In high school ,in the 1970s, I half wrote a science fiction story in which i imagined a Soyuz capsule landing in the US in the middle of winter. I imagined a cattle rancher finding the cosmonauts using snowballs to drive off curious cattle. I never knew there any such real contingency plans.
@@Inetman Probably not, actually. The US tended to launch into orbits that were closer to the equator because KSC is farther to the south, so that's an option. But they didn't always. The shuttles could orbit however they pleased (as long as it was at least as inclined as the launchsite), and had NASA crews on Stand-by at most runways capable of supporting the shuttle of the European Union. None in the Soviet Union according to Wikipedia, but of course this is only in terms of plans. If the Discovery had a medical emergency going north over the US the captain would have almost certainly burned retrograde immediately, and landed in Russia rather than wait to fall back around to the US.
I love your answer! Kinda a of a no brainer. Ha ha. I'm not sure about U.S. plans for emergency landing of a capsule, but the U.S. did maintain some very large runways for emergency shuttle landings in some very interesting places. I would imagine these runways could be used for landing other things like SR-71, etc, and could possibly be used to other reasons. One of these sites was in north Western Africa.
He wanted to see Walt's "submarine fleet." AKA the boats that they use in the Submarine Voyage ride, not true submersibles. He also probably wanted a churro... :P
That was an intra-governmental document from the Feds to local government officials . Not to release to media is common and does not seem weird in this case.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. So, it's mid-Cold War, two Ruskies land in my corn patch and I have to decide, "Do I want to risk impalement with an antenna, a thruster to my gut and mutations of my seed for generations to come...." Answer, "Get tractor, dig big hole, roll capsule in hole and then 'What Russians???'" But wait, 25 years later, tell my grandson what I did, dig up the capsule and sell all the pieces on eBay.... Pay off all the debt caused by corn tariffs on China, buy a new Lambo and go to Disneyland myself! You never know, it might have happened!
"Looks like we landed safely, Misha! I wonder where we ar-..." *banjo starts playing whilst the sound of a dozen or so shotguns being loaded can be heard*
*Presses red button blowing off the hull plate that takes with it the soviet flag and the last tow letters of "USSR" to reveal an incorrect and and crudely painted american flag and the letter A in place of the SR* Cosmonaut: Howdy there comraaaaahhhh---I mean friends. My name is Joe...Freedom...son... yes Joe Freedomson. What a beautiful day for participating in a free market economy, is it not? If you will excuse me I think I forgot to feed George Washington, my bald eagle, his daily cheese burger. I hope you all have a productive day of constitutionally protected free speech and civil liberties.
Well, as you pointed out in a previous video, American spies were no strangers to sneakily dismantling an entire Russian capsule in a night and returning it in one piece the next day :)
Yeah lot of people saying we would imprison them. We knew the missions they were on weren't military, so I imagine instead it would have been more likely an opportunity to win political goodwill and return them. After all we were doing our own missions at the time and probably wouldn't have gained much by setting precedent of imprisoning astronauts in an emergency. Obviously exactly when it happened could have changed things and without the current agreement, it's possible we wouldn't return the vehicle without negotiation.
It would have been exceedingly bad PR for either side to behave other than professional on this. That part of the Cold War was done elsewhere. So you'd probably have very nice and neat tv pictures of people helping, and politicians saying nice things. After all in aviation and sea travel declaring an emergency (theoretically) bypasses all political and organisational boundaries. At least until the paperwork afterwards.
I'd be grabbing a bottle of Whiskey, three glasses and have a good time with them - assuming, they're up for it physically after returning from space...
Mission Control: Comrade, this is MC on the shortwave. Was the emergency de-orbit burn successful? Did you make it through reentry? Cosmonaut: Yes, burn and reentry proceeded nominally. MC: Good, we are relieved to hear that you are safe. Cosmonaut: Actually, I said the burn and reentry were nominal... [Sees the southern United States come into view through the window] [Sees reflection of the large "CCCP" on his helmet in the window] Cosmonaut: ...but "safe" might be a bit optimistic comrade.
I think they would have been fine even in the 70s. Most people recognize astronauts/ cosmonauts as a different " thing " and would have helped in almost any country.
Sounds a lot like the issues NASA had with Apollo 13. I read somewhere that soviet gone radio silent to let Huston communicate with Apollo without interference and also they was ready to help in the rescue mission as well.
Yep... Amazing how reality can trump politics sometimes. BTW: The maritime rules about helping out go pretty far back. Aircraft and eventually space stuff inherited a lot of that ethic.
fotmheki I’ve read a book about Apollo 13, and quite a few countries volunteered their navies for rescue, including the USSR. The cosmonauts also wrote a letter to Swigert, Haise, and Lovell, forgetting their political rivalry and wishing them a safe return.
What I like about this is that two of the spots were in Saskatchewan. It makes sense as we have some of the friendliest people around and fairly high chances of getting advanced medical care quickly. While having a near-zero chance of hitting anything but a cow. If it ever happened I'm fairly certain that this would be the talk of the town for 30 years, a monument and a town or two renamed.
I have found that even though the "Space Race" was one of the most competitive aspects of the cold war, it was also one where the US and USSR were usually friendly about.
well now we have the SPACE FORCE so they better not try anything funny, like hack our elections and collude with our own govt to destroy 400 years of democracy!
Loved the story of when the Russians were sending up Laika in a a spacecraft and during the mission the flight director said to the Colonel overseeing the mission "look Colonel, we're about to pass by an American satellite." The Colonel responded, "Good, maybe Laika can cock its leg and piss on it." 🤣
I feel like I don't care who it is or where they come from if they're Travelers Among the Stars and I crash land in my backyard I'm giving them the biggest hospitality and helping them..... should always help the traveler when in need
I tell ya what, they land their shit in my yard and they gunna pay, not with their life but with their wallet as im no ffing charity and they wanna use my land they gunna pay hahahaha
There's a man who claimed to be of extra terrestrial origin and who arrived in Bethlehem about 2000 years ago. But rather than welcoming him, he was executed.
I dunno man... if it's just Russians, sure. But I'm not getting involved in being the welcome wagon for any intergalactic aliens. I've seen Independence Day, I know how that works out.
Plus the definition of imprisoned would be rather wide, it would very likely result in rather luxurious house arrest plus regular visits to be interviewed by authorities with scientific backgrounds.
Richard Wilson Nah. The cosmonauts would’ve been returned home in short order with a pat on the back. All of that political nonsense didn’t really affect how the space agencies treated each other.
@@Cailus3542 true, but kept under very close watch until they could be repatriated. Probably in a closed off ward of a military hospital undergoing health checks and physiotherapy to recover from the G forces. I do wonder what'd happen were the cosmonauts to request political assylum. Maybe the outer space treaty has a section on that, but somehow I doubt it.
citizen-welcome to moscow cosmonaut! cos- this is not moscow! cit- yes it is, moscow, idaho cos- idaho? potato? cit- da! cos- mmm.... us beer & steak with potato? cit- why yes sir, this way...
Really interesting for me information. As a high school student during mid 1980s I was (1 of 2 of my age) invited to the bulgarian Interkosmos club - informal club lead by academia managers of bulgarian space programs where I met Ivanov several times and Rukavishnikov ones, but I've never heared about contingency landing plans. They both joked a lot with one another about their scary flight, but rumor said their ballistic trajectory landing took a great deal from Rukavishnikov's health. He (Rukavishnikov) was very interesting for me person - broadly educated with even broader interests, open minded strong siberian personality. Knowing many people from the socialism era space business I would say that in many cases (no military involvement) they would land in the USA if they have to even without top authorities approval.
Every Russian I have met has a strong personality. If a Russian says someone has a strong personality, it must mean he has a strong personality event horizon.
@@interferon4800 Well, I'm Bulgarian, who doesn't have general admirations for anyone and as a man who spent half of his childhood in the USSR any Russian would have to do twice the distance towards me.
The reality, if this were ever to happen. Those cosmonauts would have been treated extremely well. Granted with a high sense of security but they would have been treated like out of town guests, no question. Hell, if they would have landed in TX, they might have had the best (and only) BBQ they've ever had!
Real question: how long after returning from space before astronauts can eat "real food" again? Is it right away, or do they have start with smaller meals? If everything gets weaker in space I wonder if the muscles in your stomach & gut could handle a full, heavy meal right away. Otherwise the cosmonauts might have to just sit & watch everybody else eat Texas BBQ, now that would be torture.
@@cf6282 Yes, while the shuttle was flying, we would have a helicopter crew in standing by during launches, and the runway at Goose Bay was cleared with emergency services standing by, for example.
@Charles Yuditsky SSTO? It has been, but the SABRE may change that equation as it's an air-breather initially. Since the all of the oxidizer doesn't need to be lifted to the threshold of space, it may just be the unicorn made real. Realizing a working prototype, might mean a major turnaround for the British aerospace industry. A gauge of how serious the effort is regarded, would be BAE's investment in REL's research. Wiki has a nice article on this if you are curious.
@Charles Yuditsky Well, some hard questions have been asked of it. Let's remain optimistic and see what happens. Everything aerospace is in a foment right now and I believe some very interesting things await us.
Imagine the President having to send a message to the Soviets, " We found your capsule in Utah after it made an emergency landing. But, we regret to inform you that the crew was eaten by Mormons before we could save them."
6:02 "Remove 1 of the 3 tools located at (1) OR FIND IT IF DETACHED DURING LANDING" And now I'm imagining a situation where the capsule has landed and the cosmonauts are ready to get out, but there's five or six people wandering around outside looking for the hatch tool that fell off somewhere along the landing path (but PROBABLY somewhere around where the "soft" landing thrusters fired).
I remember reading that one of Soviet test pilots crash landed in the middle of nowhere and actually starved to death due to not getting rescued in time. He lamented in his journal that had he have proper guns (the survival kit he had didn't have one), he would've been able to hunt the small games around the crash site. Alas that wasn't in his kit.
I think there’s a pretty good explanation of why they didn’t want to land in Australia. “I’m so thankful we survived, Ivan.” “Yeah, me too, Sergei.” *looks out window* “Blyat, check in the back if we have the carbine. The ammunition too.” “Why?” “I count eighteen rather large spiders, two crocodiles, and one mutated two-headed pregnant deer that’s squatting like a gopnik.”
Thanks for the video Scott. Some of those landing sites are pretty close to Minot, ND. Can't imagine NORAD's cold war response to a Soviet vehicle reentering over an AFB which hosts nuclear ICBMs.
asiluawksadvnase8238 Thankfully, NORAD wouldn’t react at all. The Americans would have kept a close eye on all manned missions, especially if a problem developed that might end with a Soyuz capsule landing in the US. The Russians themselves would undoubtedly be communicating with the Americans the whole time. When it comes to space exploration, at least so far, that kind of politics has yet to interfere, even at the height of the Cold War. Thank heavens.
@@Cailus3542 oh, NORAD's be very wary and watch the trajectory and predicted ICBM and SLBM flight paths like a hawk, likely have every interceptor in the air over northern Canada as well around the time the Soyuz was to reenter, just in case it were a FOB weapon in disguise. But yes, they'd be communicating and setting up for rescue operations as well.
Even during the height of the Cold War, we Americans would have been honored to have Soviet Cosmonauts land their space craft in our country. They would have been treated well upon rescue and the spacecraft would have been promptly returned to the Soviet government.
At 5:40 you (and the diagram) talk about the "landing motor sensor", which is also described as "Cesium Altimeter"... How can you measure altitude with a radioactive source like cesium?
i'm guessing , that they wanted something stronger that radiowaves to measure not only theyr altitude , but ignoring soft materials when measuring it , over the overal power over radiowaves that could be influenced by storms or other radiowaves .
It work sort of similar to radar altimeter - by measuring the backscattered gamma rays. Cesium is the source of gamma radiation which is useful in this case due to the exteremely short wavelength. Such altimeter will ignore the dust, grass and other weak structures. Soyus retro rockets should fire at the very exact altitude over the solid ground so the precision is important here. BTW, as far as I know, the first thing the rescue team should do after they discovered the descent module is to extract the capsule with cesium from the container.
Interesting. The Space Shuttle also had emergency landing strips set up in advance. One was the Lincoln, Nebraska airport. Its main runway is nearly 13,000 feet in length. Suitable for a Space Shuttle.
As Peter Kemp said US craft were designed for water landing. That gave NASA 70% of the Earth's surface to use for landing areas. Cross that with the US being the preeminent naval power in the world and an emergency landing in the USSR was unlikely.
Somewhere out there is the list of alternate landing sites for the Shuttle; you could look that up. But basically the Shuttle can land anywhere with a big enough runway. The tricky part is keeping the locals safe around the nasty hypergolic propellants after you roll to a stop.
I've seen that picture with the instructions before, and always wondered why they had English. I thought it might have something to do with that space treaty, but it's good to know the full details. A little disappointing that this never had to be done for real
A good chunk of the planet has English as a second language, or knows someone who does. If I had to choose two languages for them to use, I'd go with Russian and English.
@@JohnWilliamNowak It's not surprising in that respect, I agree; however, it just appears unusual to see that coming from the USSR, a country who was rather isolationist. Plus it's just strange and inverted, like seeing Apollo with Russian markings.
@@Xatzimi Also, consider who has the biggest navies and would most likely reach a Soyuz performing a water landing in the oceans. At least one uncrewed Soyuz did land in water, and it would have floated if the heat shield hadn't failed and burned through. According to an interview with Feoktistov, this caused them to add a more robust heat shield, with bigger parachutes, which unfortunately failed to deploy and cost Komorov's life.
@@Xatzimi In the week I spent as a tourist in Russia in 2017, most of the road signs were in Russian (Cyrillic) and English. Of course that's 30 years later, but I don't imagine the distribution of languages has changed much.
There's a section (the opening from memory) in the Apollo 13 book by Jim Lovell that covers the actual meeting just after the treaty was signed, from memory it's also the event he'd been at during the plugs out test for Apollo 1. Both sides were extremely happy about having it as it put to rest what would happen if a 'ditching' had to happen over the others territory.
Sven used to lecture at my university (KTH). I think he is the PM or mentor to the group that is building KTH's student sat. Didn't have those projects in my days :(
He is indeed working with the student cubesat project, name of the project is MIST. Two other space related student projects at KTH is AESIR (student rocketry group) and REXUS B2D2 (sounding rocket experiment).
@@TechThoughts Cool! Nice to hear that Sven is still involved in space! He was the first person I ever met that actually worked in the space industry. Back then (2002 I think it was), before youtube, before twitter, before the internet as we know it today meeting him and attending his lecture made the whole thing real. An actual living person that built and launched a satellite. That was kinda big deal for a nerdy kid straight out of high school.
"Contact Department of Defense Manned Space Flight Support Office with questions at [DELETED]. *Call collect if necessary."* They're literally saying "if you're such a cheap-ass to not want to pay to call us to help rescue astronauts/cosmonauts from the ISS, we will pay for the call, so f*cking call us." Wow lol.
I just keep having these visions of a Soyuz landing in one of the restricted areas of the good ol' Idaho National Laboratory. During the Cold War. Yeah. Almost as good as landing the sucker in Area 51. 😳
@@svenmorgenstern9506 It wouldn't have been a problem. Military etc. are smart enough to know that you can't do much steering in a capsule. You might even be safer landing in a restricted area as long as you're in a spacecraft because there would be more help in the area. Also it's not like they wouldn't know you were on the way down.
@@scottmanley there's mountains in Idaho? or ski slopes for that matter, that is a tourist destination?? wow. im american, and i had no freaking idea. thought it was a big farmland full of inbred trump supporters and republicans marrying their sisters, and not a mecca for skiing on some great powder... huh.
I like the fact that there is a symbol of a wine glass on the bottom of the capsule. It means, "Once you got the cosmonauts out, offer them a glass of merlot." ;-)
Decades ago I thought the flat expanse of southwestern Ontario would be a great landing spot for a Soyuz capsule, but now, they would probably hit one of over 900 windmills that are now operating.
oh my god!!! My best and smartest president of my country(you might know of him, super -loved by the entire world) anyhoo, he told us that windmills are super dangerous and will totally kill you just like a FEMA concentration camp in a social democracy will!!! how have you managed to stay alive?????
That screen is actually not entirely cursive. Just styled to looks like it, mostly. Just type "Russian cursive" into google and see the pictures. Russian "Lishish" (to take away) or Serbian "shishmish" (bat) are horrific :D
@@itchypit6413 Remember that MiG 25 in which Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko flew to Japan in 1976 and defected? The Japanese finally returned the plane to the USSR about two months later... with the fuselage rolling landing gear and the rest of the aircraft in parts contained in crates. Japanese and US intelligence gave that beast the Full Body Cavity Search. Military aircraft were not covered under that space treaty, so it got very different handling.
Well, the Space Treaty made sense. Astronauts are literally the best of the best a nation can provide, and they also have a significant PR value. Even the Soviets had to think twice before considering sacrificing them for political reasons.
@Scott: you mentioned a water landing of the Sojus in emergancy around Russia and Japan. How long that capsule would stay afloat and how it is compared with the Apollo capsules? Thanks and cheers.
Well according to one emergency landing of Soyuz 23 in Tengiz lake, it's possible to stay on surface, but they was rescued with a delay, because of difficult environment conditions
One of those Canadian landing points for Soyuz-33 is about 50km from where my then 17 year old mom was living. Funny to think she could have ditched school to see a Soviet Soyuz landing site
hey you guys big fans of your political leadership over there , these days? and how come you have access to our internet but we dont have access to your version of facebook and stuff?
@@raidermaxx2324 Hey. Maybe you are mixing something? First, I do not really understand what do you mean by "your internet". Second, I do not understand what are you talking about by saying "your version of Facebook and stuff". Ukraine does not have own version of Facebook. We (not me) are using same Facebook as the rest of the world - the one Mark Zuckerberg owns :) I have a feeling that you are talking about "Vkontakte" and "Odnoklassniki" - but those are Russian versions of Facebook. And I am from Ukraine. Feel free to ask more questions.
To think we missed "Zeke, Jonah, come quick. I've caught myself some real commie spacecraft, and a couple of real live commies too." being written into the history of space travel. Ah shucks.
If they had had to use the site in Manitoba (actually very near St Laurent MB), they would have climbed out of the capsule and been devoured by mosquitoes before a rescue could have been effected.
One would hope as fellow human beings we can all agree when people go into space it's all of us making the voyage it's a leap for all mankind and our humanity is on display for all of the world to see.
I think if a Soyuz capsule landed anywhere in the Midwest, local residents would help the cosmonauts out of the spacecraft, take them to a local tavern or restaurant, and ply them with hot coffee and pastries while waiting for the authorities to show up. Small gifts would be exchanged, ribald jokes told, invitations to come back real soon, farewell hugs, etc. Then everyone would reminisce for years about "that time the Russians visited us".
Interesting. I live at the location in Texas... Also if you notice those locations are also mostly near their respective countries military bases as they would be the only ones with the equipment to respond to a landing.
I absolutely lose my s*** if I found a capsule had landed in my backyard! I would most definitely cut a small piece off of it as a souvenir after rescuing the cosmonauts / astronauts!
I've seen one, at an exhibition in the Science Museum in London. Together with a Lunokhod, various capsules and other Soviet space stuff. Best exhibition I have ever been to.
0:14 Valentina Tereshkova is usually counted as the first civilian to command a spacecraft in 1963. She was only given a military rank to enter the cosmonaut corps, but otherwise she was a civilian recruit.
A wonderful detective story about an unknown, but fascinating possibility; a Soyuz landing in the continental US. Always great, fresh content, Scott. Thanks.
i find it hilarious looking at the end product of what was clearly a soviet label printing guy told to do english translations but only given cyrillic stamps.
Very interesting I wonder if that could have been the case today to which Chris Cassidy could have landed on American soil in the Russian soyuz MS-16. Other two American astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob behnken will still land in Atlantic Ocean in Space X dragon
