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Progress Spacecraft Launch Successful
Zothecula writes "The future of the International Space Station (ISS) became more secure on Sunday, October 30, 2011 when the Russian space agency Rosocosmos carried out a successful launch of an unmanned Progress spacecraft. The 15,718 lb (7,130 kg) cargo ship carried its three tons of supplies into orbit and successfully deployed its solar arrays without incident. This launch confirms that the Soyuz-U launch vehicle is once again safe to carry the manned spacecraft needed to ferry crews to the ISS."
Sure, I should read the article, but the summary makes no sense. Why does the successful launch of one spacecraft prove that it's safe to launch manned spacecraft again? One successful launch doesn't prove anything.
Until further notice.
Face it, we're still in the early doors of manned spaceflight, like the early decades of avaition - filled with uncertainty, peril and loss. Perhaps a few decades time will bring safe, reliable travel into space and back, but it's still got a pretty high failure rate.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now, hopefully, we can see SpaceX get their approval to combine COTS 2/3 and then launch in Jan. We need to get multiple cargo going.
Of course, the next big issue is to get CONgress to do the right thing and increase funding to private space. We need multiple launchers and multiple destinations. Hence private space need to use some money on getting Bigelow going (and ideally IDC Dover).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Progress modules don't return safely to Earth. They are expendable craft that are left to burn up at re-entry.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Based on that knowledge- it is my scientific opinion then that the progress rockets are not safe for man.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
In pseudo-democratic Russia it is a complex situation. On the surface it appears that you fail at these jokes- however, under the thin veneer of democracy it appears the jokes may still fail you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Supposedly the success rate for Russian launchs between 1980-1999 is around 94% while the success rate for american launches is around 86%. Russians are more experience having launched 2589 times with 181 losses while Americans launched 1152 times with 164 losses. Now that the shuttles have been retired I'm going to assume the Russians will be really far ahead but maybe it's better that way with globalization right? As much as I like spaceX I find their newer untested technology not really viable for manned flight. They can't be trusted to carry anything other then low cost cargo until they've worked out their problems.
The failure to have one safe launch *does* mean that a launch vehicle is unsafe, so there's that.
Pretty much any launch vehicle is unsafe, by definition. You're sitting on top of (literally) tons of highly flammable fuel, along with similarly large amounts of liquid oxygen. There is nothing about this that is "safe" by conventional standards. Even after you've safely survived the combustion of all that fuel, you are then in one of the most hostile environments known to man. Elevated radiation levels, lack of gravity causing your bones and muscles to waste away, and a hard vacuum on the other side of a rather thin piece of aluminum and/or glass. In short, human spaceflight is inherently dangerous, yet we still do it, and quite rightly so.
Of the existing launch vehicles, the Soyuz design is the single most successful and reliable launcher ever designed and operated. Since 1973, there have been 745 launches of the Soyuz-U design with 724 successful launches (with most of the failures in the early days). The soviets, and subsequently the russians, have made continuous improvements and refinements to the design of this rocket, leading to the closest thing we have to a routine launch system. As one astronaut I've worked with said, "You can take a Soyuz, pick it up in the middle with a crane, shake it, then stick it on the pad and launch it in the middle of a blizzard, and it will still make it to orbit."
Given the choice of Shuttle, Soyuz, Falcon 9, or some other launch system, I would always take the Soyuz.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...