How a Soviet Suborbital Spaceflight Nearly Killed Its Crew - Soyuz 18a 

Spoooooiiiler

I remember Scott saying that every way you can crash in KSP, there's a real life analog for it

I've accidentally killed Jebediah MANY times this way.

It’s actually surprising that tumbling down a mountainside (or landing in a violent river) isn’t considered more of a risk. Though I guess you can’t do much about it in an abort scenario over land.

yeah

Pogonauts?😅

This is the one of the best names I've heard so far!

Yeetnauts

Nonauts!

Spacediver?

Well, on KSP i do that all the time...

@@Muamasow Yup, as soon as he mentioned landing on the side of a mountain, I figured that I had experience with what was about to happen.

well done

20Gs is bad, but Indy/F1 cars and helmets are design for racer to walk away in 50-150G crash. Soviet Seat or Harness probably didn't help situation

Crazy to imagine that much weight

He *nearly* died.

But you have to wonder - did he ever have any kids after that or did the Soviet Union come up with a new way of family planning?

@@MrNeptunebob Do you mean he scared & stopped making sperm or what?

@@Itapirkanmaa2 no, it's just that the reentry was an almighty kick in the balls for quite a few minutes. Still, any landing where you're still alive at landing, not killed by landing and incinerated by the wreckage of the spacecraft, not needing major dental work, or in US instances, not needing to be reassembled after entry, is an excellent landing and the Soyuz spacecraft are pretty much spacegoing tanks. As in, Soyuz survived multiple anomalies where the entry capsule didn't separate initially, so it entered inverted. I sincerely doubt the shuttle, Apollo, Gemini or Mercury capsules could've survived such an entry.

Interesting video. Just one small point -- Vasili Lazarev grounded the Soyuz-T programme. Set to fly in 1981 he was again assigned to crew training. His cosmonaut career ended in 1975.

this said, the g forces in a plane are usually vertical, while the g forces they experienced were while lying down (so longitudinal) which the body can resist better. Still, this does not take away from the intense force these guys must have experienced. If they were sat upright, they probably would not have survived.

Excuse me, catapult?

wait did I just read catapult?? what???

@@Dorumin aircraft catapult i assume, like the ones on aircraft carriers

@@kirtil5177 i think it was a misnomer. An average scott manley enjoyer would obviously mean a trebuchet

My thought too.

I imagine you could take a nap anywhere after a brisk 20G haha

🤣🤣🤣

@@RhodokTribesman that G load is nap inducing in and of itself. Still, surviving the night after such a reentry, well, touch spacecraft get tough cosmonauts. Still, I'm betting being balls deep in snow was a blessing after 21G's worth of abuse...

Even if Lazarov was missing an arm and both legs that wolf wouldn't have had a chance.

@@erichaynes7502 You might be thinking of Маресьев. 🙂

Lazarev

@@erichaynes7502 I heard, he changed his name to Chuck Norris and moved to USA.

In Sovjet Russia, Kosmonauts eat the wolf.

Truth.

My only regret is that Scott has a job. Screw The Telecom companies I would rather have more episodes than a better working phone.

You will never not refuse to use double negatives. (Grammar Nazi AWAY!!!)

😂

@@davesomeone4059 I guess that makes him focus on the quality of the video instead of cashing out on the channel by bringing in sponsors...

Door Dash might be interested in that!

It failed and killed crew twice.

@@GowthamNatarajanAI Yeah of course I didn't mean to overlook those tragedies. Just wanted to highlight that many more crews survived the anomalies making it a fairly safe system, besides those early tragedies that is

@@GowthamNatarajanAI sure, but the last lethal failure was over 50 years and about 140 missions ago

@@GowthamNatarajanAI now do the space shuttle. The Soyuz is by the numbers the safest and longest running human space flight system.

@@GowthamNatarajanAI For well-understood reasons, both being attributable to inadequate preparation under pressure to fly.

SR-72 doesnt exist.

@@incargeek That's what they want you to think, the truth is out there.

@@incargeek Y e t

Buddy if you’re talking bout the SR 71 it flew at almost 3000 kmph. In 20 minutes it would fly 1000 km not 1400.

@@davisdf3064 I agree… “yet” !

I heard that both cosmonauts looked at each other and said, "We DO have a treaty with China, don't we???"

The G-loads reached by the Soyuz were about a tenth that of the Challenger shuttle when it smacked into the Atlantic Ocean at 200 g's.

@@davidharrison7014 200 g is a freaking collision with the water from freefall.

@@srinitaaigaura Yes it is.

@@davidharrison7014 Yikes... no recovering from that g-impact!

A well deserved title of Explainaut!

Lets hope we live to see it

i.e. gravity at the Sun's apparent surface.

A 150 pound man would weigh 2 tons on the Sun. Not to mention sporting an amazing tan.

The craziest part is that plenty of people have G-loc'd or come close at 9-12 sustained Gs, while wearing G suits and doing good G strains. It's remarkably impressive and of good fortune that things worked out as they did for the crew.

The Americans where definitely ahead in computer technology and electronics, which proved to be extremely important. The Apollo guidance computer was 10 years ahead of its time in terms of its processing power and memory.

Look up Curios Droid’s video “Faster than a speeding bullet, The human crash test dummy” Back in the day they really pushed the boundaries of human endurance. 46 Gs of deceleration for 1.1 seconds in a FORWARD facing seat,

@@philb5593 Yes for a fraction of a second

We do.

Indeed. The Golden Mountains.

I was at Freight & Salvage just before Christmas and before the show they stressed that they'd upgraded the ventilation system to circulate the air more effectively. Everyone here is vaccinated so the shows are going on just fine now.

Not sure what you mean "owning"? Reporting it to NASA? Russia was not obliged to report to anyone. Internally of course, as comrade Stalin said, "every failure has a first and last name."

I have no idea, it's from a russian language video about this event.

Stolen assets smh

Probably taken by the recovery crew I'd assume

The logo in the upper-left corner (in the shot) reads, as far as I can tell, РОССКОСМОС (Rosscomos), which is "Russian NASA", basically.

That was a huge, scary crash. Of course, though, as dangerous as that was, the g loading wasn’t sustained for long. Followed by a fire, though, like you say.

Thats not even comparable. Those are INSTANTANEOUS g's. Soyuz reached 20g CONTINUOUS. Those are very, very different things. If they reached 67g instantaneous, they would be completely fine. Also, thinking f1 is more advanced than any space program saftey wise is foolish...

Gotta remember that in The Expanse, the "Juice" and the other acceleration mitigation technologies are for burns lasting the better part of an hour or longer. Plus you gotta remember that you'll go thru G-LOC (likely the thing that the juice helps prevent) long before you're ever in any realm where the level of Gs would be considered lethal, barring any medical conditions that would predispose you to something like an aneurysm or other hemorrhagic condition. Plus that fluid immersion crash couch thing is something we could probably make today, considering that we've done successful experiments with humans being able to breathe very specialized oxygenated fluids (liquid breathing). As a matter of fact, a form of liquid breathing is available in some hospitals as a form of respiratory support to help your lungs heal from specific kinds of injuries. The only thing left to do in order to start mass-producing these fluid immersion crash couches is to scale up production of the special fluid, and engineer a suitable container for both the fluid and a human to occupy (including all the needed life support and medical monitoring interfaces, plus a method to get command inputs out of that container, of course). However, I see such a thing being trialed on fighter aircraft (the aerodynamic design of which is already capable of out-performing the pilot's biological limits) long before it is seen on any spacecraft, because the way things are going we're not likely to see any spacecraft drive systems for at least 50 years or more that are both high thrust enough to cause issues related to acceleration, AND high specific impulse enough to allow burns at high acceleration for the better part of an hour. Basically, I think "torch" type drives as seen in The Expanse aren't gonna be seen until at least 50 years after the first practical spacecraft propulsion systems that derive most of their energy from fusion reactions.

@@44R0Ndin Liquid breathing system or not, any squishy meatbag will always lose to a drone in terms of g tolerance. Days of WW2-style dogfights are over.

@@AldorEricsson You're right about that, but the politicians are still pretty cagey about making drones able to dogfight. IMO in the future the missiles will be doing all the complex aerobatics, and the solution to incoming missiles will be to have one of your own missiles shoot down that missile (with all of your own missiles able to be used to shoot down either an enemy drone or an incoming missile, interchangeably, at a moment's notice, with the change in tactics all being up to what target type is given to the missile by the drone). That way we can focus all-out on having the missiles be agile, having them use solid fuel rocket-ramjet engines (with thrust vectoring for better missile agility) and therefore getting good enough range out of the missiles (say 10km) and being able to optimize the drone itself for stealth (both IR and wide-band radar) and long flight range. Maybe if there's a little room and/or electrical power left over put some lasers on the drone (not to outright destroy anything, just to distract and/or disable (destructively overload) the seeker head sensor on incoming heat-seeking missiles). This is often called "directed infrared countermeasures", and it's a pretty neat technology.

@@44R0Ndin 10km is nothing for missile range. Even an AIM-9, which is considered short range air to air, has a 35km range. The AIM-54 is a beyond visual range air to air missile with a 190km range.

If you're dealing with 20 g's I think you can say whatever you want 😁

@@laprepper Yeah I think my language might get a bit "colorful" at that point too! 😨