Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today

dj writes in with a reminder that forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, the two Russian spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft. Wired's piece gives a gripping account of "one of the roughest re-entries in the history of space flight": "Soyuz 5's service module failed to detach at retrofire, causing the vehicle to assume an aerodynamic position that left the heat shield pointed the wrong way as it re-entered the atmosphere. The only thing standing between Volynov and a fiery death was the command module's thin hatch cover. The interior of Volynov's capsule filled with noxious fumes as the gaskets sealing the hatch started to burn, and it got very hot in there (which, a short time later was something he probably missed). ... But wait. There's more."

Comments

The suspense!

[Anonymous Coward]

"... But wait. There's more."

What a killer summary.

Re:The suspense!

[stonedcat]

It can't be helped. The actual article uses this statement three times...

Re:The suspense!

[turgid]

"There's more!" Jimmy Cricket.

Cue all the "In Soviet Russia" jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, why isn't the first post InSovietRussia-related?

Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[modmans2ndcoming]

nothing worked right, but that was no big deal since the machines were so tough, they could just brute force their way to the end.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[causality]

nothing worked right, but that was no big deal since the machines were so tough, they could just brute force their way to the end.

I think that during the Cold War, the joke (in the USA) was that Russia was a third-world country with nukes.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Stormx2]

nothing worked right

I'd say that the vast majority of systems MUST have worked right for the ships to have entered space in the first place, let alone docked and re-entered. Wuthell!

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right..as opposed to oh so superior American Engineering that results in lots of good TV coverage of shuttles blowing up and burning up every few years.

If I were going into space I'd pick the Soyuz every time, at least you get up there and back without being spread over most of Texas.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[dunkelfalke]

Well, comparing to a real third world country with nukes (Pakistan), the soviet industry was way more advanced back then - 40 years ago - than pakistani industry is now.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[sakdoctor]

Soyuz; It's the AK-47 of spacecraft

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Tablizer]

Amen! The Russians improved on an existing design to make it increasingly more reliable. We instead keep jumping from the alleged latest and greatest to the next alleged latest and greatest.

Programming languages and tools are like this also: outside of the US, older languages are still happily used in many parts. This is one reason why Microsoft kept upgrading FoxPro until recently--it's sales numbers were fairly high outside the US. (There's still some features about FoxPro that I like far more than MS-Access.)
     

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[sr180]

Foxpro had one great feature.. It functioned as a database aware scripting language which made complex tasks simpler than any other database packages around. You could work in a proceedural way, accessing record by record, you could work with sets, cursers and sql, it even had a limited object like support. I still see complex database tasks now that I wish I had foxpro or an equivalent around for. For processing or rearranging databases, nothing beat foxpro.

However, It was horribly buggy - graphics and gui features would just never work the way you expected them to - the database features were all solid however. MS would even issue major changes in the SQL syntax with minor point releases of the ADO objects. (A lesson to ALWAYS use a test server.)

Foxpro is what access should have been. Something like Foxpro is exactly what Open Office needs for manipulating data..

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[lysergic.acid]

Russia was not a 3rd world country during the cold war.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[lysergic.acid]

does that mean any 12-year-old can fly one?

joking aside, that's probably an apt comparison. i wonder how much it cost to develop/build/operate the Soyuz compared the Shuttle.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[The Grim Reefer2]

That's right..as opposed to oh so superior American Engineering that results in lots of good TV coverage of shuttles blowing up and burning up every few years.

Yes, as opposed to how many non-televised Soviet space related accidents? Including the one that killed 126 people in 1960.

http://www.leechvideo.com/video/view2470454.html

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[jd]

The Soyuz was (and is) a very simple, basic rocket. As the Russians and Americans had scooped up V2 rocket scientists, my guess is that the Soyuz is basically what the V3 would have been had the war continued. Given that the V2 was designed to be mass-produced as an effective weapon, it would logically follow that Soyuz must be cheap enough that it could have been produced in the tens or hundreds of thousands by a Europe-wide industry in war footing.

One should not assume that Soyuz is perfect, merely because it's simple. Although any engineer will tell you that a more complex system is a less reliable system, Soyuz had problems. At least one capsule malfunction killed all the crew during descent. Control malfunctions causing descent problems are common. Nonetheless, for a program that lost the only engineer who really understood rockets very early on from a brain tumour, it has had astonishing success.

The American and European space programs are not wrong, I believe, to use more modern technology, but they are wrong to use that as an excuse to not perform the additional quality control you need. It makes sense to assume that the number of possible interactions increases exponentially as you increase the number of components, which means you need to spend exponentially more resources on both the design AND the QA for a linear increase in manufacturing complexity.

It should be perfectly possible to design a highly reliable modern rocket system, but it won't be cheap and it won't be easy. Since NASA and the ESA operate on shoestring budgets that would barely pay for enough string for the engineer's shoes, it is clearly impossible for them to be designing such systems correctly. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what it takes a rocket scientist.

For commercial rocketry, though, you probably don't want the sophistication that is possible. A souped-up V2, as per Arthur C Clarke's suggestion in Wireless World and as adopted by the space giants early on, is really all you need, although I don't see the harm in borrowing more modern material science techniques to cut costs and reduce weight.

I imagine you could put a Sputnik-like payload into space for a few hundred thousand dollars and put astronauts in space for a tenth of what Russia has to charge space tourists. Not mainstream, but less the province only of the billionaires of the world.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[lysergic.acid]

yea, that was 1960. and the Nedelin disaster was an ICBM test; it was not space-related.

so far NASA astronauts have a mortality rate of 4.1% (17 deaths), whereas only 4 Russian cosmonauts have died, which is 0.9% of all the cosmonauts launched.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call 2 decades every few years.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

ya, but that's like saying you would rather eat dog shit than cat shit - most of us don't like $msshit, but by all means, swallow away!

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

So low cargo capacity and infrequent launches are a feature now?

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[dbIII]

It started off that way of becoming a super V2, however the Russians had a surviving decent rocket scientists of their own. What they lacked was technicians. What they did is repeated cleverly in a several Indian software companies today, they had the captured germans working on basicly irrelevant projects and would bring in soviet technicians and engineers to work alongside of them. After a while the soviet workers would leave and new ones would come in - the enhanced V2 project they were working on had become a training program. In the USA the captured rocket scientists were also not trusted for a few years and were mostly kept idle. The soviet orbitial rockets couldn't really be a mass produced delivery system of anything but it appears to have started off as a cleverly subverted promise to deliver a few enormous nukes to anywhere that quickly turned into a space program - Deborah Cadbury's "Space Race" describes it quite well.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Opportunist]

Russian technology was not as sophisticated as "western" technology. But it was damn durable. And easy to repair.

Don't get me wrong, but I think if the MIR was a western design, it would not have outlived its expected lifetime by many years. Yes, it would have worked flawlessly 'til its end, but in the end it would have come down because some special part was not available and without you couldn't keep it afloat.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[YrWrstNtmr]

Don't get me wrong, but I think if the MIR was a western design, it would not have outlived its expected lifetime by many years. Yes, it would have worked flawlessly 'til its end, but in the end it would have come down because some special part was not available and without you couldn't keep it afloat.

Spirit and Opportunity would like to have a word with you.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[jd]

Indian software companies use captured Germans? That explains their call centre software!

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[dbIII]

It's the model of contractors training their people on death march projects at the clients expense - only in the USSR at the time death march had a bit more of a literal meaning for those untrusted german rocket engineers and technicians.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a point with low cargo capacity but they certainly launch more often than the shuttle - the launches usually don't even make the news.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Those lost cosmonauts are clearly still alive out there, somewhere

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[sjames]

The durability of Soviet (now Russian) space technology is the result of a very different design philosophy.

The U.S. program tends to use extreme engineering to make the failure of critical componants extremely unlikely. The Soviet philosophy is to make system failures less critical. That's why Mir was basically OK with it's main power failed after the docking accident.

Another aspect of Soviet design is to brute force the problem using existing materials rather than develop new exotic materials to finesse the problem. That's why a Soyuz capsule can survive reentering at the wrong attitude.

The resulting designs do have their merits. I suspect there's a happy medium between the two approaches that would work even better.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[richardpaulhall]

Compare Soyuz, in its various models, against Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Everyone who flew came back. Apollo 1 burned on the pad, and Apollo 13 aborted its mission, but everyone who flew came home alive.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Tablizer]

Microsoft did not create FoxPro, they bought it.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Tablizer]

Agreed. It was very practical. MS-Access just slapped together some Active-X[1] components they had laying around and force-fed it VBA rather than focusing on data manipulation from the start.

I hope some OSS project takes the best of its ideas, modernizes them a bit, and mixes it with a decent GUI. (Note that FoxPro originated outside of MS.)

[1] They called it something different at the time. Can't remember at the moment.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[William Ager]

While I can't reveal my sources, I do have on very good authority that the "expected lifetimes" given for Spirit and Opportunity were arbitrary, and most people involved knew that they were quite able to last for far longer. Those sorts of numbers are given to keep missions from seeming like failures.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

According to wikipedia, the Shuttle has launched a total of 830 crew, of whom 14 have died. That's 1.69%, vs. 4 fatalities out of ~250 crew launched on human Soyuz (1.6%).

Note that this 830 crew is less than 830 astronauts, because some have flown multiple times...

2 fatal accidents out of 123 flights (Shuttle) is simply not distinguishable from 2 fatal accidents out of ~100 human Soyuz flights.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[jd]

Quite likely. If you look at "traditional" engineering techniques, you start with a specification which you then implement. A fault-tolerant specification implemented such that those faults are themselves unlikely would logically be superior to one that is fault-tolerant but liable to suffer faults or a system in which faults are unlikely but catastrophic.

Alternatively, go in the opposite direction. Design something in such a way that components have few opportunities to fail, but then implement them to be fault-tolerant should that happen.

On a more trivial level, look at materials. Iron is ok as a building material but it's heavy and has a much lower critical temperature at which it will fail than, say, some of NASA's high-temperature ceramics. Logically, a Soyuz capsule that replaced some of the ablative heat-shield with the Shuttle's thermal skin would be lighter (making it less costly to launch) and more heat-resistant (making it safer in the event of too steep a re-entry).

I suspect that the fuel used by the Russian rockets is also less stable than some of the liquid and hybrid fuels used in the US. The US has the means to develop fuels that behave in a highly predictable and controlled manner, whereas the Russians are likely using fuels that might do anything short of tap-dance. It's entirely possible that a Russian launcher converted to use US fuels would be more reliable than either country has produced independently.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[BazilBBrush]

The classic story was the one about the Americans spending a $million creating a pen that worked in zero gravity.

The Ruskies? - they just used a pencil...

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. _IA

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[damburger]

Shuttle has flown more than Soyuz, pretty much evening the risks of both individual death, and vehicle loss, at about 1-2%

Both are good systems, with their plus points and their minus points. Soyuz is perhaps more impressive because of the conditions under which it was developed.

If I went into space, I wouldn't choose either. Shuttle would, in fact, choose me - because like a considerable number of males I am too tall to ride the Soyuz

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[damburger]

Apollo 1 killed 3 people in a stupid pad accident, that has to be counted; and the survival of Apollo 13 has nothing to do with Apollo itself as they used the LEM to survive.

Three modules is also superior to 2; Soyuz is lighter than Apollo but with more interior space for the cosmonauts.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[damburger]

This is wrong. The early American rockets were far more based on German designs than Russian rockets were, because Americans got a lot more German rocket scientists.

The clustering and boosters of the R-7 design are radically different from anything von Braun envisioned. Korolev was a genius in his own right and I think its disrespectful to consider him merely a copier of German designs.

The reason Sputnik was such a shocker (along with other Soviet space firsts, all largely enabled by the immense power - for the time - of the R-7 derivatives) is because it was so far off the curve of rocket development at the time. With more and better German expertise, the US was baffled at how the Soviets had ended up with such a clear lead in the rocket race.

Yes, the US followed Soviet space firsts in short spaces of time - but in each case the satellite or capsule was a lot lighter. It was only a combination of superior computer technology in the west, and the inability of the Soviets to get the N-1 working, that kept them from claiming the moon. Both of these factors were simply policy mistakes by the Soviets; the leadership unlike their engineers lacked the insight to put good money into them early on.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Geirzinho]

And the Voyagers, Pioneers, the Galileo Jupiter probe, SoHO and Hubble, to mention just a few other systems to ignore their "do not use after" dates?

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[damburger]

Its illustrative as an engineering koan, but untrue; the 'space' pen was just a commercial product developed before the need for pens in space became apparent. Also, pencils tend not to be used in space because graphite flakes can cause shorts when it floats around.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Cally]

I imagine you could put a Sputnik-like payload into space for a few hundred thousand dollars

If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. Do you know what it costs the revolutionarily cheap SpaceX to build and launch a Falcon-1? Your guess is out by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Registered Coward v2]

That's right..as opposed to oh so superior American Engineering that results in lots of good TV coverage of shuttles blowing up and burning up every few years.

If I were going into space I'd pick the Soyuz every time, at least you get up there and back without being spread over most of Texas.

Well, considering the USSR lost at least 4 cosmonauts on reentry; and killed 140 people in two separate rocket explosions; I'd say the safety record was at best a wash.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG! Who modded you are informative. DEAD WRONG.

http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html

  Soviets were really good in hiding failures.
Idea of photoshop really originated in Russia because they were so good in erasing people who died, time after time from photos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program_conspiracy_accusations

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Ceiynt]

Only 4 cosmonauts have died, that we KNOW of. The Russian government isn't the greatest at telling the truth, and is really good at PR bending.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

s/Russian/American

your point ?

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

The rockets to do this are quite cheap. However, the cost of the bottle to launch it from are prohibitive.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Dun Malg]

s/Russian/American

your point ?

I'd ask YOU the same question. How many manned space launches did the US have where the plans, configuration, and timetable weren't trumpeted loudly before hand? See, that's the difference between the old Soviet way and the NASA way that is being referenced. The Soviets would launch and then announce after it had succeeded that it was manned... just in case. Your smug search/replace command is completely fucking stupid and irrelevant.... but you knew that, clearly, because you posted AC.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[timbos]

Come on, the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[The Grim Reefer2]

yea, that was 1960. and the Nedelin disaster was an ICBM test; it was not space-related.

so far NASA astronauts have a mortality rate of 4.1% (17 deaths), whereas only 4 Russian cosmonauts have died, which is 0.9% of all the cosmonauts launched.

Really? ICBM's aren't space related? Back in the 1950's and 1960's I'd say they were very related. The Redstone rocket that the US used for the first manned missions was also a ballistic missile.

I also didn't realize that in order for it to count as a space program related death the dead had to be actual astronauts or cosmonauts. I guess if you don't fall into one of those two categories you can't die of a space related death. I suppose the 48 that died in explosion at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in 1980 don't count either or the 9 others that died there in 1973.

I'd say that US engineering isn't quite as dismal as the AC states.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[LifesABeach]

I believe it was originally a Mac product that competed with dBase III.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you ever talk to any of the astronauts or cosmonauts, they all hate re-entering in the Soyuz. You can walk out of the Shuttle. You get carried out of the Soyuz.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Tablizer]

As I remember it, Fox started at as FoxBase for DOS. Whether the Windows GUI version was based on their Mac version or not I don't know.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[causality]

Russia was not a 3rd world country during the cold war.

Yeah, that's why I called it a joke. The USA and Russia didn't exactly like each other during this time, so the jokes and derision they had for one another aren't the kind of nice uplifting things that prevent knee-jerk moderators from deciding I was trolling. Your need to explain and their need to mod down in response amuses me though not in the derisive way that you might think it would.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[crowne]

I like the story about NASA spending millions of dollars designing a ballpoint pen that can work in zero gravity, whereas the russians opted to use a pencil.

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

*cough*Skylab*cough*

Re:Nothing like Soviet Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Kerosene and LOX are pretty stable.

The US space program isn't as focused on liquid fuel rockets. The space shuttle boosters are solid fuel rockets and the space shuttle main engine is a liquid fuel engine that uses LOX and liquid hydrogen. Liquid oxygen and LH2 is standard for the american rockets pretty much. The Soyuz rockets are fine.

The US rockets that still do use RP-1 (a type of kerosene) actually uses a russian made engine. So why on earth do you believe the americans can do any better.

Developing a new launch system wouldn't be as safe, as it's new and it's not like there are any better fuels. American LOX isn't more stable then any one else's LOX. The American companies aren't really any better then the Russian and Ukrainian either in making rockets and rocket engines so why waste resources on that. Now the space programs are intertwined any how. But little will be transfered to russia it's the other way around mostly. As they are great for launching satellites.

In Soviet Russia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... spacecraft flies you?

Re:In Soviet Russia ...

[binarylarry]

space fire kills you?

Re:In Soviet Russia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... spacecraft REENTERS you

Re:In Soviet Russia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, jokes kill you!

Re:In Soviet Russia ...

[Opportunist]

No wonder that cosmonauts had a reputation of being really hard-assed.

Re:In Soviet Russia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... spacecraft REENTERS you

Like a probe?

"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Jurily]

What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Yvan256]

Indeed. I lost about 5 minutes searching for "Soyuz 0.8" on Wikipedia.

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Anders]

What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?

"Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Yesterday"

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[AliasMarlowe]

Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?

...Soyuz 4 and/or 5...

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Anonymous Coward]

What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?

But then it should have been "Soyuzes 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today".

Or whatever the plural of Soyuz is.

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Colitis]

That version was an internal-only release.

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Tablizer]

Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 [instead of a slash]

Dude, this *is* slashdot. Plus, the capsule got stuck to the docking station, making the it re-enter the wrong way, so they showed it closer together than "and" would have provided. See, it's all logical.
             

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Anonymous Coward]

What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?

Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Yea ... Arrrgghhhh, Splurf, Aaggg, Errr ... [lapses into terminal unconsciousness]

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[orzetto]

That would be soyuzy .

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[pnevin]

Given that about 4/5 of the mission worked, it's reasonably accurate.

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[jd]

I'd hate to see what happened to the astronaut who ingested a Soyuz. Oh, not that sort of internal. Phew.

Re:"Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"

[Anonymous Coward]

... internal-only release.

That's what she said.

Moral of the story

[ShooterNeo]

The Soyuz space capsule was an incredible engineering accomplishment. Sometimes, a simpler, robust design is vastly superior to a complex, brilliant piece of engineering. It isn't always about min-maxing performance characteristics : engineering is about solving a problem with the least amount of resources used.

I've read that the clever Russian solution to updating the computers in Soyuz. Rather than a start from scratch rewrite of the controls and instruments, they choose to emulate all their old computers in modern circuitry, and to display the same gauges and instruments on modern LCDs.

For various reasons, somehow NASA has never done this. Their solutions to problems have tended to be stupendously expensive, complex boondoggles. Any average joe can see that building a space station when your launch costs are $10,000 a kilogram is a horrifically bad decision : the money spent should go into working out a cheaper way to launch things into orbit, first.

Part of this is politics, of course. The only reason Mission Control was in Houston rather than in the same facility where the rockets are worked on is due to a certain powerful Texas politician, LBJ...

Re:Moral of the story

[LWATCDR]

I guess but Remember that the Apollo 9 mission flew one month before this one. That mission was the first manned mission to orbit the moon. I would take the Apollo over Soyuz at that time. The Shuttle... Was an underfunded mess. It looks nothing like what NASA wanted to build. It was also oversold. It should have been an X-Plane like system and not sold as a Space 747. We where not even up the the space DC-3 level yet and politicians wanted to jump to airline service!
We should have kept flying Apollo/Saturn and updating it while getting the shuttle in service and testing it.

Re:Moral of the story

[chibiace]

xenu love earthling shuttle

Re:Moral of the story

[petermgreen]

Space stations are a good idea IMO, far better to leave your LAB and living facilities up there all the time then to cart them up and down all the time.

The crazy thing was building and servicing the space station using the space shuttle and hence carting a shitload of unessacery shuttle orbiter mass in and out of space continuously. Unfortunately NASA had scrapped everything else that was man rated.

Re:Moral of the story

[Em Ellel]

Part of this is politics, of course. The only reason Mission Control was in Houston rather than in the same facility where the rockets are worked on is due to a certain powerful Texas politician, LBJ...

Wow, LBJ had enough clout to move his state to be one of the southern most locations in US... amazing.... I wonder if he pushed the frozen donkey wheel alone or had some help... (Also, does that mean he could never find his way back to Texas and had to live out his life in outside world?)

-Em

Re:Moral of the story

[QuantumG]

Ahh. another idealist who is completely unaware why the ISS project was approved. MIR had fell out the sky and the Russians were about to let go a whole bunch of their space engineers. What do you think those engineers would go on to do if something else was not found to occupy their time? The US feared it would be making weapons.. most likely for countries like Iran. So the Space Station Freedom plans were dusted off and modified for "international cooperation" and, there ya go, the Russian space program is re-invigorated. No need for a nasty war. Now compare the cost of the ISS to that and you get some idea why it is considered a bargin.

Re:Moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the Apollo 9 mission flew one month before this one. That mission was the first manned mission to orbit the moon.

That was Apollo 8-- Apollo 9 tested the LEM out in earth orbit, which was a pretty exciting mission itself even though it didn't happen at the moon.

Re:Moral of the story

[Artraze]

People like to think that NASA is borderline retarded and would be better off simply using their funding dollars and fuel. Most of the time they are right. However, when it comes to safety, NASA is the top, through frequently to their own detriment.

For the case you pointed out:
> I've read that the clever Russian solution to updating the computers in Soyuz. Rather than
> a start from scratch rewrite of the controls and instruments, they choose to emulate all
> their old computers in modern circuitry, and to display the same gauges and instruments
> on modern LCDs.

The Russians here are totally in the wrong. First of all, one of the major issues concerning software in space is the ability of the hardware to work in the wild temperatures and radiation of space. NASA uses old hardware because they know it works. The Russians have swapped out their known-working hardware, and added fun potential issues like and LCD panel. On top of this, instead of just porting the code to a newer system and proving it still works, they now have to prove an emulator emulates the old hardware exactly: a much harder problem.

In short, this is like the old "Russians using a pencil / NASA spending $** million on the space pen story". It sounds clever until you realize that a pencil makes loose graphite dust in a closed environment.

Re:Moral of the story

[EdZ]

"In short, this is like the old "Russians using a pencil / NASA spending $** million on the space pen story". It sounds clever until you realize that a pencil makes loose graphite dust in a closed environment."

The story is a load of balls. BOTH used ordinary ballpoint pens due to the graphite issue. Not to mention the space pen not being developed by NASA, not costing millions, etc.

Re:Moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason Mission Control was in Houston rather than in the same facility where the rockets are worked on is due to a certain powerful Texas politician, LBJ...

It was originally going to be in Cambridge Mass, near where Tech Square is now, until JFK was murdered.

 

Re:Moral of the story

[lysergic.acid]

actually, Florida extends further south than Texas.

-Houston, Texas is located at 294546N
-Merritt Island, Florida is located at 282128N

also, the Saturn V rockets were designed & built at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which is a heck of a lot closer to Florida than to Texas. and it should also be noted that just because Johnson Space Center is the Mission Control of all manned space flights in the U.S. does not mean all manned space missions take off from Houston. the Apollo 11 mission was actually launched from Kennedy Space Center.

Re:Moral of the story

[DerekLyons]

The Soyuz space capsule was an incredible engineering accomplishment. Sometimes, a simpler, robust design is vastly superior to a complex, brilliant piece of engineering.

People keep claiming that - I'm still waiting for an example. Soyuz has flown fewer times (90 odd vice 120 odd times) than the Shuttle, yet has killed the same number of crews, had multiple reentry problems (failing to detach a module once, detaching a module too early another time, plus numerous ballistic entries and off target landings due to failed equipment), plus two non fatal loss of mission launch accidents.
 
 

I've read that the clever Russian solution to updating the computers in Soyuz. Rather than a start from scratch rewrite of the controls and instruments, they choose to emulate all their old computers in modern circuitry, and to display the same gauges and instruments on modern LCDs.
 
For various reasons, somehow NASA has never done this.

No, NASA has never done this. Instead what NASA did was to replace their old analog controls with vastly more flexible and functional digital controls when they upgraded the Shuttle's control systems. (The computers run the same code they always have - the display system serves as an emulator/translator between the displays and the computers.)

Re:Moral of the story

[lysergic.acid]

eh, so when the "old hardware" was first used, how did NASA know it would work in space? did they look at the test data from the ancient Mayan space flights?

the whole "we use old hardware because we know it works" excuse is a ton of baloney. every space technology has to be tested and tried for the first time initially. sticking to the tried and true is not a blanket excuse to oppose change or to stubbornly hold onto archaic & outdated technology; otherwise, we'd never make any kind of technological progress.

we know enough about space that vital equipment can be tested on earth by simulating space environments before they're employed on an actual space mission. it's the same principle as building equipment for use in the arctic or the deep ocean. if you don't try new things you won't be able to improve on existing systems.

part of what NASA has been doing over the past 4 decades is learning more and more about environmental conditions in space and how this affects human-beings and equipment. that lets us theorize/predict how new equipment will behave in space, and allows us to design better space technology. space isn't this unknowable mystery or some supernatural realm that magically breaks new equipment for no reason. the best way to know if LCD screens will work in space is to send one up for non-mission-critical use. and if it does break unexpectedly from an unknown interaction, then that's something that we need to investigate as it could shed light on aspects of space that we are not currently privy to.

if something doesn't work in space, we should learn why it doesn't work. likewise, if something does work in space, we should learn why it works. by taking a rational scientific approach to space exploration, we can improve on existing systems and employ new technologies in space without rolling dice. sticking to outmoded technologies due to a fear of change is a very reactionary attitude that does not belong in space exploration.

Re:Moral of the story

[radtea]

Sometimes, a simpler, robust design is vastly superior to a complex, brilliant piece of engineering.

Sometimes?

Re:Moral of the story

[Chairboy]

Very selective use of facts. Four people have died in flight in Soyuz spacecraft, while fourteen have died in flight on US shuttles.

14>4

In addition, one of the Soyuz deaths was Komarov's Soyuz One which was the very first flying craft. A failure like that 'demon machine' (which is what he called it while he fell to his death) in the very first is understandable, but the 14 who died on the shuttle did so at roughly the 25 & 100 flight milestone.

Which is more damning, a data corrupting bug that you encounter during the Alpha phase of testing, or one that shows up after the product has shipped to your customers?

Re:Moral of the story

[Em Ellel]

actually, Florida extends further south than Texas.

Yeah, isn't funny that the OTHER space center is in Florida... almost like they planned it or something...

-Em

Re:Moral of the story

[tmroyster]

Apollo 9 was a earth orbital mission only. Apollo 8 orbited the moon, but
without a Lunar Module. Apollo 9 was the first manned test of the Lunar Module - but
only in Earth Orbit. Also it launched March 9th, 1969, after Soyuz 4 and 5.

Re:Moral of the story

[Waffle Iron]

Soyuz has flown fewer times (90 odd vice 120 odd times) than the Shuttle, yet has killed the same number of crews,

However, those both happened back in the days of corner-cutting space race mode, the same era when we put highly flammable upholstery in 100% oxygen capsules. IIRC, they were due to small details (stuck air valve, parachute packing) that could be corrected in later flights.

The shuttle accidents, however, were the results of fundamental design blunders which cannot be fixed (strapping a manned vehicle with no escape system below a cryogenic ice-spewing tank and next to uncontrollable multi-ton firework sticks with seams).

had multiple reentry problems (failing to detach a module once, detaching a module too early another time, plus numerous ballistic entries and off target landings due to failed equipment), plus two non fatal loss of mission launch accidents.

Showing that their system is highly survivable even with shoddy Soviet quality control. Imagine what a great launch system it would be if *we* operated this design.

Re:Moral of the story

[dbIII]

Ahh. another idealist who is completely unaware why the ISS project was approved. MIR had fell out the sky

When you make attacks on people's ignorance you really should get your facts right :)

One of the reasons the ISS is in the paticularly orbit it has was apparently to stop the Russians bolting bits of Mir to it. With the ISS coming up there was no reason for expensive projects to keep Mir running (and expensive fuel runs to keep it up there) so they deorbited it. It was in the planning and first section construction stages for a very long time.

The other bits of revisionism in the post above are very odd - while they make a tiny bit of sense now (as senile fools look back to their glory days of the cold war and want to restart it and as Russia is run by ex-KGB) or a lot in 1968 we are talking about the late 1980s and 1990s. The other thing the earlier poster is extremely deluded about is on the point of Iran - what do you think Iran did to their communists not very far into their fundamentalist revolution? What do you think people caught forming an Iranian communist party now would spend their days (admittedly the government would be housing and feeding them)? Things like that really annoyed the USSR and relations have not improved since. To sum up - IMHO I think all of the points in the above post are rather worthless and deluded ranting with an attached groundless attack on the poster above it.

Re:Moral of the story

[QuantumG]

Sigh. The Russians were planning MIR-2.. it was canceled, what with the fall of the Soviet Union and all. Bush (Sr)'s justification for the "Agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes" was well documented at the time. With his departure and the arrival of Gore and Clinton, the reasoning was spelled out again.

I'm repeating the fact that water is wet, you're saying I'm "making attacks on people's ignorance".

Re:Moral of the story

[YrWrstNtmr]

engineering is about solving a problem with the least amount of resources used.

When you decide to have different problems to solve, you end up with different solutions.

Re:Moral of the story

[dbIII]

I'm repeating the fact that water is wet, you're saying I'm "making attacks on people's ignorance".

No, I was saying you were making ignorant attacks - especially since the reason given was "MIR had fell out the sky" which was wrong by a few years, maybe close to a decade.

The other stuff - well let's just stick to the facts instead of making loud noises to show how much of a patriot you are - nobody really cares on an international forum like this.

Re:Moral of the story

[QuantumG]

patriot? What the fuck dude? For one, I'm Australian. For two, parts of MIR had fallen out of the sky by the time the ISS started construction in 1998. Here's another idea, how about you just fuck right off? Nit picking tool.

Re:Moral of the story

[donscarletti]

In short, this is like the old "Russians using a pencil / NASA spending $** million on the space pen story". It sounds clever until you realize that a pencil makes loose graphite dust in a closed environment.

The whole story is pure bollocks anyway. Both US and Soviet agencies used pencils in space. The space pen was developed independently by Paul C. Fisher without being requested to do so by NASA. In the end, I've been told that both agencies ended up ordering them.

Re:Moral of the story

[jd]

NASA's oldest facility is in Hampton, Virginia. Given that it's parked right next to the largest Naval and Air Force bases, not to mention the CIA, it would have been ideal for providing security, clandestine training of astronauts, etc. It's also far enough from any land borders to make a quick escape by Axis scientists to Argentina unlikely.

Building in the south was riskier (the natives aren't the brightest and aren't as sympathetic to Federal goals) and it's extremely unclear that the geographical location was chosen because of the proximity to the equator. There are US-held territories much further south.

Re:Moral of the story

[dbIII]

Ronald Reagan announced ISS in 1984, it got redesigned in 1993 etc etc. I am sorry, but raving about Mir and even Iran above is misleading bullshit.

I suggest an apology to the poster above that you accused of being "another idealist who is completely unaware why the ISS project was approved".

Re:Moral of the story

[DerekLyons]

The number of people killed is irrelevant except as an emotional argument. If you do insist on comparing numbers - also compare the number of people carried to and from orbit. Shuttle has killed three times as many, but carried five times as many.

The fact the Komarov died on the first flight is irrelevant because it wasn't an Alpha test. Even if you insist on counting it as such, you still face the problem of explaining away the ongoing failures - failures coming pretty steadily across the entire program. The failure describe here during the Soyuz 4/5 flight has happened within the last year!

In short, no matter how you slice it, the difference between the two craft is minute. The claim that cheap and rugged trumps expensive and delicate is unsupported by facts.

Re:Moral of the story

[DerekLyons]

However, those both happened back in the days of corner-cutting space race mode, the same era when we put highly flammable upholstery in 100% oxygen capsules. IIRC, they were due to small details (stuck air valve, parachute packing) that could be corrected in later flights.

Which neatly dodges the issue of discussing the ongoing problems Soyuz has. The same problem described in TFA happened *again* just last year.
 
 

The shuttle accidents, however, were the results of fundamental design blunders which cannot be fixed (strapping a manned vehicle with no escape system below a cryogenic ice-spewing tank and next to uncontrollable multi-ton firework sticks with seams).

As opposed to the Soyuz accidents which were the result of fundamental design issues? Like packing too many couches in? Like jettisoning your life support module prior to ensuring that you are on a re-entry trajectory?
 
 

Showing that their system is highly survivable even with shoddy Soviet quality control. Imagine what a great launch system it would be if *we* operated this design.

No, what it shows is the great grandparents thesis is false as it is unsupported by the facts. Yours is equally false, because it is unsupported by facts, requires ignoring relevant facts, and requires special pleadings to explain why design flaws in Shuttle are bad but design flaws in Soyuz aren't germane to the discussion.

Re:Moral of the story

[Waffle Iron]

No, what it shows is the great grandparents thesis is false as it is unsupported by the facts. Yours is equally false, because it is unsupported by facts, requires ignoring relevant facts, and requires special pleadings to explain why design flaws in Shuttle are bad but design flaws in Soyuz aren't germane to the discussion.

Blah blah blah.

Did I mention that the Shuttle costs orders of magnitude more money for each passenger killed than Soyuz, even after considering higher body count?

Re:Moral of the story

[bitrex]

The shuttle accidents, however, were the results of fundamental design blunders which cannot be fixed (strapping a manned vehicle with no escape system below a cryogenic ice-spewing tank and next to uncontrollable multi-ton firework sticks with seams).

I think many Shuttle engineers would disagree that the Shuttle's _design_ was fundamentally flawed - the Shuttle was built to fit the design requirements that were handed down to NASA from FedGov and particularly the DOD; that is to build a reusable manned launch vehicle that has a 1000 nautical mile landing crossrange and can take a 15'x80' 60,000 pound payload to LEO. When you have those design requirements and start looking at the problem with the late 1960s early 1970s tech you have available, whatever way you start out you pretty much converge on a design of a vehicle that is essentially the STS. You could try putting the liquid fuel onboard the orbiter, but that's going to kill your payload size and weight. You could try putting the reusable return vehicle on top of the stack, but then you're not going to have wings, hence no crossrange. You could say "Let's try horizontal takeoff and landing and do single stage to orbit" and realize that in the 1970s the technology isn't there, and still isn't until someone comes up with an engine with an order of magnitude greater specific impulse than chemical rockets.

You could certainly make the argument that the _implementation_ of many parts of the Shuttle's design were both poorly executed; for example the fact that O-ring ablation was noticed and a non-nominal behavior was allowed to become nominal is inexcusable. The engineers had the big requirements handed down to them by the powers that be: 1000 mile crossrange, 15'x80' payload length, 60,000 pound weight, manned vehicle, reusable. These things were mandatory - the government said "This is what we want, make it or make nothing." So with the technology they had at the time they did their best, and my hypothesis is that with those requirements you'll get convergent evolution to something pretty much like the Shuttle every time. The reason the Buran looks so much like the Shuttle isn't so much that they copied our engineering: it was different in many substantial ways. It looks so much like the Shuttle because they copied some of the requirements NASA had.

Re:Moral of the story

[bitrex]

And I almost forgot the most important requirement: "You have $13 billion in 1972 dollars."

Re:Moral of the story

[bitrex]

"Sometimes" because simple and robust are relative terms. A rock is simple and robust, you could even use it to hammer a nail in a pinch. A hammer is a little more complex and vastly more efficient. A nailgun is much more complex than a hammer, but you can't put 50 nails a minute into a roof with a hammer. When you then start trying to ask questions like "Is a nailgun better than a hammer" or "Is the Soyuz better than the Space Shuttle" without any qualifications the questions are meaningless.

Re:Moral of the story

[bitrex]

Engineering isn't about solving a problem with the least amount of resources, it's about meeting your design requirements. Saying that you want to do this while using the least amount of resources is pretty much a tautology - that's why budgets exist. Comparing the engineering of the Soyuz capsule to the engineering of the Shuttle is the the definition of apples to oranges; that "they go into space and they carry some number of people" is about the only functional description that the two systems share.

Re:Moral of the story

[QuantumG]

You're a perfect example of a Slashtard.

Re:Moral of the story

[bitrex]

I'd like to add that I'm not disagreeing that the Shuttle is a stupendously expensive, overly complex system. What I'm saying is that the blame for this can be laid squarely upon the federal government (particularly the DOD) for the requirements they had. I'm sure there was a time in the early 80s when to the military the Shuttle was the greatest thing ever; it should have been at least considering a great deal of its requirements were set in stone by the DOD. The luster soon faded when the military realized that the STS would never have the kind of turnaround time that they wanted. When you have requirements laid down by Homer Simpson, for example, an engineer is going to build the Homer Simpson car. Whether it turns out to be good by anyone else's standards is another story.

Re:Moral of the story

[damburger]

Apollo was, frankly, a pile of crap that killed 3 astronauts on the pad and would've killed another 3 in space if the LEM didn't have something to say about it.

Soyuz is better than Apollo. LOK was at least comparable in capability (if smaller) than the LEM. The critical factor in the moon race was Saturn V vs. N-1, and that was never really much of a contest considering that the N-1 was underfunded, started later, and wasn't provided with a proper test stand for its first stage cluster.

Re:Moral of the story

[damburger]

The great shame is that they didn't save Buran/Energia in the same way. Want a Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle? Just remove the shuttle. Best of all, that configuration was already tested in 1987.

With a little foresight, there could've been an international Moon mission by 2000, and perhaps a Mars mission by now.

Re:Moral of the story

[damburger]

He announced 'space station freedom' in 1984, and it languished in redesigns and budget wrangling until it was merged with Mir 2 (and European and Japanese projects) to form the ISS.

Re:Moral of the story

[damburger]

Its a manned capsule. Anything that can fry an LCD screen can fry your bone marrow pretty damn well too.

Re:Moral of the story

[Waffle Iron]

The requirements are part of the design. You can't just excuse this epic failure on that and accept the outcome.

The requirements went away as soon as the Air Force saw that the resulting design was a dog, and canned it in favor of expendable rockets. Even the Soviets realized the same thing and dumped their shuttle after one flight. NASA should have followed suit decades ago.

There is nothing in those original requirements that NASA actually needs or needed, so keeping this money pit around has been nothing but a dangerous waste of taxpayers' money.

Re:Moral of the story

[Dun Malg]

Apollo was, frankly, a pile of crap that killed 3 astronauts on the pad

Apollo I was a piece of crap. It is, in fact, entirely because of the fire that Apollo was completely redesigned internally.

and would've killed another 3 in space if the LEM didn't have something to say about it.

As designed, the Apollo system was not the reason the O2 tank exploded. The thermostat supplied by Beechcraft was only rated at 28v, despite the spec having been changed to 65v. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but a confluence of unlikely events resulted in the the tank heater being run more than usual, burning off the insulation in the faulty thermostat, creating a short when the tanks were stirred which caused the explosion.

PS: You're an idiot. The internet is full of information, and yet you fire off ignorant proclamations without even making a simple google search. Amazing. Maybe you should go back to just watching TV.

Re:Moral of the story

[Dun Malg]

it's extremely unclear that the geographical location was chosen because of the proximity to the equator. There are US-held territories much further south.

I'd say it's pretty clear. Cape Canaveral had been a missile launch test center since 1949 with the explicit reasoning of a) closer to the equator, and b) the entire Atlantic to fire out over. Other, non-CONUS territories had the blindingly obvious disadvantages of poorer security and less reliable supply and transportation.

Re:Moral of the story

[Dun Malg]

Very selective use of facts. Four people have died in flight in Soyuz spacecraft, while fourteen have died in flight on US shuttles.

14>4

Utter nonsense. You somehow equate a larger seating capacity to "more failures".

Re:Moral of the story

[Dun Malg]

Blah blah blah.

Wow, brilliant counterargument.

Did I mention that the Shuttle costs orders of magnitude more money for each passenger killed than Soyuz, even after considering higher body count?

So it's better that Souyuz kills its passengers for less cost? I'm not sure what advantage you're trying to illustrate. Besides, anyone with any sense already knows that the shuttle is way too expensive to operate as a passenger vehicle because it's designed to be a truck.

Re:Moral of the story

[Waffle Iron]

Wow, brilliant counterargument.

He was blah blahing senseless technobabble the same way a NASA bureaucrat would.

So it's better that Souyuz kills its passengers for less cost?

Sure. If they both kill people at comparable rates, you might as well use the cheaper option.

Besides, anyone with any sense already knows that the shuttle is way too expensive to operate as a passenger vehicle because it's designed to be a truck.

Exactly. That's why the shuttle should have been scrapped in the 1980s as soon as real-world experience conclusively proved that combining those two incompatible functions was doomed to failure.

Re:Moral of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you get all high and mighty -- Russian mission control is in Kazakhstan.

Re:Moral of the story

[fmfnavydoc]

Apollo 10 was the "dress rehearsal" for Apollo 11...they did everything but land on the moon (supposedly the LM did not have enough propellant to allow for Stafford and Cernan to land and take off from the surface on the moon). One other piece of trivia...Russian Cosmonauts have a tradition, going back to Yuri Gagarin's flight, of having the transport vehicle for the cosmonauts stop on the way out to the launch pad, and cosmonauts get out and relieve themselves next to the vehicle, then get back in and go to the launch pad. Story has it that Gagarin was so nervous for his flight that he needed to take a leak, had the vehicle stop so he could get out and relieve himself before getting on board Vostok 1 (his suit didn't have a urine collection system, since his flight was only one orbit). Cosmonauts consider it "good luck" to do this.

Re:Moral of the story

[dbIII]

That said, Mir was not falling out of the sky in 1993 so it's still wrong. The weird spy thriller fantasy stuff is a little harder to answer but the main reason the poster above gave (ie. Mir was gone) is completly and utterly wrong.

Re:Moral of the story

[radtea]

A nailgun is much more complex than a hammer, but you can't put 50 nails a minute into a roof with a hammer.

So it would be silly to compare a nailgun and hammer, because they are doing different jobs.

My point is that the simplest and most robust tool that is capable of doing a given job is always the best one. If you specify the job incorrectly you'll wind up with the wrong tool.

Often engineering choices appear to be complex because the end-user goal is poorly specified or understood. At other times the end-user goal is either inherently complex or different groups of users have different goals. But in the cases where the end-user goal can be clearly specified, the simplest, most robust tool that will meet that specification is always superior from the point of view of user experience.

I particularly like the hammer/nail-gun comparison because it is an example I have frequently used to explain to PHBs how poor specifications can lead to inappropriate tool choices. Nail guns actually LACK most of the capabilities of a hammer (ever try to bludgeon anyone to death with a nail-gun?) whereas PHBs tend to think of nail guns as "superior" to hammers. Which they are, if you are a roofer, but no everyone is a roofer.

Re:Moral of the story

[LWATCDR]

And Soyuz one killed it's pilot and Soyuz 11 killed it's crew.
The USSR/Russia improved the Soyuz by leaps and bounds since then but the versions that few around the time of Apollo where not trouble free.

Bonus Parts?

[Tablizer]

Let me see if I got this strait: the return capsule accidentally got stuck to part of the ship it was docked to, and took the part with it on the way down, but this extra part cause the capsule to face the wrong way, using the wrong side as the "heat shield", which meant the astronaut was about to be cooked to death.

But the vibration and heat of a rough re-entry jiggled or melted the extra part away, setting the capsule free and allowing it to face the proper direction. (Although the rough ride caused other landing problems as a result.)
       

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good enough. Soyuz, Gemini and Mercury capsules were designed so that they are stable in aerodynamic flight when the heat shield is pointing in the direction of travel. So even if you can't see what orientation you are in, once the capsule 'feels' the atmosphere, it will turn around on its own to face the correct direction.

The same thing happened recently on the TMA-11 return, where the SM got hung up and didn't detach for some time.

http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/4170

Re:Bonus Parts?

[John Hasler]

> Let me see if I got this strait...

You don't. You don't have it straight, either.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I got this strait:

Not quite, but you're on the right Bering.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha OH WOW! Best /. post in a while..

Re:Bonus Parts?

[budgenator]

This does seem to be a recurring theme. Normally the Russians are very good and engineering equipment that is tolerant of quality variances, but they either need to figure out this separation issue or beef up them hatches.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[smoker2]

Let me see if I got this strait:

Not quite, but you're on the right Bering.

Oh, that was just dire.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

...

The same thing happened recently on the TMA-11 return, where the SM got hung up and didn't detach for some time.

...

We're up to ELEVEN of those things?

And where the hell is it returning FROM?

Re:Bonus Parts?

[spartacus_prime]

Not at all, by George.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Brett Buck]

Note that this is hardly the only time this happened, in fact it happened on Soyuz TMA-11 last year, and to a fair number of the Vostok/Voskhod flights before it. It's a source of concern for the ISS return spacecraft.

          Brett

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Opportunist]

Maybe, but the angel is way off.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

... The same thing happened recently on the TMA-11 return, where the SM got hung up and didn't detach for some time. ...

We're up to ELEVEN of those things? And where the hell is it returning FROM?

Tycho, obviously.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[root_42]

Let me see if I got this strait: the return capsule accidentally got stuck to part of the ship it was docked to, and took the part with it on the way down, but this extra part cause the capsule to face the wrong way, using the wrong side as the "heat shield", which meant the astronaut was about to be cooked to death.

Apart from the spelling error, you have not got it exactly straight. The Soyuz spacecraft consists of three parts: The orbital module, the reentry module and the service module. It is launched as one single piece of spacecraft. The crew starts and lands in the re-entry module. The orbital module is the living and working area during orbit. The service module contains all the propulsion,communication and similar stuff. It also has the solar panels attached to it. Before re-entry, the Soyuz fires its retro rockets and jettisons the orbital and the service module, leaving only the middle section, the re-entry module, in which the crew returns to earth. However, with Soyuz 5 the service module did not detach, due to a fault. Now you have to know that the heat shield is on the side of the re-entry module which is connected to the service module. Also if only those two parts remain, Soyuz' aerodynamics force it to plunge down to earth with the re-entry module face down, exposing its non-shielded side. Eventually, the service module broke away during descent. Probably of heat and aerodynamic stress. Once the re-entry module was separated, its most aerodynamic position was again with the heat shield in the right direction, so the capsule automatically turned itself around, much like a shuttlecock does if you throw it with the wrong side first. Hope this cleared some things up.

Re:Bonus Parts?

[Cally]

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

Robust, except for stage sep

[kaptain80]

The Soyuz space capsule was an incredible engineering accomplishment.

On the other hand, their stage separation design isn't so good...

He came from outer space

[Raenex]

Best part of the story for me was this:

Given that the entire re-entry-and-landing process was pretty well botched, it's perhaps unsurprising that Volynov came down well short of the intended landing area. In fact, he landed in the Ural Mountains, where he was greeted by a local temperature measuring a brisk minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit With rescue several hours away at best, our intrepid cosmonaut decided to hoof it for safety. He plodded a few kilometers before finding a cheery fire and a brimming samovar in the cottage of a welcoming peasant.

That must have been one surprised peasant.

Re:He came from outer space

[Detritus]

That's much better than Voskhod 2, which also landed off-course in the Urals in similar circumstances, and was surrounded by hungry wolves.

http://www.astronautix.com/flights/voskhod2.htm

Re:He came from outer space

[LeeBarnes]

no kidding. given what had just happened to him, i half expected for the peasant to have shot Volynov for trespassing.

Re:He came from outer space

[John Hasler]

A peasant shooting a guy in a military uniform for trespassing in the Soviet Union. Right.

Re:He came from outer space

[quenda]

no kidding. given what had just happened to him, i half expected for the peasant to have shot Volynov for trespassing.

Not in Russia. But this is why US astronauts landed at sea, rather than risk landing in Texas.

Re:He came from outer space

[Catmeat]

And better than Soyuz 18a which came down high up in the Altai Mountains. It landed on a snow covered slope and was sliding downhill to a 500 foot cliff-top when it was stopped by the parachute snagging on vegetation.

The crew had to wait 24 hours for rescue because nobody could get to them through the chest-deep snow and they had problems flying helicopters at that altitude.

Re:He came from outer space

[dunkelfalke]

in the soviet union there was freedom to roam, similar to the laws in nordic countries.

Re:He came from outer space

[Dun Malg]

in the soviet union there was freedom to roam, similar to the laws in nordic countries.

Yeah, except for that pesky internal passport system. Free to roam, but not too far.

Re:He came from outer space

[dunkelfalke]

actually very far - ussr was the largest country in the world. you could get a flight over 8 time zones (and this without any passport or hassle at the check in).

internal ids are pretty common in europe (the system is not much different) and european police asks for them way more often than soviet militia did it back then.

you have to get some perspective. while the ussr looked quite totalitarian some decades ago, comparing it to modern europe and usa creates a very different picture. in some ways soviet people were more free than western people are now.

Re:He came from outer space

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with Russians and hardship? I honestly can't imagine anyone else surviving a perilous space mission only to be surrounded by wolves (and survive that too).

Re:He came from outer space

[Anonymous Coward]

"ussr was the largest country in the world"
Isn't Russia still the biggest?

"in some ways soviet people were more free than western people are now."
I don't think they'd agree with you :)

True meaning of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countries

[mhalagan]

Today's meaning of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countries is vastly different from the original meaning. Originally 1st world countries were those which were democratic. 2nd world countries were communist, and everyone else fell into the 3rd world category.

Pronouncing Russian space names

[Opyros]

FWIW, most of us English speakers are badly mispronouncing the word "Soyuz". James Oberg has an article on how to pronounce it and several other names associated with the Soviet/Russian space program.

Re:Pronouncing Russian space names

[damburger]

Interesting. I always thought it was "say-us", based on how it is pronounced as the first word of the Soviet national anthem.

Re:Pronouncing Russian space names

[Cyberax]

It's pronounced as a sound closer to 'a' than to 'o'. Also, Americans usually stress the wrong syllable (it's "soYUz").

Also, imagine what would happen if...

[sznupi]

...the Shuttle entered the armosphere wrong end in (though one doesn't really have to imagine; ultimatelly the aerodynamic forces were what shred Columbia to pieces)

As for Apollo...yeah, it might have been good (though Soyuz has much larger volume to mass ratio; and it was also designed to be moon capable), but...ultimatelly it was scrapped, as you say; and that's it.

Re:Also, imagine what would happen if...

[XNormal]

...the Shuttle entered the armosphere wrong end in

The shuttle HAS NO right end to enter the atmosphere. It is not stable without active controls. Soyuz can enter in brick mode and still survive the reentry.

Re:Also, imagine what would happen if...

[sznupi]

Well, of course - but you know perfectly well that by "wrong end" I've meant ~"opposite to the way it's suppose to do it" ;p.

Definatelly much more rough than ballistic reentry in Soyuz...

Re:True meaning of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countri

[quanticle]

Not exactly. Originally, the first-world was NATO and its allies. The second world was the Warsaw Pact and its allies. The third world was everyone else. By this definition, both India and Yugoslavia were third world, despite having massively different socioeconomic conditions.

Of course, after the end of the Cold War, the second-world ceased to exist, leaving us with the first world of the West, and the third world containing everyone else.

Re:True meaning of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countri

[Calinous]

It's the Old World, the New World and the Third World, not the first, second and third world.

Mir-2 and ISS...

[joh]

The Russians were planning MIR-2.. it was canceled, what with the fall of the Soviet Union and all.

Yes, and the already built core module of Mir-2 became one of the first modules of ISS (Zvezda), providing the life support equipment for the crew even today.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss the point. The ruskies DO/DID test out new and bold designs that pushed the limit of technology.. the Buran being a perfect example .. however, rather then orgazming all over the design plans before the thing even got off the ground, they kept updating the Soyuz and kept using a launch system that they -knew- was safe and functional.. until something better was ready. As politics have it, that new-better-shiney system lost its funding after only one flight, so .. lucky for them .. they still had the "old and reliable" soyuz going since they had simply failed to retire it prematurely.....