[FPSPACE] The Red Stuff

[Tristan Cools]

At 17:04 23-10-00 -0400, you wrote:

>> Yes, that surprised me too.  That was the first time I heard about it.  The
>> parachute had to knocked into the canister with a wooden hammer to put it
>> in place.  
>> 
>> A previous unmanned Soyuz test sank into the ocean when a hole was burned
>> into the heat shield.  So they had to build a bigger heat shield and as a
>> result of that the parachute had to be bigger also.  They never had a
>> chance to test the new parachute prior to launch of Soyuz 1.
>
>Wait... this is the parachute that failed during the reentry,
>right?  And it was never tested before flight?  That is pretty
>amazing.  Has that information ever come out before?


Looking again at the documentary, Andrian Nikolajev(3th Kosmonaut) told
there was no more test flight between the sunken unmanned Soyuz craft and
the launch of Komarov.  
So the (bigger)parachute has never been tested in real flight conditions.

Looking at my archives, the sunken Soyuz craft should be Kosmos 140.  I
believe he is right in saying that there were no more Soyuz test flights.

Greetings,

Tristan Cools tcools@village.uunet.be
Belgian Working Group Satellites(BWGS)

Damse Vaart: 3.2478E/51.2277N - OBS place 1
Ryckevelde:  3.2856E/51.2045N - OBS place 2
Brugge:      3.2166E/51.2104N - OBS place 3(home)

HTTP://gallery.uunet.be/tcools/satimage/index.htm