“If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason – and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers.”
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
Since mankind first developed the ability to send human beings into space, 21 men and women have given their lives in the name of cosmic exploration. In this week’s post, I will introduce you to the explorers that made the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of manned spaceflight. These heroes embody some of humanity’s greatest traits: curiosity, bravery, dedication, and daring.
The first people to lose their lives as part of a space program died while still on the ground. The crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee, were on the launch pad rehearsing the launch-sequence in January of 1967. As part of the test, the cabin filled with pure oxygen to make sure the environmental control system was working. Faulting wiring sparked a flash fire, and the entire crew suffocated from smoke inhalation before they could escape the capsule.
Less than three months later, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov perished when his Soyuz capsule crashed into Earth. The mission had been experiencing numerous malfunctions, and during re-entry the parachute failed to deploy properly.
Another three cosmonauts lost their lives only two months after Komarov’s crash landing. Their Soyuz capsule landed without a hitch, but when the recovery team reached the craft they found cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov dead in their seats. A ruptured ventilation valve had exposed them to the vacuum of space, with the drop in pressure killing them within seconds. At 104 miles up, they are technically the only humans to die in space.
Human spaceflight didn’t see another casualty for almost 15 years. On January 28, 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. The entire seven person crew was killed: Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe (a high school teacher selected to be NASA’s Teacher in Space), Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee. The disaster was traced to a faulty O-ring seal on one of the rocket boosters.
Another 17 years of successful shuttle flights passed, but on February 1, 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts lost their lives: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon. During liftoff a chunk of insulation had broken off an external tank and damaged the left wing, which caused the craft to break apart 2 weeks later while returning to Earth.
Every man and woman that endeavours to explore space is fully aware that return to Earth is no guarantee. The void of space is the harshest and least forgiving environment imaginable. Yet the quest for truth and beauty continues to trump fear every time.
“I lay on my back, surprised at how calm and focused I felt, strapped to four and a half million pounds of explosives.”
– Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective
Sources:
[1] http://www.livescience.com/33175-the-fallen-heroes-of-human-spaceflight.html
[2] http://www.space.com/23182-gravity-film-worst-space-disasters.html
Mary Miles, Ph.D. says
Very eloquent post, this week, Collin! I remember, vividly, the Challenger explosion.
ykx5001 says
That was a beautiful post paying homage to the many people who died in human spaceflight. There are so many things that could go wrong, and so many conditions that could be catastrophic, and despite knowing this, we choose to explore space anyway because, as you wrote, of our “quest for truth and beauty.”
Alayna Kennedy says
Colin,
You’ve explored a sobering issue in a profession that many romanticize as adventurous and daring. Thank you for your tribute to the men and women who laid down their lives in the name of human exploration. With the discussion of funding a mission to Mars in the future, many more lives could be lost during the exploration of space, so this issue is still quite relevant today.
~Alayna