The moment the engine of the last stage stops working, there is an extraordinary feeling of lightness - as if you are falling out of the seat of a chair and hanging on the seat belts. The accelerated movement stops and the cold lifeless Cosmos takes into its arms those who risked breaking away from the small Earth.
But why is this happening right now? A puzzled look at the timer - 295th second of flight. Too early to shut down the engine. Six seconds ago, the second stage of the launch vehicle separated, and the engine of the third stage started at the same time. Intense acceleration should continue for another four minutes.
Sudden transverse overload, slight dizziness. A sunbeam darted across the cockpit. The alarming hum of a siren. Flash on the instrument panel. A fiery red banner slashed across the eyes: "RN accident."
By this time, the rocket and space system had already reached an altitude of 150 kilometers. They are on the threshold of Space, but they cannot take their last, final step to enter orbit! The general inconsistency of the situation in which the Soyuz-18 expedition found itself, the improbability of what happened and vague ideas about the consequences of such an emergency situation shocked the crew and ground observers. A similar case, with a critical accident in the upper atmosphere, occurred for the first time in the history of Soviet Cosmonautics.
- Chief, what's going on upstairs?
- For an unknown reason, there were malfunctions in the design of the launch vehicle, at the 295th second of the flight, the automation separated the ship from the third stage. For the next couple of minutes, the Soyuz will continue to move up the ballistic trajectory, after which an uncontrolled fall will begin. According to our express calculations, the top point of the trajectory will be at an altitude of 192 kilometers.
- How dangerous is it?
- The situation is really serious, but it's too early to despair. Those who created Soyuz were working on this situation …
- Startup aborted. What happens next?
- Rescue program. Algorithm # 2. This option is triggered in the event of an accident in the injection phase between 157 and 522 seconds of flight. The height is a couple of hundred kilometers. The speed is close to the first space speed. In this case, an emergency separation of the Soyuz from the launch vehicle is carried out, followed by the division of the spacecraft into a descent vehicle, an orbital compartment and an instrument-assembly compartment. The descent control system must orient the capsule with the astronauts in such a way that the descent takes place in the "maximum aerodynamic quality" mode. Further, the descent will take place as usual.
- So, nothing threatens the astronauts?
- The only problem is the correct orientation of the descent vehicle. At the moment, experts are not sure that the capsule will take the correct position in space - in the first seconds of the emergency third stage operation, the rocket-space system received an offset relative to the vertical plane …
Meanwhile, in the upper atmosphere, a struggle was unfolding for the lives of two people on board the falling ship. The genius of the human mind has come to grips with powerful gravity and heat. Ultra-precise gyroscopes recorded each displacement around any of the three axes - based on the data obtained, the onboard computer determined the position of the ship and promptly issued corrective signals to the attitude control engines. The Teflon "shield" entered an unequal battle with the elements - until the last layer burns out, the heat-insulating screen will staunchly protect the ship from the insane fire of the atmosphere.
Will the fragile man-made "shuttle" be able to withstand the scorching heat and monstrous loads accompanying a hypersonic flight through dense layers of air? The descent vehicle, wrapped in a raging cloud of plasma, flew down from a height of 192 kilometers, and no one could have guessed how this "leap of despair" into the abyss of the air ocean would end.
The hoarse, muffled cries of Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov were heard from the speakers in the Flight Control Center. The worst fears of specialists were confirmed - the descent took place with negative aerodynamic quality. The situation on board the descent vehicle aroused more and more fears every second: the overload went off scale for 10g. Then the terrible number 15 appeared on the telemetry tape. And, finally, 21, 3g - the scenario threatened to turn into the death of the brave conquerors of the Cosmos.
Vision began to "go away": first it turned into black and white, then the angle of view began to narrow. We were in a pre-faint state, but still we did not lose consciousness. While the overload is pressing, you only think that you need to resist it, and we resisted as best we could. With such a huge overload, when it is unbearably hard, it is recommended to scream, and we screamed with all our might, although it looked like a choked wheeze.
- from the memoirs of O. Makarov
Fortunately, the situation began to return to normal. The speed of the descent vehicle decreased to acceptable values, the steepness of the trajectory practically disappeared. Earth, meet your lost sons! The parachute slammed softly over his head - the heat-resistant container withstood the test of the roaring plasma, retaining a saving scrap of matter inside.
The capsule with the astronauts confidently walked to the surface of the Earth, but the joy of the happy salvation was suddenly overshadowed by an attack of alarm - the readings of the navigation system clearly indicated that the ship was descending in the Altai region. The landing area is near the border with China! Or beyond the line of the Soviet-Chinese border?
- Vasya, where is your pistol?
- "Makarov" in a container, along with other special equipment.
- Immediately upon landing, we must burn the secret journal with the expedition program …
While the plan of action was being discussed, the soft-landing engines fired - the descent vehicle touched the earth's firmament … and immediately rolled. Obviously, no one expected such a turn of events: the space capsule "landed" on a steep mountain slope! Subsequently, Makarov and Lazarev will understand how close they were at that time from death. Only by a lucky coincidence, the cosmonauts did not shoot the parachute immediately after landing: as a result, the dome, catching on stunted trees, stopped the descent vehicle 150 meters from the cliff.
Installation of the Soyuz TM-7 landing site. Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
Blimey! Twenty minutes ago, they stood at the launch pad №1 of the Baikonur cosmodrome, and the warm steppe wind caressed their faces - the Earth then seemed to say goodbye to its children. Now both cosmonauts were standing up to their chests in the snow and looked with horror at the descent vehicle, which miraculously hovered over the abyss.
At this time, search and rescue aircraft had already departed to the alleged area of the proposed landing: the planes quickly detected the radio beacon of the reentry vehicle and established the location of the cosmonauts - “The situation is normal. The landing took place on the territory of the Soviet Union. I observe two people and a landing capsule on the slope of Mount Teremok-3 … Welcome."
To communicate with the plane, it was required to return to the descent vehicle, which threatened to jump every second and roll off into the abyss. The cosmonauts took turns descending into the hatch: while one was fiddling with the radio station inside, the crew member who remained on the slope insured his comrade, "holding" the three-ton apparatus by the slings. Fortunately, this time everything worked out well.
Typical Soyuz landing site
Having circled over the landing site, the plane offered to drop a party of paratroopers to help, to which he received a resolute refusal - there was no need for this. The cosmonauts were waiting for the rescue "turntable". The helicopter arrived but was never able to evacuate people from the steep slope. The crazy adventure ended only the next morning - an Air Force helicopter took the astronauts and safely delivered them to Gorno-Altaisk.
The rise and fall of Soyuz-18
In keeping with the tradition of Soviet cosmonautics, "clean" numbers were assigned only to successful launches. The suborbital flight of Oleg Makarov and Vasily Lazarev received the designation "Soyuz-18-1" (sometimes 18A) and was buried in the archives under the heading "top secret".
According to scanty reports, the launch of the spacecraft was made on April 5, 1975 from the Baikonur cosmodrome and ended after 21 minutes 27 seconds, 1574 kilometers from the launch point, in the territory of Gorny Altai. The maximum lifting height was 192 kilometers.
As it was established later, the cause of the accident was an incorrectly opened joint between the second and third stages - as a result of an incorrect command, three of the six locks opened prematurely. The multi-ton launch vehicle began to literally "bend" in half, the thrust vector deviated from the calculated direction of motion, and dangerous lateral accelerations and loads arose. Smart automatics perceived this as a threat to the lives of people on board and immediately took the ship away from the launch vehicle, transferring the reentry vehicle to a ballistic descent trajectory. We already know what happened next. The capsule landed on the slope of Mount Teremok-3, on the right bank of the Uba River (now the territory of Kazakhstan).
The crew of the Soyuz-18-1 spacecraft consisted of two cosmonauts - commander Vasily Lazarev and flight engineer Oleg Makarov. Both were experienced specialists who had already been in orbit as part of the Soyuz-12 expedition (it is noteworthy that for the first time, in 1973, they flew with exactly the same composition).
Despite the dizzying descent to space heights, both astronauts remained not only alive, but also completely healthy. After returning to the USSR Cosmonaut Corps, Makarov flew to Space more than once (Soyuz-27, 1978 and Soyuz T-3, 1980) - each time the flight was successful. Vasily Lazarev was also allowed to fly into space, but he failed to visit orbit anymore (he was an understudy * of the Soyuz T-3 crew commander).
In the "era of glasnost" the incredible story of falling from space heights became the property of the media. Oleg Makarov gave interviews more than once, joked about how "they fell and reported about it with foul language," recalled with horror how they were almost strangled by the monstrous overload, told about his feelings about the landing site and how they drowned in the snow, burned a logbook and other important documents. But he spoke with special warmth about the creators of the ultra-reliable Soyuz spacecraft, which saved their lives in a situation when it seemed that death was inevitable.
Epilogue. A chance of salvation
The Soyuz rocket and space system ensures the rescue of the crew in the event of any emergency situations in all sections of the spacecraft's insertion trajectory into near-earth orbit. The exception is the catastrophic destruction of the carrier rocket (similar to the explosion of the American shuttle Challenger), as well as such eerie exotic as the "prisoners of the orbit" - the ship cannot maneuver and return to Earth due to engine failure.
There were three scenarios in total, each for a specific time range.
Scenario # 1. It was carried out from the moment when the hatch of the spacecraft slammed shut and the escorts descended on the elevator to the foot of the gigantic rocket. When a serious problem arises, the automatic system literally "tears" the spacecraft in half and "shoots" aside the block from the nose fairing and the capsule with people. Shooting is carried out using a solid propellant engine of the nose fairing - in view of this condition, scenario # 1 is valid until the 157th second of the flight, until the head fairing is dropped.
According to calculations, in case of an accident at the launch pad, the capsule with the astronauts flies a kilometer up and a couple of hundred meters away from the launch vehicle, followed by a soft landing by parachute. The thrust of the engine stripping the fairing reaches 76 tons. The operating time is just over one second. Overload in this case goes off scale for 10g, but, as they say, you want to live …
Of course, in reality everything was much more complicated - many factors were taken into account when saving the astronauts. For example, after passing the command "Rise" (the rocket broke away from the launch pad), the first stage engines of the launch vehicle had to work for at least 20 seconds - in order to take the system to a safe distance from the launch pad. Also, in the event of an accident in the first 26 seconds of the flight, the descent vehicle was supposed to land on a reserve parachute, and after the 26th second of the flight (when the required altitude was reached) - on the main one.
Scenario # 2. It was demonstrated by the Soyuz-18-1 emergency rescue system.
Scenario # 3. The upper section of the trajectory. The spacecraft is already in open space (an altitude of several hundred kilometers), but has not yet reached the first space speed. In this case, the standard separation of the spacecraft compartments follows - and the descent vehicle performs a controlled descent in the Earth's atmosphere.
Space launch from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. View from the embankment of the City Pond in Yekaterinburg
