouled around the hot, spinning crown of the module, and his reserve parachute system also tangled.

There have been reports of questionable reliability that Western intelligence overheard Komarov’s last radio transmissions as his crippled reentry module plunged toward Earth. He reportedly screamed to his wife: “I love you and I love our baby!” But it’s unlikely the Soviets would have allowed a radio connection between the doomed cosmonaut and his wife that we eavesdropping imperialists could hear.

Komarov’s death was certainly instantaneous when the Soyuz module plunged into the steppes at several hundred miles an hour. The Soviets’ official announcement of the accident stunned the world, especially since they had broadcast just 12 hours before that Komarov’s flight was proceeding normally. According to Moscow, Komarov died “as a result of tangling of parachute cords as the spacecraft fell at a high velocity.”

The Apollo program is revised

After the Apollo 1 disaster, the next five Apollo missions were unmanned tests. Apollo 7 was manned by Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham. Frank Borman was the astronaut on the NASA commission which investigated the Apollo 1 disaster, as a result of which the Apollo spacecraft was improved. In his biographical accounts, Jim Lovell referred to himself in the third person. Jim Lovell:

With Borman as point man and the rest of the pilots now backing him up more quietly, the astronauts got nearly everything they had been lobbying for in a new, safer spacecraft. They had wanted a gas-operated hatch that could be opened in seven seconds, and they got it; they had wanted upgraded, fireproof wiring throughout the ship, and they got it; they had wanted non-flammable Beta cloth in the spacesuits and all fabric surfaces, and they got it. Most important, they had wanted the firefeeding, 100 percent oxygen atmosphere that swirled through the ship when it was on the pad to be replaced by a far less dangerous 60–40 oxgen-nitrogen mix. Not surprisingly, they got that too.

The Apollo program itself was revised. Jim Lovell:

The modifications being made to the Apollo spacecraft were not the only changes NASA explored in the wake of the fire. Also scrutinized were the missions those ships would be sent on. Though John Kennedy had been dead since 1963, his grand promise – or damned promise, depending on how you looked at it – to have America on the moon before 1970 still loomed over the Agency. NASA officials would have considered it a profound failure not to meet that bold challenge, but they would have considered it an even greater failure to lose another crew in the effort. Accordingly, chastened Agency brass began making it clear, publicly and privately, that while America was still aiming for the moon before the end of the decade, the breathless gallop of the past few years would now be replaced by a nice, safe lope.