Fatalities in Human Space Flight

1
Fatalities in Human Space Flight

• Sheila Hopper

2
Spaceflight Fatalities

• 439 individuals have flown on spaceflights
  Russia/Soviet Union (96), USA (277), others (66).
  Twenty-two have died while in a spacecraft
  Apollo 1 (3), Soyuz 1 (1), X-15-3 (1), Soyuz 11
  (3), Challenger (7), Columbia (7), totaling 18
  astronauts (4.1) and 4 cosmonauts (0.9 of all
  the people launched).
• If Apollo 1 and X-15-3 are included as
  spaceflights, 5 (or 22) of the 439 have died on
  spaceflights.

3
Spaceflight Fatalities

• In flight accidents have killed 18 astronauts
• Training accidents have claimed at least 11
  astronauts
• Launchpad accidents have killed at least 70
  ground crew
• About 2 of the manned launch/reentry attempts
  have killed their crew
• About 5 of the people that have been launched
  have died doing so

4
Cosmonaut Fatalities

• The Soviet/Russian program has had two fatal
  missions for a total of four in-flight
  fatalities.
• One (Soyuz 1, 1967) due to parachute failure
  during landing (there were other problems, but
  this was the fatal failure), and the other (Soyuz
  11, 1971) when a valve stuck open during
  separation of the descent module during reentry
• Of all fatal spaceflights by any country (as of
  2006), only the crew of Soyuz 11 actually died in
  space.
• In addition, the Soviet program suffered 2
  mission-ending launch aborts that were
  potentially fatal.

5
In-flight AccidentsThere have been five fatal
in-flight accidents. In each case all crew were
killed.

• April 24, 1967 parachute failure Soviet
  cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died on board Soyuz 1.
  His one-day mission had been plagued by a series
  of mishaps with the new type of spacecraft, which
  ended by the capsule's parachute not opening
  after reentry. Komarov was killed when the
  capsule hit the ground.

6

• 1967 Nov 15 control failure Michael J Adams.
• Adams died while piloting a suborbital
  spaceflight in a rocket plane. Major
• Adams was a U.S. Air Force pilot in the
  NASA/USAF X-15 program. During X-15 Flight 191,
  his seventh flight, the plane first had an
  electrical problem and then developed control
  problems. The pilot may also have become
  disoriented. During reentry from 266,000 ft, the
  X-15 yawed sideways out of control and went into
  a spin at a speed of Mach 5, from which the pilot
  never recovered.
• Whether or not the incident technically
• counts as a "spaceflight accident" can be
• disputed, given that the flight fell short
• of the internationally recognized 100
• km boundary of space.

7

• 1971 June 30 crew exposed to vacuum of space 
• The crew of Soyuz 11, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor
  Patsayev and
• Vladislav Volkov, were killed after undocking
  from space station
• Salyut after a three-week stay. A valve on their
  spacecraft had accidentally opened when the
  service module separated, letting their air leak
  out into space. The capsule reentered and landed
  normally, and their deaths were only discovered
  when it was opened by the recovery team.

8

• 1986 January 28 spacecraft broke apart on
  takeoff
• The first U.S. in-flight fatalities. The Space
  Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds
  after launch. Challenger was thrown sideways into
  the Mach 1.8 windstream causing it to break up in
  midair with the loss of all seven crew members
  aboard Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald
  McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael
  J. Smith, and Dick Scobee. NASA investigators
  determined they may have survived the initial
  explosion but, became possibly unconscious from
  anoxia, were killed when the largely intact
  cockpit hit the water at 200 mph.

9

• 2003 February 1 spacecraft broke apart on
  re-entry
• The space shuttle Columbia was lost as it
  reentered after a two-week mission, STS-107.
  Damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system
  led to structural failure in the shuttle's left
  wing and, ultimately, the spacecraft breaking
  apart. Investigations after the tragedy revealed
  the damage to the reinforced carbon-carbon
  leading edge wing panel had resulted from a piece
  of insulation foam breaking away from the
  external tank during the launch and hitting
  shuttle's wing. Rick D. Husband, William McCool,
  Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana
  Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon were
  killed.

10
Training Accidents

• 1961 March 23 fire on board First space-related
  casualty. Valentin Bondarenko was in training in
  a special low-pressure chamber with a pure oxygen
  atmosphere. He accidentally dropped an
  alcohol-soaked cloth onto an electric hotplate.
  In the pure oxygen environment, the fire quickly
  engulfed the entire chamber. Bondarenko was
  barely alive when the chamber was opened, and
  died of his burns shortly after being
  hospitalized. At the time of the accident,
  Bondarenko's death had been covered up by the
  Soviet government and was not known about in the
  U.S. Many materials become explosively flammable
  in pure oxygen modern spacecraft use mixtures of
  continuously replaced oxygen and nitrogen. It has
  been speculated that knowledge of Bondarenko's
  death might have led to changes that would have
  prevented the Apollo 1 fire.

11

• 1964 October 31 birdstrike
• Theodore Freeman was killed when a goose smashed
  through the cockpit canopy of his T-38 jet
  trainer. Flying shards of Plexiglas entered the
  engine intake and caused the engine to flameout.
  Freeman ejected from the stricken aircraft, but
  was too close to the ground for his parachute to
  open properly.

• 1966, 28 February crash on landing
• The Gemini 9 crew, Elliott See and
• Charles Bassett, were killed while
• attempting to land their T-38 in bad
• weather. See misjudged his approach and crashed
  into the McDonnell aircraft factory.

12
1967 January 27 Fire Onboard

• A fire claimed the lives of the Apollo 1 crew as
  they trained in their capsule. An electrical
  fault sparked the blaze that spread quickly in a
  pure oxygen atmosphere, killing Virgil Grissom,
  Edward White and Roger Chaffee.

13

• 1967 October 5 controls failed Clifton Williams
  died after a mechanical failure caused his T-38's
  controls to stop responding. He had been assigned
  to the back-up crew for what would be the Apollo
  9 mission and would have most likely been
  assigned as Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 12. The
  Apollo 12 mission patch has four stars on it one
  each for the three astronauts who flew the
  mission and one for Williams.

• 1967, 8 December plane crash Robert Henry
  Lawrence, Jr. was named the first
  African-American astronaut for the U.S. Air Force
  Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, but he never
  made it into space. He died when his F-104
  Starfighter jet crashed at Edwards Air Force
  Base, California.

14
1968 March 27 Plane Crash

• First man in space Yuri Gagarin died when his
  MiG-15 jet trainer crashed while he prepared for
  the Soyuz 3 mission. An official report at the
  time blamed either birdstrike or that he turned
  too fast to avoid something in the air. But in
  2003 it came out that the KGB had found that the
  official report was false and that the truth was
  negligence by an airforce colonel on the ground,
  who gave an out-of-date weather report the
  flight
• needed good weather, but the cloud base was
• nearly at ground level. Since Gagarin was a hero
  
• the soviet propaganda engine at that time found
• it bad publicity to have him killed in a mere
• training accident and so several newspapers
• printed the report that he actually died
  heroically
• testing a top-secret prototype. This again led
  to
• speculation amongst western conspiracy-proponents
  
• whether Gagarin had not died in hushed-up
• spacecraft accident.

15
Ground crew and On-ground Civilian fatalities

• 1964 While technicians worked on the Orbiting
  Solar Observatory, in an assembly room at Cape
  Canaveral, a Delta rockets third-stage motor had
  just been mated to the spacecraft in preparation
  for some prelaunch tests. Suddenly the rocket
  ignited, filling the workroom with searing hot
  gases, burning 11 engineers and technicians, 3 of
  them fatally. An investigation following the
  accident showed that a spark of static
  electricity had probably set off the fuse that
  ignited the solid propellant.
• 1973 Nine technicians were killed in a launch
  pad accident at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.
• 1980 48 technicians were killed by an explosion
  while fueling a Vostok-2M booster at Plesetsk
  Cosmodrome in Russia.
• 1981 During preparations for STS-1, at the end
  of the 33-hour-long Shuttle Dry Countdown
  Demonstration Test, Columbia's aft engine
  compartment was under a nitrogen purge to prevent
  the buildup of oxygen and hydrogen gases from the
  propulsion system. Six technicians entered the
  aft engine compartment and five of the six lost
  consciousness due to the lack of oxygen in the
  compartment. Two died. John Gerald Bjornstad, a
  50-year-old Rockwell employee, was pronounced
  dead at the scene, and Forrest Cole was brought
  to the hospital where he later died.

16
Ground crew and On-ground Civilian fatalities

• 1995 The European Space Agency (ESA) lost two
  workers in a fatal accident at the Kourou Space
  Centre, Guiana, at the Ariane 5 launch facility.
  Luc Celle and Jean-Claude Dhainaut lost their
  lives during an inspection in the umbilical mast
  of the launchpad. A later report said, "...the
  cause of death was asphyxiation through
  inhalation of air having an excessively low
  oxygen content the reduced oxygen content was
  due to a major nitrogen leak into the confined
  structure of the umbilical mast on the launch
  table the nitrogen leak originated in a
  nitrogen/iced-water exchanger, whose drainage
  plug was found to be missing."
• 1996 A Long March 3B rocket veered off course
  two seconds after takeoff from Xichang Satellite
  Launch Center, crashing into a nearby village.
  The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that 80
  homes had been damaged with six people killed and
  57 injured, but unofficial reports and videotape
  from people who visited the scene suggested much
  greater devastation and a significantly higher
  death toll.

17

• 2001 Boeing worker Bill Brooks was killed in an
  industrial accident at Cape Canaveral Launch
  Complex 37. He was a crane operator involved in
  construction of the new Delta IV launch complex.
  The Delta IV launch site is being built at the
  location of the old Saturn IB launch complex.
• 2002 A Soyuz U carrying a science payload began
  disintegrating 20 seconds after launch from
  Plesetsk, exploded nine seconds later and
  showered debris around the launch site. The
  explosion killed 20-year-old soldier Ivan
  Marchenko, who had been watching the launch from
  behind a large glass window in a processing
  facility a kilometer from the launchpad. Eight
  other soldiers who were with Marchenko were
  injured, six being hospitalized. Rocket fragments
  fell in the woods in the same area starting a
  forest fire, and a Block D strap-on booster which
  came off during disintegration impacted the
  launchpad, causing structural damage.
• 2003 An unmanned rocket set to carry two
  satellites into orbit exploded on its launchpad
  in Brazil killing 21 technicians.

18

• American astronauts that have lost their lives in
  the line of duty are memorialized by the Space
  Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center
  Visitor Complex in Merritt Island, Florida.
  Cosmonauts that have died in the line of duty in
  the Soviet Union were generally honored by burial
  at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow. It is
  unknown whether this remains tradition for
  Russia, since the Kremlin Wall Necropolis was
  largely a Communist honor and no cosmonauts have
  died in action since the Union fell.

19
Fallen Astronaut
aluminum sculpture of an astronaut in a
spacesuit. It is the only piece of art on the
Moon. In 1971, Fallen Astronaut was placed on the
Moon by the crew of Apollo 15, along with a
plaque bearing the names of fourteen American
astronauts and Russian cosmonauts who died during
spaceflights or training exercises.
20
Work Cited

• McNamara, Bernard. Into the Final Frontier The
  Human Exploration of Space. Brooks Cole, 2000
• Space Disaster Wilkpedia (2006) August 1, 2006
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_disasters