Air & Space Magazine has a somewhat different story.[1] Also see Space Safety Magazine.[2] What went wrong is well understood. A solar panel didn't unfold, and it all went downhill from there. Not enough power, capsule asymmetrical due to solar panel problem, attitude controller couldn't stabilize the attitude...
Last-second communications after the parachutes didn't open are unlikely, because the radio antenna for communication after re-entry was part of the parachute lines.
Yeah. TFA has a follow-up [1] which is cited right at the top, and is somewhat closer to reality. The entire original article (and the book it's citing) is simply technical-sounding nonsense from someone with no idea how Soyuz-1 worked, what happened, and how the flights were organized.
Soyouz 1 was new technology and was bound to had some teething problems (like Apollo). Similar issues were very common even on other missions. There were backups and Soyuz 1 managed to deorbit.
Soyouz capsule is stabilized aerodynamically. And solar panel is not even on part that deorbits...
There were several delays. Problem was in parachute storage. It was kept in pod without maintenance. Before mission it must be checked and refolded, this did not happen. Parachute become moldy, sticky and did not open...
My source is a book from this guy:
Karel Pacner is a Czechoslovak journalist, with long history in soviet space mission. He was only soviet-block journalist who covered Apollo 11 on site. In 1990ties he had series book about soviet space mission based on his study of soviet archives.
This was briefly covered in a recent episode of the podcast "Swindled" [0]. Highly recommend this podcast to the HN crowd. I believe the veracity of the "crying in rage" part was put into question as possible anti-Soviet propaganda, but I don't know if there's a final word.
This is a great story, and also serves as a demonstration of how hard it is to write history - whether ancient or proximal. Everything is contested, whether documentary evidence ("you can't believe anything in a Soviet archive") or eyewitness (Gagarin's friend in the KGB).
When are we going to see books and articles on the Colombia disaster, where presumably several astronauts went to their molten deaths crying in rage? Why do I get the feeling that this news which periodically seems to surface on HN smacks of anti-Russia sentiments?
Likely not because the head of Soviet space program was tortured so badly he couldn’t properly open his mouth till his death and wasn’t even Russian too.
The most interesting thing is how flat the hierarchy apparently was. Was a modern astronaut just mingle with the prime minister and try to muscle in on a launch?
According to the article, Gagarin's 10 page memo never even made it up the chain to Brezhnev, because all the people in between didn't want to bring bad news. How is that a flat hierarchy?
Last-second communications after the parachutes didn't open are unlikely, because the radio antenna for communication after re-entry was part of the parachute lines.
[1] https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/first-fatal-spacefl...
[2] http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/soyuz-1/t...