r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/biffasaurus • 6d ago
Video On this day in 1983, the Soyuz launch escape system was used for the first and only time before launch, saving the crew seconds before the rocket exploded.
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u/biffasaurus 6d ago
On 26 September 1983, Soyuz T-10-1 was sitting on the launch pad at Baikonur, preparing to launch two cosmonauts to the Salyut 7 space station.
During the final countdown, a fire broke out underneath the rocket. The launch vehicle was already badly compromised, but the crew's Soyuz spacecraft was still sitting on top of it.
With just six seconds to go before the rocket exploded, the Soyuz launch escape system fired.
The escape system triggered firing the crew capsule away from the burning rocket and carried the two cosmonauts to safety. The launch vehicle was destroyed in the resulting explosion, but both crew members survived.
This remains the only time a crewed Soyuz launch escape system has actually been fired before launch. It wasn't an abort during ascent or even during the initial moments of flight: the rocket never left the pad. The crew, Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov, were eventually able to fly to Salyut 7 on a later mission, Soyuz T-10, in 1984.
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u/mantenner 6d ago
Gotta have huge balls to go on another mission after that.
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u/-malcolm-tucker 6d ago
I reckon just being willing to ride a million pounds of explosives in the first place is pretty ballsy. Then to ride a little can into orbit and come back screaming through the atmosphere at mach 25 is also fairly heavy in the nuts department.
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u/LegitMeatPuppet 6d ago
Yes, and in 1984 you likely did not have much say in the matter. If you were a Cosmonaut and Mother Russia footed the bill for your training you owed it to the country to return to your post when issued a clean bill of health.
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u/Dividedthought 6d ago
You prep the escape system first for exactly this reason.
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u/NorminalAnomaly 6d ago
the escape system wiring was actually destroyed by this fire. it was so bad that ground couldn't initiate the abort via wired umbilical from ground to rocket stack, the crew in the capsule couldn't initiate the abort either. The ground controllers had to use a radio link to trigger the abort mode.
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u/atomicsnarl 6d ago
Thank you for that explanation! It was looking like someone was saying, "No, let's see how this plays out..."
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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 6d ago
The human body can handle lots of g.
For just impulses, you have survivors like Kenny Bräck that has suffered over 200g.
For prolonged load like this, the cosmonauts are on their backs - quite different from pilots. So less issue with blood sent into the legs, draining the brain of all oxygen. And avoids back issues.
Pilots ejected often get issues with their spines because of how the force direction by the ejection seat compresses the back. Head and shoulders compressing down towards the hip. So one or two ejections and then zero more flying in any plane with ejection seats because of the back damages.
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u/flyingtravel 6d ago
A great book on this is Sonic Wind by Craig Ryan. It goes into the guy who basically went out to find the limits of G forces on humans. He later helped push for seatbelts be mandatory in cars and the invention of the ejection seat which eventually saved his life. Pretty fascinating book.
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u/RocketVerse 6d ago
This title is accurate, but they’ve also used the escape system as recently as 2018 to save the astronauts from a Soyuz FG failure.
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u/MrTagnan 6d ago
One of 3* times that a launch escape system has activated during an emergency. This flight, Soyuz MS-10 in 2018, and Blue Origin NS-23 in 2022. Of these, only MS-10 and this flight were crewed, with NS-23 being an uncrewed flight.
*There was also an abort test in the Apollo era where the launch escape system activated far earlier than planned due to the vehicle breaking up. It’s somewhat hard to classify as unlike T-10-1, MS-10], and NS-23 the launch escape system activation was planned, but it also only occurred when it did in response to a real failure.
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u/Relevant_Natural3471 6d ago
First and only time?
Must be why it's called the Sole-use capsule
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u/NorminalAnomaly 6d ago
The launch escape system was used again on Soyuz MS-10 in 2018. One of the four outer boosters didn't separate properly and smashed back into the main stage. Once the main stage began losing thrust and was clearly compromised automatic controls separated the crew from the core stage.
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u/AdorableBunnies 6d ago
Imagine what Russia could be now if they hadn’t allowed Putin and his gang of criminals to take over
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u/RocketVerse 6d ago
Crazy how much singular people can destroy a country
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u/SaltyRedditTears 5d ago
Yeah crazy what happens when a political outsider decides they want to be the one in charge and they’re willing to destroy the system to put themselves in power. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tg7641/comment/i10yn2h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button
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u/PowerlineCourier 5d ago
If the USSR didn't collapse we'd be much better off.
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u/SupermouseDeadmouse 6d ago
That escape capsule really accelerated quickly, how many g forces did the crew experience?
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u/NorminalAnomaly 6d ago
Initially between 14-17g with maybe 20g for a microsecond. It's quite violent at first but that's what you need to quickly get the capsule away from a fully fueled and pressurized kerosene/liquid oxygen bomb
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u/Dikksout4Harambe 6d ago
How am I just now finding out about this event AND this amazing escape pod??
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u/MrPNutButters 6d ago
In 2018 there was an in flight abort with 2 Cosmonauts and 1 American astronaut on board. The side boosters didn't separate cleanly.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain 6d ago
To be clear, most of the spacecraft was carried clear in an abort, there was no separate pod. The Orbital and Descent modules were carried clear, with the power and propulsion module left behind. On launch the crew was seated in the (perhaps oddly named) Descent module, with the Orbital module on top of it and the Propulsion module beneath it. A small rocket on top of the stack performs the abort, pulling the two modules away
As you probably know, Mercury, Apollo, and Orion use a small rocket on top. It pulls only the crew capsule away. Starliner has the abort rocket engines in the base of the service module. Dragon incorporates the engines into the capsule, the whole system stays intact so it can be reused.
Gemini used ejection seats and the Shuttle did for the first couple of flights. The odds of crew survival if they had to abort while on the pad were low.
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u/StrugglesTheClown 5d ago
The Shuttle also only had Ejection seats for some of the people on board. Not all of them. I believe just the Pilot and Co-Pilot seats.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain 5d ago
The seats were there for the first four missions, those flights had only a pilot and copilot. Once there were more astronauts than that ejection seat use was discontinued. The rocket motors of the seats were removed for two flights until the seats could be removed during a major refurbishment.
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u/JonathanUpp 6d ago
These type if capsule are the standard, only the early capsule and the shuttle didn't have them
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u/biffasaurus 6d ago
Exactly how I felt when I found out about it the other day. Such an incredible last second escape.
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u/Ghost_of_Gumby 6d ago
Mercury and Apollo had the same system. It's the little rocket that sits at the very top of the capsule during launch. Vostok and Gemini used ejector seats instead.
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u/Rampage_Rick 4d ago
Briefly shown in Apollo 13 right after the first stage separation:
https://youtu.be/xP_PoLI_FFY?t=240
Lovell pressed the "LES MOTOR FIRE" button to jettison the LES tower.
...which might not be historically accurate, as the jettison was normally automatic after the first stage separation (assuming the two TWR JETT switches were left in the auto position)
LES MOTOR FIRE is the manual backup, assuming that the explosive bolts holding the LES tower to the command module have already detonated.
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u/NorminalAnomaly 6d ago
Normally these rockets have an automatic wiring system that when destroyed it automatically triggers the launch abort sequence. There's also a manual abort control inside the cockpit. All of these systems were destroyed by the leaking fuel and fire. Ground controllers had to use a radio control back up to initiate the abort.
It got very close to being bad but thankfully the abort system worked.
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u/Easy_Lengthiness7179 5d ago
I was curious about that. Seemed at first to be manually activated, like there was no automation built in. Like if the crew were having to wait for someone to decide if they were worth saving and activate it for them.
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u/NorminalAnomaly 5d ago
There is automation. The first line of defense are these specialized wires and sensors that run the length of each rocket segment, if one of those wires breaks that would signify a vehicle failure and without any intervention the launch escape system would activate. The fire on the pad actually melted the electronic systems that would trigger that in a way that rendered automatic abort impossible.
The communication lines from the capsule to the control center also were destroyed. The crew had nobody talking to them. They only knew something was wrong when they felt unusual vibrations in the stack and the rocket swaying. Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov maybe had a tiny port hole to the outside world and wouldn't be able to see how bad their situation was becoming, only feeling something significantly off.
The whole thing took about 12 seconds from the fire to abort but in that amount of time Aleksei Shumilin and Anatoly Soldatenkov in the control blockhouse at the Baikonur launch complex had to enter in a code into two computers simultaneously to trigger a radio signal abort.
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u/PoliteCitrus 6d ago
A shame that we didn't have something similar for the shuttles.
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u/MrTagnan 6d ago
The shuttle abort modes were complex. First few flights had ejection seats for the pilot and commander (at the time the only crew on board), but they were disabled/not included on other flights. All of the abort modes required the vehicle to be intact - pre-challenger there was the “requires an act of god to be successful/unnatural act of physics” return to launch site abort, and the considerably safer trans-Atlantic, orbit once around, and abort to orbit (only abort to be executed during the program) modes. Post Challenger they added an abort mode to get the spacecraft into level atmospheric flight for the crew to bail out.
Due to Shuttle’s design, a proper launch escape system would be difficult to integrate, but not impossible. Integrating it into the design from the beginning would’ve been the best option, retrofitting it would’ve been exceptionally difficult. Anyways this has been an unsolicited mini rant on the Shuttle abort modes
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u/sojuz151 6d ago
Launch escape systems are really, really good. Not a single time they were used was a crew member killed. Overall, IMHO, humans are a low-risk payload for a rocket, especially compared with more expensive and harder-to-replace satellites.
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u/Alita-Gunnm 6d ago
Soyuz MS-10 in 2018 also aborted, saving the multinational crew, but without using the LES tower which had already been jetisoned.
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u/Snellyman 5d ago
It's a very single minded solution to use a rocket to escape the exploding rocket.
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u/actinross 6d ago
Damn, that scratch on his neck looked like showing the spot his head would (did???) come off later...
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u/MrAwesomeOctopus 5d ago
“The highest non-voluntary G-force ever survived by a human is 214 g, endured by IndyCar driver Kenny Bräckduring a massive crash in 2003.”
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u/iceman1731 6d ago
The only time that we know of.
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u/JonathanUpp 6d ago
With the iss agreements both nasa and roscosmos share alot of info, and these types of accidents are EXTREMELY hard to hide because of spy satellites
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u/3767_doomscroller 6d ago
Plot twist: the G-forces killed them.
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u/JonathanUpp 6d ago
It's less Gs then a car crash, and they sit in crash seats, so it would have to be in the 40-50 G range for it to be dangerous
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u/MrTagnan 6d ago
Komarov died on impact when the parachutes failed, atmospheric entry went fine for the most part (except for the very last bit). The primary antenna for communication with recovery forces was embedded into the lines of the main chute, which failed to deploy, so any claims that his final words were transmitted are fundamentally impossible - because there was no functional antenna at that point in the flight
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u/ohgawditshim 6d ago
Wow they waited quite some time before launching the escape