Space Chick Jen 👩🏻🚀
@SpaceChickJen • 9,529 subscribers
Here to inspire through fun and informative content | Rocket chaser 🚀 | Starship lover | NASA History buff | engineer 👩🏻🔧 | PhD 👩🏻🎓
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They were 90 seconds from launch when the rocket started burning beneath them. On the night of September 26, 1983, Vladimir Titov and Gennadi Strekalov sat sealed inside their Soyuz at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, waiting to launch to the Salyut 7 space station. A faulty valve let pressurized nitrogen into a turbopump. With no fuel to resist it, the pump spun unloaded out of control and tore itself apart. Fuel subsequently spilled. A fire broke out at the base of the fully fueled vehicle. The flames quickly burned through the hardwired ground command lines that controllers used to trigger the launch escape system. Controllers had to fall back on a slower radio command that required simultaneous confirmation from two separate stations. It took roughly ten seconds after the fire was spotted for the abort order to finally go out. Precious seconds ticked by while the fire climbed. When the abort order finally went out, the escape tower’s solid motors ignited with roughly 176,000 pounds of thrust (about the power of four modern fighter jet engines) in a near-instantaneous burst. The capsule was ripped free just as the rocket exploded below them. The crew endured peak loads of 14–17 G’s as they were yanked off the rocket and nearly a kilometer into the night sky, then parachuted down a few kilometers from the pad. They walked away mostly unharmed. They sustained no major injuries but were badly bruised. When the recovery team reached them at the landing site, their first request was for cigarettes. They were also offered a shot of vodka to calm their nerves. The remains of the booster, loaded with kerosene and liquid oxygen, continued to burn for nearly 20 hours after the explosion. It remains the only time in history a crewed launch escape system has been used in a real pad emergency (and worked!). For years the Soviets said almost nothing about it. The full story only emerged later.
Space Chick Jen 👩🏻🚀130,979 次观看 • 28 天前
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