Fifty-Five Years ago Yesterday in Aviation and Space History

“Our banner in the sky” painting by Edward Church (1861)

What were you doing 55 years ago in June of 1971?   As for me, I had just graduated from high school and was driving, filled with wanderlust as we were, to Key West, Florida on a post-high school driving trip with my best friend, Vince. 

As much as Vince and I were both “into” space, space missions had become…well…somewhat “old news” in 1971 after America had landed on the moon in Apollo 11 two years earlier and in five subsequent Apollo missions through 1972. 

And we weren’t listening to space, or any other kind of, news on the AM radio in the 1969 Chevy Nova that my dad had loaned us for our Key West adventure.  We were listening to the 1971 summer hits “It’s Too Late” / “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” by the Bee Gees, and “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver.  We were moved by music, not the news.

More interested in the Top 40 than Soviet space disaster.  Shirtless and enroute to Key West in June, 1971.  Photo of 18-year-old Barry by Vince.

So, the tragedy of three Soviet cosmonauts perishing in a reentry disaster hardly “moved the needle” in our teenaged consciousness…or rather unconsciousness…if it moved it at all.   And it must not have moved my needle because I didn’t recall this incident until I read it about yesterday.

While it didn’t move our needles, it sure moved the needles of the Soviet space program and those of the families, friends and comrades of the killed cosmonauts. 

According to the HISTORY.com Editors and downloaded yesterday from:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-30/soviet-cosmonauts-perish-in-reentry-disaster?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0630-06302026&om_rid=&~campaign=hist-tdih-2026-0630, “The three Soviet cosmonauts who served as the first crew of the world’s first space station died when their spacecraft depressurized during reentry on June 30, 1971.

“On June 6, the cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev were launched into space aboard Soyuz 11 on a mission to dock and enter Salyut 1, the Soviet space station that had been placed in orbit in April. The spacecraft successfully docked with the station, and the cosmonauts spent 23 days orbiting the earth. On June 30, they left Salyut 1 and began reentry procedures. When they fired the explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule from another stage of the spacecraft, a critical valve was jerked open.

While I played, these cosmonauts paid.  Photo courtesy Russian Space Agency and the Space Safety Magazine.

“One hundred miles above the earth, the capsule was suddenly exposed to the nearly pressureless environment of space. As the capsule rapidly depressurized, Patsayev tried to close the valve by hand but failed. Minutes later, the cosmonauts were dead. As a result of the tragedy, the Soviet Union did not send any future crews to Salyut 1, and it was more than two years before they attempted another manned mission.”

Onward and upward!

Sources:  History.com, Russian Space Agency, Space Safety Magazine, “Our Banner in the Sky” painting by Edward Church