The Tragic Ending of Soyuz 11

[Webster]

Something tragic happened in the early hours of June 30, 1971. The much-anticipated triumphant return of three Cosmonauts from the soyuz11 spacecraft returning from a mission in the space station in orbit turned out to be tragic. The three astronauts had been found dead. They died on space on route to earth. The three astronauts were Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrowolski, and Viktor Patsayev.

The retrieval team had waited to receive them, in a remote region of Kazakhstan, Soyu11 touched down earth safely, no sign of anything wrong on the retrieval team's arrival. But opening the shuttle, the astronauts were found on their seat’s dead. With their face covered in blue botches and rivulets of blood coming out of their ears and eyes. To this day, they are the only humans to have died while in outer space.

Their mission was successful, having spent more than 23 days in the orbit occupying history's first space station. Their achievements for the Soviet Union were fitting to the US achievement of taking the man to the moon. The three crew members also broke previous space endurance records kept by another Soyuz crew in 1970, which was about 18 days.

 

[cowcatcher]

Tragedies associated with technology always interest me, as does space. My take is that much of the space program was not about "exploration" but about warfare - in those days to prove we could quickly deliver a Volkswagen sized nuke anywhere at any time. As such, the individual tragedies/sacrifices are even sadder, as these cosmonauts were I believe innocent pawns.

The statement about being the only humans to die in space, is that a technicality since Challenger and Columbia were not "in space"?