Vladimir Komarov

Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov may have become the first man on the moon if the Soviet space program had managed to keep up with its head start on its American counterpart. It was the death of Komarov, the first human being to die in a space flight, that was a watershed event in the ultimate failure of the USSR to get to the moon. Komarov died on April 24, 1967 when the capsule of his reentry vehicle crashed to earth when its parachute failed. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space and his backup pilot, had objected to the flight of Soyuz 1 because design flaws had not been worked out. The crash of Soyuz 1, the first flight of a new class of Soviet spacecraft that were supposed to put a cosmonaut on the moon by 1968, showed that there were deeper problems with the Soviet moonshot program than just the design flaws of one craft. (Gagarin himself, another likely candidate to be one of the first men on the moon, died in a jet fighter crash nearly a year later due to the incompetence of Soviet ground crews and flight personnel.) Born March 16, 1927 in Moscow, Komarov was a Soviet test pilot and aerospace engineer who was part of the first group of cosmonauts selected for space flight by the USSR in 1960. Though twice disqualified during the Soviet space program for medical problems, he remained an integral part of the program due to his tenacity, technical skills, and engineering knowledge. At the Space City cosmonaut training center, he not only helped with the training of cosmonauts but, like Gagarin, helped design space vehicles. When the Soviet Union launched its moonshot program, Komarov was put in command of one of two groups of cosmonauts who were expected to land on the moon. (Gagarin was in his team.) Komarov was was made the pilot of Soyuz 1, and his trip made him the first cosmonaut to go into deep space for a second time. Unfortunately, he also became the first person to die during a space flight. When Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the moon two years later, they left a bag containing medals honoring Komarov and Gagarin behind on the moon surface to pay their respects to two pioneers of space flight.