posted 03-14-2007 01:47 AM               

Is there anyone out there that has technical documents, schematics, transcripts (outside of the Vostok-1), on-board journals, post-flight technical reports, etc?

RGANDT seems to be the only source, but their e-mail is blocked from my ISP's servers!

(As an update I have found a way to keep these from bouncing, but out of 5 emails sent to different locations over a month ago - 0 responses.)

posted 05-07-2007 08:53 PM               

Take for example the Raduga system. It was used during landing. It was located in the SA somewhere. It was flown during Voskhod (confirmed). Was it flown on Vostok? (probably, but not certain) It was shortwave. (9-20Mhz 80-90% certain on these numbers). There were no controls for the cosmonaut to turn it on or off (99 % certain), so it must be automatic, probably turned on somewhere in the jettison sequence after TDU firing (70-80% certain). How well did it function if it all ? Unknown. Did it have an antenna ? Unkown. Did it even need an antenna ? There are vague references to the outer hull serving as an antenna - have no idea where this reference came from. How much power usage -independent battery? Completely unknown.

The heatshield. It was ablative made of a "teflon-like (80-90% certain)" material if the translation is right. At it maximum thickness 180 mm (most sources) or 140mm (Kamanin in citing a test question on the heatshield thickness given to cosmonauts. So 140-180mm would be correct, but by researching I added another variable!

Also mentioned was the Krug system that were "signals sent by the ship during landing" by Kamanin which completely throws a wrench into poorly understood systems. Or were they testing cosmonauts on Vostok/Voskhod and Soyuz systems on the same test in 1964?

posted 06-19-2007 10:25 AM               

Another item that is speculated is that the parachute we see on the topside of the ejection seat was the main parachute for the seat and the cosmonaut right after ejection, and the cosmonaut landed on that chute, and the seat crashed to the ground without one !

A reconstruction of the ejection sequence is somewhat understood. A barometric altimiter initiated the hatch jettison, a timer started, a red light flashed on the panel with a warning tone and 2 seconds after the hatch jettison the rockets on the bottom of the seat fired for 1.1 seconds.

A set of barometric switches specially made for parachute jumping called a PPK mechanically pulled the mechanism to pull the chute from the top of the seat. A second set of these PPK's would separate the cosmonaut and parachute from the seat.

These PPK's were activated by air pressure, but also had a variable time delay that could be set by the user.