Charred cosmonaut

A thread at the CollectSPACE.com forum links to an online photo of what are purportedly the remains of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died on impact in the Soyuz-1 landing after its parachutes malfunctioned. Being the ghoulish and morbidly curious type, I have to post the photo below (in case it disappears):

From one post:

I think these paragraphs in the Kamanin Diaries 1967-68 (General Kamanin is on the right adjusting his tie) give the context of when the picture was taken:

Kamanin returned to the place of the accident and ordered a group of doctors to remove Komarov’s body from the ship’s wreckage…at 21.45 (Moscow time) Komarov’s remains were placed aboard the II-18 airplane. Ten minutess before departure an An-12 arrived from the cosmodrome with General Kuznetsov and the Soyuz-2 prime and back-up cosmonauts, who would accompany their perished colleague to Moscow… Komarov’s remains were transferred to the morgue of the Burdenko hospital in Moscow, allowing doctors to write an official report on the cause of death. Subsequently the remains were cremated and an urn with the ashes was placed in the central House of the Soviet Army later that day were endless line of people came to pay their respects. The following day Komarov’s ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall.

My initial impression on looking at that was “lump of charcoal” – not much left of him! He died immediately on impact, then the capsule burst into flame.

From Challenge to Apollo, page 587:

Finding the body had been a difficult job. One of the rescuers recalled:

The group’s physicians set to work – they shoveled away the top layer of dirt from the top of the mound from the hatch cover. After the dirt and certain parts of instruments and equipment were removed, the cosmonaut’s body was found lying in the center chair. The physicians cleaned the dirt and the remnants of the burned helmet phone from the head. They pronounced the death to be from multiple injuries to the cranium, spinal cord and bones.

[…]

In a grisly aside to his death, not all of Komarov’s remains were found during the initial search, and a group of Young Pioneers, the equivalent of Boy Scouts in the Soviet Union, discovered additional remains that were later buried at the crash site itself. Reportedly, Party officials took great pains to hide this from the general public.

I wonder how they could determine so much detail from those remains, if they are him.

Progress M-01M/№401, the first of the new Progresses with new onboard computer, TsVM-101, a digital telemetry system, launched on 26/11.

10 years of the ISS

“Nations Around the World Mark 10th Anniversary of International Space Station”, NASA, 17/11. 20 November marked 10 years since the first element of the International Space Station, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block («Заря» ФГБ, Функционально Грузовой Блок, Funktsional’no Gruzovoi Blok). James Oberg also provides an overview: “What a trip! Space station turns 10”, MSNBC, 20/11.

“Buran – the Soviet ‘space shuttle’ ”, BBC News, 20/11. Article by Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com.

A new version of the Russian Orlan spacesuit, the Orlan-MK, was delivered to the ISS in September 2008 on Progress M-65 (Orlan-MK №1170004, blue stripes). Two more will be delivered in 2009: Orlan №005 (red stripes) on Progress M-66, and №006 (blue stripes) on Progress M-02M. As with previous Orlans, NPO Zvezda are the designers and makers of the MK. I have a page on my website about it.

Grumpy Old Moonwalker

As reported at NASA Watch, former Moonwalker Harrison “Jack” Schmitt resigned from the Planetary Society, apparently miffed over the direction their goals have taken (as stated in this press release): namely, focus on a manned mission to Mars first (rather than the Moon) as a goal, and strive for international co-operation. These are laudable goals in my opinion (the Moon has been landed on and is rather boring anyway – unless there happen to be mysterious alien monoliths to be discovered!), but it’s brought out the Cranky Conservatives in the comments, who are paranoid and insular, and are horrified at the prospect of co-operating with “them foreigners”. I posted a somewhat irate comment:

He’s a cranky old conservative with outdated, insular views (like some of the posters above :-P ). I’d love to see an INTERNATIONAL Mars mission!! [From an exasperated 38-year-old female :-)]

He also thinks global warming a hoax, which doesn’t say much for his scientific credibility.

One would think that the humbling experience of seeing the Earth from the Moon would have broadened his views, but apparently not.

I would, in fact, rather have seen an international Mars mission launched, rather than the ISS project, but too late for that now.

“40 Years Later, It’s Moon Race 2.0”, TIME magazine, 13/11. The media seems obsessed to a tedious degree with the prospect of a “space race”. Nations new to spaceflight are sending out space probes, namely India (who landed a probe last week from the Chandrayaan-1 Moon satellite) , China and Japan. Russia barely gets a mention except as providers of the Soyuz taxi service to the ISS; a sad contrast to the Soviet era.

“Russian ISS spacecraft producer Energia gets $106 mln loan”, RIAN, 17/11. Energiya managed to get bank credit to allow them to construct more Soyuz and Progress spacecraft (2.9 billion rubles for a period of up to 12 November 2010).

“A Russian resurgence? (part two)”, The Space Review, 17/11.

I neglected to mention that this blog is now just over 2 years old! Not that it is hugely popular…

My Firefox browser is currently reporting the Russian Federal Space Agency site as an attack site, possibly through third-party applications (a reason not to use these):

Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including mmcounter.com, yanndex.su, ff-freehosting.com. 2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including yanndex.su, mmcounter.com.

Hope they fix that soon! Considering it’s an official government site, it is rather poor!

Buran 20th anniversary

Been depressed and haven’t felt much motivation to write here. Turning 38 doesn’t help my mood!

Soyuz TMA-12 landed on 24/10 at 03:36 UTC with no incidents (i.e. a normal not a ballistic landing). Expedition 18 is now on the ISS. STS-126 Endeavour launched successfully; its crew will install equipment (such as a regenerative environmental control and life support system) to enable the ISS’s crew to expand to 6 next year.

More money woes for Energiya (a familiar lament): “No Money, No Spacecraft, Russian Producer Warns”; “Finances may threaten Soyuz construction”, Space Daily, 24/10.

Astronaut Leroy Chiao has a blog entry about getting a look at a Chinese spacesuit.

“A Russian resurgence? (part one)”, The Space Review, 10/11. The situation for Russia’s space program has much improved since the dismal 1990s, but there are still funding problems to contend with, and the economy is precarious.

14 November marked 20 years since the first and only launch of the Buran space shuttle; a rather poignant anniversary of what could have been.

Today, 14 November, the Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya marked the 20th anniversary of the flight of the space shuttle Buran.

In the Conference Room, Energiya brought together those who took part in creating this unique system, the representatives of various enterprises rocket and space industry of Russia, whose combined efforts made this flight possible.

Leading the commemorative meeting, the president and general designer of RKK Energiya, Vitalii A. Lopota presented a welcoming speech, congratulated the anniversary and screened a documentary about the creation of the Buran system. Those actors in the film were familiar – the guests and employees of Energiya recognized their much younger selves. A scene of the Buran landing was met with thunderous applause.

At the meeting, several shared their memories of that time: Vitalii Khusseinovich Doguzhiev (Виталий Хуссейнович Догужиев), Minister of General Machine- Building in the Soviet Union between 1988-89; Oleg Dimetrievich Baklanov (Олег Дмитриевич Бакланов), Minister of General Machine-Building USSR between 1983-88 and the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in 1988; Yurii Pavlovich Semenov (Юрий Павлович Семенов), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, General Designer of RKK Energiya, 1989-2005, and one of the leaders of the Buran development; Vakhtang D. Vachnadze (Вахтанг Дмитриевич Вачнадзе), Director General of NGO Energiya between 1977-1991; Maj. Gen. Vladimir Evgeni’evich Gudilin (Владимир Евгеньевич Гудилин), head of training and of the start-up launcher Energiya and the universal space-rocket transportation system Energiya-Buran.

All speakers pointed out that the achievements of the time and date are unique in the world, and regretted the closure of the Energia-Buran program, said that today Russia needs to pay more attention to space programs, and improve support and development of the personnel policy branch.

In conclusion, V.A. Lopota once again congratulated all the participants of the meeting. “Who knows whether history will repeat its mistakes,” said Vitalii Alexandrovich, thus expressing the mood and aspirations of all those present.

A cosmonaut from Kazakhstan will fly on the ISS in October 2009. There are two in the Cosmonaut Group with the qualification of cosmonaut-tester (космонавт-испытатель): Mukhtar Aimakhanov (Мухтар Аймаханов) and Aidyn Aimbetov (Айдын Аимбетов). Both joined the 2003 selection group.