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 Komarovdied 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. 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. Training Accidents

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