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Russian Supply Vehicle To ISS Burns
First time accepted submitter Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "The Russian cargo spacecraft 'Progress' developed problems and burned up in the atmosphere shortly after its launch at 1300 GMT. From the article: 'The Russian space agency said the Progress M-12M cargo ship was not placed in the correct orbit by its rocket and fell back to Earth. The vessel was carrying three tonnes of supplies for the ISS astronauts.'"
Say what you will about Russia, but they can still put humans in space...
Too bad it's in a museum now.
What? This was the FIRST failure of a progress module. Also as far as I know, they haven't had a single fatality related to their current manned space vehicle (the Soyuz) and unless they are hiding some early issues, they have never lost any crew on manned flights. Remember, the shuttle lost 2 crews, and we lost an Apollo crew on the ground. I would say the Russian human spaceflight program is safer than the US program, although IMHO losing 2 shuttle crews is a reasonable amount of loss for a pioneering program. Just think about how many ships were lost when man first started exploring the globe.
Visualize Whirled Peas
None. It was only Soylent Green.
In related news, food prices on the ISS are expected to spike in early trading tomorrow.....
In more news, 17 Murdock newspapers printed leaks about concerns that relatives of ISS crew have about their safety.
-Charlie
They had a lot of bad luck lately. Losing at least three launches this year. I hope they get back on track soon. Who else could transport new people up and down to the ISS. Freight can be done by ESA's ATV, but human space flight is right now Russia only.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents
Just saying...
"Orbital insertion is really not that hard, once you get the hang of it."
/. I'm guessing that jokes on insertion not being hard would be a waste of time... ;-)
Being
I'm pretty sure Vladimir Komarov would disagree with you... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1.
Also, there seem to be quite a few Russian space program deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Incidents_and_setbacks
today is spelling optional day.
3.31 kilo shitloads (kSL). Metric system FTW.
Soyuz 1 crashed with Vladimir Komarov on re-entry and Soyuz 11 depressurized during preparations for re-entry. But Soyuz still has a pretty good safety record.
Things are not looking good for the Russian space program right now. This is the second loss they've had in a week. On August 18, rocket failure resulted in a new communication satellite going into an essentially useless orbit. The real worry about this sort of thing is what it will do to the human space program. The US may not be as willing to hire the Russians to go into space when things are running this badly. I can't imagine a PR disaster much worse than American astronauts getting killed on a Russian spacecraft. On the other hand, I'm very happy that this problem occurred on an unmanned supply vehicle rather than anything with people on it. It is also a bit scary to note that even a very well-understood set of systems like the Soyuz still sometimes runs into such severe problems. Hopefully they will be able to identify what precisely caused this problem.
Hopefully just common supplies...imagine if Robonaut was on that thing...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Russians (Soviets at the time) had two loss-of-crew accidents with the Soyuz. Just like the Shuttle, except that the Shuttle flew more times than the Soyuz (yes, the Soyuz is considerably older than Shuttle, and has flown fewer missions).
In addition, the Soyuz has failed its mission considerably more often than Shuttle has.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The Soviets lost Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11 for four dead in space flights.
The two Shuttles add up to more deaths because the Shuttles carried more people than any Soviet or Russian Federation craft.
Michael J. Adams died while piloting a North American X-15 rocket plane on reentry from 50.4 miles up.
Shuttle did 135 launches with two lost craft
Soyuz has done 111 launches with two lost craft
Apollo did 16 launches with no lost craft
Gemini did 10 launches with no lost craft
Vostok did 6 launches with no lost craft
Mercury did 6 launches with no lost craft
Voskhod did 2 launches with no lost craft
US 167 launches - 2 losses
USSR/Russian Federation 119 launches - 2 losses
According to wikipedia (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents), 277 Americans have flown in space, compared to 96 for USSR/Russia. 14 Americans have been killed in spaceflight (technically 13, because one was Israeli), and 4 Soviets were killed. That's a death rate of 5% for USA and 4.2% for Russia.
Better known as 318230.
I like SpaceX as much as the next guy, but there's more to the puzzle. Orbital Sciences, Boeing's CST-100, Sierra Nevada's DreamChaser, ESA's and JAXA's resupply vehicles, and even Orion-reborn (to name a few) are all critical to maintaining a foothold on the frontier.
I think what this should teach us (potentially having our only way to get things and people to the ISS grounded) is that no single solution can be depended on. In addition to the sought cost benefits of competition, we need multiple vehicles because none of them will be perfectly reliable and all run a risk of being taken out of service temporarily and leaving a gap if nothing else is available.
American pork barrel is no match for Russian vodka barrel!
Our corrupt politicians make yours look like amateurs!
If it had only made it higher and exploded, they would have lost 0 tonnes of supplies.
Damn you gravity. Damn you!
Something witty.
Misleading statistics.
There have been 277 DIFFERENT Americans in space. Quite a few have flown more than once.
Ditto the Russians.
Note that Shuttle had 135 flights, with seven crew each. Call it 950 total Shuttle crew. Fourteen fatalities, so about 1.5% death rates on Shuttle
The Russians have flown Soyuz 110 times, two crew per shot. 220 Russians, four dead. Or about 1.8% death rate.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Note that Soyuz is on about its 7th or 8th generation of craft. The soyuz deaths occurred in some pretty ancient models.
And the Soyuz 11 problem wouldn't have affected the current crews since they wear suits.
BTW, weren't there a couple of close calls when the re-entry module didn't separate properly? AFAIR the crews survived but had an exciting ride.
Here are more accurate statistics:
http://space.kursknet.ru/cosmos/english/other/stat_kk.sht
Russia / USSR launched 282 man-flights into space. USA launched 881 man-flights. Thus the fatality rate for Russia is 1.4%, and for USA 1.6%.
China has launched 6 man-flights on 3 launches with a 0% fatality rate.
Better known as 318230.
Apollo did 16 launches with no lost craft
Only if you don't count a fire during a launch rehearsal. Sure it's not actually a launch... but they had to scrap that whole flight. But still, I consider it close enough. For instance, if a couple dies during their wedding rehearsal, history should record that but for the deaths, they would have married. (In France, it would probably be good enough to get presidential approval to actually construct the marriage despite them being dead, especially if one were to survive.)
The point is, it's kind of dick to not include the lost Apollo mission on account of it "never having actually launched"... when in truth, but for the fire, it would have launched.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Have you tried Orbiter? Great space sim, not really a game. Yes, you do have to break out your orbital mechanics textbook and do some math.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So far, there's not proof that an "American company" could even replicate the 1961 mission that sent Alan Shepard into space.
Maybe you should wait until a private corporation sends one single human into space and brings him back alive before making claims about what they can do. And it's not just a "matter of certifications" because if they wanted proof of concept they could launch from some third world country (where they'll probably end up building their craft anyway).
I think a lot of people overestimate private industry's ability to achieve safe human space travel.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Which is to say, don't unmanned Progress mission failures tell you something important about the likelihood of manned Soyuz disasters?
Had it been manned, the escape system would have fired and brought the crew back down. As far as I remember that's already happened once on a Soyuz flight and the biggest problem was that the crew had to hide from hungry wolves after the landing.
One of the benefits of capsules is that you don't die just because the wings fell off and you need them to come back down.
It does surprise me that we still can't repeatably get into space over 50 years after first doing so. Not that I blame anybody; apparently it's just very, very hard to do.
To be honest, I was going for the cheap laugh. I was thinking about Googling about for US states or cities with highest obesity rates, but, oh look, shiny things.
Though the capacity is rather small, I wonder if the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle could carry critical supplies to the ISS? It's designed for quick turn-around and maneuverability. Would have to spacewalk for those supplies, though. No docking system on OTV that I know of.
Invenio via vel creo
It might help that I live in Austin. Austin shows up in the lists for most healthy cities.
Then again the rest of Texas would be happy for Austin to not be part of Texas.
It's Texas's little liberal heart.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
You don't need bombs in orbit when you have ICBMs. Bombs in space are easy to track, ICBMs on the ground are not. ICBMs go into space before dropping on their target anyway so the difference is only that you're using the rocket part long before you drop the bomb part.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The difference is warning time. An ICBM that already hangs over your head and only needs to survive reentry and explode gives you VERY little warning time compared to an ICBM that needs to launch, fly and reenter/explode. Your spy sats would pick that up the instant that missile silo opens, let alone the rocket takes off.
A bomb in orbit is literally the Damocletian sword hanging over you, it COULD drop any time it passes overhead... or it could just fly by. Sure, you can track them, but if you do not have a space program, you can't even possibly do anything to keep them from flying overhead. Protest all you like, but the bomb stays there. It's not like you could blast it from the sky without a space program.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.