“The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won’t work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, “cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.”
www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/23/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
1 – Komarov, on right, and Gagarin, first man in space. Close friends, Komarov knew that Gagarin would be his replacement if he refused to fly the shit capsule.
2 & 3 – Komarov’s funeral
This sounds like the origin story of a super villain.
“Betrayed by his country, abandoned by science, thrust into a world he never made!!!
“Doctor Komarov, THE INHUMAN TORCH!!”
Poor comrade looks more like THE HUMAN CARBON LOG. You figure Brezhnev had Gagarin disappeared a few years later?
According to Wikipedia, the cause of the plane crash that killed Gagarin cannot be verified, though a KGB investigation reports that:
“an air traffic controller provided Gagarin with outdated weather information, and that by the time of his flight, conditions had deteriorated significantly.
Ground crew also left external fuel tanks attached to the aircraft. Gagarin’s planned flight activities needed clear weather and no outboard tanks.
The investigation concluded that Gagarin’s aircraft entered a spin, either due to a bird strike or because of a sudden move to avoid another aircraft. Because of the out-of-date weather report, the crew believed their altitude to be higher than it actually was, and could not properly react to bring the MiG-15 out of its spin”
In other words, yes it was a set-up by Brezhnev. Aren’t conspiracies fun?
He was forced into a mission that he knew he would die from and couldn’t back out of it because his replacement was his best friend. He sacrificed himself to save him by partaking this mission.
If you can’t recognise the carcass then under no circumstances should the funeral service include an open casket.
not the funeral service. This is officials viewing the body (or what’s left of it) in the morgue.
Godspeed, sir.