Slashdot Mirror
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.
That version was an internal-only release.
Let me see if I got this strait:
Not quite, but you're on the right Bering.