Why don't we know whether the Intelsat 708 Incident killed 6 people, or 500 people?
How did an allergic reaction save three lives? This and more,
as we find out what can go wrong when we try to go where no one has gone before.
The Nedelin Catastrophe
During the nascent years of the Space Race, a Soviet military leader's risky mandate led to
an unprecedented disaster. Likely aiming to get ahead of the Americans, Chief Marshal Nedelin
ordered an acceleration in the development of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile.
According to Air & Space Magazine, he reportedly wanted the team working
on it to finish it in time for the Soviet revolution's 43rd anniversary,
which was a staggering eight months before its original projected launch date.
Workers made it their priority to speed up the process, ignoring risks and bypassing crucial
safety protocols. Sadly, this included working on a fully fueled missile while it was on the
launchpad, a mistake that proved to have lethal consequences on October 24, 1960,
when the missile's second stage — still attached to its first stage — suddenly fired,
leading to an explosion on the launchpad. This incident claimed the lives of about
100 people working on and around the missile, including Nedelin himself.
The investigation was kept hush-hush by the authorities, and the bereaved families
were instructed to stay silent. Journalists from Europe sensed that something terrible
had happened in Siberia, while the United States obtained low-quality photos of the
scorched site through a spy satellite, wrote James Oberg for Air & Space Magazine in 1990.
It took two decades before more details about the tragedy became known to the public.
The Gemini 9 Training Jet Crash
On February 28, 1966, astronauts Elliott See
Jr. and Charles Bassett II boarded a T-38 military training jet.
Gemini IX, the seventh crewed flight in the Gemini program,
was slated to take place in May that year. What they weren't counting on, however,
were the less-than-ideal weather conditions on that fateful day. They had trouble gauging
how high they should be flying in order to land safely on Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri.
In See and Bassett's attempt to land safely on the runway, the training jet accidentally hit the
roof of Building 101, aka Gemini Space Operations, which housed their space exploration vehicle. The
plane crashed, tumbled, hit a nearby construction yard, and exploded. Both pilots perished. In
addition, falling debris from Building 101's ceiling hit about a dozen employees inside.
An in-depth investigation on the tragedy took place, led by Alan Shepard, the first American to
travel into space, and U.S. Air Force pilot Donald "Deke" Slayton. Three months after the incident,
the investigative committee concluded that the accident was a combination of
terrible weather and a miscalculation on See's part. According to NASA, the
graves of the two original Gemini IX crew members are in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Apollo 1 Tragedy
According to NASA, the Apollo Command Module became a highly
reliable craft for Moon exploration due to crucial revisions in its design.
Sadly, these changes were implemented as a result of a tragedy that claimed
the lives of the three men slated to be on the mission's first manned flight.
On January 27, 1967, at 1:00 PM, astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White
participated in a preflight training session in the module at Cape Canaveral.
It was about a month before their scheduled mission, Apollo 204.
During the session, the module was mounted on an unfueled rocket. It probably could have been safe,
had it not been for three problems: a "sour smell" that Grissom detected in the spacesuit loop,
a "high oxygen flow indication," and communication line issues.
Five and a half hours later, a fire broke ou t in the cockpit, which subsequent investigations
indicate started from a short circuit. The astronauts were trapped inside the module
due to a hatch door that was hard to open; experts say that the men died within the first
half-minute of the fire while sustaining serious burn injuries and inhaling smoke.
For about a year and a half, the Apollo program experienced a huge safety upheaval:
a new hatch design, better record-keeping of spacecraft repairs and mods, and even
replacing the flammable components with "self-extinguishing" parts.
And to honor the three astronauts, Apollo 204 was officially named "Apollo 1."
"America's first three Apollo astronauts were trapped and killed by a flashfire
that swept their moonship earlier tonight during a launchpad test."
The Soyuz 1 Tragedy
When Russia launched Soyuz 1 on April 23, 1967, it had a single passenger: Colonel Vladimir Komarov,
who had previously served as the commander of the Voskhod space flight mission in 1964.
This earned him the distinct honor of being the first cosmonaut to fly into space twice.
Tragically, his ill-fated return to Earth bestowed upon him another unforgettable place in history:
He became the first person to ever die during an attempt at space travel.
Based on Space Safety Magazine's account, Komarov was already aware of problems in the spacecraft
almost as soon as it was launched. The issues included a problematic one-panel configuration,
a halved power supply due to failure in deploying the left solar panel,
and compromised craft stability due to malfunctioning sensors.
Once in orbit, Soyuz 1 rapidly started to lose power, so Russia decided to bring the
craft back to Earth the next day. Due to Soyuz 1's faulty control system and peculiar shape,
Komarov struggled to manually orient the craft during re-entry.
Unfortunately, the main parachute of the craft failed to deploy — and
what was intended to be a safe landing for the aircraft became a high-speed,
head-on collision with the ground. When Soyuz 1 crashed, its solid fuel rockets exploded,
obliterating everything in it and killing Col. Komarov.
X-15 Flight 3-65-97
On November 15, 1967, U.S. Air Force major Michael James Adams prepared to take his seventh flight
in the North American Aviation X-15 hypersonic craft. He would be piloting the jet dubbed X-15-3.
According to the NESC Academy, X-15-3 was unique in that it had "advanced
pilot displays, an adaptive flight control system,
and an advanced reaction control system." Since Adams was no stranger to handling the plane,
X-15 Flight 3-65-97 (aka X-15 Flight 191) was expected to be a safe one for him.
Sadly, this was not the case: The engine ended up running for just 3.3 seconds longer than the
initial flight plan, causing the plane to fly slightly faster than intended and overshoot its
projected altitude. Worse, X-15-3 experienced a malfunction in its Inertial Flight Data System,
causing it to improperly execute Adams' controls and go into a spin upon descending to 230,000
feet. The plane subsequently crashed in a remote area about five-and-a-half miles
from Randsburg, California. Adams did not survive.
NASA's investigation revealed that an electrical disturbance was the cause
of the accident. And because Adams' flight had actually surpassed 50 miles of altitude,
he posthumously received the United States Astronaut Badge,
an award given to individuals who have successfully conducted a spaceflight.
Soyuz 11
A pollen allergy saved the lives of three men — and doomed three others to go down
in history as the first, and to date, only, humans to die while in outer space.
According to Astronomy Magazine, when doctors suspected that cosmonaut Valeri
Kubasov had tuberculosis, he and his crewmates Pyotr Kolodin and
Alexei Leonov were taken off the Soyuz 11 mission three days before their flight.
A backup crew filled in for them, composed of Georgi Dobrovolski,
Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev. The launch took place on June 6, 1971;
what followed were three weeks of experiments aboard the first space station, Salyut 1.
However, tragedy struck on June 30 before the crew was able to return to Earth.
During preparations for atmospheric re-entry, a leak in the spacecraft
caused sudden decompression, killing all three crew members in less than two minutes.
As tragic as their fates were, the three cosmonauts did not die in vain.
Their deaths made both Americans and Russians realize the true dangers of space travel.
They also prompted the implementation of better safety features in later Soyuz crafts.
Space Shuttle Challenger
Initially designed to be a "high-fidelity structural test article," Space Shuttle Challenger
was used in nine crucial missions from 1983 to 1986, including the Space Shuttle program's
first spacewalk, the launch of the first American woman, Sally Ride, and first African-American,
Guy Bluford, into space, and the first Space Shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center.
Challenger's 10th launch, scheduled on January 28, 1986, was meant to make history once more:
Its seven-person crew included Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first
teacher to go into space. Unfortunately, tragedy struck 73 seconds after the shuttle's launch.
As Space.com recounts, Challenger broke up and exploded as the world watched in horror.
It took several weeks to recover the astronauts' remains, some of which could not be identified.
"I thought the flight was going fine and then I heard them say 'major malfunction'
and then the person beside me said 'It's exploded.'"
An investigation revealed that the below-freezing temperatures that day degraded a rubber seal
on the solid rocket boosters, and that the Challenger disaster could have been avoided
if NASA had picked a different day for the launch. This exposed shortcomings in NASA's
safety protocols and its "unsustainable launch rate," prompting the agency to make serious
technical and operational changes.
The Intelsat 708 Incident
A 2014 paper published in Colorado Law Review shares some details about the failed launch
of the Intelsat 708, a telecommunications satellite created by Space Systems/Loral.
On February 15, 1996, the Long March 3B rocket
carrying the satellite was launched from China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
Unfortunately, the rocket tipped over, veering off course for 22 seconds before crashing.
Experts say that it likely hit a nearby hillside village. At least six people were killed in
the incident, and 57 were injured, the Chinese government's Xinhua news agency reported. However,
U.S. experts say that the accident may have actually killed 300 to 500 people,
based on population estimates and the crowd that gathered near the crash site the previous night.
A subsequent investigation revealed that the Long March 3B's guidance system was faulty;
technical improvements were made to increase the rocket's reliability.
To this day, the actual death toll of this incident remains uncertain.
Space Shuttle Columbia
Columbia made history on April 12, 1981, as the first Space Shuttle to actually
fly in outer space. For over two decades, it completed important research, construction,
and satellite deployment missions. Sadly, the research-dedicated STS-107 mission became its
final flight — one that was doomed from the start by a piece of foam.
On January 16, 2003, approximately 82 seconds after Columbia's liftoff,
a foam ramp described as being the size of a briefcase fell from the shuttle's external tank.
It struck the vehicle's left wing, damaging its protective heat shielding.
Mission managers decided that repairing the wing was near-impossible at this point,
and did not inform the crew about it. When Space Shuttle Columbia returned to Earth on February 1,
2003, it broke apart upon re-entry due to the heat. None of the astronauts survived.
Space shuttle flights ceased for over two years while an investigation board looked
into the tragedy. Shockingly, it revealed that NASA had known about the foam problem for years,
earning the agency harsh criticism and backlash. The board concluded
that sending another orbiter into space to save the crew would have been an option,
albeit an equally risky one. The Space Shuttle program was terminated in 2011;
nowadays, "space taxi" services fly astronauts up to the International Space Station.
The Alcȃntara VLS Accident
Prior to 2003, the Brazilian Space Agency had tried to launch a rocket
into space two times - once in 1997, and again in 1999. However,
both missions ended in failure as technical problems doomed the rockets right after liftoff.
On August 22, 2003, the agency conducted a third launch at the Alcântara Launch Center,
aiming to send its VLS-1 rocket into space with two small satellites as its payload.
However, during some final pre-launch tests, an unintended ignition of propellant in one of the
rocket's four engines caused it to explode on its launch pad, resulting in at least 21 casualties,
most of whom were civilian technicians, and 20 injuries.
The base's deputy director died in the explosion, along with 10
mid-level technicians and 11 experts from the Center for Aeronautical Technology.