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."

Comments

First to land outside the US?

[inaeldi]

From the article:

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.

Re:outside the US ?

[FTL]

> I thought the moon people landed in the middle of the atlantic, does the US own that now ?.

Other than the first two suborbital Mercury astronauts (who did splashdown in the Atlantic), all the other Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts from the US returned to Earth in the Pacific.

The Pacific is bigger than the Atlantic, which means it is harder to miss.

Space programme costs

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Space programme costs

[fname]

That's interesting. But it's not true. The NASA budget is $15 billion/ year. This includes things that have nothing to do with the space program per se, such as ground based telescopes, outreach, educational grants, etc. The budges for the manned space program is about $4 billion, IIRC. The unmanned NASA program is probably less than $1 billion, for things like Mars Rovers, SIRTF, etc.

However, the US space budget is much higher. The Air Force runs a very large space program, launcing a half-dozen satellites a year, many costing $1 billion +. A GPS satellite is a bargain at $50 million, double that for launch costs on a Delta II. NRO satellites are bigger, more expensive and generally launch on Titans (soon Atlas V and Delta IV). I bet the military space program has a bigger budget than NASA's space program, yet no one complains about those costs! The military program has obviously done better than NASA recently, but they've had their share of failures, too. Initially, all US satellites were going to launch on the shuttle, but that changed after Challenger.

(Addressing other posts) The marginal cost of a shuttle flight is nowhere near half a billion dollars. Those numbers always encompass total program costs, including development and engineering, which are a sunk cost. OTOH, each shuttle has a finite lifespan and definite maintenance costs, so the real cost is more than $40 million/ flight, but not $400 million.

Anyone else follow this story as it was breaking last night? I flipped on Google news, and the headlines were "Soyuz returns to earth," and then I went to Spaceflight Now! to read the details, and I saw that the Soyuz had not been located, and radio contact was not established after landing, Boy, did my heart sink! I turned on CNN, and a few minutes later they reported that Soyuz had been found.Phew!

As to the whole Shuttle vs. Soyuz thing, they have different purposes. Shuttle (post Challenger) is a very reliable vehicle, and its recent failure is unfortunate, but by no means invalidates the approach. A lack of imagination probably contributed to this; things which were not possible 20-30 years ago were not considered now even though they became available (e.g., high rez photography of space objects). Of course, ignoring the problem of the foam hitting the shuttle was not very smart; the Shuttle should probably have an outside agency come in every 5 years and do a top-to-bottom type review, and some of these problems would go away.

It's a shame that more shuttles aren't built due to lack of funds; the basic design is sound, most of the development is done, and the cost for one is probably comparable to a B2, and is more important to our national security. Maybe the Air Force will say as much, devote some of their funds to a Shuttle 2.0 (Columbia is 1.0, Challenger and Atlantis 1.1, and Endeavour is 1.2). Same basic design, improve the materials, electronics and apply lessons learned. But it probably won't happen; hopefully Delta IV and Atlas V heavy prove reliable enough to launch the Orbital Space Plane and reduce our reliance on the Shuttle and Soyuz.

Re:Space programme costs

[Rxke]

>the basic design is sound... NOT! Recent hearings (read all about it on spacedaily.com unearthed the quite shocking truth that administrators and presidents thru the years were aware of the flawed design. They built the big external tank in such a way that the risk of debris was always there. The leading edges of the Shuttle's wings were not built to survive impact of debris, they assumed that the ext. tank would e built in a fashion that prevented shedding of ice, insulation et.c. Also administrators knew it was a horrible expensive system, but by manipulating numbers they got the green light to start building. Mind you, I still think colombia was a beautiful bird. my heart broke when i heard the news of its demise, havin seen it launched the first time when i was a kid...

They missed

[commanderfoxtrot]

They actually missed their landing point and landed in the Kazakhstan desert: over 400km from their intended destination!!

BBC News: story

Warning: matrix spoiler

[dustmite]

Above post = troll (matrix spoiler in 2nd last paragraph)

Re:Always Landed in US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Splashdown?

Re:Always Landed in US?

[Blaine Hilton]

I'm not sure what the laws are with waters that belong to a country, but isn't water so X amount of miles from the shore actually belong to the country, in this case the USA? USA also has a bunch of islands in the Pacific so maybe they never landed in international waters.

Need to create a mySQL table?

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[Mooncaller]

You missed a point. The Hubble program was designed with the idea of being upgraded periodicaly with the aid of the shuttle. This was to allow advances in technology to be incorporated every 3 or so years. In fact, the optics correction was done on a regualar maintainence mission that was planned befor the Hubble was launced. All in all the poster you were responding to needs to grow up, and realizes that there are other people in the world that know what they are doing, and some of those work for NASA. It was his type of whining that caused the graduale scaling back of the original ISS design. So he is in essence to blame ( in spirit) for the failings of the ISS that he is whining about.

Re:how did they get custom-built seats in advance?

[Vulch]

The custom bit of the seats is a padded liner that fits into the framework of the seat, the actual frames are all the same size. The station crew bring their custom seat liners up with them on the shuttle, then swap them with the ones for the old crew. Same happens when they swap out a Soyuz, the delivery crew move their seat liners from the new Soyuz to the old one, and the station crew move theirs from the old to the new

Anthony

Everything that rises must converge

[slyborg]

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.

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[barakn]

the ISS ....was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit not because that was a good idea (it isn't) but because the shuttle could get there

It was necessary. The Earth's magnetic field is what holds radiation (energetic ion) levels down to tolerable levels. The magnetic field gets weaker and the radiation levels get higher as one moves further from the planet (radiation belts make the story a little more complicated beyond 1.5 Earth radii).

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[dhogaza]

You sound just like B. Gentry Lee when, as a science brat at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, when some of us had the chance to take him hiking up the Columbia Gorge the day after he'd given a talk at the museum.

He was the project manager of Galileo at the time, if my memory serves. If not, then whichever of the various exploratory vehicles that was first designed to go up on an conventional booster, then redesigned per NASA dictum to fit in the shuttle, then redesigned again after the Challenger blew up and a whole new set of safety-related design constraints were put into place.

Russian cosmonaut says...

[melted]

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.

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[Mt._Honkey]

Good solid post, but I would like to make one little point (that doesn't change your argument):

Height has nothing to do with it. Orbit is achieved by virtue of velocity. While it can be argued that some satellites didn't need to be launched via the shuttle, it is silly to argue that satellites have been compromised by being ddiesinged to fit in the shuttle's cargo bay. All satellites must be designed to fit in the craft that launches them, whether a shuttle or an expendable booster.

For some scientific equipment (such as some observatories), a non-shuttle launch vehicle (such as a Delta) would be optimal to get it to the high orbit needed to get away from earth's interference. However, for some American projects, the government has required scientists to modify their designs to be launched with the shuttle rather than by the optimal launch vehicle. This sometimes means making it smaller to fit in the cargo bay, as well as allowing room for extra boosters to get the satellite to its desired orbit, decreasing the craft's capabilities.. More politics, just NASA trying to justify the shuttle program.

Note that I'm not saying anything bad about the shuttle. I think that it is a remarkable and useful craft, however its use shouldn't forced as it is.