Emergency recovery of the crew of the manned transportation spacecraft Soyuz during ascent to orbit (towards a history of development of the unique space hardware)

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the development of the equipment for emergency recovery of the Soyuz spacecraft crew during ascent to orbit, and contains a summary of research, engineering, design and experimental studies, carried out by specialists of RSC Energia (formerly OKB-1), TsNIIMash (formerly NII-88), TsAGI and many other companies that were involved in the development of the emergency crew rescue equipment. The paper discusses layout arrangements for the emergency escape nose section, algorithms for the operation of the emergency rescue system, provides results of simulations of the motion of the emergency escape nose section and structural parts of the spacecraft in case of the launch vehicle failure, provides brief results of the analysis of actual cases of emergency crew rescue, including the failure of Soyuz-FG launch vehicle on October 11, 2018. Key words: descent vehicle, emergency escape nose section, separation equipment.