In the 20 century, humanity was able to move further into the future than in its entire history. A steam locomotive and a car were invented, nuclear power and electricity, a computer, a mobile connection were opened, a man took to the air and was able to break the sound barrier, etc. But the main achievement of humanity is the exit into space. After the flight of Y.A. Gagarin into space, a new science appeared, which was called cosmonautics. But, unfortunately, life requires payment for everything and astronautics is no exception. To unravel the mysteries of the universe hundreds of brave souls were risking their lives. Below we give the loudest rocket catastrophes in the entire history of astronautics.

The fall from space of Boris Volynov

The story of the worst missile catastrophes must begin with this tragic event that occurred 18 January 1969 year. A couple of days before that, the first successful docking of the Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-4 was completed. The crew of the latter has already returned. Boris Volynov had to go down alone.

Before the disconnection remained a couple of minutes. There was a strong cotton, as it turned out, this squib shot off the descent compartment. Luke pressed inside like a tin can lid. As a result, the planned smooth descent turned into a random fall.

After ten minutes of falling, the descent vehicle began to rotate chaotically, and then Boris Volynov decided to tell about what was happening in the live report. This could be required by the astronauts who follow him. He transmitted the instrument readings every 15 seconds, trying in every way to influence the situation.

At a distance of 90 km from the Earth, the descent capsule was simply torn off from the main ship. She freed herself from excess load and caught fire, as a result of which the camera began to gradually fill with smoke. At an altitude of 10 km from Earth, a parachute opened, but its lines slid. It was expected that this would lead to its folding, but this did not happen. Spinning in different directions, the device approached the surface of the Earth.

Unfortunately, the engine soft landing did not work in a timely manner. The blow was so strong that Boris Volynov broke the roots of the upper teeth. He landed with a parachute not fully opened, all beaten, but alive.

Unsuccessful start "Soyuz-18"

5 April 1975, another tragic event occurred. On this day, the Soyuz-18 spacecraft was to dock with the Salyut-4 orbital station. On board were astronauts O. Makarov and V. Lazarev.

Science was haunted by the frequent catastrophes of Soviet missiles. And this episode is no exception.

Less than five minutes, as the trouble began. At the moment when the second stage engine had to shut down due to a relay failure, it was necessary to reset the tail section of the third stage.

As a result of violation of the separation process steps appeared a strong rotation. H 295 second from the crew received the command "Accident". The spacecraft split and began to descend. During the accident, the descent control system ceased to be oriented in space. In other words, it became confused up and down, which led to the passage of many wrong commands. For example, instead of reducing the overload, it began to increase to 21,3 g which was dangerous for human life (for example, the maximum overload on the simulators is 15 g).

The astronauts' organism began to do strange things. Gradually, vision began to fall - at first it became black and white, then it began to narrow. On the advice of the doctors, they began to shout loudly. But their wheeze, little resembled human. But it lasted a relatively short time. After a few minutes, the overloads began to gradually decrease. The parachute system worked, and the device sat on one of the slopes of the Altai.

The disaster Mitrofan Nedelin. Rocket "P-16"

Then catastrophes of rockets on Bayonur were extremely rare, since the cosmodrome itself appeared relatively recently. But October 24 1960 disaster occurred, which is rightly considered the most terrible. On this day, on the launch pad No. 41, the preparatory work for the launch of the intercontinental rocket “Р-16” was held, the main designer of which was Mikhail Yangel. After full refueling, the specialists revealed a malfunction in the engine's automation. Such cases required to release the rocket from the fuel and only then proceed to troubleshoot. But if they followed the instructions, they would have to postpone the launch of the rocket, which the government would not like.

To avoid such consequences, Marshal M.I. Nedelin gave the order to eliminate the fault on the refueling rocket. But no one imagined that there would be such consequences. Dozens of specialists worked on the problem. Moreover, the marshal himself monitored the work, sitting on a stool, not far from the rocket body. No signs of trouble.

But everything went well until the announcement of the thirtieth minute of readiness. Power was applied to the corrected unit. And then the second stage engine worked, as a result of which a powerful jet of burning gas escaped from a height. Most of the specialists, including the Marshal himself, died of lightning speed. Other workers rushed to where. But they were stopped by a row of barbed wire that fenced the stand. The strongest flame evaporated people, leaving only the outlines of the figures, melted buckles and pieces of charred belts.

In this disaster, 50 was injured and 92 was killed. From Marshal M. Nedelina only the star of the “Hero of the Soviet Union” remained. At the time of the accident, the designer Mikhail Yangel retired to the security bunker, and because of this he survived.

The death of the "Union-11"

This tragic event, which occurred 30 June 1971, also can not be mentioned. On this day, the astronauts V. Volkov, G. Dobrovolsky and V. Patsayev, who worked on board the station “Salyut-1” 23 of the day, returned to Earth. Having taken their seats and fastened their seat belts, they began to check the performance of the onboard systems. No deviations have been identified.

The descent module "Soyuz-11" entered the atmosphere of the earth in the estimated time. Parachute deployment was recorded 9 kilometers from the surface, but the crew did not get in touch. The radio antenna, which was sewn into its lines, often refused to land, so the MCC did not sound the alarm. Such trouble often accompanied the catastrophe of Soviet-made missiles, but it was not fatal. Two minutes after landing, the people quickly ran to the rescue capsule. But no one answered the knock on the wall. Opening the hatch, they saw astronauts who showed no signs of life. They were quickly dragged out and tried to reanimate. Attempts lasted more than an hour, but to no avail - the astronauts died.

An investigation was carried out, which showed that their death was due to the unauthorized opening of one air valve - its task was to equalize the air pressure inside the descent module. At an altitude of about 150 kilometers, it arbitrarily opened. For a few seconds, the air left the cabin.

The position of the astronauts' bodies indicated that they were trying to find and eliminate trouble. But in the fog that filled the cabin after depressurization, this was problematic. When G. Dobrovolsky (according to other sources, V. Patsayev) revealed an open valve and tried to close it, he simply did not have enough time, since all the air had already left the cabin.

"Union-1". The tragic death of Vladimir Komarov

In the USSR, quite frequent missile catastrophes did not stop. Let's give one more example. The Soyuz-1 ship was launched on the night of April 23 on 1967. Already in the morning in all the newspapers of the USSR they reported about this event on the front pages, having published, in addition to the information, a photograph of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. The next day the photo was in the same place, but only dressed in a mourning frame. What happened?

The take-off of Soyuz-1 did not cause any complaints. The rocket carrier without problems delivered the ship into orbit. But the problems started later. The failure of the star orientation system and the incomplete opening of the backup antenna of the telemetry system were still the most insignificant of them. The second solar panel did not open, but it also does not matter. An attempt to orient a workable panel to the Sun was unsuccessful, as a result the balancing was broken. The spacecraft began to lose energy, which would lead to its death. But V. Komarov, in manual mode, was able to orient him, descend from orbit, and even proceed to landing.

But the accident could not be avoided - it happened in 9,5 km from the ground when the sensor gave the command to release a parachute. There are three of them in the ship: main, brake and exhaust. The first two came out successfully, but the third one was stuck. The rapid rotation of the descent module began, and V. Komarov decided to activate the reserve parachute. He came out fine, but his slings wrapped around the dangling brake when opening. It was they who extinguished the dome.

The astronaut instantly died. The impact was so strong that the module on the 0,5 meter entered the ground. The fire, which arose after the fall, was managed to be extinguished far from immediately, therefore, only the burned remains of an astronaut had to be buried in the Kremlin wall.

Death before launch. Apollo 1

The name Apollo-1 (“Apollo-1”) was post factum assigned to the still-unloaded Apollo ship and the Saturn IBA204 launch vehicle. February 21 The first manned flight was to take place on February 1967. But on January 27 during ground tests at the 34 launch complex, a serious fire occurred in the ship, as a result of which the entire crew was killed: R. Chaffee, E. White and V. Grissom.

As the atmosphere in the ship "Apollo" ended pure oxygen under reduced pressure. Thanks to its use, it was possible not only to save on weight, but also to facilitate a life support system. In addition, the process of going into outer space was simplified, since in flight the pressure in the cabin should be only 0,3 atm. But on earth such conditions cannot be reproduced, so pure oxygen was used with excess pressure.

At that time, experts did not yet know that using certain materials in an oxygen environment could cause a fire. One of these was the Velcro. She began to sparkle in an oxygen environment, and in this case, a single spark is enough for a fire.

For a few seconds, the fire spread throughout the ship, and the spacesuits of the astronauts were damaged. In addition, the complex system did not allow them to quickly open the hatch. The commission concluded that the astronauts had already died 25 seconds after the formation of a spark.

After this fire, the manned flight program was suspended, and the 34 launch complex itself was dismantled. On its remains was a memorial tablet.

Unfulfilled mission "Apollo 13"

The terrible mission of the Apollo-13 ("Apollo-13") is also among the terrible missile catastrophes. His story is also tragic, though slightly different.

11 April 1970 of the year the Apollo-13 space shuttle broke away from the earth's surface to deliver earthlings to the moon. He was piloted: captain - Jim Lovell, John Swagate and Fred Hayes. Two days of the flight took place in the normal mode. But the 13 numbers didn't go according to plan. The day was almost over, the crew had to mix up the fuel to find out what was left of it, and then a loud bang rang out, and a blast wave rolled over the edge. It turned out that one of the tanks with liquid oxygen collapsed. On the instrument panel the warning lights came on. Through the porthole, astronauts saw the strongest jet of gas striking the open air from the service module. It turned out that the explosion had destroyed the first oxygen tank, and the second was damaged. Despite all the efforts, the damage could not be fixed. Very soon the ship was left without water, oxygen and electricity. The next ones failed the chemical batteries that were installed in the command module. To stretch some more time, the astronauts decided to move to the lunar module. But what to do next?

Captain Jean Krantz decided to deploy the Apollo 13 using the force of gravity of the moon. The astronauts used the engine of the lunar module, but the ship began to rotate. It took Jim Lovell two hours to learn to maneuver in the new conditions and steer the ship in the right direction. Having flown around the moon, the ship rushed to Earth.

After many adventures that the astronauts had to overcome, they splashed down exactly in a given area. Three chilled, exhausted and not sleeping people returned home.

The fall of the rocket in Plesetsk

23 April 2015, foreign and Russian media reported the launch of an experimental launch vehicle failed. It is worth noting that in the Western press such words as “rocket explosion”, “another catastrophe”, “Plesetsk cosmodrome” passed through all messages. But they forgot one very important speech. Missile catastrophes in the Russian Federation are not as frequent as in the USSR. So what happened then?

According to the press service of the Russian government in the Arkhangelsk region, an experimental rocket launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome was found in 7 km from the launch site. According to the special services, the site of the incident was taken into development by the landfill specialists. There was no threat to nearby settlements.

The rocket was used to launch the satellite into orbit. It was equipped with instrumentation. At the same time, the strategic command of the missile forces claimed that it had nothing to do with this incident and they did not know anything about the launch. As a result, we managed to find out that the device belonged to one of the numerous defense enterprises, namely, the plant that develops Topol and Yars missiles. Therefore, their three regular expressions, such as: “rocket explosion”, “catastrophe”, “Plesetsk cosmodrome”, only the latter can be considered true.

Challenger disaster

The accidents of space rockets in the 80s of the last century were haunting America. Below we describe one of the examples.

28 January 1986 has a large crowd gathered at Cape Canaveral’s launch site to see an orange-white ball of fire in a clear sky. It appeared already after 73 after the launch, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on one of the solid fuel boosters due to insufficiently tight sealing rubber. Then the American cosmonautics lost Michael Smith, Francis Scobie, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Gregory Jarvis, Allison Onizuku and Christie McAuliffe. The latter was not a professional astronaut - she was a teacher in one of the secondary schools in the city of Lanham. She was taken along by order of Ronald Reagan himself.

Before the start, the temperature in Florida dropped to -27 degrees Celsius. All the surroundings, including the body of the spacecraft, were covered with ice. In this case, following the instructions, the start should be postponed, especially since one of the engineers responsible for the start said so. But they did not listen to him. The ship led to death.

Within sixteen seconds after launch, the ship made a graceful turn and headed out of the atmosphere. Suddenly a flickering light appeared between the fuel tank and the bottom of the ship. Instantly there was a series of explosions, as a result, the shuttle tore into pieces, and he fell into the water. The astronauts died almost instantly.

The Americans described the event as “catastrophe”, “rocket”, “Challenger”. Nation grieved. As a result, the development of the space program was halted at 3. But completely, of course, it was not closed.

The death of "Columbia" (Columbia)

The Columbia disaster is considered one of the most significant events in the history of astronautics, which occurred on February 1 of the year 2003. This is associated not only with many of the dead astronauts, but also with their influence that they had on the development of astronautics.

The launch of Columbia was postponed several times. The first flight was scheduled for another 11 in May 2000 year. It was such that he was completely excluded from the schedule, but the American Congress intervened. But the flight took place more than in 2 of the year.

And here it is a long-awaited start. Pilot William K. McCool, captain Rick Douglas Husband, specialists Laurell B. Clark, Michael F. Anderson, Calpan Chawl, David M. Brown boarded the ship. And the Israeli astronaut Illan Ramon. Several cameras shot start. Such precautions allow you to better consider all kinds of deviations, when they occur. It was with their help that a small bright object was recorded on the 82 second flight, which hit the left wing of the shuttle. As a result, it turned out that it was a piece of foam, which hit the left wing of the ship and pierced a large half-meter hole in it. The simulation conducted at NASA did not reveal any negative consequences, so they decided not to stop the flight.

The first symptom of a malfunction was identified during a landing maneuver in 16 59 hours in Washington. Everyone noticed the abnormal readings of pressure sensors. The failure was attributed to a bad connection. But the destruction of the ship's hull began at this time. In less than a minute, he crumbled into pieces. As a result, all the astronauts died.

Unfortunately, many secrets of rocket catastrophes were never declassified. It is not yet known when they will be revealed. But some facts you have learned.