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

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[Yvan256]

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

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I got this strait:

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

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

[Colitis]

That version was an internal-only release.

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