Crew of 'Soyuz' Spacecraft Establish Contact After Failed Launch (theguardian.com) 123
A Russian-American space crew have been forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after their Soyuz rocket suffered a failure shortly after launching from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in one of the most serious space incidents in recent years. From a report: The launch began as a routine affair. Missions bound for the International Space Station (ISS) have been conducted every few months for the past 20 years. But 119 seconds into Thursday's flight, mission controllers on the Nasa broadcast began to speak of a failure. Shaky footage from the capsule's cabin seen during the live broadcast appeared to show objects floating mid-launch. The crew told mission control they felt weightless, an indication of a problem during that stage of the flight. Agitated voices flooding the radio link between mission control and the capsule could be heard on the Nasa broadcast. Details and the exact sequence of events remain unclear, but shortly afterwards the crew initiated an abort and ejected their capsule from the rocket. Judging by the time at which the failure took place, it involved separation of the rocket's second stage -- just before the ship would have ignited the third stage for its final kick to exit the atmosphere. A commentator on Nasa's live broadcast later said that rescue teams had reached the capsule's landing site and the two-person crew were in "good condition."
These aborts are dangerous (Score:4, Informative)
All sides have every incentive to play up the "the crew is safe" aspect, but there's frequently injuries associated with these aborts, and sometimes long-term ones. I hope they're actually in good health after this.
Re: (Score:2)
Um... how many of these aborts have actually happened?
Isn't the number "0"?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to being old.
Re: (Score:2)
the Soviet programme had a capsule-abort from a rocket once, one of the cosmonauts even credited the inventor of the American system that the Soviets duplicated with saving his life if I remember right.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:4, Informative)
the Soviet programme had a capsule-abort from a rocket once, one of the cosmonauts even credited the inventor of the American system that the Soviets duplicated with saving his life if I remember right.
The American system used in Challenger and Columbia? Seems like the Russians did not duplicate faithfully.
Ummmmm....the Space Shuttle had no such escape system. They had 'abort modes' that were only usable in certain stages of launch and climb to orbit. There was no option for the crew to 'bail out' during the Challenger accident and Columbia burned up on re-entry due to failure of the heat shielding on the left wing due to a foam impact during launch. The Apollo, Gemini and Mercury systems had such escape systems, but fortunately never had to be used.
BTW, Google is your friend......
Re: (Score:2)
He's nice, and he doesn't blab about your sex life, but he just doesn't know jack shit.
Re: (Score:1)
Where was there a "capsule" on board Challenger, Columbia, or any shuttle, American or Soviet? There wasn't? K, thought so.
The Soviets did a decent job duplicating the EOS from the Mercury program, which was improved for Apollo manned flights (thankfully never used).
Re: (Score:2)
No. Challenger and Columbia, or the Shuttle concept in total, was a security nightmare. Von Braun made 3 things clear when he took the helm of the space program.
1. No solid boosters in manned flights. For no reason, never.
2. There must be a way to separate the capsule with the astronauts from anything loaded with fuel in a fast and absolutely fault-proof way.
3. You have a Plan B? Great. When you have a Plan C, we'll talk about launching.
Lo and behold, nobody died in a space flight in the US until the fuckin
Re: (Score:2)
nobody died in a space flight in the US
Though the 3 man crew of apollo 1 died in a space rocket on the launch pad.
And the 3 man crew of apollo 13 only survived because of on the fly improvisation to allow the command module's CO2 scrubber cartridges to be used in the lunar module.
until the fucking crapfest the shuttles were.
According to Wikipedia there were 33 manned American space flights in the pre-shuttle era and during that era one crew died in an American spacecraft (though admittedly not during a space flight).
Compare to the 135 flights with two loss of crew incidents of the shuttle
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody is perfect.
Re: (Score:2)
Buran could have been the most perfect design of anything, ever. Alas, if you can't get it up, whether it's a better design is a moot point.
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
the Soviet programme had a capsule-abort from a rocket once, one of the cosmonauts even credited the inventor of the American system that the Soviets duplicated with saving his life if I remember right.
Yes, the Soyuz T10-1 abort used an escape tower to pull the spacecraft away from the burning (soon to be exploding) rocket, 1983. They credited Maxime Faget for inventing the escape tower that was used in the abort (before Soyuz, Soviet manned spaceflight used ejection seats, which only are useful over a very limited range of altitudes. And they left off the ejection seats for some missions, where they needed the mass).
https://web.archive.org/web/20030204073904/http://www.janes.com/aerospace/civil/news/jsd/jsd030203_3_n.shtml
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Soyuz has had two prior aborts prior to reaching orbit. Soyuz T-10A, in September 1983, caught fire during fueling. The LES motor fired, carrying the crew to safety shortly before the rocket exploded. Soyuz 18A, in April 1975, was a pretty close match for this event: stages 2 and 3 failed to fully separate before stage 3 ignition, the ensuing strain as the engine blew the second stage away caused the craft to veer off course, triggering an automated abort.
The crew of Soyuz 18A had a particularly nasty time of it. The abort triggered while the craft was already pointing downward, so it accelerated its downward fall - they went through about 20G of deceleration when they hit the atmosphere. The craft landed on a hill and started rolling, narrowly avoiding falling off a cliff before the still-attached parachutes snagged on trees. The terrain and heavy snow kept the rescue team from reaching them for a day, forcing the crew to camp overnight. And they were initially unsure of their position, and thought they might be in China - who was rather hostile at the time.
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to treat this abort-crew-is-safe similarly to how I treat the passenger in cars post-auto-accident. Asking, "are you OK?" doesn't mean I expect them to be exactly as they were prior to the collision, I'm establishing if they are in a position to respond, and how serious their injuries are. I expect they might have suffered whiplash, or been battered-around enough to have bruises and scrapes. I just want to know if they're seriously injured enough to require emergency medical attention, so when I'm talking with the 911 operator I can state if an ambulance must be called or not.
My expectation is that the crew is battered and possibly has suffered minor to moderate abrasions from cabin contents shifting about. Concussion isn't even ruled out. I expect though, no deep lacerations, no major bones broken, no injuries that would classify one as a casualty.
Re: (Score:3)
I expect they may need new underwear.
Re: (Score:2)
Which means they probably handled it better than any of us.
Re: (Score:2)
With all the data from the ... two other launch aborts ever? One from the 80s and the other from the 70s. I don't think that's sufficient evidence to talk about injuries happening 'frequently' since only 4 (well, now 6) people have ever experienced it.
I do hope they're in good health of course.
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Soyuz 7K-T No.39 / Soyuz 18a and Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L / Soyuz T-10-1. There have also been similar high-G experiences in Soyuz capsules from other causes, such as Soyuz 33, Soyuz TMA-1, and Soyuz TMA-11.
Nominal G forces in an abort in a Soyuz capsule are 15g. Sometimes they can be even more. The landing site is also untargeted in an abort and can be hazardous. Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts [nasawatch.com] who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.
Re: (Score:2)
What's the injury rate on staying attached to a failing booster that is falling out of the sky from a staging failure, or exploding on the pad?
I'm guessing it's far higher than the injury rate and severity from an abort scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts [nasawatch.com] who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.
Heh... On this week's "Space Boffins" podcast, they interviewed a European astronaut who had flown the Soyuz several times. He described a Soyuz landing as "a series of catastrophic events." On his first one, the Russians commented on the soft landing, he replied "You call *that* a soft landing?!?!" and they said "You're alive. That's a soft landing."
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.. (Score:1)
Old aviator joke
Re: (Score:2)
And any landing where you can use the aircraft again is a great one. Probably almost as old, but I only heard that addendum recently.
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds like the escape tower was not used here. The American narrator explicitly said the escape tower had been jettisoned before any mention of the failure, it looks like the escape tower gets jettisoned when the first stage separates based on the video. Based on the weightless feeling, it sounds like it just didn't have the power for whatever reason to reach orbit and started descending, and the negative G-forces of the descent made them feel weightless. So it sounds like the capsule was already des
Re: (Score:2)
On that video, the stage separation/escape tower jettison happens between 2:38-2:48, it looks like a lot of debris was around the vehicle then. The emergency/failure transmissions start at about 3:20.
Re: (Score:2)
It almost seems like the second stage never ignited.
Re:These aborts are dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Not according to a major Russian new agency. [tass.ru]
They say that the astronauts are not in a "completely good health".
Re: (Score:2)
Not in completely good health is to be expected. Aborts with emergency escape tower rockets pull you with 12+g away from the rocket (after all, they have to be more powerful than the rocket you're sitting on top, which accelerates you with 3-5g, and then some in case that thing goes boom right underneath you, which usually happens faster than the usual acceleration).
And I want to see you after being squished by about a metric ton to your chest. That's no cakewalk, you can expect some sort of injury from thi
Re: (Score:1)
there's frequently injuries associated with these aborts
Except for the fact that aborts aren't frequent, you nailed it.
I hate when that happens (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This always happens when you forget to check for a full tank of gas before a long trip.
It actually sounds like someone forgot to Check Yo Stagin'!!
Re: (Score:3)
Welcome back Jebediah. Now get ready for the next attempt. Moar boosters this time.
Re: (Score:2)
I was looking for this comment.
Re: (Score:2)
The cosmonauts thought it just meant that the Russian space program had started outsourcing their rocket engines to the Czech republic to save money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not true.
It's not fun, that fact.
What's next? (Score:1)
Looks like no ISS crew exchanges for a while until they determine the cause and fix it. Although supply should not be too much of a problem, although some scrambling might be necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
Soyuz delivers (virtually) no supplies. that's the Cygnus and Progress mostly, and those are on schedule.
Re: (Score:2)
Soyuz delivers (virtually) no supplies. that's the Cygnus and Progress mostly, and those are on schedule.
Progress flies on a Soyuz booster, so you can expect a stand-down while they analyze the problem.
But, as you say, there are other resupply spacecraft: Cygnus and Dragon. So they can keep up resupply even as they do the stand-down for failure analysis and recertify-for-flight.
Re: (Score:2)
And all ISS supplies are well stocked, because they anticipate having to survive at least one failed mission.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but nobody gives half a fuck if a non-manned rocket blows up. Or, let's put it that way, if the options are either to launch an unmanned supply rocket with the risk that it might blow up or to leave the ISS crew stranded with no supplies, that rocket launches.
Re: (Score:2)
Soyuz launches are suspended for a while and there is no Space Shuttle alternative available. Can Space X deliver?
Get Musk and Branson out of the way and Bezos will just Amazon Prime it up.
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, he'd start charging for delivery times that used to be free?
Re: (Score:2)
Soyuz launches are suspended for a while and there is no Space Shuttle alternative available. Can Space X deliver?
The SpaceX Crew Dragon is fully complete and certified. SpaceX was informed by NASA last week that it will require another four months at least to complete its own paperwork before it can fly.
SpaceX could fly them with probably two weeks' notice at this point - it doesn't employ bureaucrats.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. They've been doing so for years. It's a moneymaker for them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
> The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarded $1.6 billion to SpaceX for 12 cargo
> transport missions, covering deliveries to 2016. SpaceX CRS-1, the first of the 12 planned
> resupply missions, launched in October 2012, achieved orbit, berthed and remained on
> station for 20 days, before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the
> Pacific Ocean. CRS missions have flown approx
This is why everyone is going back to capsules (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Capsules have killed too, there was the Soyuz accident where faulty valve leaked the air into space and one where capsule impacted earth at full speed.
Re:This is why everyone is going back to capsules (Score:4, Informative)
Capsules have killed too, there was the Soyuz accident where faulty valve leaked the air into space and one where capsule impacted earth at full speed.
That is true, but those failure modes are not unique to capsules; air leaks and mechanical failures will kill in shuttles just as they will in capsules. The difference is that the capsule gives you more abort coverage, since the crew module is self-contained and can survive any conditions from stationary on the ground to orbital velocity. Just pop it off the stack (or whatever's left of it) and go -- not a comfortable ride (I've read that abort loads can be in excess of 20 G's for a few seconds) but that's easier to take than getting caught in the blast. The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, had stricter structural limits because of its large wings and cargo bay, so there were 'black zones' in its launch sequence where it could not safely separate in the event of a failure.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but none of them were unavoidable due to design constraints that could not be changed.
Re: (Score:2)
what the heck, could say that about any space failure that resulted in death. or any airplane or elevator or car or building failure that resulted in death.
Re: (Score:2)
Aside of Soyuz I, which was a rushed shitjob (much like Challenger's start, if you think about it), the Soyuz accidents were due to human error, not design flaws.
Re: (Score:2)
design flaws are a human error
they all were human error
human error causes death in capsules and cabins
Re: (Score:2)
Wings and wheels also add a whole lot of extra mass which directly takes away from payload while providing negligible benefit.
The space shuttle was more a vision of american prowess (and a means to spread government spending) than an effective space launch platform. There's a good reason no one else has or is doing it except for very small craft where the rocket equation balances differently with very different purposes.
Re:This is why everyone is going back to capsules (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the Space Shuttle was to go into orbit, dock with a spy satellite, and re-load it with new film canisters. That's why the Shuttle's cargo bay was exactly the size to hold a spy satellite (which not coincidentally is about the same size as Hubble - in fact they're just a HST pointed at the ground instead of at the stars). As long as the cost of each Shuttle mission was less than the cost of building and launching a new spy satellite, it was worth it to the USAF. The USAF was hoping for one Shuttle launch every week to restock its spy satellites with fresh film. At that frequency, the rocket stages you throw away become prohibitively expensive. So the Shuttle was designed with as many re-usable parts as possible.
Unfortunately for the Shuttle, during its development, spy satellites began switching to electronic camera sensors. These could simply beam the resulting images down to Earth via radio, obviating the need for film. Consequently, by the time the Shuttle finally flew, the USAF no longer needed it for its original purpose. And the Shuttle never flew more than about a dozen times a year, with average interval between flights being more than 2 months. The huge development, facility, and staff maintenance costs which were supposed to be amortized by spreading it over 50 launches a year, were instead spread over just 5 launches a year. Resulting in a per-flight cost which far exceeded the cost of conventional rockets.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious, is it possible for a capsule to perform a mission profile such as the Hubble repairs that the STS performed? What missions will never be attempted, because a capsule is simply not fit for that kind of mission? The shuttle did some amazing stuff, but if I had to choose, I think I'd rather have the crews of the Columbia and Challenger back rather than have the Hubble repaired. Perhaps it would have been better to build and launch a second Hubble, and keep using capsules?
Soyuz crew is having a bad problem (Score:1)
They will not go to space today.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The part that falls off second did not fall off. It is good that the part that falls off third did not make fire come out. The people in the box came back and can go to space again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if the American drilled a hole in something.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also here. [xkcd.com]
Components (Score:5, Funny)
Why is Soyuz in quotes? (Score:2)
Are you implying that this was a fake Soyuz, masquerading as the real thing?
Re: (Score:1)
Because the idiot who wrote the headline thinks that Soyuz is a name like Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour were. Slashdot only hires millennials who don't know anything that happened before about 2003.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot only hires millennials who don't know anything that happened before about 2003
I seriously doubt slashdot would have any success in hiring millennials. Why would they want to work for a decaying husk of a website that predates facebook by over a decade? They'd be just as well off working for a local 7/11; at least that is a job that is likely to still exist for more than a few months.
Poroshenko (Score:1)
Russia needs to get the Poroshenko suppporters out of their rocket factories. The incidents of sabotage are just getting worse and worse. One would think space is offlimits in the sabotage war going on between US and Russia but the Nazis runnignUkraine today did not get the memo. One must love Hillary's foreign policy choices. Giving weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria and to Nazis in Ukraine.
Re: (Score:2)
We need a new law for when someone interjects into a discussion that this is all Hillary's fault.
We could call it the Ghoul Rule.
This discussion has been ghouled. Actually you Godwinned it at the same time, that's like a two-fer. Pretty impressive.
Re: (Score:2)
I should have stated that more accurately.
The Ghoul Rule: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability that someone will place blame on Hillary Clinton approaches 1.
Re: (Score:2)
that's like a two-fer.
I love that drinking game!
Kavanaugh'd.
Q Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Capt. Picard: I understand what you've done here, Q. But I think the lesson could have been learned without the loss of 18 members of my crew.
Q: If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid.
Re: (Score:2)
Q was talking about the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Q: If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid.
What a socialist prick that Q is. He sees people in terms of groups, not individuals.
Picard was the wiser of the two. Sadly, Roddenberry was more like Q and saw this as one of Picard's faults.
I volunteer my trampoline (Score:2)
I have a big trampoline in the backyard, I’ll let the Russians and NASA use it for a minimal fee. What are the alternatives to getting men into space? Starliner? Dragon crew module? Chinese copies of the Soyuz? I think my trampoline is the safest method.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like it could have been way worse (Score:2)
Videos of Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L / Soyuz T-10-1 abort (Score:2)
Here are a couple videos of the 1983 pad abort of Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L / Soyuz T-10-1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:The missing footage shows (Score:5, Funny)
brainwashing works well on human subject, only specially train candidates are able to resist
Soon this world will belong to the trains. Choo choo mother fucker.