The Nedelin Disaster
There's some justice in the fact that the worst rocket accident in history, which happened 50 years ago this week, is remembered by the name of the man who caused it. Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin was a daring military commander who rose through the ranks to command the Soviet Union's Strategic Missile Forces during the Cold War. In the autumn of 1960, his primary focus was the development of the new R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile, which was intended to compete with the American Atlas. Work on the R-16 was ahead of schedule, according to Soviet rocket designer Boris Chertok in his landmark history Rockets and People, with a target date of July 1961 for the first launch, when Nedelin upped the ante: he would launch on November 7, in time for the 43rd anniversary of the Soviet revolution.
Nedelin's quest for glory cost him his life, as well as the lives of nearly 100 other people. Because the schedule was rushed, exhausted workers took all kinds of shortcuts and risks, including continuing to work on the missile after it had been fully fueled on the Baikonur launch pad, with 250 people milling around within close range.
On the evening of October 24, a series of errors, including an incorrectly set switch, resulted in a rocketeer's worst nightmare: the R-16's second stage fired on the pad while still attached to the first stage beneath it, which exploded. There was an investigation, but there was no witch-hunting or official blaming. The Soviet authorities decided that being present at the accident scene was sufficient punishment for the engineers and technicians who survived. Families of the victims were instructed to remain silent, and the first detailed accounts of the accident did not appear until the late 1980s.
Marshal Nedelin, on the other hand, was near the base of the missile at the time of the explosion and was killed in the blast. "The majority of the dead were unrecognizable," Chertok writes, "but Nedelin was identified by the 'Gold Star' medal that had survived."
Native name: Катастрофа на космодроме Байконур
English name: The Catastrophe at Baikonur Cosmodrome
Date: October 24, 1960
Time: 18:45
Type: Rocket explosion
Cause: Short circuit in the rocket
Organised by: Soviet Strategic Missile Troops