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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...
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
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