Mission Highlights
The Soyuz 7K-OKS spacecraft was launched on June 7, 1971, from Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakh SSR. Several months earlier, the first mission to the Salyut, Soyuz 10, had failed to successfully dock with the station. Soyuz 11, however, successfully docked with Salyut 1 on June 7 and the cosmonauts remained on-board for 22 days, setting space endurance records that would hold until the American Skylab 2 mission in May–June 1973.
Upon first entering the station, the crew encountered a smoky and burnt atmosphere and after replacing part of the ventilation system spent the next day back in their Soyuz until the air cleared. Their stay in Salyut was productive, including live television broadcasts. However, a fire broke out on day 11 of their stay causing mission planners to consider abandoning the station. The planned highlight of the mission was to have been the observation of an N-1 booster launch, but the launch was postponed. The crew also found that using the exercise treadmill as they were required to do twice a day caused the whole station to vibrate. Pravda released news of the mission and regular updates while it was in progress.
Read more about this topic: Soyuz 11
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“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)