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ISS Crew Returns in Soyuz Capsule
physicsnerd writes "According to CNN the Soyuz capsule from the International Space Station has landed in Kazakhstan. This is the first time US Astronauts have ever landed outside of the US."
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Before the shuttle program, as I recall, they always landed outside the US.
I'm sure many will disagree, but the cost of the shuttle program is horrendous, and NASA's insistence on using it has led to some cataclysmically stupid decisions. One example: the ISS (which is an utter joke compared to Skylab or Mir) was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit not because that was a good idea (it isn't) but because the shuttle could get there.
Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
The idea of capturing and reparing satellites is inherently absurd; most aren't where the shuttle can get 'em and the total cost of the program utterly dwarfs the expense that would have been incurred had they said of the Hubble "Well, we screwed it up...build another one and get it right this time."
The safety record sucks. After Challenger Richard Feynman put the probability of a fatal accident at one in fifty. So far, NASA's on the money and the nature of the shuttle is such that if someone dies, everybody dies.
Lest I be misunderstood, I understand the romantic and scientific appeal of manned space flight, of the visceral sense of satisfaction we can have as a species when we look up to the skies and say "We live there." I'm a strong proponent of that. I also recognize the complaints that the money spent on that is money not spent on (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, inoculating the sick, fill in your pet cause). The manned space program is hellishly uneconomical and a great deal of that can be laid at the feet of the shuttle program.
It's a white elephant without a mission, a bastard child of a spacecraft and an airplane which like most gadgets that try to do two fundamentally different things does neither well. Its payload capacity compared to heavy-lift rockets is a joke, it's barely capable of crawling out of the atmosphere, it's presented a tremendous constraint to the rest of the space program by forcing many missions to be less than they could have been in order to be shuttle-doable, and it bears repeating that every fifty flights it kills everyone on board.
It's time to ground the shuttle fleet permanently. Space isn't going anywhere. Stop pouring the hundreds of millions of dollars into the shuttle program and pour them into a new design effort. Scrap the silly "space-plane" concept and trinity dies at the end of the matrix reloaded develop a family of lifters and craft that _can_ be used for many things but don't back NASA into a corner that forces them to use it for all missions. Make crew safety an inherent feature (recognizing that there are tradeoffs and that getting out of the gravity well is a fundamentally dangerous activity). Stop throwing good money after bad on that ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
Let's do it over. And do it right.
In Soviet Russia, your capsule lands with you in it!
The astronauts were not the first Americans to land on foreign soil after a trip in space because U.S. tycoon Dennis Tito beat them to that distinction.
Because landing in a Soyuz is generally bumpier than in a shuttle, Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin were seated in the Soyuz on custom-built recliners designed to fit their bodies, NASA said.
This is fantastic. I bet the astronauts were complaining about everything.
My chair is too hard, The in flight meal is too dry, Nikolai kept kicking my seat. You wouldn't get this kind of service on a good old Shuttle.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
This is the first time US Astronauts have ever landed outside of the US.
I thought the moon people landed in the middle of the atlantic, does the US own that now ?.
I didn't even realize that space programs in US or Russia were even using space capsules as opposed to shuttles anymore.
I bet they are a crapload less comfortable than space shuttles.
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
ISS did WHAT?
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Um, I think you'll find that most of the Pacific Ocean is outside the USA, and that's where most of the early US astronauts came down.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
With the increasing trend of corporate sponsorships for space travel, i wouldn't be surprised to see the ISS be remamed the "IIS".
What? Are US Astronauts not allowed outside the country?
Well... it just sounded like a good title. I'm so good with words sometimes. :P
...you ARE the rubble that is falling from the sky..
What ever happened to a simple technology like at gps hooked up to a sat phone?
There should have been no searching at all for the capsule( or its radio beacon).
Russians lost contact with astronauts several minutes before landing. They landed more than 500 kilometers from target, and were waiting more than 5 hours for rescue heli.
However they were in pretty good condition - they were able to open landing capsule and ignite some fire to warm themselves. That's not that usual - normally astronauts after such landing qualify for med-evac...
Maybe they can report that there's a whole world outside of the US!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
And Russians, with their space tourism program, proved that econom-class is ok not only for semi-military educated cosmonauts, but even also for space tourists (including US citizens!).
I hope Europians and Japaneese will cooperate with Russians more, heliping to keep their space program. I doubt NASA will keep cooperating with Russians as in US everything is related to politics and Russians joined to Germany and France club, it means US decline trade operations and cooperation with them after they denied to help with Iraq occupation.
Less is more !
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
The Russian soyuz spacecraft has been the longest-lived, most adaptable, and most successful manned spacecraft design. In production for forty years, more than 230 have been built and flown on a wide range of missions.
The fundamental concept of the design can easily be summarised as obtaining minimum overall vehicle mass for the mission. This is accomplished by minimising the mass of the re-entry vehicle. This was achived by putting all the systems not needed for re-entry outside the re-entry vehicle in a jetisonable 'livingsection'*, and by having a re-entry vehicle with the highest possible volumetric efficency**.
Compare this to the US capsules of the sixties (in which almost everything that went up came down, and the volumetric efficency was poor) and todays twenty year old shuttle system. Basicly, by finding a good design, keeping things simple and not fixing that which isn't broken, the soviets and later the russians has keept what is basicly the same design flying for the better part of half a century. And in a way, it's a design more optimised to building large spacestations than the shuttle are - just leave your livingmodule on the station as you detach your capsule, and you have just increased the size of the station. The only thing the shuttle has going for it when it comes to stationbuilding is the canadarm (isn't there one mounted at the ISS already?) and the fact that the shuttle could, theoreticly, bring modules down for repair.
Oh well, anotehr victory for KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. While the shuttle has it's uses, for most everyday stuff in space a simple capsule is safer, simpler and possible cheaper.
*) As a rule of thumb, every gram saved this way saves two grams in overall spacecraft mass, as you don't have to support it with parachutes, protected by heatshields and braked on landing.
**) In theory this is a sphere, as the earlier vostok, but as the Soyuz was originaly planned to be used on lunar missions it was required to bank a little, generate lift and 'fly' a bit to reduce the G-loads on the crew - just like the Apollo was. The optimum shape was found to be the classic headlightshape the soyuz have had for it's entire life.
Most information in this post is taken from the linked websites, even if I've barely scraped the surface. I stronlge recomend following the links to learn more of this four decades old design.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
About the only thing that is limited to the US is Buttwiper^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hudweiser billboards.
Yes, but it is now called "Freedom Ocean"
I bet if they had kept trying to land 'em in the Pacific, they'd have missed sooner or later....
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
According to this report in German, the capsule came down almost 500km (300 Miles) outside it's planned target area, and it took two hours to locate it.
The astronauts climbed out of the capsule themselves and waved to the people looking for them when they finally turned up. That could have easily have gone very horribly wrong - imagine them coming down on the side of a steep mountain-face.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Russian: ~ 1 billion dollars per year.
American: ~ 15 billion dollars per year.
Of the 1 billion dollars a year, only 20% is paid by the Russian government, the rest is commercial enterprise. That's a fantastically tax efficient space programme for Russia. Can America get even a single shuttle launch for $200million?
Perhaps the US government should outsource the management of their space programme to the Russians. They have a better heavy lift capability more reliable launch vehicles and are many many times cheaper.
1) Egad! A matrix spoiler! Sneaky f*cker! :)
:o
:-))
:^)...but once it is in place everything thereafter is a breeze at relatively 'launch' low cost and minimal/reduced risk.
:)
;P
2) A better design? Ok, what design do you suggest? From what I've seen from those 'space-research' companies that have been mentioned on slashdot over the past few weeks...well...frankly I don't think we should get too excited
My (not so original) suggestion:
((Most of this has been discussed here on slashdot before - I'll just rince and repeat and state the obvious
Let's build a space-elevator. Right now we (eh..NASA) are spending VAST amounts of money to get relatively small amounts of material into space. The risks involved in getting this material into space are astronomical.
So build a space-elevator. The initial costs are most certainly incredibly high (no pun intended: astronomical - billions of dollars
I think most people will agree with me that ONLY once we have one of these in place that we can seriously begin to explore our solar-system.
(Because we can then build our space-ships as big as want and launching them towards other planets will be a breeze
There are some hurdles...we lack some of the technology required to pull this off...(again...a question of applying plenty of moola)...and finding a location for this thing is another kettle of fish altogether.
(E.g. Right on top of Mount Kilamanjaro? I doubt the locals wil let ya)
Rockets are not the way to go. They are a stop-gap..eh..thingy...measure.
Plan B:
Invent an anti-gravity drive, stick it in your favourite rocket and forget everything I mentioned above
Or they could have burned up in the atmosphere and been spread over hundreds of square miles of scrub land.
They actually missed their landing point and landed in the Kazakhstan desert: over 400km from their intended destination!!
BBC News: story
http://blog.grcm.net/
By alot. And it took hours to get to the capsule. This is just a bit disturbing.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Above post = troll (matrix spoiler in 2nd last paragraph)
The American space programme is in a state of severe disarray with the suspension of the Shuttle missions. In fact America *doesn't have* a space programme without the Shuttle.
Of course this leaves the Russians as the only people with manned launch and reentry capabilities, and many Americans should be asking how they are able to do this, with their budget a tiny fraction of what the USA spends on space travel. If this reentry had been a complete success, even more questions would have been asked as to the superiority of the Russian space programme (look, we don't kill our cosmonauts!). It is in the interest of the Americans at the moment to make it look like space travel is extremely dangerous.
Killing the crew would've been too drastic, so they had to settle on sending them way off target.
NASA spends almost $470 million dollars just on one launch ! Just think about what of research you could do with that money !
NASA needs to learn how to manage their money and build a new economical reusable space craft before they start wasting ridiculous amounts of money on a floating money waster.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Those X-Force dudes are 31337.
rob
since this set of ISS crewmen went up in the shuttle...
and since when they went up they assumed that they were going back down in the shuttle...
and since there was a different set up people in that soyuz capsule when it was launched...
and since that soyuz capsule was originally going to be the return trip for the people who brought up the *next* soyuz...
how did this trio get custom-built seats?
jf
In Soviet Russia, capsules land YOU! Gotta keep it correct with /. tradition.
Did they have a visa? "Papers, please..."
The word 'landed' is the key. As far as I know, all the US manned space flights before the shuttle program splashed into ocean on return. Whether you call it landing, is up to you.
Actually, in aeronautical terms, it's called ditching into the sea.
Sorry, I was tired when I submitted the article. What I should have said was that this is the first time that US Astronauts have ever landed in a foriegn country. Tito doesn't really count because he was a paid Tourist, not an astronaut.
I was reading your comment. I found it fairly well built. I read a matrix spoiler. I don't even watch the trailers because I don't want the plot screwed. I hate you.
Shuttles should go back and forth from the moon. One shot capsules, made on the moon should bring cargo down. I want to pay for an effectives space program, not the "reuseable space plane" that was never a good idea.
You should perhaps check out some these websites more closely yourself.
The only US manned spacecraft "in which almost everything that went up came down" was the tiny one-man Mercury capsule. And unlike the first Soviet Vostoks, all US manned capsules have had some aerodynamic steering capability, even the Mercury capsule. Ironically, the steerable blunt-body design was actually originally researched and developed for use on ICBM warheads.
The fundamental design charcteristic of ANY spacecraft launched with a chemically-fueled rocket is "minimizing the overall vehicle mass", I'd hardly say that was a great satori of the Russians. Read anything about the Apollo lunar module and you will see the immense lengths gone through to limit the mass of the lander, including having a skin so thin you could stick a pencil through it.
Both the Gemini and Apollo spececraft had jettisonable service modules.
Apollo:
Command Module Total mass: 5,806 kg
Service Module Total mass: 24,523 kg
Lunar Module Total mass: 14,696 kg
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 13%
Gemini:
Reentry module Total mass: 1,982 kg (2-person)
Retro module Total mass: 591 kg
Equipment module Total mass: 1,278 kg
(Total jettisoned mass prior to entry: 1,869 kg)
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 51%
Soyuz (original design):
Orbital Module Total mass: 1,200 kg
Descent Module Total mass: 2,850 kg
Service Module Total mass: 2,700 kg
(Total jettisoned mass prior to entry: 5,550 kg)
Reentry mass % of total orbital assembly: 18%
The fact is that the vehicles are all optimized for different mission profiles and constraints, so it's really incorrect to generalize based on any one characteristic. The Shuttle for example, is a massive re-rentry object, but it can launch and return a crew of seven and a 14,000 kg Spacelab module. It's all based on what you want to do and how you want to do it.
All that said, I think that the Soyuz is an excellent design, and obeys one of the most fundamental tenets of engineering - refine a basic design. The Soyuz incorporates all of those years of operational experience and the Soyuz is definitely the most proven manned space vehicle design available.
But was it a successful design? According to its original mission, it's hard to say. It never carried a Hero of Socialist Labor to the lunar surface and back because the Soviets couldn't get the N-1 to work, so it never attempted its design mission.
from reading this and other articles about the Russian re-entry:
1. The subtle undercurrent of U.S. space program elitism, that is, the Russians run a barebones operation and the U.S. astronauts were incredibly lucky to return alive in such a piece of junk space capsule. Numerous posts have spoken to the incredibly reliable and effective Russian space program, so I won't belabor the point.
2. The absurd notion, much inferred, that since the space shuttle disintigrated on re-entry that a similar disaster will befall the Russian Soyuz. Somewhere out there someone was waiting to say, "Look, I told you so! Space is dangerous!", as if they had divined the second coming. Space is dangerous, expensive and in the opinion of many, not worth the effort.
There is a benefit to mankind in exploration that often does not come without planning, foresight and much trial and error.
Just my thoughts.
I'll take 400 km over vaporized on decent any day. Hm, in Soviet Russia? Let me think some more. Nah, 400 km in some god-forsaken desert is better.
What most people aren't focusing on is that this is the first time NASA astronauts have returned to earth in an non-NASA spacecraft.
Budarin says that one of the americans botched the descent. "He pressed a wrong button and control systems have gone crazy" - this is a rough translation of his words. I doubt this will ever show up in "free" American press. He didn't clarify which one, though.
--maybe they have some near space craft already? Brilliant Buzzard? Or do you think the B2 and the shuttle are the most advanced that are in use at this time?
I have no "secret" knowledge of any of those programs, but I would be highly surprised if we *don't* have a variety of way more advanced aircraft right now. Some probably with space or near space capabilities depending on your definitions of what those are. They certainly have spent quite the impressive pile of sums over the years that doesn't show up as exact book keeping entries for public view..
What idiot modded that as troll? Cannibalism jokes are funny! Hell, did anyone else notice the astronaut's name was "Donner"????
Like what I said? You might like my music
This should be a case in point about why we should be using the russian equipment. If the space shuttle were 500 KM off, the orbiter would be a pile of debris and the crew likely dead. Only a handful of landing strips exist that can accomodate it, and it comes in so fast you have only a window of a minute or two where it is safe to eject. Too soon and you are going to be torn apart by the wind. Too late, and the shuttle is falling like a brick.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Odd the way some of us missed all those articles in the Russian press... ;-)
Here is the best transation I can do without a Russian dictionary. I have translated without full understanding of some of the terminalogy. For example, I can't tell you what acronyms such as TVS, TMA stand for. I have guessed that MKS is ISS. I also, the spellings of the names of the Americans are my best guess.
An American Pressed the Wrong Button During the Landing of the "Soyuze"
The head of the Russian space corporation "Energia", Yuri Semenov, at the TVS ether [beats me], made a statement concerning the cause of the irregular situation during the landing of the ship "Soyuze TMA-1" with a Rusco-American ISS crew.
According to Semenov, the ballistic descent, that is the almost free fall, occured because "an American pressed the wrong button." The head of "Energia" added that the descent apparatus [i.e., the ship] began "to go haywire" [lit., "to play the fool"] starting with those commands. So, Semenof actually laid the blame for that which occured on one of the American astronauts [lit. "astronauts", an English word], who were the first to make a descent in a Russian capsule and had not familiarized themselves with the technology.
The ISS crew included the Russian Nickolay Boodaren and NASA astronauts Kenneth Bawersocks and Donald Pettit. Semenov did not specifically name the one who erred[?] during the landing, simply indicating that the commision would conduct an inquiry into the incident. It is worth noting that the experts of Rosaviacosmos [Rusian Space Agency, perhaps] have not yet made an official announcement as to the cause of the irregular landing.
One of the Possibilities -- the Human Factor
A special commission formed to study the circumstances of the landing of the International Space Station crew will examine a number of possibilities, including the so-called human factor. "It would not do to exclude any possibility, all will be carefully examined," said Sergey Gorboonov, press-secretary of the head of Rosaviacosmos, in an ITAR-TASS interview.
According to him, the commission will include all who participated in the building of the Soyuze and the management[?] of its flight. These include the Russian experts of TNIImash[?], of the rocket and aerospace corporation "Energia", [and] of Rosaviakosmos. Gorbunov emphasized that American experts would not take part in the work of the commission, for as much as the matter under consideration is the "analysis of the flight" of a Russian space ship. But he did not dismiss the possibility of consulting with NASA employees during the final stage of the commision's work.
We might recall that Boondarin, Bawersocks, and Pettit "crully" came to rest at 6:12 MSK [presumably Moscow Time] in Kazakhstan more than 400 kilometers from the intended area. The search parties were able to hunt up the descent apparatus only after two hours had elapsed. During all that time the Control Center passed the moments in fearful anticipation since the radio link with the astronauts [lit. "cosmonauts"] had been lost during the landing.
Neverthless, the head of Rosaviacosmos, Yuri Koptev, does not feel that today's descent "is an irregular situation." "During Soyuze descents, three possibilities are anticipated: guided, ballistic, and manual. The crews are well prepared for any of them." he told journalists at TUP.
David.Chappell@trincoll.edu
They supervise flights. The astronauts are strapped to their seats and control layout is divided between the three (and so are the responsibilities). This guy knows everything about this piece of metal, and whatever can make it behave the way it behaved. He probably even knows who exactly fscked up the landing, he just don't want to point fingers.
And Americans have tremendous amount of loyalty in them. "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch, and if he's screwed up - we don't want to know about this." Telling American public that American astronaut has pressed the wrong button, is very unpatriotic to say the least, which has some negative consequences in terms of ratings and advertisement revenues (in Russia these same things have positive effect, though).
Besides, his words are just that, words, no matter how well he knows the situation. There should be some official investigation which would reach some conclusion as to why things happened the way they did. But by the time investigation finishes hardly anybody will notice the outcome.
It's on Google now.
v lj gh.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030505163420.gym
US GDP in 2002 was about 10 trillion dollars. NASA's budget is about 15 billion dollars. I think you dropped a decimal point there.
I hope we see many more movie spoiler trolls in future.