“See you tomorrow. Make the brandy,” he said. Vladislav Volkov to the authorities before his return. With Georgy Dobrovolsky and Victor Patsaev, made up, in 1971, the crew of the Soviet ship soyuz 11, the first and only one to arrive at the Salyut space station. They had everything ready for their return to Earth.
The Salyut station (Saliut 1) was the first space station in history, again surpassing the Soviets to the Americans. It reached low Earth orbit, 200 kilometers above the surface (the International Space Station is at 400), staying 175 days there.
Volkov, Dobrovolsky and Patsaev, sent on Soyuz 11, were able to visit it, after Soyuz 10 failed in its attempt. For 23 days, these cosmonauts performed various experiments, demonstrating that humans could remain safely on a base in space without inconvenience.
At the end of their stay at the Salyut station, the three cosmonauts prepared for their return to Earth.
The tranquility before the disaster on Soyuz 11
On June 29, 1971, Volkov, Dobrovolsky and Patsaev were ready for undocking from the Soyuz 11 spacecraft, leaving Salyut station behind.
In the conversations declassified by the Roscosmos agency, everyone’s tranquility is noted, after the mission accomplished.
“The separation has occurred. It is done. Visually, we observe the distance. The station went to our left, with a change of direction”, Volkov told the Zarya measuring station in the Soviet Union.
The descent signal came on.
“See you tomorrow. Prepare the brandy.” Volkov warned his people at home, anticipating the celebration after the successful work. It was his dying wish. He didn’t know.
Fate had something else in store.
The death of the three cosmonauts
The descent vehicle, as explained aerospace news, It regularly entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, landing in the determined area, in Kazakhstan.
When Soviet authorities opened Soyuz 11, they found the lifeless bodies of Volkov, Dobovolsky and Patsaev. They had all died horribly, during the final minutes of re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
What had happened?
As reported later, the ventilation valve opened as a result of the violent vibration in the return.
recounts Rafael Clemente in El Pais that “probably the cosmonauts did not hear the pop of the valve opening; the headphones and the other noises of other mechanisms must have muffled it. But they felt it immediately in the most painful way: a very sharp earache when trying to balance pressure with the escaping air”.
They suffered internal bleeding in the brain and lungs as a result of depressurization. “The biomedical data recorder”, explains Clemente, “recorded intense gasps from the pilots, 48 per minute, three times normal, just seconds after the valve opens. Half a minute later, they were dead.”
After the deaths of the cosmonauts, the Salyut space station was sent to sea, several modifications were made to the Soyuz spacecraft, the use of space suits for travel became mandatory (it was not, until then) and the crew was reduced. to two people, instead of three.