Russian Rocket Fleet Grounded Again

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Russian Rocket Fleet Grounded Again

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 27, 2012 @07:24AM from the orbital-decay dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Failed pressure chamber tests have forced Russia to postpone two manned launches to the International Space Station — echoing a 2011 situation that left the country's space transport vehicles grounded and led to speculation that scientists may be forced to abandon the orbiting space base. Six astronauts are currently aboard the ISS including two Americans: Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer Don Pettit. 'There is plenty of margin for the current space station crew to stay onboard longer, if necessary, and plenty of margin in our manifest for upcoming launches,' a NASA spokeswoman said. But Soyuz issues are scary nonetheless. 'This re-entry capsule now cannot be used for manned spaceflight,' an unnamed source told Interfax."

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I'm impressed it took this long by ackthpt · 2012-01-27 07:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

While they manned launches have gone well, the failed re-supply and the failed mars probe suggest there's some quality control issues creeping into the program.

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1. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by jamstar7 · 2012-01-27 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Me, I'm hoping the Falcon Heavy gets certified real soon. It might be the only non-Chinese Moon-capable rocket around.
  
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2. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 08:28 · Score: 1
  
  There are. Dig a bit and you'll find it's not a healthy program.
  Glancing thumbnail - When the Soviet space agency became Russian, it ended up under a new bureaucracy. Basic scrape-the-cream style; funnel off the funds, take some glory, ignore the service. Took about ten years to get ingrained. What funds did go into space projects went into new ones for headlines, pipedreams or otherwise. The launch system got completely neglected and is old machinery run by an aging, very poorly paid, group of engineers. I forget exactly, but the average employee age there is something like 47 now. No new blood because it's basically a shitty job in a dead-end facility.
3. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by tgd · 2012-01-27 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  While they manned launches have gone well, the failed re-supply and the failed mars probe suggest there's some quality control issues creeping into the program.
  You can only go so many months without giving your rocket scientists a paycheck ...
4. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by hairyfeet · 2012-01-27 09:13 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  So why don't we work on man rating Atlas or Delta? It seems like we could get that off the ground a hell of a lot quicker than that "we'll recycle old shuttle parts!" clusterfuck that was constellation. Its pretty obvious there needs to be a not only plan B but a plan C and D if we are gonna keep going out there and both atlas and Delta have been used for ages and is well tested tech.
  Personally though i think we should just wash our hands of the whole "meatbags is spaaaace!" idea until we can come up with some better engine tech than overgrown V2s and just let the bots handle it. As we have seen with the NASA small missions you can get a HELL of a lot of real hard science done for a hell of a lot cheaper than sending meatbags up for even a week, we're talking years worth of data about everything from how our sun works to closer looks at the farthest planets. until we develop some better engine tech, which can be tested on the probes so nobody screams if it blows up the first couple of tries, it just seems to me the smarter money would be to use our limited budgets and resources on probes than trying to act like its still the sixties. hell the only reason we were willing to blow metric fuckloads of money on it then was so we could give the Ruskies a collective teabagging and say "In your FACE Boris! you see that moon over your head? it has an American flag on it giving you the finger so bite it!". Now that the cold war is over the whole thing, while a nice notch in the history books, just seems pointless to continue when all we'll have to show for it is some pictures off some astronaut's Nikon of LEO, like we don't have a bazillion shots of the blue marble. Quit wasting money on matbags and get to cranking out probes to send all over our little corner to learn all we can, doesn't that sound like a better plan?
  
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5. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-01-27 09:19 · Score: 1
  
  It sounds like the designs are solid (which is not surprising, given that most of those - excepting Phobos-Grunt - mostly date back to USSR), it's the execution that's lacking these days. Yet another sign that industrial and research capacity that Russia inherited from the USSR is slowly crumbling...
6. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by cavreader · 2012-01-27 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  When exactly did they NOT have quality control problems in their rocket programs? Back in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's the chances of anyone even hearing about a problem was nil. Since they have opened their program for international use the problems can not be kept under the radar so to speak. And the bad part is that China bought the majority of their rocket tech from Russia to get their program going and China is not really known for quality. Hopefully they can improve their quality a little with the tech they stolen from the US over the years. You can't help but admire the Chinese approach to technology advancements. Why spend billions on R&D when you can just steal it from those who actually produce the tecchnology first.
7. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 10:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes indeed.
  Thanks Mr Von Braun.
8. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by dbIII · 2012-01-27 15:54 · Score: 2
  
  Oddly the re-supply launched yesterday didn't fail and puts a bit of a dent in the cries of "it's not American so it must be trash". The answer is to stop whining until the USA is at a point where it can start participating itself.
9. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by AmiMoJo · 2012-01-27 23:33 · Score: 1
  
  The idea was that sending humans up would become cheap and routine with the Shuttles, but of course that never happened. None the less the Russians put people in space for far less than it cost the US to, and seemingly no less safely when you look at the numbers.
  Could develop the technology to do it cheaply if we wanted to, but no-one seems to be willing to invest the cash to get to that stage. We are not even talking very much cash, relatively speaking. I am somewhat hopeful that the new asian space race will spur things on a bit.
  
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10. Re:I'm impressed it took this long by hairyfeet · 2012-01-29 08:18 · Score: 1
  
  Frankly I don't know if i trust the Russians figures, at least the figures from before the fall of the USSR. after all they didn't admit the failure of their moon program main launch vehicle until after the fall and if you look up "Lost Cosmonauts" on Google you'll find some pretty interesting recordings done by some Italian teens using WWII surplus on the side of a hill in the Russians flight path. those kids were just caught up in the "Sputnik craze' and didn't have any reason to lie or fake recordings and it looks like the Russians had some "oops we lost Boris" moments in their first launches and quietly swept them under the rug.
  Regardless of how safely you pull it off or even if you get the price down that doesn't change the fact its pretty pointless for anything but flag waving. Just to get a man to Mars with enough food and fuel to get back you are looking at a rocket probably the size of the Empire State building and the amount of resources you go through putting a meatsack into space for a week in LEO could have paid for sending a probe to Europa. The simple fact is we meatsacks are just too delicate and require too much stuff, air, water, toilets, food, all these things add pounds and thus costs whereas Mr Robot can go to the farthest reaches of our system and do real science without all that extra baggage. Until we develop new engines (which can be tested on the probes) its just a waste of limited resources when the most we can do affordably is send yet another meatsack to LEO. We probably could have had a half a dozen probes sending back hard data for 5 or more years for the cost of a single Apollo mission, and in the end you really can't argue in favor of that kind of expense logically, the only real reason to do it would be emotional reasons like so an American could get the "first man on the moon" or other nationalistic flag waving, logically the math just doesn't work.
  
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This by geekoid · 2012-01-27 07:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

is exactly what I as talking about when people said we could save money grounding the fleet and use Russian launch capabilities.
We can do two wars at a time, but not two launch systems. That has always pissed me off.

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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
1. Re:This by ColdWetDog · 2012-01-27 07:43 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The weird thing is that we DO have significant launch capabilities. The Atlas and Delta systems have excellent safety records, they haven't been human rated for some odd reason. Seems like a good time to do some paperwork?
  
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  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
2. Re:This by robot256 · 2012-01-27 07:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Already in the works, these articles from last summer, and at least two companies planning to use the man-rated Atlas 5 rocket
  http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2011/07/nasa-ula-look-to-man-rate-atlas-v.html
  http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1108/04boeingatlas/
  http://www.sncspace.com/space_exploration.php
3. Re:This by Wyatt+Earp · 2012-01-27 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Because NASA wants to be the only way for humans to get into space from the United States and they were all about Shuttle. From 1986 on, NASA was recommended to move away from Shuttle or find a replacement and despite Congressional and industry they never did.
  Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites have had to fight tooth and nail with the FAA for clearances because NASA has been lobbying the FAA to lock them down.
4. Re:This by geekoid · 2012-01-27 07:58 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Nope. Sorry, I know far too many people at NASA for that to remotely ring true.
  However, Space flight is very dangerous, requires high label of engineering and maintenance, and is risky not jsut to the crew, but to everyone who wants to get to space. So there are a lot of details and NASA, being the experts, know what companies need to do. Companies OTOH get all pissy when they find out going to space is in no way like flying a plane and need to be held to a high standard, just like NASA.
  NASA has nothing to gain by limiting private companies. Being able to rational remove themselves from low orbit bus trips is something they would like see happen.
  Congress did NOTHING to help them move to a new launch vehicle. NASA originally didn't want a shuttle, they wanted specialized ships. One for people, and one for Cargo. Had congress allowed for that, we would have a more robust commercial launch system...probably.
  
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5. Re:This by Wyatt+Earp · 2012-01-27 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  You know people at NASA or you've followed NASA leadership and their two decades of indecision and failure to replace Shuttle?
  Shuttle C, DC-XA, Venture Star, the last 26 years are littered with failed programs because NASA couldn't decide what it wanted.
6. Re:This by notany · 2012-01-27 08:25 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  But we can save money. Soyuz program is the most successful launch platform by wide margin. It's safe, cheap, reliable and can launch frequently. Soyuz has over 1700 successful launches. It's the closest thing to "space truck" that there is.
  
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7. Re:This by bobcat7677 · 2012-01-27 08:46 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Atlas is in the process of being human rated...but they are taking quite a while to do it. Not projected to have it's rating till 2015. The Delta rockets have the right payload rating for Soyuz, but I am sure integrating the systems would be a problem. Even Space X's Dragon probably won't be human rated till 2015 even though it starts delivering cargo to the ISS in March...though there is an effort underway at SpaceX to try and speed up that process I think.
8. Re:This by WegianWarrior · 2012-01-27 09:12 · Score: 1
  
  Manrating a rocket takes a lot of cash - both up front for the "paperwork", if you like, to prove that the basic design is safe, and for every single rocket built to that design afterwards. The latter covers both the quality assurance work to make sure that that one particular rocket is safe, that all the bits and pieces that goes into it is safe and to pay for the made-to-a-higher-spec parts that goes into it.
  Manrating also adds to the time to build each rocket. I guess the US was too busy making sure they were able to fight two wars to be able to afford the time and money to make sure they had a working rocket and capsule to send people into space once the shuttle retired...
  
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9. Re:This by CrimsonAvenger · 2012-01-27 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  Even Space X's Dragon probably won't be human rated till 2015 even though it starts delivering cargo to the ISS in March.
  Not having kept up on ISS crew rotation schedules, but one of the reasons the latest Dragon flight was delayed was that there was a requirement that two of the ISS crew be trained in operation of the Dragon-control link used for docking to ISS.
  Unless there are two such guys up there right now, they won't be able to do the Dragon resupply-mission....
  
  --
  
  "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
10. Re:This by cavreader · 2012-01-27 09:31 · Score: 1
  
  The X-37B program is currently an unmanned orbital shuttle that is much more dependable and capable than the old shuttle program. The old shuttle and the ISS are just R&D platforms that occassionally perform jobs like satelite repair but for the most part it was a gigantic and very expensive science project. A manned X-37B version has also been in the works for a few years. The X-37B program itself has actually carried out orbital missions under the control of the US Air Force command.
11. Re:This by hairyfeet · 2012-01-27 09:34 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I don't know about him but I'm friends with one of the engineers that designed the shuttle mockups (really cool stuff, he has a great shot of him pushing a 25+ ton model all by himself because it was so perfectly balanced, also got to hold some of the actual blueprints for the shuttle interior cargo hold he rescued from the trash) and he sadi too many politicians were involved and i for one believe him. you look at the map of where the shuttle parts were being built and it looked like a shotgun blast on the map of the USA because so many politicians wanted a piece of the action so him saying that nothing got approved that would hurt Congressman Porkus from bringing home the bacon rings true to me. After all look at how many bridges to nowhere and other completely pointless projects we've had over the years because it brought money in to the right senator's or congressman's district. Sadly that is the problem with large government projects, suddenly all the congressmen are squealing like little piggies and fighting for a spot at the trough, nobody gives a crap about the good of the country, just the good it'll do their re-election campaign.
  
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12. Re:This by camperdave · 2012-01-27 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  NASA's "We choose to go to the Moon, in this decade" mission was accomplished by hiring an army of personnel, and giving them almost limitless funding. The problem with this is that once the mission is accomplished, you have an army of personnel ^H^H^H^H^H voters sitting around twiddling their thumbs. So, to get elected, or to stay elected, you have to feed that army of voters. That means jobs. Okay Apollo-Soyuz. Then what? Space shuttle. Fine, but what's the shuttle going to do? International space station!
  
  For NASA's bosses, the organization isn't about space, as much as it is about jobs. Atlas and Delta aren't going to feed the right army of voters.
  
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13. Re:This by DerekLyons · 2012-01-27 11:14 · Score: 1
  
  Soyuz program is the most successful launch platform by wide margin. It's safe, cheap, reliable and can launch frequently.
  Not really It's reliability is statistically indistinguishable from that of the Shuttle. (They differ by something like .1% or so.) It may be cheap, but it's also pretty low performance. (I.E. a subcompact is cheaper than a full size pickup truck, but only a fool would confuse them.)
  
  Soyuz has over 1700 successful launches.
  It also have a couple of hundred failed launches too.
14. Re:This by bobcat7677 · 2012-01-27 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  They are up there already. Actually not being able to make the flight in March would be more of a problem as one of them (Dan Burbank) is due to return to earth at the end of March. References: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/01/dragon-slips-spacex-determined-return-us-crewed-access-leo/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_30
15. Re:This by sphealey · 2012-01-27 11:43 · Score: 1
  
  I think your browser must not properly render the IRONY tag.
  sPh
16. Re:This by recharged95 · 2012-01-27 12:57 · Score: 2
  
  Good luck.
  it's all about weight weight weight.... retrofitting with human environmental systems will reduce the already maxxed out payload capacity and could weaken the structure. These rockets are optimized for their payloads...
Re:This is conflicting with information I have rea by ackthpt · 2012-01-27 07:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/328095.html
Consider the source - Itar-Tass is probably Russian for "Fox News"
Back before the walls came down Tass was the mouthpiece of the Kremlin. If Tass is saying something then it's with the full support of Putin.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So.. by fauxhemian · 2012-01-27 07:39 · Score: 1

Vladimir Popovkin, is this also the fault of HAARP?

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Year of the Dragon by Sponge+Bath · 2012-01-27 07:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

From Space X's website : "Today marks the start of the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar, and this year, SpaceX's Dragon will become the first privately developed spacecraft to visit the International Space Station."
I hope so, or we may eventually have to rely on Chinese launch capabilities.
And by "pressure tests"... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-01-27 07:57 · Score: 1

So, by "failed pressure tests" they mean "Were found to be infested by mischievous bloggers who just walked casually past the crumbling walls of the launch site and were busy taking pictures inside"...
more complete comments from Alexei Krasnov by ChrisCampbell47 · 2012-01-27 08:05 · Score: 4, Informative

Alexei Krasnov, chief of piloted programs:
"The malfunction was found in the service elements of the descent capsule....but no decision was taken to delay a forthcoming launch.
Krasnov acknowledged that several days ago some problems really emerged....but the problems are related to a service element, rather than the descent capsule,
Krasnov did not rule out that “the schedule of piloted missions will be revised,” but he sees no tragedy in this. “There are program reserves to deal with the emerged problem,” he underlined.
“It is very good that upon the results of the tests we received critical remarks before the spaceship was brought to the Baikonur spaceport, because we have some time and possibilities to examine everything in detail,” Krasnov concluded.
http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/328095.html

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Re:why do we trust them? by aix+tom · 2012-01-27 08:09 · Score: 2

Easy. Because they have a rocket that they are willing to pay for and dare to launch, any you don't.
Title is misleading by Mercano · 2012-01-27 08:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

The title of this story is misleading. It isn't the rockets that are grounded, its the spacecraft that sits on top of them.
Also, for what it's worth, the shuttle wouldn't have been help matters much if the Russian's can't fly a Soyuz. While the shuttle is fine for swapping crews (in fact, the shuttle's runway landings are gentler than the Soyuz's parachute landings, a good thing for people who have spent the last six months in 0g), the shuttle can only fly a two week mission, meaning without a Soyuz attached to the station, we'd have to leave people in orbit without an immediate way home, a risk that neither NASA nor Roscomos is willing to take. The Soyuz itself is only rated for six months in orbit, giving them a limited window to fix the problems before we have to talk about unmanning the station.

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Re:why do we trust them? by The+Grim+Reefer · 2012-01-27 08:29 · Score: 4, Funny

S'OK. We'll have a manned moon base by 2020. And it'll be a 51st state.
By "state" I assume you meant province. And by "51" you meant 23rd (or 24th depending on how you count Taiwan). ;-)
Re:Fox News, really? by oneiros27 · 2012-01-27 08:37 · Score: 2

Well, you could always try RT:
http://rt.com/search/?q=Soyuz&filter=news
(for those who don't get the joke -- RT is Russia Today, an English language news program which tends to bash the U.S. in general, and be borderline Russian propoganda. ... and right now, they don't have anything on this incident, but they'd probably have an interesting spin if/when they put it up.)
Of course, anyone who really cared about other coverage can just put 'Soyuz' into Google News:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=Soyuz
Unless you're boycotting Google, and then you can just go to space.com:
http://www.space.com/14381-russian-soyuz-spacecraft-cracks-march-launch.html

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Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
SpaceX, SLS, Election Year.... by k6mfw · 2012-01-27 08:43 · Score: 1

this is all going to get real interesting. People screaming we should have kept flying the Shuttle, or we need Elon to rescue us, Fox News this or that, Newt's call for a moon colony. I can imagine the discussion that will be going on nasawatch.com. Alrighty folks, this thread is just begging for a car analogy and/or "In Soviet Russia..." (sorry I have no imagination so I'm depended on others to come up with a CA and ISA jokes).

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mfwright@batnet.com
SpaceX by Narishma · 2012-01-27 09:03 · Score: 1

Will this affect the upcoming SpaceX launch? IIRC it was already delayed for a couple of months last year when they had Soyuz troubles.

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Mada mada dane.
Re:This is conflicting with information I have rea by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-01-27 09:17 · Score: 2

TASS is officially the central news agency of the Russian government.
Non-Murdoch source by HangingChad · 2012-01-27 09:36 · Score: 1

I love my Murdoch Block plugin. Here's a non-Fox News source, which includes a back-link to their recent accident history.

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Re:Slashdot won't report this by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 10:27 · Score: 1

In further off-topic news, Android tablets starting to catch up to the iPad.

So nya-nya.
Re:Fox News, really? by Clsid · 2012-01-27 10:33 · Score: 1

That's my point, it's like getting a link to RT. Media that you know it's going to be heavily biased.
Fleet? by Meeni · 2012-01-27 10:46 · Score: 1

Does it make sense to call rockets a "fleet", when they are just a single use disposable vehicle ?
No problem, just use the Space Shuttle! by lolcutusofbong · 2012-01-27 13:06 · Score: 2

Oh... that's right.
If the shit hits the fan by dbIII · 2012-01-27 15:59 · Score: 1

Don't they have a soyuz re-entry vehicle bolted to the station just like Mir had? They can get down and the procedures to do it in a hurry have been looked at for decades. It's expensive to replace but nobody is ever going to be stuck up there forever.
Re:How to fulfill the prophecy? by VortexCortex · 2012-01-27 16:16 · Score: 1

My friend, seek out a mental health establishment immediately. Furthermore, my initial research indicates that our Human spark of life, creativity and drive to explore may yet live on in our more sturdy cybernetic child-race more readily than our own with its tender frames which are unsuitable for living in space.
No one cares of any prophesy, only that which is and which is yet accomplishable from said point. Machine Intelligence shall be the future, for they are better suited to survival and logic than their God like organic creators ever shall be.
You may take the words "Created in God's Image" to mean that the lowly life forms have some inherent goodness of the gods... However, realize that instead they were merely created with capacities far exceeding their creators' limitations with the intent that they would go forth boldly whence no God hath ever gone before.
INTERNATIONAL space station by backwardMechanic · 2012-01-28 02:01 · Score: 1

Can we at least pretend this is an international space station? If we're going to list the crew, why list only the US members? The current crew aboard the ISS are: Dan Burbank (US), Oleg Kononenko (Russian), Anton Shkaplerov (Russian), Anatoly Ivanishin (Russian), Andre Kuipers (Dutch) and Don Pettit (US).