Wrong Stuff

Trouble at Tyuratum

The account remained sketchy, the details not altogether clear. One morning early last week, according to U.S. intelligence sources, a booster rocket exploded into flames on a launching pad at the space center in Tyuratum, in the Central Asian Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Atop the rocket was a manned Soyuz space capsule bound for a rendezvous with the orbiting space station Salyut 7. Luckily, the safeguards apparently worked without a hitch, and the two or three spacemen aboard survived the disaster.

The rocket either exploded or caught fire when its fuel tank, containing some 270 tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen, suddenly ignited and turned the launching pad into a flaming ball. In such emergencies, the capsule, its crew snugly strapped inside, blasts away from the pad within milliseconds after the blowup. The rocket tip arcs up to an altitude of several thousand feet, where the capsule then rolls out of its casing (much like a tennis ball out of a tin can) and parachutes safely back to earth. *

The cosmonauts probably did not escape without some injuries. When the capsule shoots away from the rocket, its occupants suffer a terrific jolt comparable to the one received in a car hit from the rear at high speed. Besides conducting a time-consuming investigation into how the accident happened, the Soviets will have to rebuild the launching pad, one of three at the facility. The estimated cost of repairs, including underground fuel lines: between $250 million and $500 million.

Since 1971, when the first Soyuz-Salyut hookup took place, about 30 flights have been launched. Over the years the space stations have set several impressive records, including the longest stint in orbit (211 days in 1982). Salyut 7, launched with great fanfare in April 1982, is the most sophisticated so far; weighing some 40 tons and outfitted with three docking ports, the beetle-shaped craft is designed to serve eventually as the core of a much larger complex. Two members of last week's hapless team, Vladimir Titov and Gunady Strakalov, were forced to return to earth after only 48 hours last May because of docking problems. This time, the crew was on its way to take over from Cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Alexander Alexandrov, who have been aboard the space lab since late June. The Soviets now could order their comrades to return in their aging Soyuz or launch a fresh one to retrieve them; either way, the experiments aboard the Salyut will be delayed. -

*The U.S. Apollo program featured similar safety measures, but not all disasters can be handled so smoothly. In 1967 Virgil ("Gus") Grissom, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, and his two crew members were asphyxiated in a launching-pad fire at Cape Canaveral. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.