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Top 10 Saddest Space Flight Disasters


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houston we have a problem welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re counting
down our picks for the top 10 saddest
space accidents before we begin we
publish new videos every day
so be sure to subscribe for more great
content for this list we’ll be taking a
look at the history of space exploration
and the disasters that occurred across
different countries both in the private
sector and government-run programs
whether it occurred during liftoff
re-entry or training and testing as long
as it was an accident related to
aeronautics and attempts at spaceflight
it was considered for this list while
this is a tragic setback we are moving
forward and will do so deliberately and
with determination number 10 the death
of Valentin Bondarenko
as part of the very first group of men
selected for cosmonaut training in 1960
Valentin Bondarenko could have been
Russia’s first men in space
however 10 days into a 15 day experiment
in a low-pressure altitude chamber a
fire broke out after an alcohol soaked
cotton ball he’d used to clean himself
landed on a hot plate the flames quickly
spread through the oxygen-rich
environment leaving third-degree burns
over most of his body he died 16 hours
later at just 24 years old the Soviet
government kept his death and
involvement in the cosmonaut program
secret for decades but today a crater on
the far side of the Moon is named in
Bondarenko honor number 9 the VSS
enterprise crash the project was dealt a
serious setback when its spaceship 2
exploded during a test flight over
California’s Mojave Desert as part of
the Virgin Group Virgin Galactic is
developing a space plane known as
spaceship 2 with hopes of ultimately
providing commercial suborbital space
flights to Taurus on Halloween 2014 the
company was testing one such ship the
VSS enterprise in the Mojave Desert in
California
shortly after detaching from the launch
vehicle the craft began to break apart
due to an unidentified in-flight anomaly
pilot Peter Sebold was ejected from the
craft parachuted to safety and sustained
non-life-threatening injuries however
copilot Michael Al’s burry was not
able to get three of the crafts and died
in the crash is almost unbelievable that
anybody could survive a rocket plane
crash at the speed of sound number eight
Michael J Adams after leaving MIT US Air
Force pilot Michael Adams received the
ad hunt trophy as the top scholar and
pilot in his class at the Air Force
experimental test pilot school no doubt
he was on the fast track to being an
astronaut in 1966 he joined the x-15
program which was developing a
hypersonic rocket-powered and
experimental aircraft Adams had
completed six flights successfully in
the x-15 prior to November 15th 1967
during his seventh and final flight
however the aircraft began to spin
violently at Mach 5 and entered a dive
the g-forces exerted on the craft were
too much and it broke apart killing the
37 year old Adams the US Air Force
posthumously awarded him his astronaut
wings number seven until fad 708 the
Intelsat 708 was an American
telecommunication satellite meant to be
launched into orbit via China’s long
march 3b rocket on February 15 1996 the
boosters ignited and the rocket began
its ascent however due to an engineering
defect it veered off course within
seconds and exploded over a village
lighting up the sky the Chinese
government initially reported that only
six people were killed but this was
highly disputed due to eyewitness
accounts and the size of the blast no
official number has ever been released
but it is most likely in the hundreds
number six
Apollo one one of these days there are
going to be some mistakes made either in
the systems design or are we on the
ground which results in an accident and
assailant won the Apollo program that
ultimately brought the first men to the
moon had a tragic beginning the first
mission Apollo 1 was due to launch in
February 1967 bringing Gus Grissom
Edward Higgins white and Roger B Chaffee
to a low Earth orbit during a routine
launch rehearsal in January a fire broke
out in the cabin
it took workers five minutes to open all
the hatches to get to the astronauts but
it was too late all three men perished
all died in moments helplessly trapped
inside their spacecraft the pure oxygen
atmosphere combined with electric arcs
from faulty wires ultimately ignited the
blaze
all three were posthumously awarded the
Congressional space medal of honor the
Apollo 1 fire changed us forever
and we’ve never forgotten it number five
the Vostok 2m rocket explosion the
Vostok rocket was the Soviets answer to
America’s Atlas and Titan rockets to
send men and satellites into space on
March 18th 1980 a Vostok 2 M was being
fueled on its launch pad at the place
yet cosmodrome when it exploded over 40
people mostly young soldiers were burned
to death with about a half a dozen dying
later due to injuries sustained in the
blast the launch pad was damaged so
severely that it was not used again for
four years due to the secrecy of the
USSR government the outside world would
not learn about one of the worst
disasters in the Space Age for nearly a
decade
number 4 Soyuz 11 the Soviet Union Soyuz
11 mission was the only manned mission
to dock with and board the first ever
space station Salyut 1 after 22 days on
board cosmonauts gay orgy d’urberville
ski vladislav volkov and viktor pasilla
began their journey home their capsule
made a textbook re-entry into the
Earth’s atmosphere parachuting safely to
the ground
however when the recovery team opened
the hatch all three men were dead an
investigation revealed that a pressure
release valve malfunctioned causing a
loss of cabin pressure since cosmonauts
did not use pressure suits during this
era the men is sick ceated within
seconds
the three were posthumously awarded the
hero of the Soviet Union medal and each
has a crater on the moon named in his
honor
after the loss of the Soyuz 11
cosmonauts the Soviet space agency made
it mandatory for all crew members to
wear spacesuits during reentry
number three then a daelin catastrophe
the Vostok rocket explosion was not the
first launch pad disaster the Soviet
Union experienced almost 20 years prior
in 1960 the nydalen disaster claimed the
lives of about a hundred Russian workers
and soldiers during the development of
the ICBM r16 rocket a prototype was
being prepped for a test flight at the
Baikonur cosmodrome when the second
stage engines inadvertently ignited
killing countless military and technical
personnel no standing close to the
rocket including field marshal nedelin
were instantly incinerated as was the
norm in Soviet Russia the government
kept the disaster under wraps for
decades the incident is named for me to
define Ivanovich nydalen commanding
officer of the Soviet Union strategic
rocket forces who was killed in the
explosion over 150 people died including
many top Soviet scientists and engineers
but for decades afterwards the story of
the disaster remained hidden from the
public number two the space shuttle
Columbia disaster we have booster
ignition and liftoff of space shuttle
Columbia with a multitude of national
and international space research
the space shuttle Columbia had just
finished a 16-day scientific mission
orbiting the Earth when it began to
re-enter the atmosphere what NASA and
the Columbia did not know was the during
takeoff a piece of insulating foam had
become dislodged and punctured a hole in
one of the wings
this allowed gases to pierce through the
wing during re-entry which slowly tore
it apart and led to complete control
failure the Columbia broke apart before
NASA’s eyes killing all seven crew
members NASA suspended flight operations
for two years and the crew was
posthumously awarded the Congressional
space medal of honor before we unveil
our number one pick here are a few
honorable or in this case dishonorable
mentioned
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number one the space shuttle Challenger
disaster with CNN broadcasting the
launch all eyes were on the space
shuttle Challenger in January 1986 the
crew consisted of five astronauts and
two payload specialists one of whom was
Christa McAuliffe a teacher from Concord
New Hampshire who would have become the
first-ever teacher in space after a
handful of delays the launch was set for
the morning of January 28 73 seconds
after launch with millions of Americans
watching the Challenger broke apart
during his ascent and was gone
in an instant it was determined that an
o-ring seal and the right booster failed
during liftoff due to cold conditions
the shuttle program was grounded for 32
months while America mourned their first
astronauts lost since the 1960s do you
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