Cosmonaut On Fire

Today's top of Fark is story about a Russian cosmonaut launched in a capsule that everyone knew was seriously defective, but were too scared to tell the truth to their superiors. Inevitably the capsule failed and burned up on re-entry. The cosmonaut knew he was going to die - American intelligence recorded his last transmissions where he was cursing the Russian president. The other memorable part of the article

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/18/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?ft=1&f=1026

was the photo of the guy afterwards:

"Get ready, Brezhnev's coming!"
"Okay."
"Um, is he right-side up?"
"I think so...how should I know?"
"Is that his head?"
"What are you asking me for?"
"I just don't want Brezhnev to put the damn medal on his ass!"
"Well, if we can't tell--"
"Shhhh! Brezhnev's here!"
"Okay."
"...I think that's his head."
"Shut up!"

Of course, being Fark the discussion went off in several directions.

The photo prompted one guy to recall a pot roast that his wife had incinerated.(and someone else went "I'll bet you left her black and blue for that mistake!") Another suggested that a decent mortician could have tidied up the remains .....

The obvious reference was to Major Tom:

And then on to the Apollo capsule fire and the Challenger disaster, both being partly attributable to groupthink and not wanting to tell superiors about safety concerns.

Interestingly there was quite a range of what people recalled about Challenger, particularly as to what we were told about whether the astronauts were alive/conscious on the way down. Some believed that the crew capsule was found intact (it actually disintegrated on impact and was reassembled from debris).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078062/ns/technology_and_science-space/

But even if the crew cabin had survived intact, wouldn’t the violent pitching and yawing of the cabin as it descended toward the ocean created G-forces so strong as to render the astronauts unconscious?

That may have once been believed. But that was before the investigation turned up the key piece of evidence that led to the inescapable conclusion that they were alive: On the trip down, the commander and pilot’s reserved oxygen packs had been turned on by astronaut Judy Resnik, seated directly behind them. Furthermore, the pictures, which showed the cabin riding its own velocity in a ballistic arc, did not support an erratic, spinning motion. And even if there were G-forces, commander Dick Scobee was an experienced test pilot, habituated to them.

The evidence led experts to conclude the seven astronauts lived. They worked frantically to save themselves through the plummeting arc that would take them 2 minutes and 45 seconds to smash into the ocean.