A look of troubled uncertainty creased the man’s face. Kneeling beside him, another member of the recovery team likewise listened to the Soyuz 11 capsule, which had just landed following a record-breaking 23-day stay at the world’s first space station. Moments before, both men were eagerly clamouring to greet the returning cosmonauts — Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev — whose fame swept Soviet Russia like a whirlwind in June 1971. But when they knocked on the capsule, they were met with only ominous silence.
The would-be rescuers opened the hatch to find a scene of indescribable horror. All three cosmonauts lay dead in their seats, with blue splotches on their faces and blood trickling from their noses and ears. On June 30, 1971, humankind was forced to grapple with
the first — and so far only — deaths to occur in space.
A troubled mission
From the outset, Soyuz 11 was an unhappy assignment. After Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the Moon, the Soviets nixed their own lunar landing plans in favor of an Earth-orbiting space station. Salyut 1 was launched in April 1971, but it first crew failed to dock with the station during the Soyuz 10 mission. That meant it was up to Alexei Leonov (the world’s first spacewalker), Valeri Kubasov, and Pyotr Kolodin to try again with Soyuz 11.
But three days before launch, during a routine exam, doctors found a swelling on Kubasov’s right lung. Fearing tuberculosis, the whole crew was replaced by their backups. Kubasov’s inflammation turned out to be due to a pollen allergy, but top brass unflinchingly stood by their decision. The cosmonauts were mad; Kolodin returned to his room and got drunk, crying in rage and frustration. Yet, it must have been no easier for the backup crew, who were now faced with accomplishing the longest space mission ever attempted.
In his memoir
Two Sides of the Moon, Leonov recalled the palpable sense of dread the astronauts felt. A keen artist, he did a pencil sketch of Patsayev the night before his launch, dubbing it “Patsayev’s Eyes.” It was obvious that the quiet mechanical engineer — a Renaissance man of the cosmonaut corps who loved literature and music, and whose father died defending Moscow from Nazi Germany — was visibly troubled.
The replacement commander of Soyuz 11 was Dobrovolski, a fighter pilot and accomplished parachutist. As a boy, his fingers were smashed by Nazi thugs as punishment for providing ammunition and messages to resistance fighters. Years later, during cosmonaut training in the isolation chamber, this devoted family man whiled away the hours by carving a tiny wooden doll for his daughter.
Meanwhile, the energetic Volkov was the only one of the replacement crew who had flown before. A talented athlete and boxer, the wiry aeronautical engineer would also become the first accredited journalist in space. And during Soyuz 11, his rugged good looks made him somewhat of a pinup icon for Russian women.