Remarkable safety technology. Back in the old days those two men would have been dead.
They need to buy the parachute packers a case of vodka!
Remarkable safety technology. Back in the old days those two men would have been dead.
...
Actually, this is old days technology and that’s why they are alive.
If they’d been on the Shuttle they would be dead.
This was the American astronaut’s first launch.
There are pictures of both astronauts back at the launch complex. They look great. Just another day at the office.
You can't get much more "old days" than Soyuz. It's basically a refined mid-1960s spacecraft design sitting on top of about a 2nd generation descendant of the German V-2 rocket.
The basic design of a capsule on top of a rocket with an escape rocket to pull it away in an emergency is good one, which is why we used it in both Mercury and Apollo, and will use it again for the new generation of spacecraft NASA is developing.