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Further Details From Soyuz Mishap
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Apr 25, 2008 04:10 PM
from the remind-me-never-to-crash-my-spaceship dept.
from the remind-me-never-to-crash-my-spaceship dept.
fyc brings us some information from Universe Today about what happened to Soyuz TMA-11 when it re-entered the atmosphere late last week. Reports indicate that a failure of explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz modules delayed the re-entry and oriented the capsule so the hatch was taking most of the heat, rather than the heat shields. CNN reports that the crew was in 'severe danger.' They experienced forces of up to 8.2 gravities. NASA officials have voiced their approval of how Russia handled the crisis. They expect to rely heavily on Soyuz spacecraft once the shuttles are retired in 2010.
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Soyuz Ballistic Re-entry 300 Miles Off Course 197 comments
call-me-kenneth writes "Soyuz TMA-11, carrying a crew of three returning from the ISS, unexpectedly followed a high-G ballistic re-entry trajectory and ended up landing 300 miles off-course. The crew, including Commander Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, are reportedly in good health. Soyuz capsules have previously saved the lives of the crew even after severe malfunctions that might have led to the loss of a less robust vehicle."
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GAO Report (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GAO Report (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:GAO Report (Score:4, Informative)
The closest operational heavy lift system is the Delta IV Heavy coming in at only 1450kg less mass to LEO than the shuttle's max payload, and which has one successful and one partially successful launch on its record. However, the Delta line is a good one, and none of the eight Delta IV launch vehicles (including three Medium and three Medium+ launches) have been lost.
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We won't always be so lucky (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We won't always be so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect the attitude might change somewhat when China and India start putting people on the moon too. Then we'll find out whether the United States is in inevitable decline or whether there's some life left in the old empire.
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Re:We won't always be so lucky (Score:4, Informative)
The safety differences between Soyuz and Shuttle are statistically insignificant. Unless you engage in shady practices like not counting Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-10 "because they were a long time ago", etc... By that that metric one should be able to discard Challenger as well - at which point Shuttle's safety is still equal to or better than any other booster excepting only Soyuz. Even so, the difference is still statistically insignificant because neither vehicle has a enough flights to create valid statistics.
Myself, I'm not surprised at the latest Soyuz incident. Soyuz has a long history of incidents and near accidents.
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Re:We won't always be so lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:We won't always be so lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you're being flippant, but xenophobia can be very rational.
Some cultures area more productive than others, and they all compete with each other for resources -- consisting mostly of land, energy, and minds. Sometimes that competition devolves to open war, other times to guerilla war, but nowadays mostly to ideological subversion. The current "all cultures are equivalent" drumbeat is an example of this kind of attack.
When one culture has developed an efficient pattern -- one capable of producing vast amounts of safety and comfort and making it available in some proportion to all of its members -- then it is rational for that culture to adjust its pattern to breed resistance to changes that other cultures try to introduce into it. Xenophobia is probably the cheapest way to mobilize that kind of resistance en masse.
Parent
Similar to Soyuz 5? Upsidedown reentry. (Score:5, Informative)
Russian hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a moral that applies here... how does it go again? Something about not putting all your eggs in one basket, if I recall correctly...
Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
By "electronics would get them killed" do you mean in combat?
My brother is a MiG-29 (and Su-27) pilot. (He has also flown F-16s on a USAF detachment.) On a landing approach in the MiG-29, he hit a truck that was parked a little too close to the runway. They had to replace the wheels and tires but otherwise the aircraft was fine. The truck was totalled.
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Re:Russian hardware (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Informative)
Your comments about Russian aerospace hardware is at best optimistic and based more in folk lore than anything.
A lot of Russian jet aircraft are simple but pretty fragile. US aircraft tend to be pretty complex but very rugged. The Mig-21 was made of tissue paper compared to the F-4, F-105, A-6 and or F-100.
Even the F-15 has huge kill ratio VS every Migs.
There was at least one F-15 that had a mid-air and lost a wing! That plane made it home!
Yea US aircraft tend to require more man hours and you have to have more skills and tool than your average oil change tech but they tend to be very rugged and reliable.
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IAF F-15 Mishap (Score:5, Informative)
The incident to which you refer was a mid-air collision in an Israeli Air Force training flight. Here is a link [youtube.com] to the History Channel interview with the pilot. After McDonnell Douglas analyzed the accident, they concluded that the F-15's lifting body design allowed it to remain airborne on one wing, given enough speed.
Gigantic kudos to the pilot who brought that plane home safely! After a full investigation into the accident, a new wing was fitted, and the fighter returned to service.
How's that for American aircraft ruggedness! (Well, in the F-15's case anyway)
Parent
old-fashioned engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the old days: "We don't fully understand the physics of this thing, so let's make this part 5 times stronger than it has any reason to be, just in case shit goes seriously wrong."
*kaboom*
"Heh, good thing we had that margin of error!"
Modern engineering: "We can shave 0.37% off the cost of the final product by replacing this part with cheaper, lighter materials. The computer model tells us this is perfectly safe to do."
*KABOOM*
"Oops, I guess our computer model didn't account for turbulence."
Parent
Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't re-enter without the heatshield. They started re-entry improperly oriented and properly oriented the craft at virtually the last possible instant. That isn't tough, that's damn lucky.
Soyuz is much cheaper than a Shuttle per launch. But considering it takes something like four Soyuz launches and four Progress launches to incompletely replace a single Shuttle mission to ISS, it shouldn't be surprising that it is cheaper - lower capability almost always implies lower costs. I say 'incompletely' because Soyuz/Progress cannot deliver station modules, cannot deliver external cargo, cannot deliver ISS racks, cannot return hardware... etc.. etc... All of which the Shuttle can do. (Not to mention that the CBM hatches available to Shuttle carried cargo containers are nearly four times as big as the APAS hatches used the Soyuz/Progress.)
If only cheap and super-tough weren't mutually incompatible.
It makes perfect sense - because assembling and launching them in serial (as opposed to parallel) means you can apply lessons learned from assembling the first to assembling the second. You can 'promote' and 'demoted' hardware from one vehicle to the next to ease schedule pressure. Etc... Etc... Launching them at the same time means assembling them at the same time - and for one-off (or severely limited production) vehicles that means more expensive, more likely to fail, more likely to slip schedule, etc... etc... Without providing an iota more science return.
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Re:Russian hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Daylight. They are constantly hours ahead, and the west still hasn't caught up.
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Built tough. (Score:4, Insightful)
They're the Volvos of the space program.
There's another way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we vote this guy in (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Safe even upside down? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities! (Score:5, Informative)
Modern fighter aircraft are software-limited to 9G maneuvers, with the crew in G-suits and trained for it. (The hardware can probably take higher). The Gemini launches on converted Titan-II missiles routinely hit about 8G during the ascent (Shuttle does 3G).
Then-Captain John Stapp in his rocket sled experiments in the late 1940s/early 1950s routinely experienced 18G in the "eyeballs in" position, and 30G in "eyeballs out" deceleration as the sled stopped. The peak force he survived was around 45G. (Black-eyed, bloodshot, bruised, with the occasional cracked rib and generally beat up, but survived.)
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