The Astronaut Who Fell From Space Will Leave You In Tears; An Heartbreaking Story
Usually, when an astronaut goes to space, they know it would take them months to return back home, but this astronaut knew he was going to die, yet he agreed to fly aboard Soyuz I. This is the story of an ambitious young man called Vladimir Komarov. Born in Moscow in 1927 to a poor family Komarov excelled in math, a talent that helped him later in his life. However, during the 1941 World War II between Russia and Germany, then 14-year-old Komarov dropped out of school to work on a farm. At the age of 15, he got selected at the first Moscow Special Air Force School and then went on to study at Chkalov Higher Air Force School.
It was in 1949 that he became lieutenant for the Soviet Air Force after qualifying as a pilot. Komarov also studied engineering and so after being promoted to chief pilot, he also became a senior engineer-lieutenant. Then in October 1950, he married a woman named Valentina Yakovlevna Kiselyova and fathered two children, Yevgeny and Irina. It was in 1959 that 32-year-old Komarov became a test pilot for the Soviet Union’s Central Scientific Research Institute and was soon shortlisted as an astronaut for the Soviet space program despite not meeting the age, weight and height criteria.
His first mission to space from the Baikonur base was on October 4th, 1964. Being the commander of Voskhod I he flew with two crew members called Boris Yegorov and Konstantin Feoktistov. After successfully completing the mission Komarov was ranked colonel, awarded Order of Lenin and termed as the Hero of the Soviet Union. Then in 1967, Komarov was selected to fly Soyuz I, and if, for any reason, Komarov was unable to fly, Yuri Gagarin would have to take his place. Komarov and Gagarin were close friends, and they both knew that the Soyuz I craft was riddled with design defects.
Gagarin even mentioned those defects to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, but their concerns fell on deaf ears. Komarov knew the dangers of flying a defective craft but because he didn’t want his friend Gagarin to suffer the misfortune, he agreed to pilot the defective Soyuz I on the 23rd of April 1967 from the Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome. But Komarov had a condition – if he were to die during the mission, his funeral would have to proceed with an open casket. He wanted the world to know that despite raising concerns about the defective craft, authorities insisted that he fly to space with it.
Both Komarov and Gagarin were correct – the craft’s two solar panels failed to open, meaning it didn’t have enough power to operate. Apart from that, manual controls were also not fully functional. After spending 27 hours in space and orbiting the Earth 18 times, it was time for Komarov to return home so when he started his retrorockets, the parachutes failed to deploy. Because of this failure, Soyuz I catapulted to Earth’s surface at about 90 miles per hour, crashed into the ground and burst into flames. Komarov paid for the craft’s design defects with his life.
