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Disasters In The Space Programs
When John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. was going to put a man on the moon it inspired a nation. The speech took place on September 12, 1962. Here is the entire speech in full color: If you need a movie player you can download one here for free.
Video Source: NASA The space program first launched in the Soviet Union and a little while latter the U.S. had a lot of failures but eventually got ib track. It is interesting to note that except for the crew of Soyuz 11, no one had died while in space. This statement may be challenged by some, since there is a rumor that the Soviets have lost other people in space, but this has never been confirmed. This is not to say that the space program didn't produce any deaths, there have been quite a few. Not only have astronauts and cosmonauts died, but members of ground crews have also died. No one as died from natural causes in space yet. Aside from the accident there have also been several near misses. An example of this was when the Mercury capsule landed in the ocean and sank. Another good example was Soyuz 5, when the service module refused to separate on reentry. The Gemini 8 capsule had a thruster problem, the thruster wouldn't shut down and caused an uncontrolled spin. There were many other close calls both in actual flight and in training. Vehicles were not the only things that had close calls, so did space stations. Look at Mir, The Progress, a freighter collided with the station.
Photo Source: NASA Mars Polar Orbiter Launch The NASA Astronaut Memorial Wall contains the names of 24 astronauts who died while in the space program. 17 were killed in space related accidents and the rest died in aircraft accidents. The amount of known cosmonauts deaths is 8. Ground crew members working at the Kennedy Space Center had their problems also. One poor guy fell off the gantry to his death. Another was killed when struck by lightning. A rocket motor ignited while it was in an assembly room killing 3 and burning 8 badly. But it wasn't only the Americans having these fatal accidents, the Soviets had their share also. A launch gone bad killed 9 at Plesetsk Commodiome. As bad as this was an explosion killed 50 more when a rocket that was being fueled exploded. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, another Soviet rocket exploded killing 126 people. You can see from this that the Soviets truly had their troubles with their space vehicles. Two more American died when 6 entered a shuttle that had gas in it. A couple of European Space Agency workers died while inspecting rocket parts.And the list goes on and on. It doesn't seem to be safe working around space vehicles. There are many other countries now entering the space arena I guess with this will come many more deaths. It just can't be helped. Rockets are very volatile. They are like huge bombs waiting to explode. The good thing is that the technology is much more advanced in this area than it was when the Soviets and Americans first entered the space race. If one were to look at all the accidents and add them up, they would be astounded. Looking at some of these accidents, not in any particular order, we get a better picture of the trials and tribulations of the space program:
Photo Source: NASA To me, the worst of all the U.S. disasters was the Columbia Shuttle disaster. Why do I feel this way? It's quite simple really, with all the disasters before it, we should have had an escape system in the shuttle. There was no need for these deaths. It was truly sad. The Challenger disaster was another one of those disasters which could have been prevented. If someone would have just listened to the engineers who tried to tell NASA that it was too cold for the launch and the 'O' rings might fail, those lives could have been saved. Soyuz 1 was making a reentry into the Earth's atmosphere and when it got to a certain altitude it's parachute was supposed to open, it didn't killing Vladimir Komarov. During a flight in the X-15 rocket plane things went bad killing Major Michael J. Adams. One of the most famous American accidents was the fire that killed LT COL Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, LT COL Edward H. White II and LT CDR Roger B. Chaffee. It broke out in their Apollo capsule when they were training. A spark had ignited the pure oxygen atmosphere killing the three in seconds. Major Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. was the first African American astronaut but he never made it into space because he was killed when his aircraft crashed. Every new type of transportation technology has its disasters. Even technology that has been around for awhile. Look at trains, there are still train accidents once in a while. The airplane is now over 100 years old and they still have accidents. So why would we ever think that space travel can be made completely safe? I am sure we can make it safer than it is but never 100% safe. Having said that, if we have enough money to spend on a program we must surely have enough respect for the lives concerned. We must attempt to install every possible safety device even though it might cost extra money. We must also make sure that there are enough people involved to make procedures as safe as possible. Here is a list of known Astronaut and Cosmonaut Deaths: Cosmonauts Valentin V. Bondarenko (Soviet Air Force) Astronauts CAPT Theodore C. Freeman (USAF) |
