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.

Comments

Russian hardware

[Bombula]

Give me Russian-built aerospace hardware any day. Their stuff is built brick-shithouse tough. Re-entry without the heatshield? Astonishing. I've heard lots of stuff over the years about how tough the old Migs and SUs were as well, and I think the attitude would translate well to space exploration. I think NASA's approach of building craft out of gold foil and tissue paper in clean rooms, trying to turn every last ounce of the payload into instrumentation is misguided. How much does a Soyuz laucnh cost compared to a shuttle launch? Fuel and other materials are the cheapest part of the overall cost of spaceflight, so the logical thing would seem to be to build simple, cheap, super-tough craft and just launch dozens of them rather than investing heavily in individual craft. And why not launch missions with a fleet of craft, rather than just a single vehicle? When we do launch more than one vehicle, it is months apart as in the case of the Mars rovers. Doesn't make much sense.

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...