(3 of 4)
Clearly, Soviet officials had already determined the cause of death. No lengthy autopsies were performed, and only a day after the accident the cosmonauts' bodies were publicly displayed in Moscow's Central Army Hall. (One puzzle: a heavy bruise was observed on the right side of Patsayev's face.) Why, then, were the Soviets so secretive about the cause of the deaths? Westerners could only guess that Soviet space officials were being cautious, determined to be absolutely certain about what went wrong before announcing the results of their investigation.
At week's end London's Evening News reported that Russian scientists attending the state funeral had blamed the tragedy on the cosmonauts' failure "to seal the hatch of their spacecraft properly." The Evening News' Moscow correspondent, Victor Louis (a Soviet citizen often suspected of being a Russian agent), wrote that "human error and mechanical failure between them caused creeping depressurization in the spacemen's nine-foot cabin and deprived the astronauts of life-supporting oxygen on the final phase of their journey." During the turbulent re-entry of Soyuz, Louis said, the spacecraft's hatchway opened enough so that the oxygen supply escaped into space.
Why did the cosmonauts—or the ground controllers—fail to notice the opened hatch in time? "The Soyuz hatchway is not unlike a car door," Louis explained. "When the hatch is open, a signal light goes on on a console at mission control. But the light will go out when the hatch is half closed, as with a half-slammed car door." The calamity came at a time when the Russians seemed to be overtaking the U.S. in space—a remarkable comeback after they abandoned the race to land the first man on the moon. Still, the comeback was not entirely without its price. After the crash that killed Cosmonaut Komarov, the Soyuz spacecraft made no manned flights for 18 months while its faulty systems were overhauled. Although three manned Soyuz ships were fired off in rapid succession in 1969, the Soviets failed to make good on hints that the ships would dock and set up a rudimentary space station. In April, the Soviets followed up the orbiting of their unmanned Salyut space lab with the launch of Soyuz 10, but it took the three men aboard the smaller ship more than 24 hours to rendezvous and dock with the station. When the hookup was finally made, undisclosed problems forced them to back off and return abruptly to earth.
A Vote from Space
In contrast, the follow-up flight of Soyuz 11 was trouble-free from the start. Using improved docking techniques, it easily attached itself to the awkward-looking, tubular-shaped space lab. Upon entering Salyut's trailer-sized interior, Dobrovolsky cheerfully announced: "This place is tremendous. There seems to be no end to it." Through most of the mission, the cosmonauts remained in remarkably good humor. While a TV camera recorded their activities, they performed exercises, engaged in numerous scientific experiments and even cast the first votes from space—affirming their support of the Communist Party's policies.