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Russia Botches Another Rocket Launch
astroengine writes "Three hours before a new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, bringing the outpost back up to full staff for the first time in months, Russia racked up its fifth launch accident within a year. A Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a military communications satellite failed to reach orbit after blastoff from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia. The botched launch is again due to an upper-stage engine problem."
The summary reads like an angry teenager implying that they could do better.
Really? Do yo have any idea how hard it is to actually manage launching something like that in to space? We should be more amazed when everything goes right and a rocket actually makes it there. The rocket failing is, of course, not a good thing... but at least they are trying in the face of failure, instead of giving up and whining about for a decade like the US did after the shuttle disasters.
Launching a rocket into space is a marvel of just about every discipline involved.
Though given a chance, even if the odds were 5% ending up as an "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, rocket does NOT launch YOU!" joke, there'd be no shortage of volunteers for something like a Mars mission.
How many of us, when we were kids, would have been willing to risk a 50/50 chance for a moon ride?
It seems most people see launching things into LEO is routine but talking with people who actually do the work (instead of armchair QB and paperpushers on the upper floors), rockets are very complex with so many parts and components. All (with exception of items covered by redundancy) must work in order to achieve speed and altitude to sustain orbit. Are they scaling back someplace that impacts quality? Of course USA hasn't had big failures with human carrying vehicles since 2003 (but then we don't fly such anymore).
Sorry, I cannot come up with a "In Soviet Russia..." or a car analogy. But this thread is just begging for one.
mfwright@batnet.com
So the Ruskies follow the Ballmer Peak when it comes to rocket building?
Personally i though Gerald Bull had the right idea for launching unmanned payloads when he came up with the idea of using something similar to HAARP as a "space gun" but he simply didn't have the technology to make it work. Now that we have both rail and coil guns it should be easier to accomplish and ultimately lower the cost of putting objects into space. you could build the barrel on the side of one of those South Pacific islands we've had since WWII, build a small reactor to power the thing, maybe even use a small rocket for the final push after the energy from the firing has been expended so you won't have to build as big a gun.
Ultimately I think we need to be trying radical new ideas as both us and the ruskies are basically using the same tech we stole off the Nazis at the end of WWII. We are never gonna get very far using nothing but chemical rockets and the cost per pound even after improvements is frankly nuts so we need to be working on tech that will let us launch material cheaply and effectively so we can then look beyond the moon towards mars and maybe even the outer planets. If we could send up the pieces via space gun we could then assemble the rocket in LEO and with a little luck we might even end up with a Mars base in our lifetime, but sticking with chemical rockets I doubt we're gonna be able to move the amount of cargo we'd need to be moving to make longer trips feasible.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The only access to the ISS is via the Russian Soyuz, right now, and this will remain the case for at least 20 years - the time it'll take for a functional Shuttle replacement to be designed, built, tested and launched given the current available funding (or lack thereof), the very limited number of rocket designers in the US (rockets are updated regularly, but when was the last time the US actually invented one from scratch through to completion?) and the extreme age of all existing launch facilities.
If a Soyuz carrying US astronauts reaches orbit but cannot dock with the ISS, the astronauts will be stranded. There's no rescue service possible. (Even with the Shuttle, there was a case where Russia almost did lose a Soyuz capsule with astronaut in space - it would have taken far too long for a Shuttle to have been readied and the altitude would have made it extremely difficult if not impossible.) More likely, if a stage failed, the rocket would be remotely destroyed along with the crew. Or it would smear itself over the landscape with much the same effect. We're increasingly aware that space is unsafe, but nobody is willing to stump up the cash to make it safe enough. It would also require total trust and cooperation between the US and Russia - and that would be political suicide for anyone in either country to suggest, let alone try.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You really don't understand the maintenance of alcoholism, do you? To much booze, and they're worthless. To little booze, and they are worse than worthless. You have to know the individual alcoholic, and maintain him at the proper level for maximum production, while keeping an eye on that weak link, the liver. At some point, the liver will fail, but you want to maximize production, while balancing a possible reduction of useful life.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There's also a limit to how much an ablative heat shield can endure. After a certain point, the contents behind the heat shield will bake.
It would be best if the mountain was near water so that if there's a launch failure there's less danger of ground casualties and it also gives a splashdown option for the astronauts.
Perhaps Mauna Kea in Hawaii would be a good spot for such a launch. It's near the equator too so there would be a little extra velocity from the rotation of the earth for a prograde orbit.