{"id":27063,"date":"2012-08-07T21:21:46","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T21:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/08\/07\/npr-in-1967-vladimir-kamarov-and-yuri-gagarin\/"},"modified":"2017-07-01T13:41:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T13:41:43","slug":"npr-in-1967-vladimir-kamarov-and-yuri-gagarin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/08\/07\/npr-in-1967-vladimir-kamarov-and-yuri-gagarin\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-27063 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/08\/07\/npr-in-1967-vladimir-kamarov-and-yuri-gagarin\/attachment\/27064\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/tumblr_m8dckly09f1qzpxq3o1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/tumblr_m8dckly09f1qzpxq3o1_1280-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/tumblr_m8dckly09f1qzpxq3o1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/krulwich\/2011\/05\/02\/134597833\/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage\">NPR<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In 1967,\u00a0Vladimir Kamarov and\u00a0Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach outer space,\u00a0were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn\u2019t back out because he didn\u2019t want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been his replacement.<\/p>\n<p>The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships.<\/p>\n<p>The plan was to launch a capsule, the Soyuz 1, with Komarov inside. The next day, a second vehicle would take off, with two additional cosmonauts; the two vehicles would meet, dock, Komarov would crawl from one vehicle to the other, exchanging places with a colleague, and come home in the second ship. It would be, Brezhnev hoped, a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Brezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen.<\/p>\n<p>The problem was Gagarin. Already a Soviet hero, the first man ever in space, he and some senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203 structural problems \u2014 serious problems that would make this machine dangerous to navigate in space. The mission, Gagarin suggested, should be postponed.<\/p>\n<p>The question was: Who would tell Brezhnev? Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command. Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to make it back from this flight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Russayev asked, Why not refuse? According to the authors, Komarov answered: \u201cIf I don\u2019t make this flight, they\u2019ll send the backup pilot instead.\u201d That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov couldn\u2019t do that to his friend. \u201cThat\u2019s Yura,\u201d the book quotes him saying, \u201cand he\u2019ll die instead of me. We\u2019ve got to take care of him.\u201d Komarov then burst into tears.<\/p>\n<p>On launch day, April 23, 1967, a Russian journalist, Yaroslav Golovanov, reported that Gagarin showed up at the launch site and demanded to be put into a spacesuit, though no one was expecting him to fly. Golovanov called this behavior \u201ca sudden caprice,\u201d though afterward some observers thought Gagarin was trying to muscle onto the flight to save his friend. The Soyuz left Earth with Komarov on board.<\/p>\n<p>Once the Soyuz began to orbit the Earth, the failures began. Antennas didn\u2019t open properly. Power was compromised. Navigation proved difficult. The next day\u2019s launch had to be canceled. And worse, Komarov\u2019s chances for a safe return to Earth were dwindling fast.<\/p>\n<p>All the while, U.S. intelligence was listening in. The National Security Agency had a facility at an Air Force base near Istanbul. Previous reports said that U.S. listeners knew something was wrong but couldn\u2019t make out the words. In this account, an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov\u2019s wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.<\/p>\n<p>When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence \u201cpicked up [Komarov\u2019s] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NPR: In 1967,\u00a0Vladimir Kamarov and\u00a0Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach outer space,\u00a0were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn\u2019t back out because he didn\u2019t want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/08\/07\/npr-in-1967-vladimir-kamarov-and-yuri-gagarin\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6944],"class_list":["post-27063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-oof","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27065,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063\/revisions\/27065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}