May not be what we wanted to happen, but everyone got home safely. That's a win in my book, glad the emergency systems are working as intended.
It's the beginning of a very very small, exclusive club, one that will hopefully not be too big.
The other Soyuz incident in 1983 was Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L, sometimes known as Soyuz T-10a or T-10-1.
Found below from wiki.
It was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the Soyuz T-9 crew. However, it never finished its launch countdown; the launch vehicle was destroyed on the launch pad by fire on September 26, 1983. The launch escape system of the Soyuz spacecraft fired two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crew. It is the first case in which a launch escape system has been fired with a crew aboard.
In early US space program, in one of the test flights before Apollo program, a 2 stage rocket failed mid flight. The rocket escape system attached on top of the capsule fired and successfully saved the capsule. But there was no crew in the capsule.
Just watched this PBS special on the US space program. Pretty interesting footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jia78xRMTEc
There have been some other, less consequential manned launch failures.
Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during ascent, and only some quick thinking saved the mission.
Apollo 13 suffered extreme vibration in the second stage center engine that nearly tore the rocket apart. (This is unrelated to the more famous problem Apollo 13 experienced later in the mission.) Fortunately the vibrations messed with sensors which caused the engine to shut down, and the launch continued on the remaining four.
STS-51-F lost an engine a few minutes after launch. It was still able to make orbit on the remaining engines, but ended up in a lower orbit than planned.
With space launch systems, any use of escape system is dangerous and best to avoid. I think it will be a long time before aborting/escaping from botched space launch and recovery will be as routine as aborted takeoffs and go arounds.
The probability for commercial airliners is something around 1 in 100 million.
https://www.universetoday.com/98484/this-day-in-space-histor...
For example, Progress ship (very close in design to Soyuz ship, unmanned ship to deliver supplies, not recoverable) failed less than 2 years ago due to launcher failure.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
I imagine you are happily doing 3, maybe 4 G's, then an alarm sounds and suddenly the escape system (or mission control, your the commander) decides you are not going to space after all, adds 10 G's or so to what you are already doing for a couple seconds, then a couple seconds of free fall until the parachutes open, then the final kick when you are about to land.
They had a very bad day.
At least it's not a very long time inside a Soyuz. I don't think I fit inside one.
That's a much gentler experience, provided the booster doesn't explode.
After landing safely (and being badly bruised), they asked for cigarettes and were given shots of Vodka. [1]
[1] http://www.americaspace.com/2013/09/28/we-were-swearing-thir...
"A few hundred miles."
It is better to be on the ground wishing that you were in orbit, than to be in orbit wishing that you were on the ground.
The Soyuz launch abort system is actually quite robust probably the best launch abort system that has been implemented for manned flight so far with the Orion and Crew Dragon only marginally improving on it and even that is still not clear given those haven’t been flown yet alone actually used in practice yet.
There's eight for redundancy, it's a fault-tolerant system.
Also, the engines are designed for use in space during a normal mission and to be recovered. So in that configuration the crew would still need to be located close to a hydrazine thruster as a part of a normal flight.
Smaller Dracos are used for in-orbit maneuvering. SuperDracos are now solely for launch abort. They could conceivably be used for an orbital maneuver requiring more delta-v than the fine-tuning the Dracos do, but at this point the only likely destination for Dragon is the ISS.
Sure, in _very_ rare case engines might not shut down or something else might get broken, but "If the booster had exploded, the crew would have been in extreme danger." seems too over the top. Launch escape tower is jettisoned for a reason ...