Soyuz Ballistic Re-entry 300 Miles Off Course

call-me-kenneth writes "Soyuz TMA-11, carrying a crew of three returning from the ISS, unexpectedly followed a high-G ballistic re-entry trajectory and ended up landing 300 miles off-course. The crew, including Commander Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, are reportedly in good health. Soyuz capsules have previously saved the lives of the crew even after severe malfunctions that might have led to the loss of a less robust vehicle."

Comments

How far exactly?

[MagdJTK]

According to the first paragraph of the article, the distance by which they were off was 400km, which Slashdot claims is 300 miles.

Perhaps the calculations were done by the same person who worked out the re-entry trajectory?

Re:How far exactly?

[call-me-kenneth]

Story submitter here... I used 300 miles because the NASA press release (the second link in the story) says:

"The landing was approximately 295 miles from the expected landing site" ...which I rounded to 300 to try to make the story sound more exciting than it really is, just in order to flatter my inadequate sense of identity and self-esteem. Little did I reckon on the elite mental arithmetic of the Slashdot readership! I hang my head in shame.

Full Manual Re-entry is Possible in Soyuz

[CodeBuster]

There is an interesting article, written by a Canadian, in which he discusses the manual descent training that he received as part of cosmonaut training. Apparently, one of the back up computer systems is your brain itself (i.e. full manual control or renentry with analog controls and instruments). Queue the Soviet Russia jokes now...In Soviet Russia the re-entry computer is YOU!

From TA: "Under nominal end-of-mission situations, an automatic re-entry system will return the Soyuz vehicle and crew from space safely back to the ground. However, the crew must be familiar with the several backup modes that exist in instances when the automatic system fails. One of the backup re-entry modes is the crew themselves! For certain hardware and software malfunctions, the crew will be required to manually fly the Soyuz back to Earth through the atmosphere."

Re:Full Manual Re-entry is Possible in Soyuz

[johnny cashed]

Addendum:

According to this link: http://www.astronautix.com/flights/mireo23.htm the landing rockets failed anyway, which resulted in a hard, but survivable landing.

And according to this: http://www.jamesoberg.com/soyuz.html the crew has no control over the parachute deployment. (This is written in entry 6 B under "Special Questions)

Re:Ballistic trajectory?

[trout007]

A capusle can "sort of fly" during reentry. You can use thrusters to change the attitude of the craft which changes the direction. This requires guidance. You usally use this because it's less stressful on the crew and you have pretty good accuracy. The ballistic trajectory is just like you said. Uncontrolled so you fall like a rock. So you spend less time slowing down in the upper atmosphere. You get to the thicker atmosphere sooner and when you do you are going faster which causes very high G deceleration. Not fun but the craft is designed to do it.

sort of off-topic

[zappepcs]

This is one of the reasons that material/websites are listed as inaccurate sources of data. Rounding is good when you are talking about 1.300056000 billion dollars as 1.3billion. But in the case of simple math that the reader can do on their own rather quickly, it is imprudent to do any rounding.

A professional news reporter would know that there have been trouble with the US space program regarding conversions to and from metric units. Therefore it is professionally prudent to make sure you are not lumped in with the same idiots who made those mistakes.

It's not that hard, really. Such things are the stuff of journalism classes from the 50's or sooner. How not to look like an idiot when reporting the news!

Re:sort of off-topic

[ozmanjusri]

Out of curiosity, how does that statement make me a foreigner?

You've made an intelligent point without threatening anyone.

That's downright unamerican.

I'm impressed

[Whuffo]

They came down in a space capsule on a ballistic trajectory - in other words, dropped like a rock.

The fact that they survived the experience is amazing. Say what you want about Soviet technology, this was a very, very neat trick.

Re:Ballistic trajectory?

[Fishead]

According to the voice data recorder, the last comment before the course change was:

"Screw you guys, I'm going home."

Re:Ballistic trajectory?

[Detritus]

I'd take that report with a grain of salt. The first impulse of many bureaucracies is to blame all problems on the flight crew.

Re:I'm not impressed.

[EsonLinji]

Of course, this is still a lot better than what happens to a space shuttle that has problems on re-entry.

Re:Astronauts.

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Stories like this remind me of the huge BALLS it takes to strap yourself onto a rocket and fly straight into orbit, and then come back down again.

Maybe you should say huge nads or something else that's more unisex, considering both of the astronauts in this case were women. :)

Re:Nice Spin

[mlyle]

Taken from a web forum, but I've seen similar stuff before:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/military/read.main/54404/

Soyuz (1967-Present)
Flights: 95
Failures: 4 (2 non-fatal)
Failure Rate: 4.21%

Cosmonauts Flown: 228
Fatalities: 4
Fatality Rate: 1.75%

Shuttle (1981-Present)
Flights: 116
Failures: 3 (1 non-fatal)
Failure Rate: 2.59%

Astronauts Flown: 692
Fatalities: 14
Fatality Rate: 2.02%

This is a statistical dead heat. There is simply not a big enough sample size to distinguish between a 1.75% and a 2.02% fatality rate. And the "who had an accident more recently" does not establish it either.

Both are good systems, each has respective advantages (simplicity and low-cost vs. a lot of on-orbit assembly and payload capability). It's good the world has both, and we may never know which would be safer with infinite flights.

Re:Ballistic trajectory?

[garlicbready]

I'm sure it was
"Nyet Nyet, metric I tell you metric"