Viadimir Mikhailovich Komarov

Cosmonaut, Voskhod 1, Soyuz 1

Vladimir Komarov knew that the flight of Soyuz 1 was in trouble from the beginning. After launch one of the solar panels on the spacecraft failed to deploy. His reaction control system also failed almost immediately making it very tough to manouvre the spacecraft. Moscow Mission Control decided to abort a very ambitious mission and bring Komarov home at the first available opportunity.

The first attempt of the Soyuz 1 spacecraft to automatically fire its retro rockets failed. Komarov needed then to make another orbit to line up for retrofire. Due to the failure of the automatic system Mission Control decided that Komarov would manually align the spacecraft to the proper attitude for re-entry and fire the rockets

With great difficulty Vladimir Komarov accomplished this task and the re-entry began. It went smoothly at first with the spacecraft surviving the heat of re-entry and deploying its drogue parachute. That would be the last thing that would go right for Soyuz 1 and Vladimir Komarov. His main parachute failed to deploy at all and when the backup chute deployed it became tangled with the drogue chute. With no working parachute Soyuz 1 plummeted at great speed. Komarov was killed instantly on impact.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov was born in Moscow on March 16th 1927. He grew up in an “old Moscow” type district and was a good student at school. He had an affinity for mathematics and a loathing for writing school compositions. At age thirteen World War II began. During the war Komarov worked on a collective farm where the family usually summered. Like most young men at that time he would work at a job usually reserved for adults.

Komarov, was fortunate, and was able to return to his Moscow school during the war. Upon graduation he entered a special Air Force school graduating at the end of the war. It was at this school that Komarov discovered his love of flying and set his sights on becoming a test pilot. He kept his ambition from his mother for as long as he could; knowing that she would disapprove, when he finally told her and after much discussion she felt her son knew best and gave him her blessing.

Komarov attended two more flight schools becoming a Soviet fighter pilot, and moving him closer toward his goal as a test pilot. Komarov then returned to Moscow to study engineering at the Air Force Academy, he graduated in 1959. After graduation he was dispatched to an Air Force unit for regular duty. One day he received a puzzling telegram recalling him to Moscow. Like NASA Astronauts, Komarov and other pilots were subjected to three weeks of grueling medical tests. It’s unknown whether any pilot knew what the tests were for. If Komarov did not know he would soon find out.

On March 7th 1960 Vladimir Komarov became one of twenty men selected to be the Soviet Union’s first group of cosmonauts. Unfortunately while training Komarov required hospitalisation and was told that he could not undergo any of the rigorous physical training, which the Soviets required of their cosmonauts, for six months. Komarov decided then to concentrate on his academic studies telling officials he would catch up to his group when he could physically train again. Komarov was true to his word and caught up to his colleagues quickly in the physical training part of the program. Again a health problem surfaced, it was during centrifuge training that doctors detected an "extra-systole" in his cardiogram. Much like Deke Slayton in the United States, Komarov was grounded as a cosmonaut. Komarov decided that this grounding was unfounded and appealed his grounding to doctors all the way to the top of the chain of command. It was during a high level meeting that doctors decided he could return to full cosmonaut status.

During this time the Soviet Union had recorded a number of spaceflight firsts, including the first man and the first woman to fly in space. Yet the Gemini program loomed on the horizon in the United States threatening to allow the US to achieve a kind of parity with the first launching of a multi-manned spacecraft. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was not about to let the Soviet Union be upstaged and ordered Chief Designer Sergey Korolov to design, build and launch a spacecraft that would hold three cosmonauts and to do it before any Gemini flight took flight. For the Soviets no spacecraft of this type was even on the drawing boards, but due to Khrushchev’s order Korolov began planning the most hazardous spaceflight ever undertaken.

The only choice Korolov had was to convert a one man Vostok into a spacecraft that would hold three men. Due to space and weight limitations this crew would have to fly without spacesuits and without a means of escape should a launch mishap occur. Vladimir Komarov was chosen as the commander and pilot of this mission. His two crewmates, Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov an engineer and Dr Boris Borisovich Yegorov, were essentially passengers. On October 12th 1964 Voskhod 1 was launched. Ironically while in orbit the man who ordered this hazardous flight would be removed from power. This was not known to the crew which asked to extend their flight. The chaos of the shift in power prevented this and Voskhod 1 was ordered home after 16 orbits. They returned to the new regime in power and the Soviet Union managed to upstage the United States yet again.

Vladimir Komarov next flight, Soyuz 1, would make him the first Soviet to fly into space twice; it would also make him the first person to die in a space accident. Knowing that things were not going well with the Soyuz program Komarov may have had a premonition about his flight. Handing a book about Joan of Arc, to a friend, shortly before the flight he underlined this passage; “She bade her farewells and continued gazing at the clear blue sky until the final second when the black smoke blotted out that sky forever."

Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov was cremated and interred, with full military and state honors, inside the Kremlin wall. Receiving the highest honour accorded to a Soviet citizen. A memorial service held at the crash site one year after the accident attracted over 10,000 people. Komarov was survived by his wife, Valentina, and two children. The awards and memorials Komarov has received include receiving both the Hero of the Soviet Union and Order of Lenin twice. His memorials include the naming of a crater on the far side of moon after him and asteroid number 1836 also bears his name. Finally, befitting a military pilot, a military pilot school in Yeisk bears his name.

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