The Soviet fighter pilot Valentin Bondarenko could become the first person in space. In any case, the chances for it were. But before his first flight, he simply did not live: he died by an absurd accident during the tests.
Valentin Vasilievich Bondarenko was born on February 16, 1937 in Kharkov. His father, the head of the shop of the Kharkov Fur Factory, went to the front in the first days of the war. Together with his mother and elder brother, Valentine survived the German occupation. He became a senior pupil in the Kharkov aeroclub. In 1954, after graduation, he entered the Voroshilovgrad Military Aviation School, after his disbandment he transferred to Groznenskoye, and then to the Armavir School, which he graduated with honors in 1957. Military service Bondarenko was held in the aviation units of the Air Force of the Baltic Military District.
April 28, 1960 Valentine's cherished dream came true: after careful selection he was enlisted in the first detachment of Soviet cosmonauts. Of the few thousand people selected only 29 people.
Initially, Valentine was not among the six candidates for a space flight on the ship "Vostok". But for various reasons, several selected future cosmonauts were out of order, and Bondarenko.
The number of trials included a ten-day stay in the surd-chamber, whose purpose was to test the response to the absence of external stimuli. It was believed that the conditions in the chamber are close to the conditions inside the spacecraft. She was stationed at the Air Force Research Institute-7 (now the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine).
After the experiment, Valentin was informed that he can remove the medical sensors attached to the body. In the places of attachment there were red traces, which Bondarenko wiped with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol. After that, the young man, without looking, threw the cotton wool toward the trash can. But by an unfortunate accident she landed on the spiral of a hot electric hotplate and immediately broke out. Since the chamber was filled with almost pure oxygen, the flame quickly spread. On the test pilot, a woolen training suit caught fire ....
It was not possible to open the camera quickly due to a large differential pressure. When she was finally discovered, the cadet was still alive. Doctors of the Botkin Hospital fought for 8 hours for his life. He died on March 23, 1961, just 19 days before the flight of Gagarin, who spent several hours with his companions in the hospital ward. The cause of death was a burn shock.
The death of Senior Lieutenant Valentin Bondarenko was not reported anywhere: in those days everything that was connected with the cosmos was strictly classified. However, on June 17, 1961, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Valentin Bondarenko "was awarded the Order of the Red Star for the successful fulfillment of the government's task, posthumously.
At the grave of Valentin Bondarenko, located in Kharkov in the Filippovskoe cemetery, an obelisk was erected with the inscription: "A bright memory of fellow pilots". And only in the 80 years there was a postscript: "cosmonauts of the USSR".
Bondarenko left his wife Anna and son Alexander. For a while, they continued to live in the Star City, where Anna worked in the Cosmonaut Training Center, then left for Kharkov, where they had relatives. Up to the age of 16, Sasha was paid for his father a pension of 100 rubles - the money at that time was quite decent. Subsequently, Alexander Bondarenko followed in the footsteps of his father and became a military pilot.
Only in 1980 about the death of Valentine Bondarenko began to write the press. In the USSR, an article about him was first published in 1986 in Izvestia,. In 1991, the name of Bondarenko was named one of the lunar craters, and in July 2013 the name of the pilot-cosmonaut was awarded to the school № 93 of the city of Kharkov, where he once studied.
It would seem that the death of Valentin Bondarenko has nothing to do with the space flights themselves - it's just a tragic accident. However, without such mistakes and tragedies, astronautics could not develop.
By the way, this story forced engineers and scientists to review the design of the test chambers, in particular, changing the composition and pressure of the atmosphere, which was taken into account in the further development of manned spacecraft.
Today, in the Museum of the First Flight, located in the city of Gagarin, Smolensk region, in the small homeland of the world's first man who went into space, you can see a surdobarokameru, which is an exact copy of the one in which Valentin Bondarenko died. This was reported by the Internet publication "Comte".