Background
A spacecraft of the design Vostok 3KA had only been launched once before, which was on March 9, 1961. This mission was called Korabl-Sputnik 4, and it was a complete success. Prior to Korabl-Sputnik 4, the two previous missions in the Vostok programme were both launched in December 1960, and both ended in failure.
Only days before the launch of Korabl-Sputnik 5, the cosmonaut team, which consisted of 20 men, experienced its first fatality. Cosmonaut candidate Valentin Bondarenko was killed in a fire during a training exercise in an oxygen-rich isolation chamber. It's not clear whether other cosmonauts were told of his death or not; the media didn't learn of Bondarenko's death - or even of his existence - until many years later, in 1986.
Read more about this topic: Korabl-Sputnik 5
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense ones native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (18691940)
“... every experience in life enriches ones background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877?)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)