There are hardly any documents available depicting Bondarenko's life, an attempt from the Soviet Union to erase Bondarenko. Bondarenko's death was caused by fire in a sealed, high-oxygen environment, which also befell the crew of Apollo 1. There was some later unfounded speculation that, had the Soviets been open about the circumstances of Bondarenko's death, NASA might have been alerted to the hazardous design of the early Apollo command module and would have made changes which could have prevented the 1967 deaths of the three Apollo 1 crew members. However, by 1966 the lethal hazards of a high-pressure 100-percent-oxygen environment such as Apollo 1's had been thoroughly described in American scientific publications and were well known to NASA. In 1971, the crew of Apollo 15 placed a plaque on the moon dedicated to the fallen astronauts. Valentin Bondarenko's name was not on the plaque as his death had not been revealed at the time. Books An account of Bondarenko's life appears in the 2003 book Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon by Colin Burgess. References Bibliography External links Cosmonaut biography for Valentin Bondarenko Yaroslav Golovanov, "Cosmonaut No. 1" (in Russian) James Oberg, "Dead Cosmonauts", chapter 10 of Uncovering Soviet Disasters, (Random House, New York, 1988) contains a detailed account of his attempts to uncover the facts concerning actual and alleged deaths in the Soviet space program. 1937 births 1961 deaths Accidental deaths in the Soviet Union Deaths from fire Military personnel from Kharkiv Nonpersons in the Eastern Bloc Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Soviet Air Force officers Soviet cosmonauts Space program fatalities