The Russian Soyuz spacecraft is the longest-flying spacecraft in history. Developed in the early 1960s, it was designed to give cosmonauts more control in space leading up to possible missions to the Moon. The three man spacecraft was the Soviet equivalent to NASA’s Gemini; it could do everything a spacecraft going to the Moon needed to do. What it couldn’t do, at least in its first iteration, was land back on Earth.
The Soyuz descent module was designed to separate from the instrument module and fire small retrofire rockets to reenter the atmosphere. A large parachute would slow its descent then, just before touchdown, rockets would fire to cushion the landing for the cosmonauts inside. Contrary to the Soviet Union’s presentation of early Vostok and Voshod flights like Yuri Gagarin’s, this was the first spacecraft that would land with cosmonauts still inside.
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On April 20, 1967, that the prime and backup pilots for Soyuz 1 were confirmed – Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin respectively. The mission was complicated and risky. Komarov would launch on April 23. The following morning, Valery Bykovsky, Aleksei Yeliseev, and Yevgeny Khrunov would launch in Soyuz 2. Komarov in the more sophisticated spacecraft would rendezvous and dockwith Soyuz 2. Two cosmonauts would don spacesuits and transfer from Soyuz 2 to Soyuz 1 by spacewalk and the restructured crews would return from orbit.
The only problem with this flight plan was that it was beyond the capability of Soyuz at the time. Many engineers and cosmonauts doubted its safety and weren’t convinced it would be ready in time. Unmanned test flights revealed serious problems and experienced failures that would have killed a human pilot, and while many called for more unmanned tests to work out the kinks, no one wanted to delay the launch. Communist Party bigwig Leonid Brezhnev wanted a launch on May 1, 1967, the National Day of Worker Solidarity. Because of who he was, if that was the day he wanted, that was the day he’d get.
Read the rest over at Motherboard.
