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Further Details From Soyuz Mishap
fyc brings us some information from Universe Today about what happened to Soyuz TMA-11 when it re-entered the atmosphere late last week. Reports indicate that a failure of explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz modules delayed the re-entry and oriented the capsule so the hatch was taking most of the heat, rather than the heat shields. CNN reports that the crew was in 'severe danger.' They experienced forces of up to 8.2 gravities. NASA officials have voiced their approval of how Russia handled the crisis. They expect to rely heavily on Soyuz spacecraft once the shuttles are retired in 2010.
It is interesting that the GAO has concerns about the ability of Soyuz to take the shuttle's place. And anything else with capabilities that approach the shuttle's are basically vaporware at this point. I think that it is not out of line to ask if the ISS is going to make it. I'm not saying that because I think it wont, I just don't think it is to difficult to imagine very realistic scenarios where it does not.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
In soviet Russia, bolts explode you!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
It will be interesting to see public outcry when one of the Russian craft craters with Americans onboard. This will inevitably happen, even if the Soyuz is safer than anything America has (which it probably is). Then we'll all have to be dragged through a lot of media-driven "soul-searching" about whether it was smart to "outsource NASA" (you heard it here first).
Sounds very similar to the Soyuz 5 rentry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5), would have been quite an ordeal. For more 'interesting' reentries have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_disasters
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
It's interesting that it reentered safely without using the heat shield. What part of the design helped that?
good job Russia is so big then...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
There's a moral that applies here... how does it go again? Something about not putting all your eggs in one basket, if I recall correctly...
A-Bomb
Always thought that business of 3 interconnecting modules would be the weak spot & it is. That's malfunction #3 with it. They could swap one disposable module for a more robust docking mechanism & a bigger crew capsule but they won't.
I'm continually amazed by how robust and dependable the Soyuz modules are.
They're the Volvos of the space program.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The "hatch first" story is already in doubt, latest info says separation of the entry module was delayed, it entered sideways and computer thus went to ballistic mode after a certain time and was in said mode when it finally separated.
I just read a forum where knowledgeable people translate from a reliable known guy on a russian forum. Not much official has yet been revealed.
Details here
But what ever happened to Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1?
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
There's an alternative to waiting 5 years after the final shuttle launch - check out http://www.directlauncher.com./ It'd be ready 2 years after the final shuttle launch and it would cost a heck of a lot less than Ares...
www.isoHunt.com
Something sounds suspisious...
Ok, it doesn't work.
Back in the old days: "We don't fully understand the physics of this thing, so let's make this part 5 times stronger than it has any reason to be, just in case shit goes seriously wrong."
*kaboom*
"Heh, good thing we had that margin of error!"
Modern engineering: "We can shave 0.37% off the cost of the final product by replacing this part with cheaper, lighter materials. The computer model tells us this is perfectly safe to do."
*KABOOM*
"Oops, I guess our computer model didn't account for turbulence."
They love Soyuz. It's not like they have any other options at this point. The Constellation Program? Ugh. It's going to be to space vehicles what Vista is to operating systems.
NASA = Need a Space Agency.
Don't mod me troll, search your feelings. You know this to be true.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I'm for anything that is a peaceful endeavor between nations....but we are about to loose the ability to put people in space. What amazing baby steps we have taken, how far have we fallen.
The incident to which you refer was a mid-air collision in an Israeli Air Force training flight. Here is a link to the History Channel interview with the pilot. After McDonnell Douglas analyzed the accident, they concluded that the F-15's lifting body design allowed it to remain airborne on one wing, given enough speed.
Gigantic kudos to the pilot who brought that plane home safely! After a full investigation into the accident, a new wing was fitted, and the fighter returned to service.
How's that for American aircraft ruggedness! (Well, in the F-15's case anyway)
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
As with most things, you learn far more when something goes wrong, than when it all goes right. By these standards the February 1997 fire aboard Mir and Apollo 13 have taught us more about how to survive space than any other missions.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
They expect to rely heavily on Soyuz spacecraft once the shuttles are retired in 2010.
I'd say they have damn little choice.... Yeah I'm old enough to remember Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. I seriously doubt that there's one person in Washington DC today that has a tenth of that kind of vision.
What are supposed to be "developing" nations are heading to space, and the U.S. doesn't seem to have a clue that they're being left behind.
Three Squirrels
Phantom II. There was a sturdy beast. A friend who was ground crew talked about picking small trees out of what landed, replacing unheard of percentages of missing wingspan and getting them back in the air.
I've also head it reported that the sum total of criteria for certification to flight, for things going on a Soyuz, can be "did the check clear?".
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There is no "Soyuz Capsule Culture" that is trying to introduce a "new space hardware culture change", and there's no resistance to this non-existent "Soyuz Capsule Culture".
Is there anyone out there with statistics that prove/disprove whether or not it is safer to go into space than it is to drive a car?
The game.
One bit of hope is that NASA announced a few days ago that instead of using the Russian Progress vehicles for cargo transport to the ISS after 2010, they'll instead use US commercial providers. They haven't yet committed to using commercial providers for crew transport, but I imagine they're waiting to see how the sector performs first. NASA Aims for All-Commercial ISS Resupply
NASA will base U.S. resupply of the International Space Station on the untried vehicles of the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program, and will not buy cargo services from Russia after the space shuttle fleet retires.
U.S. space agency officials are set to begin discussions with Congress this week on continued use of Russia's Soyuz crew-launch vehicles following the final shuttle flight in 2010. But they won't ask for permission to keep using Russian Progress vehicles.
Instead, NASA plans to pay a U.S. commercial provider for delivery of at least 20 metric tons of cargo to the ISS between 2010 and 2015. Under the COTS program, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. are splitting almost $500 million in NASA seed money intended to spur development of a commercial route to the ISS.
Administrator Michael Griffin has sent a proposed amendment to Capitol Hill specifically excluding Progress vehicles from a request to continue using Soyuz capsules to deliver crew to the ISS after the shuttle retires. Griffin had no immediate comment, but William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for spaceflight operations, says NASA believes one of the commercial vehicles in development under the COTS program eventually will be able to meet its ISS-supply needs.
Until a COTS vehicle is available, Gerstenmaier says, the U.S. agency plans to rely on prepositioned spare parts to be sent up before the shuttle retires. Two "contingency flights" among the 10 remaining shuttle missions to the ISS are slated to deliver station spares too large to get to orbit otherwise, he says.
The AK-47 was a knock off of the Sturmgewehr 44 Wiki link
The first 3 man crew was killed when the capsule depressurized on reentry. The Soviets took a 2 man capsule, shoved a third seat in which left no room for pressure suits. Soviets lost 2 2 man crews as well. The other fatalities are still classified. Also their moon rocket the N-1 exploded on liftoff and killed the flight crew and the ground crew. And in the early days of the ICBM program a launchpad explosion killed more than a hundred people on the ground.
his rockets appear to be headed for making 2 of those. The schedule did not match, but considering that it will be done in a faction of the time that ares I was done in (which had a massive head start via the existing infrastructure), it is not surprising. But so far, his costs are in line with his predictions, and his performance will be improved over what was originally laid out (of course, 2'nd full iteration of the engine).
Maybe it is workable to provide some boost from a deep, rail-mounted launching sabot. Doesn't have to be rails, or rails alone. A giant, vertical gun could be a part with the space vehicle being bullet and the first stage sort of a discarding sabot. Yeah, it'd be expensive to dig a deep launching well and line it with apparatus for accelerating a space vehicle, but it might save a lot on getting the vehicle up to or closer to escape velocity. This could possibly replace at least the first stage.
Also, what about creating a path for the rocket, at least down here where the atmosphere is thickest. Some of the right kind and position of turbulence could clear a path. Maybe a laser cannon could punch the hole or the rocket could just chase an empty surface-to-air missile. It works for geese and cyclists to draft each other, why not also space vehicles?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Have you considered what position the occupants would be in if the heat shield was not leading the way? You can bet that they weren't in the optimum position for a re-entry. My guess is that they might have been pushed into their seat-belts rather than into into the backs of their seats.
Try doing some research on the two weapons and the goals each tried to accomplish. The AK-47 owes almost everything to it.
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You said,
... why was 20 MT necessary? (In contrast, the US only set off 15 MT once, and that was an accident.)
"That's not entirely fair. They've had their fair share of avoidable disasters due to flawed designs (*cough* Chernobyl *cough*) but they've also built some really impressive shit."
*sigh*
They were impressive at making shit, that's for sure.
Chernobyl was just one example of Soviet Nuclear's paradigm: "We Don't Give A Damn About Our People". The depressing, unromantic fact was that a lot of decisions in the USSR were made on the basis of "people are replaceable, with some unskilled labor". So... why bother with containment domes? And why use skilled labor and build up a force of people that can run reactors that are inherently unstable at certain power levels? If someone smart complains, kill them.
From end to end the former USSR is a massive pollution mess. Use Google Earth and look at the Barents Sea and the Sov shipyards. Lord. After dumping who-knows-how-many reactor cores overboard, now they've got buildings filled with many reactor cores falling apart, and draining, of course, into the Barents Sea.
The USSR always killed off the intelligent people, always kept secrets (the Chernobyl reactor operators did not know the instabilities of that design!), and in 70 years, from 1920 to 1991, polluted a vast country so badly that there may not be enough money in the entire world to clean up the mess. When you don't care about people as individuals, pollution is irrelevant.
It's cheaper to replace the people! When you keep secrets about what's buried, you get criticality accidents. We know about two bad ones. Hell, there are entire large dams and water diversion projects just to slow down the spread of long-term radioactives.
The Soviet nuclear submarine program is the largest human radiation experiment ever. Harrison Ford movies or not, those crews took heavy doses even on routine voyages. Who cares? They can always get a new crew next year.
You said,
"The T-34 [wikipedia.org] was arguably the best tank of WW2."
Oh, please. If you want a tank, you go to Germany and ask for one. The Tiger was unmatched in WWII.
The Russians were, however, silly enough to make fleets of T-34's and T-60's and T-72's. All that treasure poured into making crap. Did you miss the Gulf War or something? Thousands were carved into scrap in a hundred hours. Their crews could not wait to get away from them, because they were (rightly) considered to be deathtraps.
You said,
"The R-36 (SS-18) [wikipedia.org] ICBM was superior to any American missile (including the vaunted Peacekeeper) in many areas -- survivability, throw-weight, etc, etc."
Hmm. The SS-18 had to be able to lift 8800 kg, which is the weight of a 20 megaton nuclear warhead. Because it's fission-fusion-fission, it has an extremely heavy "blanket" of U-238 surrounding the physics package and whatnot. The U-238 can be fissioned by very hot neutrons coming off the fusion reaction. Half the yield of a big multi-megaton device is from fissioning U-238.
Now
The USSR went to around 60 MT with a 100 MT design in the early 1960's. The USSR thought that popping several of these in high orbit over the US would cause EMP effects and be a great first strike weapon.
They went to 20 MT as a standard weapon ( !!! )because the USSR could not figure out how to get a missile to come down closer than "somewhere on the side of the barn", so to speak, so they heavily over-targeted anything they really wanted to clobber, and they used incredible overkill megatonnage.
The US did not do 20MT warheads because US missiles were far more precise. The US does not kill off its intelligent people, and the hyperaccurate targeting system was a product of that. The US chose ~~350 KT (not MT) weapons, and retired all the 20MT stuff in the early 1960's.
Here's an important fact: Weapons effects fall off as the cube root of distance, not the square. Thi
Is that why Germany won the war? Oh wait, they didn't ;)
The Tiger might have been superior to the T-34 in a straight up comparison of armor/weaponry but the T-34 was a better overall tank. It was easier to produce, easier to maintain, easier to repair and generally more reliable. It also completely outclassed every single German tank when it was first introduced -- not a small feat considering the fact that it was the Germans who largely came up with the concept of armored warfare to begin with!
For all the grief that the Russians get for under-engineering the Germans in WW2 managed to do the exact opposite -- they over-engineered everything. Their designs for everything from tanks to field artillery tended to be more complicated than the equivalent Soviet/Allied designs. As a result their equipment was much more liable to breakdown and was harder to repair when it did. This was especially true for their tanks.
The Russians were, however, silly enough to make fleets of T-34's and T-60's and T-72's. All that treasure poured into making crap. Did you miss the Gulf War or something?Did you miss World War Two or something? Those T-34s won the war for the Soviet Union. They were a great surprise to the Wehrmacht and practically invincible during the first few months of the war -- the German ground formations typically lacked the weapons to defeat their armor head-on. Had they been available in larger numbers at the outset it's likely that the history of the Eastern Front would have turned out quite differently.
Thousands were carved into scrap in a hundred hours. Their crews could not wait to get away from them, because they were (rightly) considered to be deathtraps.Yes, because it's not like the Coalition had any other advantages, like total Air Supremacy, better training, night vision/IR equipment or anything like that.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
>>Oh, please. If you want a tank, you go to Germany and ask for one. The Tiger was unmatched in WWII.
>Is that why Germany won the war? Oh wait, they didn't
Of course, you are correct; the combined pressure of the industrial engines of the US and USSR eventually overpowered Germany.
>The Tiger might have been superior to the T-34 in a straight up comparison of armor/weaponry but the T-34 was a better overall tank. It was easier to produce, easier to maintain, easier to repair and generally more reliable. It also completely outclassed every single German tank when it was first introduced -- not a small feat considering the fact that it was the Germans who largely came up with the concept of armored warfare to begin with!
Well, we don't happen to agree on this, but I do see your points and they are valid. On the other hand, the Military Channel agrees with me on its "Top 10 Tanks". In it, various British, American, and French tank crewman from World War II were asked what tank they'd pick to be in if they had a choice, and they all said, "Tiger".
>For all the grief that the Russians get for under-engineering the Germans in WW2 managed to do the exact opposite -- they over-engineered everything. Their designs for everything from tanks to field artillery tended to be more complicated than the equivalent Soviet/Allied designs. As a result their equipment was much more liable to breakdown and was harder to repair when it did. This was especially true for their tanks.
This is correct. The Germans over-engineered the Tiger. However, that usually resulted in a relatively small part of the tank being deadlined at any time, not the entire tank. Again, we don't have to agree here, but I think you have valid points.
>> The Russians were, however, silly enough to make fleets of T-34's and T-60's and T-72's. All that treasure poured into making crap. Did you miss the Gulf War or something?
>Did you miss World War Two or something? Those T-34s won the war for the Soviet Union. They were a great surprise to the Wehrmacht and practically invincible during the first few months of the war -- the German ground formations typically lacked the weapons to defeat their armor head-on. Had they been available in larger numbers at the outset it's likely that the history of the Eastern Front would have turned out quite differently.
Umm umm umm, so many factors at the Eastern Front, difficult for me to say. Stalingrad alone was on a feather's balance for months.
>>Thousands were carved into scrap in a hundred hours. Their crews could not wait to get away from them, because they were (rightly) considered to be deathtraps.
>Yes, because it's not like the Coalition had any other advantages, like total Air Supremacy, better training, night vision/IR equipment or anything like that.
You're correct, within a certain narrow vision.
But these things are not my point.
And the history of the USSR, and the cyclic history of Russia, leaves me utterly saddened. I fear it is sliding into the depths again, with "Polonium-210" being Putin's not-too-subtle hint that he'll reach out and touch you even in England if you complain too much. With a half-life of 138 days, it's pretty damn obvious it was "state-sponsored".
However, my reply, which you *haven't* answered, is that the USSR system wastes the most important capital of all, which is not RBMK reactors, T-34 tanks, R-36/SS-18 nuclear missiles, or R-73 (AA-11) air to air missiles.
The most important capital is people.
The USSR system wastes *people*. Over and over, in my original reply, I said that the Soviet way was, "We can always get more people using cheap, unskilled labor!".
Or as Stalin said, "The death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of a million people is a statistic." Stalin would know; he killed so many Ukranians that we don't know within a million how many died, but it's well over ten million. Stalin is directly
That's probably because they didn't have the experience that the German tankers did of sitting on the side of the road in a combat zone waiting for the repair crew to arrive ;) Seriously, German units couldn't even complete a road march without having a couple of Tigers fall out with mechanical problems. I'd rather have a T-34 any day. Hell, I might even prefer to be in a Sherman than in a Tiger -- the Sherman isn't facing 5 to 1 odds, is a match for the early German tanks (which were always the bulk of the German forces, even towards the end) and isn't going to leave me stranded on the side of the road.
However, that usually resulted in a relatively small part of the tank being deadlined at any time, not the entire tankIf that "relatively small part" is your drive train and you can't move then is it really a "relatively small part"? And over-engineering has more drawbacks then just reliability -- a simpler design would have been easier to mass produce and would have delivered more tanks to the front lines.
And the history of the USSR, and the cyclic history of Russia, leaves me utterly saddened. I fear it is sliding into the depths again, with "Polonium-210" being Putin's not-too-subtle hint that he'll reach out and touch you even in England if you complain too much. With a half-life of 138 days, it's pretty damn obvious it was "state-sponsored".I'm honestly not that concerned about Putin. I'm less then thrilled with his internal "reforms" but his goal seems to be making Russia into a Great Power again -- over the long run a more powerful/assertive Russia will serve as a useful balance/counterweight to a rising China.
The most important capital is people. The USSR system wastes *people*. Over and over, in my original reply, I said that the Soviet way was, "We can always get more people using cheap, unskilled labor!". Or as Stalin said, "The death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of a million people is a statistic." Stalin would know; he killed so many Ukranians that we don't know within a million how many died, but it's well over ten million. Stalin is directly responsible for nearly losing World War II because he did a paranoid purge of the professional officer corps right before the war. I applaud your points, but I encourage you to consider that people matter the most.I don't know why you keep emphasizing these points about Soviet disregard for human life. I never disputed them.
From the firemen who "volunteered" to go into Chernobyl to the Red Army troops at Stalingrad that didn't even have weapons (no, that scene in Enemy at the Gates wasn't all Hollywood -- that kind of crap did happen on the Eastern Front) -- the Soviets tended to solve a major problem by throwing bodies at it. And that's without even talking about Stalin's paranoid purges -- if the USSR had lost the Great Patriotic War it would have been entirely his fault, IMHO.
I still think it's a mistake to underestimate their engineering though. I seem to recall that we did much the same thing with the Japanese in the opening months of the Pacific War. They had some surprises up their sleeve though and we paid a heavy price for underestimating them. One wonders what surprises the Russians had waiting for us if the Cold War had ever turned into a real shooting match.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.