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Questions arose of emergency rescue of a cosmonaut in case of a launch failure of the booster rocket, as this was considered a rather probable event. The percentage of unsuccessful launches was rather high, and working on this problem of rescue were B.G. Suprun and V.A. Yazdovski as co-authors of the System of Emergency Rescue (SAS), but actually, S.P. Korolev worked them through it. On a regular basis he visited Suprun, he gave advice on increasing efficiency of this system and he knew the workings of this system to the smallest detail. This was natural for him, for the life of the cosmonaut, S.P. Korolev answered personally, and he did not remove this responsibility from himself. SAS worked as follows: [list][*]From launch until T+40 seconds by radio command emergency ejection of the cosmonaut with the subsequent ejection of seat and a landing by parachute is made [*]From T+40 seconds until T+150 seconds, there is capability for an emergency shutdown of engines of the booster rocket and when the falling rocket has reached 7 km altitude emergency ejection of the cosmonaut, etc. is made. [*]From T+150 seconds until T+700 seconds from trailer contacts (Gyro equipment) there is an emergency shutdown of engines of the booster rocket and the separation of the decent module is made. However, the automatic system of normal landing joins from the independent time mechanism on 70th second of flight. After falling to 7 km descent proceeds under the regular plan; [*]From T+700 seconds until T+730 seconds there is an emergency shutdown on engines of the 3rd stage and the separation of the entire ship is made. At an input in dense layers of the atmosphere on a signal from other modes there is a division of the ship to subsequent descent SA under the regular scheme.[/list] However the problem of rescue of the cosmonaut on the first 15-20 seconds of flight had no satisfactory outcome. The only thing that it was possible, was to hang out metal nets in an area where, after ejection, the cosmonaut was expected to fall, as in this situation, the parachute simply would not have time to deploy fully. But even if the cosmonaut survived this ejection, the resulting explosion and fire would probably kill them anyway. All the same, S.P. Korolev felt terrible because of the impossibility to solve the problem of rescuing the cosmonaut during these potentially fatal seconds, but a solution was impossible. In the end, Sergey Pavlovich has resolved, that piloted flights should be made only after two successful pilotless flights.
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