The Final Countdown Trivia Quiz

Answer: Fire

The story starts with a thermostat designed for a 28 volt supply which was not upgraded when the supply was changed to 65 volts. The higher voltage fused the contacts of the thermostat closed, resulting in a heating element being permanently switched on. This melted the insulation on some wires during a ground test. During the flight, the fan supplied by the wires was switched on, causing the fire which resulted in the failure of the tank.

This 1970 space mission was the subject of the 1995 film "Apollo 13".

Answer: Adverse weather

The mission was to place cosmonauts on the Salyut 5 space station however the automatic docking system failed, the mission was abandoned and they returned to Earth. They landed at night in fog in the middle of a blizzard some eight kilometres from shore. The capsule was designed to cope with a splashdown. However it broke through the ice, the parachute dragged it beneath the surface and the beacons could not be seen in the fog. The temperature was minus 22 degrees Celsius.

Rubber boats and amphibious vehicles were tried but were defeated by the conditions. In the end, the rescue was abandoned until dawn when a helicopter with frogmen brought the capsule to the surface. The crew were rescued and the capsule then dragged to shore by helicopter. It was not until glasnost ten years later before any of this became publicly known.

Answer: The leaking fuel froze

Hydrazine, the fuel involved, freezes at two degrees Celsius. Re-entering the Earth's atmosphere was accompanied by a rise in temperature, causing the fuel to start leaking again. The fuel leaked on to two of the three auxiliary power units (APUs). The APUs are only used during launch and landing, and are used to control flaps and landing gear.

At least two APUs are needed to control the descent. The heat they generated caused a fire about two minutes before landing and eventually the explosion.

The fire died out once the fuel was exhausted. The damage was only discovered by technicians the day after landing.

Answer: Incomplete separation

Although there were manual controls, the whole flight was controlled by automatic systems or by ground control as it was not known what effect the flight would have on Gagarin. In the event, he remained conscious throughout.

During the descent, the retrorockets successfully fired. However, after the command was give to separate the re-entry module from the service module, a bundle of wires prevented complete separation. On re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, the modules gyrated strongly until the wires burned through. The descent then proceeded as expected. Gagarin was ejected from the module to land by parachute some ten minutes after the re-entry module.

Answer: His suit started filling with water

The spacewalk was terminated and by the time he was back on board the space station, he was having difficulty seeing, hearing and speaking. About one and a half litres of water leaked into the helmet before it could be removed.

The water came from the suit's life support system rather than his drinking bag as initially suspected. In fact the investigators determined that there were seven potential sources for the leak.

Answer: His suit had over-inflated

Alexey Leonov, the space walker, had to partially deflate his suit in order to be able to bend and manoeuver in the lock, suffering the "bends" (decompression sickness) as a result. He is reported to have carried a suicide pill in case he couldn't get back into the spacecraft and had to be abandoned.

The two cosmonauts had an interesting landing as well, landing in deep forest and having to spend a night in the capsule in sub-zero temperatures. The rescue party arriving on skis the next day built a log cabin for the second night before they all skied out to a waiting helicopter the next day.

Answer: Struck by lightning

Struck twice by lightning, three fuel cells were knocked offline causing much of the instrumentation to fail. The second strike knocked the onboard guidance system offline. Quick thinking got the fuel cells back online and avoided an aborted mission. They then proceed to the moon and the second lunar landing followed.

Another incident occurring on splashdown was that one of the astronauts was knocked out briefly when a camera came loose. Several stitches were required to close the wound.

Answer: Using the launch escape system (LES)

The rocket was destroyed. The control tower tried to activate the LES but the control cables had already been destroyed. The cosmonauts couldn't trigger the LES themselves. Activation by radio control took a bit longer and needed two people in another building to press two buttons within five seconds of each other after receiving a code word. In the event, the LES reportedly fired about two seconds before the rocket blew up.

The LES typically uses the tower on top of the space capsule to house rockets which, in an emergency, pull the space capsule clear of the launch vehicle. An alternative approach is to use ejector seats.

Answer: The automatic abort programme took over

The nose-cone tower used in the Launch Escape System (LES) had been ejected sometime earlier so the LES was not an option. When the trajectory deviated enough, the automatic abort system was triggered. The third-stage had by this time burnt off the three (of six) bolts that failed to release, however the rocket was now pointed back to Earth. This resulted in the cosmonauts experiencing over 21g acceleration instead of an expected 15g. Despite operating outside their design parameters, the parachutes deployed successfully and helped them to land safely.

If that was not enough, they landed on a steep snow-covered slope and began rolling down hill. Their parachutes again saved them, catching on vegetation and preventing them from tumbling off a 152 metre cliff.

Answer: The hatch blew out early

The Liberty Bell 7 was equipped with a new explosive hatch release mechanism. This fired early and Grissom had to exit quickly to avoid a watery tomb. The early release of the hatch meant the helicopter was not in position to recover the craft. It did in fact manage to secure the craft however by this time it had flooded and was underwater, adding considerably to its weight and taking it 450 kg beyond the helicopter's lifting capacity. Engine warning lights meant that the pilot had to abort the lift and let the spacecraft go.

Grissom by this time was having his own buoyancy problems, however a second helicopter successfully recovered him. The spacecraft however sank in nearly five kilometres depth of water. It was not recovered until 1999. The explosives intended to destroy the spacecraft in the event of sinking, had failed to go off.

The controversy involving Grissom was whether or not he had fired the hatch release mechanism. He said that he had not and that the system was at fault. He was later to die along with two other astonauts in fire during an Apollo 1 launch rehearsal in 1967. Ironically perhaps, incorporating an explosive hatch release mechanism in the design had been rejected partly because of the Liberty Bell 7 incident. Instead an inward-opening and manually released hatch was used. In the fire the cabin pressure doubled, making it harder to open the hatch and probably contributing to the deaths.