

Soyuz 11 - arabtut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11
Soyuz 11 crew was the only human deaths to occur in space.
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rdtsc
One thing that I always find surprising is that Soviet space programs have
about the same fatality rate as NASA.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_accidents_and_incidents)

I remember jokes about unreliable and shoddy Soviet construction, people
cutting corners and all, and about "high quality" American technology, where
everyone is honest and human safety comes first. Yet looking back the track
record doesn't quite match.

Obviously Americans launched larger crews. But you know, that is also perhaps
thing that should have factored in -- "If we launch 8 people at once, we will
probably kill all of them if an accident happens".

Another issue is well Americans just launched more flights so they clearly
would have a higher accident rate. It seems from the above site, the rate of
accidents (per flight?) is about the same for both space programs.

~~~
kllrnohj
> Yet looking back the track record doesn't quite match.

Well it does, kind of. I mean, during the space race itself and the cold war
the US's space program had no in flight fatalities. The first NASA flight
fatality wasn't until '86, a good 14 years after the Apollo program had ended.

For what it's worth the Soviet's response to the Shuttle program was a
failure. NASA remains the only one to get a partially re-usable orbiter into
use.

> But you know, that is also perhaps thing that should have factored in -- "If
> we launch 8 people at once, we will probably kill all of them if an accident
> happens".

The Space Shuttle program already had a good 24 successful flights, 6 of which
were in the Challenger, before the first fatal flight. It wasn't like they
crammed in a bunch of people in an experimental ship for shits and giggles.
The first set of shuttle flights only had a crew of 2.

~~~
rdtsc
> For what it's worth the Soviet's response to the Shuttle program was a
> failure.

I always thought Buran was a great success. It performed the first fully
autonomous flight. It did at a fraction of what the Shuttle cost. It is just
that "shuttles" are just a bad idea to start with. It is like saying Soviet
Nuclear Airplanes were a failure compared to American Nuclear Airplanes. Well
the idea of nuclear airplanes isn't that great so comparing advances in it
doesn't say much. They started it as a response to show that they could do it.
Then it was deemed a bad idea. Americans kept launching these oversized,
expensive, hard and expensive to maintain machines.

Looking at that particular Wikipedia page, informally it looks like the Soviet
also didn't have any fatalities after 1971. Americans had quite a few.

[quote from wikipedia article]

"Soyuz accidents have claimed the lives of four cosmonauts. No deaths have
occurred on Soyuz missions since 1971, and none with the current design of the
Soyuz. Including the early Soyuz design, the average deaths per launched crew
member on Soyuz are currently under two percent. "

Sounds like historically their design is just better.

~~~
kllrnohj
> It is just that "shuttles" are just a bad idea to start with.

Shuttles are a fantastic idea. Just because the implementation wasn't
brilliant doesn't make the idea bad. Then again I'd strongly disagree with
your claim that the Shuttle program was bad in the first place. It had a very
successful and impressive 30 year carrier.

The comparisons of the Shuttle vs. the Soyuz are bad in the first place as the
two platforms are vastly different in lifting capability. The correct
comparison would be the Shuttle vs. the Proton-M/K, and the Protons are far
from reliable (Proton-M has had 8 failed launches since 2001). Without the
Space Shuttle we wouldn't have the ISS for example.

> Sounds like historically their design is just better.

Better than what? The Saturn V is the only rocket that has propelled humans to
the moon, and the entire Saturn family has zero deaths. And the Saturn V
remains to this day the heaviest lifter mankind has created (NASA's SLS and
China's Long March 9 are in development to surpass the Saturn V)

~~~
rdtsc
> Just because the implementation wasn't brilliant doesn't make the idea bad.

We have two countries that tried to build them and in the end it is still 60s
tried and true technology that puts man in space. Some of those reasons are
price, some politics. But that needs to be factored in the end. Formulas and
blueprints don't launch people into orbit.

Another way to put it, if the idea is so complicated that nobody got it to be
implemented properly and no country is actively working on a new design, I say
there is something with the idea.

> Without the Space Shuttle we wouldn't have the ISS for example.

That is true. But just like the idea that shuttles are great just that nobody
engineered them well enough (yet?) one can also say well hypothetically if
NASA had an equivalent program to Soyuz maybe they would have had more money
in the pocket to build an even bigger and better ISS, or ISS would have been
there a lot sooner.

> Better than what?

Better for fairly regularly flying people into orbit or to orbital space
stations. Saturn V is awesome. That's great, I agree. If we were to still fly
to the moon that would be the vehicle to use.

~~~
kllrnohj
> We have two countries that tried to build them and in the end it is still
> 60s tried and true technology that puts man in space. Some of those reasons
> are price, some politics.

One country succeeded, and the other stopped being a country. In neither case
did the idea fail.

> Another way to put it, if the idea is so complicated that nobody got it to
> be implemented properly and no country is actively working on a new design,
> I say there is something with the idea.

No, that's called learning from experience. There's nothing wrong with the
idea. It's an idea still actively being explored by a variety of people as
well, and the tech developed for the Shuttle programs lives on the SLS and
Ares vehicles that NASA is replacing the Shuttle with.

> one can also say well hypothetically if NASA had an equivalent program to
> Soyuz maybe they would have had more money in the pocket to build an even
> bigger and better ISS, or ISS would have been there a lot sooner.

We can state with certainty that the ISS would have happened a lot _LATER_ if
all we had was Soyuz vehicles, if it would have happened at all. Soyuz lacks
the capacity to build the ISS or to do space walk repairs. There's a reason
Proton was used more than Soyuz was in the construction of the ISS. Soyuz is
good for some things, building space stations, repairing satellites, or
getting to the moon/mars are all not on that list.

Also you do realize the Shuttle wasn't the only NASA vehicle, right? NASA does
have Soyuz-class vehicles, such as the Atlas or the Delta (Atlas-Centaur alone
has more flights than the Shuttle)

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eps
Komarov, Dobrovolski and Patcaev are widely regarded as national heroes (or at
least they were regarded that way back in pre-Perestroyka days). In fact, back
in those days pretty much every adult could name all cosmonauts that died on a
mission and quite of few people also knew _all_ cosmonauts by name. Space was
a really big deal. So having three men die was a real national tragedy.

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brandnewlow
Really excellent article about the deaths of the cosmonauts and the global
political response: [http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2013/04/28/crew-home-
misf...](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2013/04/28/crew-home-misfortunes-
soyuz-11/)

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tomphoolery
I think we should just skip the number "11" in missions from now on.. ;)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11)

~~~
jlgreco
Are you mistaking Apollo 11 for Apollo 1?

