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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."
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.)
Table-ized A.I.
It can't be helped. The actual article uses this statement three times...
You can't take the sky from me.
That would be soyuzy .
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
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.
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
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
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
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.
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".
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap