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

GAO Report

[stoolpigeon]

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.

Re:GAO Report

[BZWingZero]

No they don't. At least not in anywhere near a usable state. One (that actually flew in space once in 1988) is crushed under a building, another is on its way to a museum in Australia. And another is a simulator ride in Moscow. Helping SpaceX finish their Falcon 9/Dragon capsule launch system would be easier and more cost effective.

Re:GAO Report

[gharris]

Yes. It needs periodic 'lifting' to boost it back into the proper orbit. In fact, the new ESA ATV just did that today according to space.com (European Cargo Ship Boosts Space Station's Orbit ):

Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) cargo supply ship has successfully raised the International Space Station into a higher orbit... additionally:

Russia's unmanned Progress supply vessels are also is capable of boosting the station's orbit, as are the U.S. space shuttles of NASA. It is in good hands in that regard.

--Glenn

Re:GAO Report

[osu-neko]

Mod up parent! These are serious concerns, should not be swept under the rug. As much as I dislike the design of the Shuttle, it's the only one capable of carrying that sort of heavy payload to the ISS' orbit (LEO).

Comparison of heavy lift launch systems

Is Wikipedia on crack again, or are there no less than four other currently operational launch systems with nearly identical payload capacity to the shuttle?

Re:GAO Report

[Martin Blank]

You're misreading it. The shuttle has the highest launch capacity of any currently operational heavy lifter. There are others (Angara A5, Ares V, Falcon 9 Heavy, Long March 5) on the books, but a NASA payload is unlikely to ever launch on a Long March rocket. The remaining lifters on the list (Energia, N1, and the Saturn line) are retired; the two Soviet lifters had a dismal record of one success in six launches.

The closest operational heavy lift system is the Delta IV Heavy coming in at only 1450kg less mass to LEO than the shuttle's max payload, and which has one successful and one partially successful launch on its record. However, the Delta line is a good one, and none of the eight Delta IV launch vehicles (including three Medium and three Medium+ launches) have been lost.

Re:GAO Report

[MichaelSmith]

Australia? One is just 10km away from me now. came up the river Rhine two weeks ago and now is perpared for display in a museum from August on. Thats the new Australian colonialism for you. Look out Europe.

Re:GAO Report

[ejecta]

Interesting part is that Daimler took care of haulage free of charge so they could use the stunt as an advertisement for their 'new' heavy haulage truck the Actros SLT.

They put out a nice press release with cuddly photos of the action: http://jalopnik.com/383099/daimler-tugs-soviet-buran-spaceship-self

Re:GAO Report

[Dun Malg]

Makes you wonder what it would take to put the old Saturn V back in service/ Well, despite the rumors, the plans for the Saturn V have not been lost... but that's not the real issue anyway. All the tooling used to make the Saturn V is long gone. If you have to start from scratch building the manufacturing capacity, then you really might as well start from scratch on the design. Of course, there's nothing wrong with saying "we'll start with the same basic configuration as the Saturn V" and then re-creating the specifics with modern materials and techniques. The manned Mars mission craft is a derivative of the Apollo.

Re:GAO Report

[tpheiska]

There are others (Angara A5, Ares V, Falcon 9 Heavy, Long March 5) on the books, but a NASA payload is unlikely to ever launch on a Long March rocket. The remaining lifters on the list (Energia, N1, and the Saturn line) are retired; the two Soviet lifters had a dismal record of one success in six launches. What about Ariane 5? The ECA version lifts 21000 kg to LEO, which 3400 kg less than STS but I would still consider it a viable heavy lifter. It has even been used to take Da Vinci to the ISS succesfully.

Don't hit me...

[Daimanta]

In soviet Russia, bolts explode you!

Re:Don't hit me...

[arivanov]

Both.

It is the repeat of the Leonov reentry of Voshod from around 40 years back.

They are lucky to have landed only 300 miles off. Leonov's crew landed 1000 miless off in the middle of a Russian forest without any weapons and with minimal survival gear (that incident is what has made small arms and survival kits standard equipment on all russian capsules).

We won't always be so lucky

[timeOday]

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).

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[Uncle Focker]

Never underestimate the power of xenophobia on any public mob.

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[sokoban]

And everyone with a brain will point out that more americans have died in american shuttle mishaps than have died in russian shuttle mishaps. And everyone with a brain will point out that there have been no manned russian shuttle flights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[ceoyoyo]

Maybe they'll decide not to outsource NASA then.

I expect the attitude might change somewhat when China and India start putting people on the moon too. Then we'll find out whether the United States is in inevitable decline or whether there's some life left in the old empire.

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[inviolet]

Never underestimate the power of xenophobia on any public mob.

I know you're being flippant, but xenophobia can be very rational.

Some cultures area more productive than others, and they all compete with each other for resources -- consisting mostly of land, energy, and minds. Sometimes that competition devolves to open war, other times to guerilla war, but nowadays mostly to ideological subversion. The current "all cultures are equivalent" drumbeat is an example of this kind of attack.

When one culture has developed an efficient pattern -- one capable of producing vast amounts of safety and comfort and making it available in some proportion to all of its members -- then it is rational for that culture to adjust its pattern to breed resistance to changes that other cultures try to introduce into it. Xenophobia is probably the cheapest way to mobilize that kind of resistance en masse.

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[DerekLyons]

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).

The safety differences between Soyuz and Shuttle are statistically insignificant. Unless you engage in shady practices like not counting Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-10 "because they were a long time ago", etc... By that that metric one should be able to discard Challenger as well - at which point Shuttle's safety is still equal to or better than any other booster excepting only Soyuz. Even so, the difference is still statistically insignificant because neither vehicle has a enough flights to create valid statistics.
 
Myself, I'm not surprised at the latest Soyuz incident. Soyuz has a long history of incidents and near accidents.

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[moosesocks]

The safety differences between Soyuz and Shuttle are statistically insignificant. Unless you engage in shady practices like not counting Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-10 "because they were a long time ago", etc... By that that metric one should be able to discard Challenger as well - at which point Shuttle's safety is still equal to or better than any other booster excepting only Soyuz. Even so, the difference is still statistically insignificant because neither vehicle has a enough flights to create valid statistics. No, we discount Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-10, because they were completely different craft than the capsules that are flying today.

And, yes. I think you actually might be able to discount Challenger, because the fundamental design "bug" that caused it to happen was fixed.

However, one of the chief "safety" features of Soyuz is the robustness of the basic capsule itself, which has allowed it to protect the crew, even in the event of the catastrophic failure of several of its systems (one of them exploded on the launchpad, and the crew survived). As long as the retro-rockets and parachutes are intact, a free-fall to earth is usually survivable.

The shuttle, on the other hand, does not have many favorable abort modes. If any part of the craft fails, the integrity of the entire craft is compromised, and the crew are almost certainly doomed. Had a challenger-type incident occurred during a Soyuz, it is likely that the crew would have survived. Similarly, the fact that the crew entered literally upside-down during this past mission demonstrates that a Columbia-type failure isn't all that likely either.

The Space Shuttle has literally millions of parts and components, the failure of any one of which can spell doom for the mission and crew. The Soyuz engineers were not nearly as optimistic regarding their own manufacturing and quality-control abilities, and made something that was idiot-proof.

Ironically, NASA's next-generation craft design resembles the Soyuz more closely than anything else. The Russian and ESA designs all opted for something that most closely resembles a hybrid between a capsule design and shuttle design (but on a much smaller and less extravagant scale).

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[Shakrai]

unless the American passengers were, I don't know, rocking the capsule back and forth on the way down.

Sorry, we won't let it happen again ;)

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[Planesdragon]

but xenophobia can be very rational Nope. Xenophobia is by definition irrational. It can however, be productive, and a rational mind can reasonably foster Xenophobia for survival's sake. But Xenophobia is not, itself, rational.

Re:We won't always be so lucky

[Dun Malg]

It is looking like the Russians are using NASA logic which is as follows: #1 Something bad happened #2 The backup system worked #3 So the design is safe no need to fix what caused #1. No, they're just using classic Russian ne Soviet engineering theory:

"We cannot guarantee quality or precision, so instead we employ redundancy"

Soviet/Russian design theory is "Make it thicker, make it simpler, make three of it". It's classic belt, suspenders, AND holding on to your waistband with your hands thinking.

Similar to Soyuz 5? Upsidedown reentry.

[node159]

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

Safe even upside down?

[SleptThroughClass]

It's interesting that it reentered safely without using the heat shield. What part of the design helped that?

Re:Safe even upside down?

[khallow]

The frame of the Soyuz is made of titanium. Someone had linked to a list of Soyuz accidents before, and I recall that the titanium shell has enabled the vehicle to survive a flawed reentry before (I think it might have been a hole burned in the heatshield or another skewed reentry).

Re:Safe even upside down?

[LWATCDR]

Titanium is good but not that good.
Odds are that the Soyuz righted it's self at some point. Also I am not sure what hatch took the heat. Does the Soyuz have a side hatch of just the top hatch?
If it was the top hatch they are very lucky that the chute system didn't fail from the heat.

Re:Safe even upside down?

[sznupi]

Perhaps not "that good", but apparently it's good enough to allow survival until service module breaks off due to heat/aerodynamic stress in case of separation failure.

And Soyuz has two hatches - on the side solely to exit the capsule after landing, and top one connecting the capsule with orbital module; I guess the latter one took the heat (as heppened 39 years ago during Soyuz 5 reentry when service module also failed to separate - aerodynamically stable position for Soyuz in such configuration is "top hatch first")

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...

Re:Russian hardware

[Uncle Focker]

If you want to talk about durability and toughness you just need one word: AK-47.

Re:Russian hardware

[Colonel Korn]

Having spoken with two ex-Mig flight trainers who had also flown F-16s, my impression of their impression was that they loved the potential of the Migs, but were always nervous that the electronics would get them killed. American aircraft have had system crashes that have endangered (and probably in cases I don't know about, killed) pilots, but in India it was considered common for Mig pilots to die because instruments went glitchy at a bad time (like in low visibility situations). Maybe this was somewhat specific to Indian Migs, though. One of the pilots told me that his dream plane would be a Mig design built in the US.

Re:Russian hardware

[AsnFkr]

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. I agree with what you said about the sillyness that is the Space Shuttle "reusable" program, but you mention gold foil and tissue paper, which I can assume was a jab at Apollo's LM. In that case the weight of the spacecraft was VERY VERY specific, and the "gold foil" was the best way to control the heat from the thrusters of the craft without adding a ton of extra weight and was actually a pretty slick way about it. Sometimes lightweight spacecraft with instrumentation on every inch is a good thing. That said, fuck the shuttle.

Re:Russian hardware

[LWATCDR]

Well they didn't reenter without a heat shield. It looks like the hit sideways until the propulsion section broke away and then righted themselves. At least that is what it looks like from the pictures I have seen.
Your comments about Russian aerospace hardware is at best optimistic and based more in folk lore than anything.
A lot of Russian jet aircraft are simple but pretty fragile. US aircraft tend to be pretty complex but very rugged. The Mig-21 was made of tissue paper compared to the F-4, F-105, A-6 and or F-100.
Even the F-15 has huge kill ratio VS every Migs.
There was at least one F-15 that had a mid-air and lost a wing! That plane made it home!
Yea US aircraft tend to require more man hours and you have to have more skills and tool than your average oil change tech but they tend to be very rugged and reliable.

Re:Russian hardware

[DerekLyons]

Give me Russian-built aerospace hardware any day. Their stuff is built brick-shithouse tough. Re-entry without the heatshield?

They didn't re-enter without the heatshield. They started re-entry improperly oriented and properly oriented the craft at virtually the last possible instant. That isn't tough, that's damn lucky.
 
 

How much does a Soyuz laucnh cost compared to a shuttle launch?

Soyuz is much cheaper than a Shuttle per launch. But considering it takes something like four Soyuz launches and four Progress launches to incompletely replace a single Shuttle mission to ISS, it shouldn't be surprising that it is cheaper - lower capability almost always implies lower costs. I say 'incompletely' because Soyuz/Progress cannot deliver station modules, cannot deliver external cargo, cannot deliver ISS racks, cannot return hardware... etc.. etc... All of which the Shuttle can do. (Not to mention that the CBM hatches available to Shuttle carried cargo containers are nearly four times as big as the APAS hatches used the Soyuz/Progress.)
 
 

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.

If only cheap and super-tough weren't mutually incompatible.
 
 

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.

It makes perfect sense - because assembling and launching them in serial (as opposed to parallel) means you can apply lessons learned from assembling the first to assembling the second. You can 'promote' and 'demoted' hardware from one vehicle to the next to ease schedule pressure. Etc... Etc... Launching them at the same time means assembling them at the same time - and for one-off (or severely limited production) vehicles that means more expensive, more likely to fail, more likely to slip schedule, etc... etc... Without providing an iota more science return.

Re:Russian hardware

[evanbd]

Indeed. Here's one of the better writeups.

Re:Russian hardware

[phliar]

By "electronics would get them killed" do you mean in combat?

My brother is a MiG-29 (and Su-27) pilot. (He has also flown F-16s on a USAF detachment.) On a landing approach in the MiG-29, he hit a truck that was parked a little too close to the runway. They had to replace the wheels and tires but otherwise the aircraft was fine. The truck was totalled.

Re:Russian hardware

[Shakrai]

Whether it's plane, subs, rockets etc, you can count on the Russians to come up with expensive shit which simply doesn't work reliably

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.

The T-34 was arguably the best tank of WW2. The R-36 (SS-18) ICBM was superior to any American missile (including the vaunted Peacekeeper) in many areas -- survivability, throw-weight, etc, etc. The R-73 (AA-11) air-to-air missile was at least a generation ahead of the equivalent NATO weapon (AIM-9L or AIM-9M) when it first came out.

We've generally beaten them in the electronics game (more success at miniaturization, more powerful computers, better software engineers), which probably makes our weapons/sensors more effective overall but it's a huge mistake to dismiss or underestimate Russian technology.

Re:Russian hardware

[the_other_chewey]

Remind me, why should we copy the Russians in the space arena? In which regard are they ahead of the west?

Daylight. They are constantly hours ahead, and the west still hasn't caught up.

Built tough.

[TripMaster Monkey]

I'm continually amazed by how robust and dependable the Soyuz modules are.

They're the Volvos of the space program.

Re:Built tough.

[Sique]

They're the Volvos of the space program. They use turbo charged Renault-engines?

Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities!

[ch-chuck]

People have willingly endured 46.2g 's.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities!

[AJWM]

Don't know where you got that figure from.

Modern fighter aircraft are software-limited to 9G maneuvers, with the crew in G-suits and trained for it. (The hardware can probably take higher). The Gemini launches on converted Titan-II missiles routinely hit about 8G during the ascent (Shuttle does 3G).

Then-Captain John Stapp in his rocket sled experiments in the late 1940s/early 1950s routinely experienced 18G in the "eyeballs in" position, and 30G in "eyeballs out" deceleration as the sled stopped. The peak force he survived was around 45G. (Black-eyed, bloodshot, bruised, with the occasional cracked rib and generally beat up, but survived.)

There's another way...

[bigfootindy]

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...

Can we vote this guy in

[Shadow-isoHunt]

Now please?

"We seem to have gotten away from our concentration on science," said U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D- Texas.

old-fashioned engineering

[tetromino]

It's not so much a difference between Russians and Americans as between old-fashioned and modern engineering practices.

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."

Re:old-fashioned engineering

[Skuld-Chan]

Sadly a lot of engineering decisions are made by marketing people and not engineers. Read Ralph Nader's book - unsafe at any speed. The engineers actually designed the car properly, but it was management who changed the design to cut costs at the safety of the car itself.

IAF F-15 Mishap

[clbyjack81]

There was at least one F-15 that had a mid-air and lost a wing! That plane made it home!

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)

Re:Recent NASA announcement on ISS resupply

[FleaPlus]

I also just came across some interesting related commentary here:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=5989&catid=49

NASA needs the Falcon 9/Dragon combo to attain crew service capability if the agency is to have a US based option for sending astronauts to the ISS sometime during the period between the end of the Shuttle program in 2010 and the start of Ares I/Orion operations in 2015. So far, all the designs reviews (e.g. here, here, and here) have found no fundamental flaws in either the Falcon 9 or Dragon designs. Assuming aerospace engineering does not involve black magic, this should mean something. Currently COTS is funding F9/Dragon (and also the Orbital Taurus II) only for cargo services. Increasing COTS funding to accelerate development of the Dragon for crew transport would seem a reasonable gamble, especially considering it would cost a fraction of what is going into the Ares/Orion program.

On the other hand, if Falcon 9/Dragon succeeds there will most likely arise overwhelming pressure to kill Ares I/Orion to save billions dollars in further development and operational costs. (NASA could alter its lunar exploration architecture to use the Dragon instead of Orion, e.g. see this powerful option.) Jeff Foust and Rand Simberg comment on recent statements from Mike Griffin as he tries to deal with this situation:
/-- COTS contradictions? - Space Politics
/-- Griffin's COTS Contradictions - Transterrestrial Musings

[Update: Jon Goff also discusses the gap and COTS issues: Gap Math - Selenian Boondocks - Apr.8.08.]

Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities!

[toddhisattva]

Don't know where you got that figure from. I think he got it from Ambassador Delenn, who was talking to a Narn.

Re:Recent NASA announcement on ISS resupply

[zippthorne]

Well that's stupid. Everyone knows the space station is like one of those buddhist sand painting thingies. It's about the building, not the having.

Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities!

[rbanffy]

Please remember that brave and slightly insane man survived 45G for a tiny fraction of a second. Any longer they would have problems separating him from the rest of the rocket sled.

8G during reentry is bad enough for me, thanks. It must feel like quite a beating.

Re:You are being held by a force of two gravities!

[budgenator]

pilots tend to black-out or grey-out around 9 or 10 Gs when flying aircraft, spacecraft pilots can go a bit higher because of more favorable seating positions.