Russian Supply Vehicle To ISS Burns 184
First time accepted submitter Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "The Russian cargo spacecraft 'Progress' developed problems and burned up in the atmosphere shortly after its launch at 1300 GMT. From the article: 'The Russian space agency said the Progress M-12M cargo ship was not placed in the correct orbit by its rocket and fell back to Earth. The vessel was carrying three tonnes of supplies for the ISS astronauts.'"
Re:I'm afraid this means vodka rationing, boys (Score:3, Interesting)
What? This was the FIRST failure of a progress module. Also as far as I know, they haven't had a single fatality related to their current manned space vehicle (the Soyuz) and unless they are hiding some early issues, they have never lost any crew on manned flights. Remember, the shuttle lost 2 crews, and we lost an Apollo crew on the ground. I would say the Russian human spaceflight program is safer than the US program, although IMHO losing 2 shuttle crews is a reasonable amount of loss for a pioneering program. Just think about how many ships were lost when man first started exploring the globe.
Bad luck lately (Score:4, Interesting)
They had a lot of bad luck lately. Losing at least three launches this year. I hope they get back on track soon. Who else could transport new people up and down to the ISS. Freight can be done by ESA's ATV, but human space flight is right now Russia only.
Re:I'm afraid this means vodka rationing, boys (Score:3, Interesting)
According to wikipedia (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents), 277 Americans have flown in space, compared to 96 for USSR/Russia. 14 Americans have been killed in spaceflight (technically 13, because one was Israeli), and 4 Soviets were killed. That's a death rate of 5% for USA and 4.2% for Russia.
Re:Shuttle (Score:2, Interesting)
Please no that program should have never happened. Making a reusable do all vehicle for going to space was never a great idea. Weight is so critically important, sure reuse the same modular design over and over. You want a do all thing in orbit and a cheap way to get stuff there. The shuttle was designed to push money all over the country not get to space efficiently.