Would you give them the last slice of pizza if you were still hungry? Or if you caught a foul ball at a baseball game, would you give it up? How about the window seat on an airplane if that was your favorite spot? Where would you draw that line? Enter Vladimir Komarov, cosmonaut. This dude sacrificed himself for his best friend and the entire human race.
An official portrait of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. – Credits: Roscosmos
In the early 60’s, Komarov was best friends with Yari Gagarin, aka the first star man aka the first man in space and the first man to ever orbit the Earth. That was a pretty big deal at the time. Gagarin was the face of the USSR and you were somebody if you were in the same room with the man. Komarov was no novice himself being the 14th person in space and the first to orbit the earth with another human being. Both men made their marks in the USSR Voskhod 1 program as cosmonauts but when President Kennedy said the US was going to send men to the moon, the USSR knew they had to step up their game.
After Kennedy’s moon speech in Houston, the USSR created the Soyuz program. Komarov and Gagarin were assigned to it. The main priority was to get to the Moon, no obstacles were to stop that. Safety was not a priority and while the Soyuz program was rife with problems from designing to hatches to communications, the plan was to push through all obstacles.
The Soyuz 1 was a death trap and Gagarin voiced his concerns to the Kremlin with a letter. This was ignored. Komarov knew that if the poster boy, face of the nation Gagarin was to be the first to pilot the Soyuz, his death would crush the USSR and they would cower in defeat. Komarov stepped into the first pilot position knowing full well that it meant death.
On April 24, 1967, after his 19th orbit, the Komarov piloted Soyuz 1 plummeted into the ground killing him instantly.
On April 25, 1967, the nation grieved but the cause of safety for their national hero’s was never greater.
The USSR revised all spacecraft after the incident pushing the US to do the same. Without his sacrifice, mankind might have never made it to the Moon or had any greater ambitions beyond Earth orbit. That is sacrifice.
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