posted 07-20-2010 07:33 AM               

Publisher's description of original edition:

On April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in history to leave the Earth's atmosphere and venture into space. An icon of the 20th century, he also became a danger to himself, a threat to the Soviet state and, at the age of 34, he was killed in a plane accident.

Based on KGB files, restricted documents from Russian space authorities, and interviews with his friends and colleagues, this biography of the Russian cosmonaut reveals a man in turmoil: torn apart by powerful political and emotional pressures; his private life in ruins; fighting a losing battle against alcoholism; and rebelling against the cruelties of a corrupt totalitarian regime.

The authors also suggest that Gagarin's death was no accident but a deliberate "political elimination."

• Paperback: 248 pages
  
• Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (4 April 2011)
  
• ISBN-10: 1408815540
  
• ISBN-13: 978-1408815540

posted 03-03-2011 01:42 AM               

One of the comments above notes that the book suggests that Gagarin's death was no accident, however looking on the Amazon reviews, one of the comments on there says "The book more or less stamps on the conspiracy theory that says that Gagarin was murdered by the Brezhnev regime, saying that his death was a tragic if mysterious air accident. "

posted 03-03-2011 05:53 AM            

This is a large, coffee table format book, about 300 pages long with lots and lots of photographs, and containing a detailed and fabulous account of the post Vostok 1 publicity and goodwill tours to Soviet satellite states.

Make no mistake, this is a work of Soviet-era propaganda, but it is still an excellent book with many photographs which at that time had not previously been published.

It is worth the hunt to find it: a very enjoyable read, and if you get sick of the "over the top" propaganda, then the many photographs make it all worthwhile.

posted 03-18-2011 07:17 PM               

(WARNING: The NPR site includes a graphic photo Vladimir Komarov's remains in an open casket.)

So there's a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he's on the phone with Alexsei Kosygin -- then a high official of the Soviet Union -- who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.

The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes -- though no one knows this -- won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

This extraordinarily intimate account of the 1967 death of a Russian cosmonaut appears in a new book, "Starman," by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, to be published next month. The authors base their narrative principally on revelations from a KGB officer, Venymin Ivanovich Russayev, and previous reporting by Yaroslav Golovanov in Pravda. This version -- if it's true -- is beyond shocking.

"Starman" tells the story of a friendship between two cosmonauts, Vladimir Kamarov and Soviet hero Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach outer space. The two men were close; they socialized, hunted and drank together.

In 1967, both men were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn't back out because he didn't want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been his replacement.

• Komarov being so certain he was going to die that he was worried for his back-up's (Gagarin's) life were he to refuse to fly;

• the U.S. having intercepted Komarov's final words;

• Gagarin showing up on the launch pad demanding he fly in Komarov's place.

posted 03-19-2011 06:10 AM               

He was a test pilot, Air Force officer, highly trained and experienced cosmonaut, a 100% professional. He was the commander of the Voschod 1 mission where there was no means of rescue in case of the pad or shortly after the launch disaster - no ejection seats, no launch escape system. He knew it and he went for it.

He also knew the Soyuz 1 mission would be very dangerous as no unmanned test flight was fully successful. His mood was very depressed as it is visible in the bus ride footage before the launch. Komarov is accompanied by his fellow cosmonauts - including Gagarin in full military uniform, so he did not appear on the pad suddenly, he was there with him as many others - and the cosmonauts were trying to rise his spirits and mood with singing. Komarov joined them hesitantly but he appered to be very sad. No wonder, he knew he was to fly a spaceship which was far from perfect. But he went, accepting the risk, as any other cosmonaut and astronaut is going for the mission and would never decline the chance of flight, despite the risks involved.

Boris Volynov, commander of Soyuz 5, was very close to death when the Orbital and Descent section of his capsule did not separate and the connecting cables just burned through in last moment. Did he panick, did he scream and curse? No, he behaved professionally, making notes of events and trying to pack his notes so that they would survive the disaster even if he died. And this problem of the soviet spaceships seems to be generic from Vostok times, even an American astronaut ( Peggy Whitson ? ) experienced such dangerous landing few years ago. So he would have any reason to curse the engineers for not solving this problem long ago. And he really beieved he was going to die.

posted 03-19-2011 08:57 AM               

Why would Prime Minister Kosygin call Komarov and weep when the fate of the cosmonaut was not sealed at all? He was in a serious situation fighting a lot of malfunctions, like orientation system, lack of energy, etc. Ground control worked very hard with the cosmonaut to overcome this and to return back to Earth. The last thing they would need was a distracting and disturbing phone call by a layman who understood nothing of the spaceflight business and would be emotionally wasting precious minutes of troubleshooting - those times the radio sessions with orbiting spacecrafts were measured in minutes and there were too long periods of blackouts. So I can't imagine there was such a phone call at all.

Komarov together with the ground control managed to overcome the problems, to orient the spaceship manually and to make the deorbit burn manually and successfully. And when everybody thought the trouble was over the parachute disaster struck. Here again I can't simply imagine the professional fighter pilot and cosmonaut would start to accuse and curse anybody even knowing the end is inevitable.

posted 03-20-2011 05:20 PM               

Briefly, the facts do not support these malevolent rumours. Yes, the flight of Soyuz 1 was in trouble. Komarov was flying a newly-designed spacecraft which suffered from severe orientation problems, a jammed solar panel and a malfunctioning attitude control sensor. Despite his best efforts, and those of ground control, to resolve these issues, it was eventually decided to terminate the mission early and bring him back to earth. This also caused the postponement of the three-man Soyuz 2 mission, which was on the pad and ready to be launched for a rendezvous and docking with Soyuz 1. Obviously this decision would have frustrated Komarov, but as a trained and talented pilot he would have known that there was no way the flight could have continued given all the technical problems.

Just as Gordon Cooper later did in similar circumstances on his Faith 7 mission, Komarov successfully aligned his spacecraft for a manual re-entry and prepared himself for what he and ground control believed would be a relatively normal re-entry and touchdown. Given that everything was organised for re-entry, why would an experienced space pilot suddenly begin blubbering about dying and screaming abuse at the space and political chiefs? On the contrary, his transmissions (see Siddiqi's book) were calm and professional.

The only way Komarov would have known he was about to die was if he was aware that his parachute was not going to deploy properly, and this he certainly did not know. The descent through the atmosphere was quite normal until it came time for the parachute to deploy. This was not successful, and seconds later, travelling at around 400 kph, Soyuz 1 slammed into the ground and exploded. So how in those few seconds did he have the luxury of speaking with his wife (who was at their home in Moscow), to make a will, or to waste precious transmission time talking with the politician Kosygin?

In late 2004, Rex Hall and I attended the Autographica show in Coventry, England, during which time Rex Hall sat down with Valery Bykovsky to record an interview. In this, Bykovsky revealed that he had later been told by engineers that the Soyuz 1 problem had been traced to a sticky residue found on the walls of the parachute container. He was further told that the same fault was found in the parachute container of Soyuz 2, and had they launched it was highly probable that the Soviet Union would have lost four cosmonauts - not just one.

Vladimir Komarov was an accomplished, decorated pilot and cosmonaut. He had skillfully brought control to his spacecraft and made a normal re-entry. To suggest that he was crying and screaming abuse at anyone, based purely on the rambling recollections of some shadowy "insider" is a profound disgrace.

And shame on the NPR for attaching that grisly photo of the charred remains of Komarov in a glass case to their "report." When Rex Hall and I were determining the photos to be used in our "First Soviet Cosmonaut Team" book, we actually had this photo but declined to use it out of respect for Vladimir Komarov and his memory.

Sure there are some excellent parts in the book "Starman," but to perpetuate this horrible bit of dishonouring fiction in order to sell a few paperbacks means that it does have a rotten core to it.

posted 03-21-2011 08:06 PM               

Even before reading any of those, though, I was aware of the sensationalistic and melodramatic rumors about the end of Soyuz 1. They always struck me as absurd. Say what you will about their respective nations, cultures, and the socio-political apparatus that nurtured them, but I've always been of the impression that the early Soviet cosmonauts were cut essentially from the same cloth as their American counterparts: Highly trained, highly motivated, patriotic and driven professionals who understood that they were in one of the world's most dangerous professions. While doing everything in their power to minimize risks and accomplish their assigned missions, they accepted that what they do could very well get them killed. The notion of a blubbering, cursing Komarov is impossible to square with what was almost certainly the reality: A test pilot trying every last option available to him to save his craft and himself.

It's sometimes easy for us in the West, especially Americans, to forget that the cosmonauts had "the right stuff," too.

posted 03-22-2011 05:57 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by ColinBurgess:
Don't get me wrong; a lot of the book is very good and well written. It's just that I take exception to the ill-conceived and grossly dishonouring Komarov story.

---

posted 03-22-2011 08:25 AM               

My question is, do historians trust Russayev's testimony? Doran and Bizony seem to. They rely on it. It's the spine of their narrative. Has anyone come up with information that would disprove or contradict Russayev's version, specifically the conversations mentioned above? Asif Siddiqi sent me a very specific contradictions. He says there was no conversation between Premier Kosygin and Komarov in space. He said I should check out his book. I will.

(Please understand, everybody, that while I was shocked by Doran and Bizony's account, and wondered out loud if the details were right, I didn't know of Siddiqi's book or Colin Burgess' book; that's the way these blogs operate. I didn't spend a month reading through all the books on this subject, I just wanted to share the version that shocked me. But now that I know about the others, I will definitely see what they have to say.)

This version of Komarov's death is so provocative and seems to have made some people so angry (especially today in Russia), I am more than happy to investigate further. The book is only a few weeks from publication and I will see if I turn up serious inconsistancies that contradict the Russayev/Doran/Bizony narrative. If I do, I will let everybody know. And, again, thanks for sharing these posts with me.

posted 03-22-2011 03:50 PM               

I didn't spend a month reading through all the books on this subject, I just wanted to share the version that shocked me. But now that I know about the others, I will definitely see what they have to say.

In this case, although Krulwich may not have had a month to go through the literature, there had to have been a small amount of time to do some basic checking-out. This wasn't a breaking story, and it's not hard to find people who are knowledgeable on the Russian space program, even if you're not a space enthusiast. Think about how much better Krulwich's initial report would have been with, say, comments from James Oberg or Asif Siddiqi or Colin Burgess, who aren't that difficult to find if you dig a little bit. Maybe it would have shot down the initial frame for the story, but then you can turn it into a great story about "it's a great story, but did it really happen?"

On the other hand, good on Krulwich for owning up to it and promising to check it out. I'll look forward to his follow-up.

posted 03-22-2011 04:45 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by ColinBurgess:
Don't get me wrong; a lot of the book is very good and well written. It's just that I take exception to the ill-conceived and grossly dishonouring Komarov story.

---

I agree with Colin that the book is actually very good on Yuri Gagarin and did reveal new info. The main problem is that it was originally published in 1998 and much more has come to light since then.

I think the authors have been lazy just adding a new end chapter and would have better served history with a full rewrite to take out some of the more blatant fictions such as the Komarov story.

I can almost visualise Rex Hall rolling his eyes and shaking his head once again because people still believe the same old Soyuz 1 stories.

posted 04-04-2011 11:15 PM               

Basically it is the same as the original 1998 first edition hardcover except for the addition of a four page Afterword. Still has the same (wrong) info on Komarov.

Apart from the errors already mentioned it is still one of the books which gives a fairly honest account of Gagarin's life.

Nothing new in the way of conspiracy theories on Gagarin's death. The authors did speak to Sergei Belotserkovsky who has written a book titled First Cosmonaut story of his life and death (in Russian). It seems he is one of the very few people who had access to the original reports on Gagarin's crash.

Doran and Bizony conclude that the aircraft piloted by Gagarin and Serugin hit turbulence from the wake vortex of another aircraft (possibly travelling at supersonic speed), lost control and did not have enough height to recover.