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Russian Supply Rocket Malfunctions, Breaks Up Over Siberia En Route To ISS (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: An unmanned cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station was destroyed after takeoff on Thursday. The Russian rocket took off as planned from Baikonur, Kazahkstan, on Thursday morning but stopped transmitting data about six minutes into its flight, as NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reported: "'Russian officials say the spacecraft failed [...] when it was about 100 miles above a remote part of Siberia. The ship was carrying more than 2 1/2 tons of supplies -- including food, fuel and clothes. Most of that very likely burned up as the unmanned spacecraft fell back toward Earth. NASA says the six crew members on board the International Space station, including two Americans, are well stocked for now.'" This is the fourth botched launch of an unmanned Russian rocket in the past two years. Roscomos officials wrote in an update today: "According to preliminary information, the contingency took place at an altitude of about 190 km over remote and unpopulated mountainous area of the Republic of Tyva. The most of cargo spacecraft fragments burned in the dense atmosphere. The State Commission is conducting analysis of the current contingency. The loss of the cargo ship will not affect the normal operations of the ISS and the life of the station crew."
at 190km they can't have been that far away from being pretty safe?
They should be. Soyuz-U launchers used to be absolutely reliable, with 30 years of flawless flights before the 2010s. Apparently the new generation of Russian aerospace workers are monkeys, there is no other explanation for the failures.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Apparently, it was rather Tuva and bust .
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I happened to be watch the post-launch coverage of this launch. The images were taken inside the Russian Command Center near Moscow and showing the orbital graphics on the room's main monitor. The NASA reporter mentioned that the "telemetry after launch was reported to be fuzzy" and he was told the third-stage booster shut off / ejected early.
BASIC astrophysics: it's the horizontal velocity that matters. If it were not for obstacles and atmospheric drag slowing you down, you could orbit the Earth at 5000 feet. You can certainly orbit the moon (which has essentially no atmosphere) or any similar body at any altitude.
During WWII German V-2 Rockets flew to as high as 206 km (128 miles) which is space, but they never had even a third of the horizontal velocity to achieve orbit. It's that horizontal speed which causes things reentering the atmosphere to heat up and burn, and the lack of that horizontal speed is why V-2 rockets, Spaceship One, Spaceship Two, and the Red Bull parachutist could all plunge back to Earth from space without heat shields.
To orbit the Earth, you must be going "sideways" so fast that as the Earth's gravity pulls your trajectory "down" (towards the center of the Earth) you've moved "sideways" far enough for the Earth's curvature to equal that bent trajectory. That's about 14500MPH for low Earth orbit. Most rockets burn an enormous amount of fuel initially getting off the pad and climbing vertically to get up out of the thick lower atmosphere quickly, but then execute a "gravity turn" in the upper atmosphere so that they then spend most of their fuel thereafter building up the great horizontal velocity needed to achieve orbit. This Soyuz apparently had a third stage failure, so it was plenty high but unable to continue accelerating to orbital velocity - it was doomed the moment the third stage either shut down or failed to ignite.
Nope.
...I'd wonder if the cargo was actually inside.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
They probably ran out of the old Soviet parts... Soviet factories once they got started could crank out lots of whatever. Part of why SU went broke. A friend in the 90s encountered an ammonium nitrate or sulfate plant that just piled the stuff up for several years because they didn't have transportation arranged (rails)and built yet.
Every time I read about something like this I'm just so glad it was only a supply ship. I'm sure it must be stressful for the crew on the ISS to hear about this.
with 30 years of flawless flights
There actually seems to be one failure every several years in that time period, but given the very high flight rate of that vehicle, that's not shabby at all.
Ezekiel 23:20
National issues relate to more than your personal ability to party. Your job, if you are not a state-employee, is at risk with economic downturn, and your job if you are a state-employee is likely to soon be downsized due to budget cuts. You should save your rubles while you can.
More issues.
Ukraine has enough neo-nazis of their own. And before some arsehole tries to dismiss it as Russian propaganda, I've been in the Ukraine and I've personally seen them. Scared the shit out of me. There were more of them than at the yearly neo-nazi demonstration in Dortmund and they were armed by the Ukrainian government.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That is simply the most comprehensive treatment found quickly. Feel free to find other sources, this is fact and reality confirmed everywhere journalists can't be shot by Putin's FSB for writing about it.
German, and Kaliningrad / Königsberg was nice to visit before Putin's rise to power and the descent of Russia into Fascism.
That is due to national origin in fighting both Nazis and Soviets. East sees one way, West sees the other. When one supports a founding group the other sees evil. However, Russia is more fascist than Ukraine especially after the Maidan revolution.
Difference is this time it isn't an outside force but the Fascist leader Putin who has stifled economic growth, squandered the reserve, and sabotaged the only trade networks that could have competed with China's OBOR. Now Russia faces a swift decline and if it is too quick that will require additional isolation if not combat to resolve to prevent larger disruptions in Europe.
I had no idea that the supply and quality of the commodity known as 'women' was an indicator of economic growth. I must update my models at once!
"models" get it? Like, economic models, "great women" models. I'm here all week.
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They are both pretty equally fascist, especially after the Maidan revolution. The only difference is which aspects of fascism are more prominent. If we go by the classic 14 defining characteristics, then in Russia emphasis would be on
- Supremacy of the Military
- Religion and Government are Intertwined
and in the Ukraine on
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
the rest is basically the same between the two countries.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I am German as well and, in fact, managed to visit Koenigsberg in 1987 (don't ask how). It never was nice to vist in first place and visiting any city in Russia before Putin's rise to power (that is before 2000) would be insane.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Wrong. But now we know what kind of person you are.
West or East? From East, Russia was similar and had slightly less absolute poverty though not as nice as West. Unfortunately there were only so many jobs after reunification unless you could move very far away.
East then, West now.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
As it turns out, space is still hard.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yeah, go ahead and bash the reputable source, rather than refute the actual content. You're a hack.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
They did that a long time ago. But Soyuz-U (and I think even the spacecraft itself) seems to be problematic among other reasons because a share of its components is or was Ukrainian. They're removing them now but one has to wonder about the effect of the continuous changes.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, Soyuz-U has been EOLed anyway, this flight was, in fact, the penultimate one.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
If nothing else, the need for a rotating launch pad was a nuisance for newly built pads (like in Vostochny).
Ezekiel 23:20
Ukraine is not "pretty fascist". If you take every candidate who could remotely be described as "fascist" in the 2014 election, combined they got less than 2% of the vote. Right Sector's Dmytro Yarosh, the most clearly fascist, got 0.7% of the vote. If that's what you call a country being "fascist" then fascism has lost all meaning.
If you're talking about the fact that there *"exist* nazis in Ukraine that are fighting for the country in Donbas, well, duh, there is no ban on that. While you're at it, however, you might want to Google Russian nazis in Donbas; there's no shortage of them fighting for the other side as well.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
I think a rotating launch pad is an awesome idea - no need for spending precious fuel for rotating and some other advantages. Don't understand why it is such a nuisance - USSR managed to build several in the early 1950ies, surely Russia of 2016 ought to be able to build them without any problem.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The "precious fuel" is negligible. In fact, the improved (digital) version of the rocket has better performance. Rotating a multi-hundred-tonne object is not exactly cheap to arrange for. If the autopilot can steer the vehicle, you don't need it.
Ezekiel 23:20
Oh please, Stalin was hardly better. He sent tens of millions to be worked to death, knowing that there was a regular stream of undesirable ethnicities and people suspected of being political opponents to replace them with. And he was just as much a militaristic expansionist as Hitler, having carefully negotiated with Hitler how Europe was supposed to be divided up with him, until Hitler stabbed him in the back.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
NASA has, perhaps rightly so, cautious about utilizing private space transport contractors. You know, all that need to see reliability. While the Russians (essentially a private contractor at this point) have a good record overall, I'd like to see a comparison over the last 5 years. What is the success to failure rate for Roscosmos, SpaceX, Nasa (ULA), etc...?
Like I said, I have been there and have actually seen them. And there was a shitload of them. Besides, most of the candidates of the 2014 election could be described as nationalist and authoritarian at the very least. I mean, the party names say it all: fatherland, people's self defence block, freedom (founded as social-nationalist party of Ukraine). Even their current president Poroshenko was the founder of the "National Alliance of Freedom and Ukrainian patriotism 'OFFENSIVE'" party. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
And what does your "google russian nazis in donbas" has to do with it? This is a bloody whataboutism, Russian neo-nazis are not the point here and I am well aware of their existance, but that absolutely doesn't excuse Ukraine's government arming their neo-nazis and making them official state troops.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Have it your way. Not going to show you anything because I'm content to let you squat in your own ignorance.
No other nation, no other culture, no other people have ever come close to that.
We have as 20th Century counter-examples, the Armenian genocide, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and the Rwanda genocide. The plans might not have been as detailed as the Nazi's, but they were good enough.
"An estimated 500,000â"1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994"
That outproduced the Nazi regime, and they did it in a desert. If the Rwandans had kept the same pace for 6 years, they would have killed 18 million with their bare hands.
Most of the executions were done by machete and organized via radio stations. Dead is dead no matter how primitively organized the killing was.
blow things up real good!
Hmmm....Sounds like the Farm Film Report. Are you Canadian?
To watch the launch I presume. Jeesh.. Talk about conspiracy theories.
So my tomcat was scratching around in the catbox over by the storage bay, and now it's just a big cloud of clay dust. It's says it's clumping litter on the box, but it's just not working.
"Just pee in your suit" I told him.
'72 Summit Series Winning Goal by Paul Henderson
I am German as well and, in fact, managed to visit Koenigsberg in 1987 (don't ask how).
Given a name like dunkelfalke, that you're German, and it was 1987, you were either being sent there for Stasi training, RAF training, or seeking out underground Russian new wave band or punk bands that you had heard on some smuggled cassette tape (or possibly playing a show there yourself).
A more precise definition of Fascism, according to Griffin, is a political ideology with three broad elements: populist ultra-nationalism, the claim that the country has become soft or ‘decadent,’ and a “rebirth myth.” The third is the promise, typically made by Fascist leaders, to restore a country to some sort of former greatness, usually taken from it treacherously by its enemies, either external or internal.
ehm ehm Trumphm ehm... ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
No, it was Russian hackerz!
Performing a roll maneuver in powered flight before pitching over is stupidly easy to do in comparison to rebuilding your entire launch infrastructure, or having a massively complex mechanical rotating launch pad that will invariably have weight limits and breakdowns.
This is like the opposite of the NASA astronaut pen -vs- Soviet Pencil joke.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
OMG! An AFRICAN went PINK! That explains it.
Heh, sort of. Appartment gigs sure were fun. But it was more like being young, stupid and very curious.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap