hallo it's scott manley here in snot 79s
soyuz 33 launched an omission to Salyut
6 with cosmonauts and nikolai
rukavyshnikov the first civilian to
command a Soviet spacecraft he was
joined by Georgi Ivanov a Bulgarian
cosmonaut as part of the inter cosmos
program the launch had been delayed due
to high winds at the launch site but it
took flight two days late on April 10th
it would take a day to rendezvous and
dock with the station where they planned
to meet the long-duration crew of Soyuz
30 to spend a week in space and swap
over the Soyuz spacecraft leaving the
long-duration crew with a newer fresher
Soyuz however on approach the spacecraft
suffered an engine failure that forced
the docking to be aborted and ultimately
it was decided to bring the spacecraft
home at the next opportunity the return
could be accomplished using the backup
engine but problems resulted in a
deorbit burn that ran too long and a
steep ballistic re-entry that was rough
on the crew but this isn't the story of
that failed mission and the dangerous
return to earth it's about the
contingency plans which were shared and
which were overheard by a group of
amateur radio operators in Europe the
Kettering group had begun at Kettering
grammar school in the UK and it had
grown to be an international affair
including Spain gran in Sweden who
deserves all the credit for writing up
this little bit of history the listeners
had been expecting to hear the docking
in progress instead what they heard was
the crew reading lists of orbit numbers
times and the phrase Google Passat key
that is angle of landing they were sure
that these might be landing instructions
for orbits being relayed to the crew
there was some uncertainty about the
meaning of landing angle but if these
were instructions for subsequent orbits
then some of these would not have
allowed the crew to land on the plains
of Kazakhstan a few years later they had
the chance to ask a cosmonaut about a
landing angle vladimir shatalov who you
might remember as the commander of Soyuz
4 he explained that the
angle was the expected distance that
would be traversed along the orbit line
between the retrofire and the landing
site the landing instructions would be
calculated on the ground and delivered
to the cosmonauts when they were in
range of the Soviet ground stations for
much of the orbit the spacecraft would
not be in range and would not make
passes for several hours so they had to
have all the eventualities planned ahead
of time so now they knew the meaning of
landing angle the space sleuths returned
to their recordings and pieced together
the landing instructions from the orbit
number the timing of the deorbit burn
and the landing angle this allowed them
to locate the emergency landing sites
that would have been used if the crew
needed to return to the earth early the
Soyuz needs wide open flat areas of land
to safely touch down and it seemed like
the most suitable alternate locations
were in the prairies of North America
one of the landing sites was about 20
miles northwest of Fort Worth Texas
which no doubt would have caused
something of a stir during the Cold War
coincidentally one of the amateur
spacecraft trackers was based in Fort
Worth other sites were in Canada and
curiously in the seas around Japan and
Russia now the amateurs understood the
meaning of these details they looked for
other examples and soon they found the
same communications during Soyuz 19
better known as the Soviet half of the
apollo-soyuz test project Soyuz 19 had a
much wider range of emergency landing
sites on top of the sites in North
America some of the landing coordinates
pointed to northern France and sites in
the Ukraine now I can give you an idea
of how the crew would have used these
numbers there was a device called the
Soyuz space navigation display this is
from an old Soyuz capsule at the Chabot
spaces and Science Center in the bottom
right you see the control saying Google
passat key which can be set to the value
expectant following the deorbit burn and
then if you switch this control up here
the display mode will show the location
of the landing site on the globe so the
a deorbit burn can be triggered when the
landing site location is somewhere that
you want it to be also you might
remember I talked about Australia being
a possible
for a landing site the reason why none
of these sites shown here were in
Australia even although the spacecraft
passes over Australia is that to align
the spacecraft for landing and to land
they wanted to do that in daylight and a
spacecraft had been launched into an
orbit where its maximum latitude was
achieved during the middle of the day
that meant that it would be in the
middle of the day in daylight and over
the Soviet Union when they were
performing all the critical docking
operations but equally that meant that
all their landing sites for these short
missions had to be in the northern
hemisphere this daylight requirement is
an important constraint on Soyuz
operations at the international space
station even today and of course
nowadays the possibility of a Soyuz
having to land in North America is very
much part of the space station plans
there are actually documents that NASA
has published that you know contingency
plans for local rescue operators so that
they know what to do should a Soyuz land
in the middle of Idaho for example
immediately after landing the capsule is
far from inert it will deploy these
antennas swiftly enough to injure
someone so you're supposed to remain at
a distance to allow those to deploy then
once you approach the capsule try to
stay away from the under site just in
case some of the landing motors haven't
fired and also because the landing motor
sensor is a low level radiation source
and of course is suggested that you help
get the crew out of there after all they
have been in zero-g for an extended
period and they're probably still
getting used to gravity this capsule
actually includes opening tools for the
hatch on the bottom so you can take one
of these turn it clockwise and unlock
the hatch to help them begin helping
them out but during the Cold War these
plans wouldn't have been officially
communicated even during the
apollo-soyuz test project I can't see
any information that suggests that NASA
had been informed of what to do if a
Soyuz capsule landed back so the
Russians of course did the obvious thing
and put the instructions on the capsule
this is a soviet-era capsule and you'll
see that includes the instructions in
Russian and English so these alternate
landing sites were even incorporated
into the spacecraft's design but some of
you might wonder what kind of treatment
cosmonauts would expect if they landed
in the u.s. after all most of them were
Soviet military
well this eventualities was anticipated
by the Space Treaty of 1967 with an
addendum in 1968 called the rescue
agreement which said that signatories to
the treaty have to do their best to
render assistance and immediately notify
the launching authority of the problem
and of course return the astronauts or
cosmonauts home as quickly as possible
as well as the spacecraft so the
intelligence services wouldn't be
allowed free reign to disassemble a
stranded capsule they would have to
return it as quickly as possible but of
course I'm sure they would do their best
to inspect as much as they could and
learn what they could before returning
it to the relevant authorities
regardless of what any treaty said so
even without an official agreement with
the US the Soviet Union realized the
safety of their cosmonauts might require
an unintentional collaboration with the
US I'm Scott Manley fly safe
[Music]
you