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Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today
dj writes in with a reminder that forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, the two Russian spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft. Wired's piece gives a gripping account of "one of the roughest re-entries in the history of space flight": "Soyuz 5's service module failed to detach at retrofire, causing the vehicle to assume an aerodynamic position that left the heat shield pointed the wrong way as it re-entered the atmosphere. The only thing standing between Volynov and a fiery death was the command module's thin hatch cover. The interior of Volynov's capsule filled with noxious fumes as the gaskets sealing the hatch started to burn, and it got very hot in there (which, a short time later was something he probably missed). ... But wait. There's more."
nothing worked right, but that was no big deal since the machines were so tough, they could just brute force their way to the end.
Indeed. I lost about 5 minutes searching for "Soyuz 0.8" on Wikipedia.
What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?
"Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Yesterday"
That version was an internal-only release.
> Let me see if I got this strait...
You don't. You don't have it straight, either.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Dude, this *is* slashdot. Plus, the capsule got stuck to the docking station, making the it re-enter the wrong way, so they showed it closer together than "and" would have provided. See, it's all logical.
Table-ized A.I.
Let me see if I got this strait:
Not quite, but you're on the right Bering.
xenu love earthling shuttle
he who controls the spice controls the universe
Part of this is politics, of course. The only reason Mission Control was in Houston rather than in the same facility where the rockets are worked on is due to a certain powerful Texas politician, LBJ...
Wow, LBJ had enough clout to move his state to be one of the southern most locations in US... amazing.... I wonder if he pushed the frozen donkey wheel alone or had some help... (Also, does that mean he could never find his way back to Texas and had to live out his life in outside world?)
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
... spacecraft REENTERS you
Best part of the story for me was this:
Given that the entire re-entry-and-landing process was pretty well botched, it's perhaps unsurprising that Volynov came down well short of the intended landing area. In fact, he landed in the Ural Mountains, where he was greeted by a local temperature measuring a brisk minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit With rescue several hours away at best, our intrepid cosmonaut decided to hoof it for safety. He plodded a few kilometers before finding a cheery fire and a brimming samovar in the cottage of a welcoming peasant.
That must have been one surprised peasant.
Given that about 4/5 of the mission worked, it's reasonably accurate.
Oh, that was just dire.
No wonder that cosmonauts had a reputation of being really hard-assed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
patriot? What the fuck dude? For one, I'm Australian. For two, parts of MIR had fallen out of the sky by the time the ISS started construction in 1998. Here's another idea, how about you just fuck right off? Nit picking tool.
How we know is more important than what we know.