[FPSPACE] The Red Stuff

[Larry Klaes]

How did the fate of Soyuz 1 and its stuck solar panel
affect Soyuz 4?

Larry


At 07:48 AM 10/24/2000 -0400, Chris Jones wrote:

>"Bart Hendrickx" <bhen@tijd.com> writes:
>
>[...]
>
>  There was also an unofficial (but much more likely) explanation of the main
>  chute failure, namely that the parachute compartment was poorly covered (or
>  not covered at all) when the descent capsule's heatshield was
polymerized in
>  a high-temperature chamber. As a result, tiny particles of insulation
>  settled on the inside walls of the compartment, which became rough and
>  sticky, making it much harder for the the main chute to be extracted. The
>  same processing error had evidently been made on Soyuz-2, which therefore
>  would very likely have suffered the same fate had it been launched to link
>  up with Komarov's ship (its main parachute did indeed fail a test at
>  Baikonur shortly after Komarov's accident).
>
>So, in a strange irony, the failure of the solar panel on Komarov's Soyuz
1 to
>deploy saved the lives of Bykovsky, Khrunov, and Yeliseyev.  Spooky.  (And
they 
>reportedly vehemently opposed the decision to cancel their flight.)
>
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