Just a bit of expansion on Cecil’s column. I don’t want to imply I would ever argue with the Sensei, but it wasn’t just the Cosmonauts who took appalling risks in the Soviet space program. One factor that helped to ensure that the U.S. won the moon race was the brain drain that occured when, during a launch test of an early mark Proton rocket, the rocket the Soviets planned to use for their moon shot, it blew up on the pad. At this launch several military figures, and key technicians and managers were allowed to watch the launch from a close in position. I can’t recall the exact date, but it resulted in the deaths of about 20 people, split about evenly between the useless higher level management, and high level movers and shakers.
Welcome, OtakuLoki.
The Nedelin disaster was October 24, 1960. The final death toll was 92. Pretty horrifying…
Eric
BTW, to clarify another part of the OP: the “moon shot rockets” were not Protons, but N-1’s, a very different beast from a Proton; they exploded after launch in two consecutive test flights in the late 60s.
Clarification of a clarification: the N-1 was going to be the backbone of the Soviet moon program, except that they never got it to work. However the Proton was slated to carry a cosmonaut on a free flight around the moon, and the unmanned Zond missions were in fact test flights for such a misson. That was the main reason why NASA reversed the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 missions, having 8 be a lunar orbit flight while 9 was the earth orbit check out. They were afraid the Soviet Union would get a man around the moon first.
Anyway, about the original Column. Some additional reasons why the “Lost Cosmonaut” myth might have arose:
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The first generation of Soviet spy satellites used the same Vokshod capsule as their manned flights to provide a pressurized controlled climate for the cameras, and to return the film (they used film rather than electronic cameras) back to earth. Naturally the USSR would have said nothing about these launches, and they looked indistinguishable from manned flights. A number of them went wrong, IIRC.
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The Soviet Union was in the habit, especially in several of their unmanned lunar probes, of using recorded voices to test their communication equipment. So a casual listener would have heard voices coming from these launches, again several of which were lost.
For more info, try http://www.astronautix.com
I, who know little, would like to point out that if the capsule were going slower it would fall into a lower orbit. For a satellite to spin out into space it would need to be gaining momentum.
The dog Laika, the first living creature to orbit the Earth, did not live nearly as long as Soviet officials led the world to believe. The animal, launched on a one-way trip on board Sputnik 2 in November 1957, was said to have died painlessly in orbit about a week after blast-off. In 2002, it was revealed she died from overheating and panic just a few hours after the mission started. The new evidence was presented at the recent World Space Congress in Houston, Texas, US, by Dimitri Malashenkov of the Institute for Biological Problems in Moscow.
Of course, some people want to believe. And on the web, you can believe all you want. For instance the lost cosmonaut website claims that a bunch of Soviets died up there and they even have evidence. So who (except Cecil) knows for sure?
this may be a silly quesiton from an ignorant man, but suppose an “astronaut of the future” was lost in space “Major Tom”-style. He gets separated on a space walk, or his mission gets aborted and the gov’t decides to abandon him up there, or a nuke hits the country and we lose our ability to bring him back.
Being a futuristic astronaut, he has enough oxygen, food, and water to last a few weeks or even months.
How would he die?
the obvious thought is that he would die from lack of oxygen or nourishment - but could he die of anything else? fright? boredome? space rash?
Most people can starve for 30-40 days, and you can skimp on water, so probably your oxygen is the weakest link. I don’t know if you can significantly extend your oxygen supply by sleeping/resting like in submarines, but it would still almost certainly be the first thing to go.
One question is whether you would run out of actual O2 first, or whether your CO2 scrubbers would be saturated first. If the former, you go fairly painlessly- you get dizzy and lightheaded and then you pass out. If you die of carbon dioxide poisoning however, it gets pretty unpleasant: hyperventlating, gasping, feeling like you’re choking to death (which you are).
Unless of course space crews are equiped with “quick way out” pills; wasn’t there a thread on that?
My guess, if you allow for an unlimited supply of oxygen, is that our ‘Flying Dutchman’ would die from either over heating, or freezing long before starvation or dehydration would be a factor. Part of what makes a space suit so expensive is it’s ability to maintain temperatures inside it where liquid water can exist, when the environment it is in allows only for gas or solid phase water, normally.
In earth orbit, the energy recieved from the sun is enough to make overheating a serious concern. (Which is why the shuttle spends so much time with the cargo bay doors open, it allows more surface area for the shuttle to radiate excess waste heat away from the shuttle.) So, as power failed, the suit would most likely heat up until various heat stresses killed our hypothetical ‘Dutchman.’
Further out (I believe it’s about the average orbit of the asteroid belt, but I can’t say for certain one way or the other. Nor do I care to spend the minutes to find out for sure, either (grinning)) the opposite problem occurs: the suit would radiate more heat away from itself than it receives, which would translate to our ‘Dutchman’ slowly freezing to death.
But notice that the Shuttle’s cargo bay doors are usually pointed towards the earth. It receives almost as much infrared radiation as it emits. Or a bit more, depending on temperature of each. Essentially this couples the Shuttle’s temperature to that of the earth which is fairly stable. Otherwise the temperature goes up during day and goes down too far at “night” (sun obscured by the earth).
An object placed 1AU away from the sun (i.e. the same distance as earth) will reach a fairly comfortable temperature of 300K or so. It doesn’t matter if that object in question is a pebble or a planet, it will reach the same temperature. But that’s just the average temperature of the object; parts of it will be hotter than the other. Also the equilibrium temperature will change if the object is not uniform. If you want a higher temperature, just paint the sunlit side black and coat the other side with aluminum. And of course, a nearby planet that occasionally obscures the sun will seriously screw up the temperature.
Lumpy is correct about film being used for Soviet spysats, but the US was also using film canisters (re: Corona) which would be spit out, re-enter the earth’s atomsphere and snatched mid air by a specialy modified plane which would hustle it back to recon office. I don’t believe the first electronic pictures were used until the KH series in the early 70’s.