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."

Comments

Why so angry?

[NitroWolf]

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.

Re:Why so angry?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Citation needed. I don't think anyone is saying "Russia bad!" -- especially since we (the US) now rely on the Russians for human transport missions.

Instead, we're saying "Russia, what the hell, this isn't like you. Get your shit together."

Re:No Vodka!

[oldhack]

Triple the vodka for ruskies!

Sounds like they expected "botched"

[John3]

FTFA:

"There is aging of many resources. We need to optimize everything. We need to modernize," Popovkin said.

"It’s also aging of human resources," he added. "Given the troubles we had in the '90s, quite a lot of people left and nobody came to replace them."

Maybe some of those things should be done before you just fire off another rocket. Those sound like serious, deeply-rooted issues. To do "rocket science" you need "rocket scientists" and apparently quite a lot of them have left the program.