Russian Space Agency Determines Cause of Soyuz Crash 102
An anonymous reader writes "The online version of the San Francisco Chronicle reports the cause of the loss of a Soyuz rocket in August. The Russian Space Agency, ROSCOSMOS says a manufacturing flaw led to the failure of a gas generator."
Re:There are no accidents (Score:3, Interesting)
We made it to the moon with ones that burn on the launch pad. And I recall some shuttles exploding and/or disintegrating as well. And our economy was great back then. Maybe what we've been missing these last couple years is spacecraft going boom. Maybe we can just dynamite a decommissioned shuttle to fix the economy. Should be a cheap experiment.
There was a test (Score:2, Interesting)
There was an urgent full-cycle test of Soyuz rocket engine RD-0110 (from the same batch which include failed one) at the test range near russian city Voronezh right after Progress has crashed. Defect inspection after firing test showed no mistakes in manufacturing or defects in materials used, so decision-makers marked this Progress crash with "shit happens" bit, and allowed remaining engines form the batch to be used on purpose.