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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."
What a retarded headline. Would it have killed someone to write it as "Soyuz 4 and 5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today"?
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!
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, 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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Soyuz; It's the AK-47 of spacecraft
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 sticking to the tried and true is not a blanket excuse to oppose change or to stubbornly hold onto archaic & outdated technology; otherwise, we'd never make any kind of technological progress.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.
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.
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.
"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.