Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely

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Posted by samzenpus on Sunday July 1, 2012 @05:58PM from the safe-and-sound dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with news that the astronauts who helped dock the first privately owned spacecraft with the ISS have returned safely to earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule. "A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppes on Sunday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts who helped to dock the first privately owned spacecraft during a six-month stint on the International Space Station. The descent capsule, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, touched down with its parachute in a cloud of dust at 0814 GMT. The crew left the space station early on Sunday after serving 183 days in orbit, often sharing their experiences with the public via blogs and Twitter. At the end of May, the crew released Space Exploration Technologies' unmanned Dragon cargo, which arrived as part of a test flight and was the first privately owned spaceship to reach the $100 billion orbital outpost, which is a 15-nation project. Three other ISS crew members - Russia's Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba - will remain in orbit."

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It feels by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 18:10 · Score: 0, Funny

It always gets me when an astronaut returns :'-)
1. Re:It feels by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 21:45 · Score: 1
  
  And it always gets me, when I see scientists not giving a fuck about the artificial separation into nations and instigation against each other, to work together like this.
  Scientists don’t care if you are from China, Iran, USA, or Kongo. (And neither do I. All that matters is if you personally are nice to me, and hopefully a smart person.)
2. Re:It feels by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 22:11 · Score: 1
  
  I'll have my assistent, mrs Alotta Fagina, contact you.
Don Pettit's Videos by Hadlock · 2012-07-01 18:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm going to miss Don Pettit's videos. 1lb instruction booklet on how to use legos for static electricity science video that cost $10,000 to put in space? Toss it off screen, because legos were meant to be built with creativity, not instructions! Gotta love that guy. Never too serious, always "holy shit! I'm in space!". Really brings some excitement and interest to spaceflight, which the rest of NASA seems to smother.

In case you missed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Ei6h3LVb0

--
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1. Re:Don Pettit's Videos by oobayly · 2012-07-01 20:06 · Score: 1
  
  +1
  Brilliant find, I especially love the foam satellite and his comment "it reached escape velocity"
2. Re:Don Pettit's Videos by ZankerH · 2012-07-01 20:40 · Score: 1
  
  That guy is always amazing to watch, he sounds super-enthusiastic about everything he does.
I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? by BenJCarter · 2012-07-01 18:40 · Score: 1

Vs the launch and recovery of SpaceX's Dragon system?

--
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
1. Re:I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-07-01 18:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Soyuz launch costs ~$70 million (which, so far as I can, see, includes any recovery costs - they'd be dwarfed by the launch, anyway). Wikipedia says that Falcon 9 launch to LEO is $50-55 million.
2. Re:I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 01:39 · Score: 0
  
  50 million for human space flight? Or just cargo?
3. Re:I wonder how much the Soyuz return trip cost? by Megane · 2012-07-02 01:51 · Score: 1
  
  I'm pretty sure that $70M is a per seat cost. IIRC, Crew Dragon is supposed to be about $140M per flight, but you can put 7 on board.
  
  --
  #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
oblig? by RivenAleem · 2012-07-01 19:45 · Score: 3, Funny

Smoke me a Kuipers, I'll be back for breakfast.
Don Petit's Blog by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 20:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

Don's blog started during training for this mission - it's been a great read.
Suggest you start at the beginning and take it a post or two at a time. If you never wanted to be an astronaut you will by the time you're done.
http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=letters
Flashback by upside · 2012-07-01 21:01 · Score: 2

Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers, Gennady Padalka ... Bill Severn and Tracey Morris. Team picked. Plasma rifles and stun rods - check. Auto-cannons and power suits - check. Skyranger fuelled and ready. Time to kick some sectoid ass!

--
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
resident artist by rbrausse · 2012-07-01 21:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

I was impressed by Andre Kuiper's images - he really made space as grant as I ever imagined it.
His Flickr stream is the greatest way to waste time.
1. Re:resident artist by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 23:20 · Score: 0
  
  I get claustrophobic just by looking at this. https://secure.flickr.com/photos/astro_andre/7418806114/in/photostream
2. Re:resident artist by arth1 · 2012-07-02 01:00 · Score: 2
  
  Kuipers' the guy on the right. At least he's wearing a belt...
"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by mapkinase · 2012-07-01 21:43 · Score: 0

For a moment I thought slashdot went passive-aggressive on Soviet cosmonautics.

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1. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by isorox · 2012-07-01 23:12 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  For a moment I thought slashdot went passive-aggressive on Soviet cosmonautics.
  The editors, and most contributors, are from a country that lacks a way to put a man in space and return him safely. Russia and China are the only players in the game at the moment, but this country (The USA -- just south of canada, used to be a great nation, now a snivelling shadow of it's former glory) used to be able to put people in space.
  They've lost their former power and standing in the world, and some are bitter about it.
2. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by mapkinase · 2012-07-01 23:47 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  >They've lost their former power
  Being a metropolitan DC resident, I take that literally after this weekend :-)
  
  --
  I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
3. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Max_W · 2012-07-02 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  Why do we need to send people in space? Would not robots do work better?
  
  People are too heavy, need to much food and oxygen.
  
  I am to be proud, as I was born in Siberia, but I think we damage the planet with such huge rockets.
  
  And it is the only planet suitable for life. We won't get another.
4. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 01:51 · Score: 0
  
  With current day technology it's already possible to terraform Mars into a livable environment for humans.
  In a 100 years or so, providing humanity survived that time, i'm fairly sure there will be permanent colonies there with a few hundred, maybe thousand people.
  If we want to survive as a species, we need to go into space.
5. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by isorox · 2012-07-02 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  With current day technology it's already possible to terraform Mars into a livable environment for humans.
  In a 100 years or so, providing humanity survived that time, i'm fairly sure there will be permanent colonies there with a few hundred, maybe thousand people.
  If we want to survive as a species, we need to go into space.
  I'm fairly sure those colonies won't work on the western notions of captialism and democracy either, and they'll be mostly far-eastern. China is expanding it's colonial ambitions dramatically, look at how much of Africa they own, setting up military bases in the Indian ocean etc.
  Space is an obvious extension. Unless China reaches the point of collapsing like America did towards the end of the 80s, I see them on Mars with a mostly self sufficient colony as soon as 2050.
6. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 02:07 · Score: 0
  
  wooosh
7. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Builder · 2012-07-02 02:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It turns out that the Russians won the space race when they realised that it was a marathon, not a sprint.
  I just visited the USA and while I was there, I toured both Johnson (on the day their replica space shuttle arrived) and Kennedy space centers. The amount of bullshit that was spouted to tourists about the current US space programme honestly made me cry at one point.
  We've stopped moving people to new places so that we have more money to kill brown people.
8. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 03:33 · Score: 0
  
  Oi, here we go again. Just because there's no shuttles for a few years. NASA is busy busy and paying Russia for a bit to enable a vastly superior option (SpaceX etc) is totally worth it. Please, tell me about all the other advanced research and spacework Russia is doing to 'win' the space race.
9. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 04:21 · Score: 1
  
  vastly superior option (SpaceX etc)
  "vastly superior"? says who? Elon Musk? (the guy who claims ultra low cost out of one side of the mouth while losing his shirt (and your tax money) on Tesla).
  SpaceX Dragon is a Soyuz/Progress wannabe with no automatic docking capability.
10. Re:"Soyuz Capsule Lands Safely " by Builder · 2012-07-02 21:12 · Score: 1
  
  How many people has SpaceX successfully delivered to (and safely retrieved from) space? How many has the Soyuz ?
  So for right now, the Soyuz is vastly superior for the simple reason that it's the only vehicle that can do the job.
  Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of what SpaceX are doing and have done. I bought the dragon commemorative shirt on the vacation discussed above. But given that right now they still need to add seating, life support and other features to the dragon, you can bet that manned transport is going to be a WHOLE lot more pricey per flight than the COTS2 mission was. We still don't actually know _what_ they're going to have to charge to be man-capable.
very cool by decora · 2012-07-01 23:15 · Score: 2

thanks for posting
Andre's tour of ISS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-02 00:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

For those who understand Dutch, here is an awesome 70 minute tour around the ISS by Andre Kuipers:
http://nos.nl/artikel/390049-toer-met-kuipers-door-iss.html
Just think . . . . by bogidu · 2012-07-02 04:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

If all the countries in the world take their military budgets for one year and spend the money on space research and exploration, how much farther we could progress as a species.