[FPSPACE] AP: Russian Space Disaster Remembered

[JamesOberg@aol.com]

JimO: I invite you to read my account of my 1990 visit to the memorial 
obelisk, at 
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/articles/therophe.htm

Russian Space Disaster Remembered
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
AP-NY-10-24-00 0923EDT
  
MOSCOW (AP) - The Baikonur cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of 
Kazakstan suspended work Tuesday, observing a day of mourning for the victims 
of two Soviet-era launch pad explosions that killed about 100 people. 

The annual commemoration interrupted preparations for the planned launch of 
the first permanent crew to the International Space Station. 

U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalyov and Yuri 
Gidzenko are set to blast off from Baikonur on Oct. 31, on a journey to 
become the outpost's first permanent residents. 

In Moscow, top space officials honored victims of the disasters by laying 
flowers at the Kremlin wall. Strategic Missile Forces chief Gen. Vladimir 
Yakovlev said lessons learned from the accidents had helped develop safer 
missile technologies. 

On Oct. 24, 1960, an R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile exploded before 
a test launch, killing 92 people and injuring about 30 in the world's worst 
space disaster. Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, who commanded the Soviet Strategic 
Missile Force, was among those killed. 

The secretive Soviet government said at the time that Nedelin had died in an 
airplane crash, and details of the disaster became known only after the 1991 
collapse of the Soviet Union. 

An investigation disclosed that Nedelin, in a rush to speed up the launch, 
had urged workers to fix a problem in the missile's electric circuits even 
though the fuel tanks already had been filled. He sat in a folding chair next 
to the missile, surrounded by aides and technicians, giving orders. An 
electric signal prematurely ignited the missile's second stage, turning it 
into a giant fireball. 

On exactly the same day three years later, eight people died when another 
ballistic missile, the R-9A, exploded on the launch pad because of an oxygen 
leak. Space engineers have since stopped all work at Baikonur on Oct. 24. 

The cosmodrome was used for both military and civilian launches in Soviet 
times. The site in the desert was named after a Kazak village hundreds of 
miles away in a bid to trick Western intelligence about its true location. 

After the Soviet collapse, Russia leased the cosmodrome from Kazakstan for 20 
years. Moscow now uses it for manned space flights and commercial launches of 
foreign satellites. 

Another cosmodrome, Plesetsk in northern Russia, is used for regular military 
and civilian satellite launches. Plesetsk has its own black day - March 18, 
to mark a 1980 accident when the Soviet Vostok-2M booster rocket exploded on 
the launch pad and killed 48 people. 

Russia's manned space program has had only two fatal accidents in flight 
since 1961, when it rocketed Yuri Gagarin into space. In 1971, three 
cosmonauts died when a valve designed to open just before landing to equalize 
pressure opened at a high altitude, killing the men. Another cosmonaut died 
in 1967 when a parachute system failed to slow his landing capsule.