Tim Furniss
Vladimir Titov's wife calls it his half-spaceflight. On 27 September 1983, he and his flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov had what even today is still a truly unique experience among the 400-plus space travelling fraternity "launch abort!" Although the Space Shuttle has had engine shutdowns on the pad, one Shuttle "aborted" to orbit and another Russian crew had to abandon their launch when the upper stage failed to separate and misfired, Titov and his engineer were the first to experience the use of a launch escape rocket and they hadn't even left the launch pad. Titov recalled the day during an interview at the Boeing chalet he now works as the company's Moscow-based US-Russian liaison manager.
Evrything seemed to be going well with the count at the Baikonir Cosmodrome and Titov, aboard his Soyuz capsule, was looking forward to a long duration stint on a Salyut space station. A T-1min 40sec, the first stage engines were prepared for ignition, with turbopumps and other components starting up.
"It" took just 11sec. The cosmonauts felt a distinct vibration in two waves. Launch control knew there was trouble. A turbopump had malfunctioned and a fire had broken out in the bowels of the Soyuz rocket.
Control
The crew didn't know exactly what was wrong, as they couldn't hear launch control. They then felt a second vibration and immediately the abort signal was being transmitted to the booster from launch control. The escape rocket's four solid propellant 100 tonne thrust rocket's were ignited.
Titov and Strekalov knew they were leaving the launch pad and quickly "understood that this was a wrong launch", joked Titov. The rocket fired for just 4sec, giving the crew a 16-18g force. The Soyuz booster was exploding on the pad and the crew could not talk to the ground, which kept up a running commentary as the launch abort procedures went to work and the Soyuz, initially inside the payload shroud, flew to an altitude of about 1.4km.It was later dropped out of the shroud to make a "conventional" Soyuz landing 4km from the Baikonur launch pad. "We did not feel stressed but just very sad we were not going to the space station," he said. Though Titov's "half-spaceflight" had lasted 5min 30sec, he later spent a year aboard the Mir space station, flew on the US Space Shuttle twice and was the first Russian to make an "American" spacewalk.
Source: Flight Daily News
