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Russian Cargo Mission To ISS Spinning Out of Control
quippe writes: Many sources report that a Russian spacecraft, launched successfully (video) from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier Tuesday, is in big trouble now after having a glitch shortly after liftoff. There is a video on YouTube (credit: NASA) of the space ship spinning out of control. Recovery attempts haven't gone well so far, but they will continue. If they can't regain control, the ship will likely burn up when it falls back into the atmosphere. Current speculation points to greater-than-expected lift by the third-stage, because the apogee is 20km higher than planned. The ship does not seem to pose a threat to the ISS at the moment.
Did someone on the ISS order scrambled eggs on the supply boat?
Silence is a state of mime.
There'll be a Dragon along with supplies in six weeks or so.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
NASA ISS Team: Due to budget cuts we're having the janitor request more supplies from Russia this year for the ISS. And remember, use both sides of the toilet paper.
FKA Scientist We've got the request from NASA....
FKA Director Whats it say?
FKA Scientist: "Kindly Spin the cargo baskets, it is to launch when inside to space, of the 20 long lengths for happy triple mode, and iside the burn of the roundness. Glory."
FKA Director: Can we....can we even do that?
FKA Scientist:Sir maybe their translator isnt very knowledgeable?
FKA Director: Nyet Sergei, this is America we're talking about. Two government shutdowns, riots every week and two failed wars...Its entirely possible this is exactly what they want...Just look at Florida.
Good people go to bed earlier.
and fix the ship with a big wrench?
The ship does not seem to pose a threat to the ISS at the moment.
The resupply ship is not even remotely in the same orbit as the ISS. Progress 59 will never pose a threat to the ISS unless they regain control, adjust the orbit 200km higher, rendezvous with the ISS and attempt a docking.
They need to get some politicians involved. They're good at spin control.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Somewhere is the ocean probably. Happy?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Dear Dice, please let us know when you have something that wasn't reported in the major news outlets a day ago.
If you are coming here for cutting edge news, then you are in the wrong place.
The only reason I come back here is for the discussions about the stories. While I typically seen the major news pieces in other locations (and with more in-depth reporting than will ever be on /.) I haven't seen a site that comes close(*) to the /. comments section for it's structure, moderation and (gasp) insightful comments.
Many times I let the comments brew for a few hours and then read the ones that have risen to the top of the moderation system. That can give me a lot more insight into the background of a story than anywhere else.
* Yes I look at Soylent News every so often, but there is a tenth of the commenting there than there is here.
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In Soviet Russia Cargo Boxes Open You!
You're right - I do feel better.
They said the problem was 2 of the solar panels didn't deploy.
Yesterdays news with a better takeaway than you'd get from the current news folks.
Dive in. If nothing else, the other users will make you a better poster, and if you pay attention, a better thinker.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
At least they can still get a man into orbit. Puts them way ahead of the U.S. And their safety record is a shitload lot better than NASA's.
When you put the word "Cargo" in the title it's pretty self explanatory otherwise you're just a horrible person...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
How could you possibly know this early? If it hasn't already fallen then it's in orbit, which means atmospheric drag is what will eventually bring it down. And atmospheric drag, especially on a tumbling structure at that altitude, and on a presumably elliptical orbit, is extremely chaotic. Add in the 11+km/s of orbital velocity and you'd have to somehow estimate its final reentry time within a few minutes to even guess which continent or ocean it will be over.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Dragon won't make it in time to deliver patriotic artifacts for Russian crew to celebrate victory of Russia in the second world war.
As you know, Russian Church blesses spacecrafts. Probably, this time they overdone, so ship flew 20km higher and one side received more blessing than the another, so it lost balance and started spinning.
The Millennium Falcon was a cargo ship, and yet I seem to remember there being a crew. Adding that's it's unmanned would not have been redundant and would have been a nice useful detail.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Well, it's going make contact with the ground, literally.
That can give me a lot more insight into the background of a story than anywhere else.
Unless the story is about politics, then the comments (including the +5s) are in the groupthink sewer here the same as they'd be anywhere else. /. is at its best on stories about science, space, and technology. Most of the rest are clickbait.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Unless the story is about politics, then the comments (including the +5s) are in the groupthink sewer here the same as they'd be anywhere else.
Not sure I totally agree with that.
From my experience even the groupthink comments still have to back up their arguments with some justification rather than just a "Because I said so" argument. (and anyone who tries to present a "Because I said so" argument is going to be called out pretty quickly.) Thus even if I am not in the groupthink, I am still learning the basis for the groupthink.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
"Current speculation points to greater-than-expected lift by the third-stage, because the apogee is 20km higher than planned. The ship does not seem to pose a threat to the ISS at the moment."
Sounds like a safe-ish orbit if all goes haywire after the third stage is done. Good flight plan.
Too bad it didn't get on course, but obviously a major malfunction.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You just have to imagine that Elon Musk heard this news and did a happy dance. This just sells into his narrative that Russia's launch systems are old, expensive and unreliable.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
In Soviet Russia (taking into account Mach's Principle) uncontrolled spaceship rotates you!
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Honestly I did not see this particular story anywhere yesterday on any major national feeds and I am not seeing it running much today even though it is an ongoing situation. Everything is buried by baltimore. Who had this covered?
Constellation basically cancelled itself by going way over budget with almost nothing to show for it except a useless suborbital launch of a glorified Space Shuttle solid rocket booster and no hope of ever maintaining a semblance of a budget going forward. And Obama didn't end the shuttle program -- he just executed the end of the shuttle program as scheduled and planned by the Bush administration and Congress before he took office.
(1) spinning is caused by force
(2) more force, unless purely rotational = higher speed
(3) higher speed = higher orbit
(4) 20km higher orbit is not much -- consistent with a small engine (like a thruster) causing it
So, (5) keep guessing what the problem is
My guess: a thruster stuck open...
I come here for the love
Lol.
O did NOT cancel the shuttle. You neo-cons did. In addition, ares 1 was not going to be ready until 2017-2018. And Ares v would fly around 2030, no earlier.
It is fools like you that continue to kill NASA.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Uh, not even close. When it comes to launches, NASA is way ahead of USSR/Russia.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Soylent News seems to be worth watching and checking in on occasionally, since it's slowly getting better and better comments (and they have folks actively developing and enhancing the back-end too), but yeah, it's nowhere near the level of commenting we get here.
I saw it on Ars before I saw it here. It is also on the front page of CNN
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That's an easy fix. Just turn on non-physics time warp for a moment and turn it back off. Bam, no more rotation. Easy as pie.
Seagoing cargo ships are manned. Cargo planes are manned.
For anyone who wants the latest news, Russia has given up on trying to recover it, saying recovery is impossible and it will be left to break up in the atmosphere.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Old? Yes, but in rocket science old = proven. Conservative people like that they are paying for proven tech that works.
Expensive? No, Soyuz and Progress are damn cheap.
Unreliable? Well, two failures out of ~150 missions is pretty good reliability for an unmanned cargo vessel.
Proton failures with booster going full Kerbal were much bigger deal. This is obviously a setback, but nobody can claim that Progress is unreliable based on this alone. Besides, main theory appears to be third stage shutdown problem, resulting in the stage colliding with Progress and damaging it critically.
This failure does prove that you need redundant supply ships for ISS (and for any long term manned space mission) - a booster or a cargo ship might fail, so you need dissimilar redundancy and suitable buffers of supplies. ISS has these things. Dragon and HTV are still working fine. Granted, if Progress flights get delayed due to accident investigation, Dragon is going to be in bit of a do-or-die mode in June as a failure for that cargo flight would be a fairly big deal. Not "evacuate ISS"-big deal (yet), but "reshuffle all cargo manifests, start conserving supplies"-grade big deal.
I hope SpaceX is keeping their guard up though, a myriad of US defense contractors, foreign launch companies and government officials probably have prepared statements, budget bills and press campaigns ready and waiting for when SpaceX finally has a failure. If SpaceX can even maintain their current prices/reliability let alone do half of what they are working towards they're on track to shake the space launch industry to its core and a lot of people are very unhappy about it.
Russian _____________ Spinning Out Of Control. OK, easy potshot, but hey - Ukraine, Crimea, poisoned pols, puppet leaders... this well doesn't seem to be running dry anytime soon. For perspective on flying to the ISS a colleague needed to fly some software on a thumb drive to the ISS. Beyond the cargo charge, the Shuttle shakedown of the item involved extensive testing of the sw, the physical device, etc. with the associated cost with a comma in it. The Russian criteria for flying the stuff was a bit more streamlined. It amounted to little more than "did the check clear?" Yes, their flight hardware is very reliable, though actually flying in it beats you up and makes the shuttle seem like a luxury liner.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
OH BOY! A BASE ON THE MOON! Yeah, sure, maybe it would have happened by 2029 at the rate NASA works these days, have you seen how the Senate Launch System keeps missing its milestones? And what exact value is a base on the moon? A lot of scratchy moon dust to give everybody silicosis? Helium-three (giggle) for (hahaha) fusion power (giggle *SNORT*)?
An orbital space station is much more useful because we need to learn to do things in zero-gee (like, say for getting to Mars), and the moon ain't gonna do that.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If you look at the ratio of serious accidents on the Soyuz compared to the shuttle, it's actually higher. Soyuz has gotten very lucky several times in nearly killing its occupants, and had several complete would-have-been-deadly failures in modern times on unmanned launches.
Just looking at crewed vehicles, here's some of the more significant Soyuz accidents since 1971:
18a (1975): second stage separation failed, the craft accelerated toward earth, the crew hit over 21g on abort, rolled down a hill, and stopped just short of a cliff. Serious injuries.
23 (1976): Landed off target, broke through a frozen lake, and sank to the bottom; with great difficulty, the crew was ultimately rescued in time.
33 (1979): Engine failure in orbit; the mission had to be aborted but the craft was thankfully low enough to achieve reentry in a reasonable length of time.
T-10-1 (1983): Rocket engulfed in flames on the launch pad. The emergency escape system was activated just two seconds before the craft exploded.
Expedition 6 (2003): Malfunction during reentry, causing the craft to reenter too hard and way off target. Landed on its side and left one of the crew with a broken shoulder.
(2008): Separation failure on reentry, causing incorrect reentry orientation for part of aerobraking and a rough landing; another crew member injured. Russia responded by blaming the problem on a superstition that having more women than men in a spaceship at any given time is unlucky and banning the practice for all future missions, and no, I'm not kidding though I wish I was.
It's not even accurate to say that the last fatality from a Soyuz was in 1971, in that a Soyuz-U launch in 2002 failed 29 seconds after launch, fell back on its pad and exploded, killing a man on the ground.
Soyuz's "spotless safety record for decades" is anything but. They've gotten really lucky, many times. And now Russia has made bug cutbacks in their space program due to the current economic climate, yet still wants to pursue grandiose programs like their own space station and even moon base. What do you think the result will be?
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Umm, the Millennium Falcon wasn't real. It wasn't a cargo ship. It was a plot device.
I know the computer graphics were pretty good and all but Leia's hair style should have given it away.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This has been happening my rockets also. Everything needs to be thoroughly re-tested because of changes to the aerodynamic model in KSP 1.0. I admire the Russians, though, for doing things the Kerbal way; launch first, ask questions later.
If Voyager, MRO, Gallileo and Rosetta are spaceships, so is this busted pickup truck. .. or is the distinction you wish to draw between spaceSHIPs and spaceCRAFT?
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
https://i.imgur.com/9t5KGPK.pn...
You're kidding, right? Soyuz has had dozens of major failures. Even killed a guy in 2002 when the rocket failed seconds into launch and fell back on the pad. Also, the manned Dragon costs per seat are $25M. For Soyuz it's $75M. Hardly cheaper. Same for cargo comparisons, Soyuz is said to be as little as $6000-7000/kg++, Falcon 9 is $4500/kg, and Falcon Heavy is supposed to come in around $1700/kg.
++ - Doubtful in general; looking up actual delivered contracts makes one question whether that's actually that cheap. For example, Soyuz STB launches for the Galileo satellites were contracted at $114m per launch. That rocket has a max capacity of 7800kg to LEO. That comes out as a whopping $14,600/kg.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
And where would one investigate spinning a spacecraft up for artificial gravity? Exactly, in space. Not on the moon.
Lunar surface science could address some issues not addressable in space but they're really not the interesting ones. Things like manufacture with or refining of regolith can be done here in Earth (or in space if you want reduced or zero gravity) using simulants for far, far cheaper. And working on the moon increases your costs and risks by an order of magnitude. It's just not the answer. Even if you want to work on "space mining" experiments it'd be far cheaper to do so on an asteroid rather than to drop down into the lunar gravity well. And asteroids are a much more interesting mining target anyway.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Should they start rolling out the trampoline?
And Cargo spacecraft are not--unless you count the Shuttle, which is no longer flying.
You're really bending over backwards and splitting hairs there, to the point of misrepresenting what the person you answered to is saying.
He specified "cosmonauts" as in people who ride in the vehicle.
Fact is that when it comes to getting people to space, Russians are clear number one in the world right now, with no real challenger in sight. That's why even extremely rich space tourists go to them instead of financing development of vehicle of their own like Elon Musk is trying to do right now.
At this point there's no point in going to the moon unless you're going to do something there. I'd argue that we should go to the moon and do something there, however, and that is to build a radio telescope array on the far side. Maybe several of 'em. And by "build an array" I just mean "land a number of array elements" which will communicate with one another and build a mesh network. Then we land a number of communications repeater elements to get the signal to where we can use it, etc etc.
Doing anything else on the moon right now is kind of a waste of time, deep sampling/drilling aside. That might tell us something we don't already know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's why even extremely rich space tourists go to them instead of financing development of vehicle of their own like Elon Musk is trying to do right now.
Not really disputing the facts here, but this isn't really an apples-to-apples.
It is like calling somebody stupid for building their own plane when it is far easier and cheaper to just buy a ticket on an airliner. That would be true if the only goal were to get from point A to point B, but people who build things usually have other goals.
Please describe how what he said will kill NASA.
Also, what about his post makes you think he is a Neo-Con, not just an idiot?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I have seen plenty of women wearing that hair style...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How could you possibly know this early?
Because the earth is ~70% water by surface area? Chances are it will hit the briny.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
Personally, I think we're far better off abandoning the Senate Launch System and contracting with private companies for launches, companies that aren't required by politics to have contractors and subcontractors all over the country to hit some Senator's state or Congressman's district.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Great. Where? I'll do you one better - there's a 100% chance it will hit the Earth. Only very slightly less useful information.
And actually, without knowing the orbit we can't even state that 70% probability: 70% of the total surface area doesn't translate to 70% of the surface under it's flightpath. I can draw plenty of great circles that traverse far less than 70% water. And a fair number of those those pass over Russia...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I would expect in this case it is more of
Dammit Jeb, you're supposed to shut off the engines before staging!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The guy who I answered to, if you click on his commentary, is basically here to take a big dump on Russian space tech. He's going all the nine miles of spin doctoring, from conflating casualties among people being launched to people getting hit by debris on the ground to listing accidents and suggesting that this is comparable to accidents with lethal outcome. All while ignoring that in this apples for oranges comparison, he doesn't offer similar list for the other side.
Which from a point of view of someone who followed the space race and technology for a long time, this is what we've been seeing for a while now. It's the standard "the other side sucks, let's not work together but give money to private sector who can make the innovations instead and then keep them for themselves" speech.
It's quite possibly the second biggest objective to our progress in space exploration after the general apathy towards it among population.
"Objective" was supposed to be "obstacle". It's late evening here. Apologies.
Tomatoe, tomahto
The 6 I mentioned (starting at 18a) were manned missions. As in, people riding in the vehicle.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Yes. Yes we were.
Yup. Wasn't really disputing your overall point. I think the Russian designs are praiseworthy for their simplicity/stability. Sometimes their QC fails a bit, but the fact that these haven't resulted in casualties speaks to the robustness of the design. NASA is moving towards simpler designs themselves.
You are once again intentionally misunderstanding. As in claiming that "people riding in the vehicle perishing" is the same as "people riding in the vehicle which has a failed launch and kills people outside the vehicle by crashing on top of them".