Slashdot Mirror
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...
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
This is most likely a quality control issue, not a design issue which would have turned up in the last 40 years, you would think.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder