
A Cosmonaut's Fiery Death Retold (2011) - todayiamme
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-fiery-death-retold
======
MrBra
Webpage has a play button to "Listen to Komarov as the Soyuz capsule began to
fail".

And then - unbelievably - there is a link for buying it for "89 cents at
Amazon.com".

At Amazon they're selling one man's last words of despair. And linking to that
you are even advertising this. The whole thing is sick and sad.

~~~
civilian
I paid 15 euros in Kutna Hora (Czech Republic) to visit the Ossuary and the
Cathedral nearby. There were roughly 10k stacked skeletons in the Ossuary
basement, and there were two cannonized Saints in the Cathedral. (As in--
mummified and dressed up, in glass boxes with wax faces.)

The market is everywhere, and your emotion is misplaced.

~~~
hyperbovine
Cathedrals and catacombs at least require some upkeep. If the $.89 is somehow
making its way to this man's next of kin then fine. Otherwise it just seems
like cynical profiteering.

~~~
baddox
You're using a fairly useless theory of value for this context.

~~~
hyperbovine
I do not know what that sentence means.

------
kahirsch
Be sure to read the follow-up, which casts doubt on parts of the story:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cos...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-
fiery-death-retold)

~~~
Someone
As far as I can tell, this article _is_ the follow-up (the same URL, even)

~~~
nicw
In my RSS feed, the original 2011 is linked [1]. But loading the page takes
you to the follow up [2]

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmo...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-
crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage)

[2]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cos...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-
fiery-death-retold)

------
jlgreco
Another interesting read is the timeline of the other famous reentry disaster,
the Space Shuttle Columbia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster#Re-
entry_timeline)

One of the things that I find surprising is the amount of time between when
the breakup started ( _" 8:53:46 (EI+577): Various people on the ground saw
signs of debris being shed. ... Dialogue on some of the amateur footage
indicates the observers were aware of the abnormality of what they were
filming._") to last radio contact (nearly 6 minutes later).

~~~
Pxtl
And on takeoff, the Challenger crew compartment was still intact after the
explosion and the crew was protected and quite likely conscious for the 2
minutes and 45 seconds while it hurtled along in a ballistic arc until it
splashed down into the ocean hard enough to pulverize everything on board.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disast...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Cause_and_time_of_death)

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah. A similar thing happened during Columbia; the cabin remained somewhat
intact for up to 39 seconds after the rest of the vehicle really started to
fall apart, though it ultimately disintegrated with the rest of the orbiter.

It seems those crew compartments were pretty damn tough.

------
jt2190
Previous discussions:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342677) * [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342058) * [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346331)

------
jaxytee
"The problem was Gagarin. Already a Soviet hero, the first man ever in space,
he and some senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203
structural problems — serious problems that would make this machine dangerous
to navigate in space. The mission, Gagarin suggested, should be postponed."

This helps puts things in perspective when I'm obsessing over trivial things
like the max length my RegExp will allow on some arbitrary form field. One of
my user's phone won't blow up if he/she wasn't able to use five more
characters in a message.

We should do our best to minimize the amount of bugs we code, but when we
(inevitably) do code buggy software we can fix it relatively fast. Unless of
course one is coding a GPS system for SpaceX or something of the such.

------
Recoil42
There are too many holes in the story. Highly recommend the followup, where
it's confirmed that many parts are flatly made up or just vaguely inaccurate:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cos...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-
fiery-death-retold)

~~~
Edvik
I am not sure if these replies count as confirmed. They are more sources
citing different events. But the sources are often official USSR documents,
which are not being doctoring.

The final official transcript, for one, reads like propaganda.

------
g123g
Reminds me of some companies where the team knows that a particular project is
doomed from the start but has to still work on it as no one has guts to tell
the boss the truth.

~~~
bsullivan01
Almost the same :-)

Cast doubt on a Dear Leader's idea and all of the sudden you're shipped to a
gulag or to the firing squad. Just like that....enemy of the people, support
the US imperialists...trying to sabotage socialism, etc.

Ask an Eastern European or Russian that lived through the communist times.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
In my naive young western view, Gagarin (and possibly Komarov) would be one of
the most likely people to get away with it. These guys were national heroes.
They had statues built of them.

Shifting to a different dictatorship, the case has been made in Burma that the
only reason Aung San Suu Kyi was kept alive the whole time was that her father
was very well regarded even by the military.

But then I've also read 1984 and remember the memory holes.

~~~
bsullivan01
_These guys were national heroes._

True, thy could away with more than others, especially since the leaders and
the Party benefited from them (Unless they became a threat to replace the
leaders etc..). But never underestimate the power of 24/7 propaganda and how
they confessed to being CIA spies, how the risked lives of our comrades...blah
blah. The higher you are the harder you fall.

For these guys the top leader would decide, but for the poor peasant
complaining about the bread, a local communist bureaucrat would do to ruin his
life.

 _They had statues built of them._ Nothing a bulldozer can't remove :-)

------
guard-of-terra
Just proves heroism is stupid. His death threw Soviet space program back for
several years. Postponing the mission would undeniably cause much less harm if
any at all.

But it's in Russian nature to take stupid risks that are clearly not worth it.
Авось.

~~~
rwallace
It's not specific to Russian nature. It's the nature of any environment where
people are punished for reporting bad news up the chain of command. That's the
relevant message most of the HN readership should be taking from this. You'll
never be in charge of a Soyuz launch but you might someday be in charge of a
project or company that has an opportunity to correct problems before they
become disasters. Make sure the workers on the ground floor aren't afraid to
tell you about the problems. Conversely if you are on the ground floor and
find yourself afraid to report problems, it might be time to start looking for
another job.

------
zaroth
Literally, WTF!

The first thing you see is a large picture of molten human remains. That's
just horrific.

------
hansjorg
> According to the authors, Komarov answered: "If I don't make this flight,
> they'll send the backup pilot instead." That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir
> Komarov couldn't do that to his friend. "That's Yura," the book quotes him
> saying, "and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him."
> Komarov then burst into tears.

This doesn't seem to make any sense. I think people might be a bit credulous
when it comes to stories about the SU.

------
andrewliebchen
It's really hard to take Krulwich seriously after the way he treated the Hmong
witness in Radiolab's "Yellow Rain" story, including the callousness of the
follow-ups.

------
pattisapu
I hate how this article begins with "So . . . " right above a picture of
charred human remains. Ira Glass often does this kind of flip intro too.

------
croisillon
They wanted to protect Gagarin, yet he died less than one year later.

------
ck2
Those that were protesting social justice articles being posted, where are you
for this article?

(not personally complaining about either one, just want to check the
perspective)

~~~
jlgreco
I don't really see this as a "social justice" article. More like an article
that drives home the human impact of engineering.

I mean, the people responsible for this are almost all dead now, and the
government that pushed to hard has long since dissolved. The lingering
relevance is engineering and risk.

------
nsxwolf
Photo of remains has been removed.

~~~
jlgreco
There are two different articles:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmo...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-
crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage)
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cos...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts-
fiery-death-retold)

The second article is an update, and does not have the picture.

------
derleth
This sounds like the Torre Bert recordings, which are almost certainly a hoax:
[http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4115](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4115)

Of course, the Torre Bert story goes further, with a whole passel of
cosmonauts going missing and unreported on except for these two guys in Italy,
the Judica-Cordiglia brothers, with a lash-up radio rig, who weren't
influenced _at all_ by all the publicity they were getting every time they
reported a new cosmonaut dying in pain. _Not at all._ Also, in their world,
spacecraft can just kind of 'drift' out of Earth orbit without any additional
engine thrust.

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2433/are-there-
real...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2433/are-there-really-lost-
cosmonauts-stranded-in-space)

