“In 1975, after a serious booster malfunction partway through ascent, pyrotechnics automatically fired to blast the crew’s capsule free of the rocket; as it fell back to Earth, its parachutes deployed properly, right on schedule. However, that Soyuz crash-landed in a hilly remote area and promptly began to roll down a snowy slope coming to a stop at the edge of a steep cliff only because the parachute snagged on some vegetation. The crew lived to tell the tale.”
