Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11

by James Donovan

During the craft’s seventeenth revolution, ground control attempted to land it, but retrofire did not achieve the proper orientation. On the next orbit, Komarov managed to make a precisely timed manual retrofire and survived reentry through the atmosphere. But his parachute lines became entangled, and Soyuz 1 hit the ground near the edge of the Ural Mountains on the Kazakhstan border. Komarov died on impact, and the retro-rockets blew up, leaving his body a small, black, molten mass. Soyuz 2 was canceled, and the tragedy caused the Soviet program to pause and undergo its own reassessment. Jim Webb suggested that “full cooperation” between the United States and the Soviet Union might have helped save some or all of the two countries’ lost spacefarers. Komarov’s remains were displayed in an open-casket funeral—he had requested it before the flight and had told others the spacecraft wasn’t ready—then interred in the Kremlin Wall, close to Korolev. NASA sent condolences, but privately, many in the agency were relieved. The war might have been a cold one, but it was still a war.