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Russian Space Agency Determines Cause of Soyuz Crash
An anonymous reader writes "The online version of the San Francisco Chronicle reports the cause of the loss of a Soyuz rocket in August. The Russian Space Agency, ROSCOSMOS says a manufacturing flaw led to the failure of a gas generator."
This is not an accident that there is a flaw in manufacturing procedure, it's the reality of current Russian political arena, where nobody really gives a s..t about anything and the only important question is - how do I make more money now?
In fact it is better and faster news than many people feared. It suggests a by-the-numbers path to return the Soyuz to service. In turn, this dramatically lowers the risk that we will need to evacuate the ISS and suffer any negative consequences associated with that.
(We now return you to this thread's excessively random spew.)
was the real problem
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
A Progress was the payload. The rocket is called Soyuz. (As are the payloads that carry humans.)
how are american lives more important than russian lives, or any other?
If you can't value a human life, ask life insurance professional. Short version: a human generates income stream. Value of someone's life is a sum of that income from present to death of the individual. So if GDP per capita today is 14K in Russia and 45K in America then average American life is three time as valuable.
Space Failures Raise Uneasy Questions - The Russian Space Industry starved after the fall of the USSR. The workforce aged and retired and there was a lack of new hires due to non-competitive pay scales with industry. Now the agency faces a lack of skilled workers that will only worsen as corruption has devoured all capital investments. New engineers and technicians take years to become proficient, it's not like working at you're local 7-11 as some folks seem to think.
You can draw a direct parallel to the US human spaceflight program. Now that the shuttle program has ended the majority of laid-off contract workers (i.e. USA, BOEING, Rockwell) are dispersing out of Brevard County - Florida to other aerospace jobs across the United States. Any future US manned space program will spend much treasure and likely a few lives to restore the talent that was let go, APOLLO all over again.
Hello. This is Russian Space Agency. My Name Peggy. You Have Problem With Our Rocket?
In the second link it says that a defect led to a "clogged fuel supply pipe". They don't seem to specify which part was faulty or what the defect actually was. Did a valve stick or maybe a turbopump failed. The way it's worded somebody could have left their lunch in the fuel tank.
Anybody know where there's more specific information?
Knowledge Brings Fear
This isn't about spaceflight, so it isn't directly applicable here, but... I was always curious about a $1 bid, so I asked someone in the construction industry. He said that one of the requirements on every job is a "completion bond". This is a bond from an insurance company that will pay to have the project completed to the requirements if the bidder fails to do so themselves. So, if you get an insurance company to underwrite a bond on your $1 bid, the buyer doesn't care. If you don't build it, your insurance company will pay someone else to do so. Either way, they get what they requested for your bid of $1. If you don't get the bond, they'll never accept your bid in the first place.
How does the buyer ensure you're meeting the requirements? They have inspectors. As with any contract dispute, if you say you completed the project to requirements and the buyer says you didn't, ultimately a court will have to decide who's right.
That may work in small owner-operated business. As soon as you get corporations with diffuse ownership structure and a leader that really has no stake in the company, the decision between price and quality tends to rest on the question whether the flaws of the cheaper model have a high enough chance to only become apparent after the CEO already jumped ship with his golden parachute.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
There was an urgent full-cycle test of Soyuz rocket engine RD-0110 (from the same batch which include failed one) at the test range near russian city Voronezh right after Progress has crashed. Defect inspection after firing test showed no mistakes in manufacturing or defects in materials used, so decision-makers marked this Progress crash with "shit happens" bit, and allowed remaining engines form the batch to be used on purpose.
Americans dying on an American rocket or Russians dying on a Russian rocket is a tragedy but Americans dying on a Russian rocket or vice versa is a political and diplomatic nightmare that would seriously damage this planets space efforts for generations.