Russian Cargo Mission To ISS Spinning Out of Control 120
quippe writes: Many sources report that a Russian spacecraft, launched successfully (video) from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier Tuesday, is in big trouble now after having a glitch shortly after liftoff. There is a video on YouTube (credit: NASA) of the space ship spinning out of control. Recovery attempts haven't gone well so far, but they will continue. If they can't regain control, the ship will likely burn up when it falls back into the atmosphere. Current speculation points to greater-than-expected lift by the third-stage, because the apogee is 20km higher than planned. The ship does not seem to pose a threat to the ISS at the moment.
Re:Yesterday's News (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Dice, please let us know when you have something that wasn't reported in the major news outlets a day ago.
If you are coming here for cutting edge news, then you are in the wrong place.
The only reason I come back here is for the discussions about the stories. While I typically seen the major news pieces in other locations (and with more in-depth reporting than will ever be on /.) I haven't seen a site that comes close(*) to the /. comments section for it's structure, moderation and (gasp) insightful comments.
Many times I let the comments brew for a few hours and then read the ones that have risen to the top of the moderation system. That can give me a lot more insight into the background of a story than anywhere else.
* Yes I look at Soylent News every so often, but there is a tenth of the commenting there than there is here.
Re:UNMANNED Russian Spacecraft (Score:2, Insightful)
Apologies for posting something on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
(2) more force, unless purely rotational = higher speed
(3) higher speed = higher orbit
(4) 20km higher orbit is not much -- consistent with a small engine (like a thruster) causing it
So, (5) keep guessing what the problem is
My guess: a thruster stuck open...
Re:I bet the CEO of SpaceX is happy this morning.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Old? Yes, but in rocket science old = proven. Conservative people like that they are paying for proven tech that works.
Expensive? No, Soyuz and Progress are damn cheap.
Unreliable? Well, two failures out of ~150 missions is pretty good reliability for an unmanned cargo vessel.
Proton failures with booster going full Kerbal were much bigger deal. This is obviously a setback, but nobody can claim that Progress is unreliable based on this alone. Besides, main theory appears to be third stage shutdown problem, resulting in the stage colliding with Progress and damaging it critically.
This failure does prove that you need redundant supply ships for ISS (and for any long term manned space mission) - a booster or a cargo ship might fail, so you need dissimilar redundancy and suitable buffers of supplies. ISS has these things. Dragon and HTV are still working fine. Granted, if Progress flights get delayed due to accident investigation, Dragon is going to be in bit of a do-or-die mode in June as a failure for that cargo flight would be a fairly big deal. Not "evacuate ISS"-big deal (yet), but "reshuffle all cargo manifests, start conserving supplies"-grade big deal.