The Fiery Re-Entry of Boris Volynov
Published by Ray Katz
Smashwords Edition
copyright 2010
Introduction
Only some people are interested in space flight. But nearly everyone is interested in a good story. What follows is a good story that happens to be about space flight.
Some space stories are famous. For example, most people know at least a little bit about Apollo 13. Back in 1971, as the damaged lunar spacecraft and its crew limped home, the media reported events as they happened. And, of course, years later Ron Howard made a popular movie about that flight.
But Boris Volynov was a Soviet cosmonaut. When a Soviet flight had troubles, they were kept a secret. So Volynov's story wasn't revealed until years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Even now, few know his story.
Read what follows, and you will be one of the few. The story is amazing.
The Flaming Re-Entry of Boris Volynov
As Boris Volynov watched the flames lapping at the blunt nose of his Soyuz spacecraft, he felt certain that death was near. With his heat shield out of position, the 5,000 degree flames outside would soon consume him.
He could already smell the burning of the rubber seals which held the spacecraft’s hatch in place. The cabin was now full of smoke. And, wearing no space suit, Volynov was himself beginning to feel uncomfortably hot inside the crew compartment.
Alone, his fuel spent, and with nothing left to do, the cosmonaut began writing and recording notes—his final thoughts.
This wasn’t the first trouble Volynov had experienced as a cosmonaut. From the beginning, Volynov had difficulties, despite his unquestionable ability. Largely, this was because the Soviet Politburo didn’t like Volynov’s lineage; his mother was Jewish.
Volynov had been selected with the first cosmonaut group. He trained with his neighbor, Yuri Gagarin and watched as Gagarin became the first man in space.
Later, Volynov was selected to command the first Voskhod mission, the Soviet Union's early 2-man spacecraft. But he was removed from the crew three days before the flight, when the government discovered the cosmonaut’s Jewish roots. Nonetheless, Volynov kept his job and was re-assigned to a future flight, Voskhod 3.
After a year of training, he lost that mission, too. The flight was cancelled as the Soviet space program shifted attention to the new Soyuz space craft, which they hoped would put a Russian on the moon before the Americans got there.
The first flight of Soyuz ended in tragedy. It crashed killing the cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.
In January 1969, Volynov had his flight. He commanded Soyuz 5. He did a brilliant job, successfully performing a rendezvous and docking with Soyuz 4. Next, he helped his two crew mates suit up for a space walk over to the other spacecraft. When this was accomplished, there were three cosmonauts in Soyuz 4 and Volynov was alone in Soyuz 5.
With Volynov’s help, the Soviet Union had achieved two “firsts”: the first docking of two manned spacecraft; and the first crew transfer in space.
Soyuz 4 returned to earth, and Volynov was scheduled to bring his craft home next. That’s when things started to go wrong.
The Soyuz space craft is composed of three “modules”: Volynov occupied the Descent Module, the only part of the spacecraft designed to return to the earth. This module was set between the Equipment Module and the Orbital Module. Both are supposed to separate, and leave the Descent Module free to enter the atmosphere alone.
In the case of Soyuz 5, the Equipment Module failed to separate. This put everything out of alignment and caused Volynov's heat shield to face the wrong way. His space craft was out of control.
As Volynov continued his uncontrolled descent, the cosmonaut thought about his 34th birthday, which he'd celebrated with friends at his Moscow apartment just a few weeks earlier. Now, he assumed that would be his last birthday.
Mean while, at the Soviet mission control, the ground team had drawn the same dismal conclusion. One ground controller, in despair, buried his face in his hands. A military man took off his hat, dropped three rubles into it and passed it around. The ground team was taking a collection for Boris Volynov's presumed widow, Tamara.
Tamara and Boris had been friends since childhood. Tamara had worked as a pediatrician and a surgeon. They married in 1957. Now, she was taking care of the couple's two young children.
Suddenly, Volynov got lucky. Soyuz 5's situation changed; the Equipment Module broke free. The heat had burned through the connectors from that module. Equally important, the spacecraft's hatch did not fail. Soyuz 5's Descent Module spun around, and the heat shield moved to its proper position. Volynov would not burn up.
He was, however, still approaching the ground at an alarming speed. The parachutes deployed—imperfectly—slowing the craft somewhat, but not nearly enough. When Soyuz 5 hit the ground, hundreds of miles off course, the retro-rockets designed to cushion the landing failed to fire.
Even though the spacecraft landed in a snow bank, it still hit hard. Volynov survived. He was badly shaken and lost several teeth. He was bleeding profusely. And his troubles were not yet over.
Despite having grown up in Siberia, which he loved, Volynov was not prepared for what happened next. He opened the hatch and found himself in a desolate freezing landscape, with the temperature at minus 40 degrees fahrenheit. Volynov saw a thin plume of smoke in the distance. He walked toward it.
Hours later, a rescue team located Soyuz 5, but not its pilot. Following a trail of blood stains in the snow, the team came to a peasant's cabin and found Volynov had been protected and cared for by a kindly stranger. The cosmonaut asked his rescuers, “Is my hair gray?”
Proud of its successes and secretive about its failures, the Soviet government ordered Volnynov to keep the problems of Soyuz 5 to himself. There would be a parade, celebrating the latest Soviet space achievement.
Volynov participated in the parade, along with other cosmonauts and Premier Brezhnev. Even here, he wasn't safe. An assassin aiming for Brezhnev fired his gun wildly, missing Brezhnev but hitting the car in which Volynov was riding. The driver was killed, but the cosmonaut was uninjured. The gunman was quickly apprehended.
Because of the physical and mental trauma of his Soyuz 5 mission, Volynov was expected to never fly again. This expectation proved to be wrong.
Volynov got a second space flight. Apparently, either feeling lucky or shrugging off his previous close call, he commanded Soyuz 21 in July 1976. When fellow cosmonaut Vitaliy Zholobov became ill, the mission to the Salyut 5 space station was cut short. It was now Volynov's job to rescue the stricken Zholobov. The pair would return to earth immediately.
But some thing—again—went wrong. Volynov found him self unable to undock from the space station. He fired the engines in an effort to get free, but only succeed in becoming partly free. This lasted for 90 minutes before some emergency procedures resolved the situation. Like Soyuz 5, this mission also made a hard landing. But Volynov (and Zholobov) again survived.
Years later, recalling his near-death experience aboard Soyuz 5, Volynov said: “There was no fear but a deep-cutting and very clear desire to live on when there was no chance left.”
Boris Volynov retired from the Russian space program in 2006. His hair was now grey, but he and his wife Tamara—both very much alive—visited Kennedy Space Center that year and he told his story openly to an appreciative crowd.
Notes
If you enjoyed this story, share it with your friends. Also, please visit our space-related websites:
The Space Buff
www.thespacebuff.com
Museum of Space Travel
www.museumofspacetravel.com
Sources
Zarya
zarya.info
Soyuz 5's Flamining Return
by James Oberg
jamesoberg.com
Wikipedia
Boris Volynov entry