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Crew of 'Soyuz' Spacecraft Establish Contact After Failed Launch (theguardian.com)
A Russian-American space crew have been forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after their Soyuz rocket suffered a failure shortly after launching from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in one of the most serious space incidents in recent years. From a report: The launch began as a routine affair. Missions bound for the International Space Station (ISS) have been conducted every few months for the past 20 years. But 119 seconds into Thursday's flight, mission controllers on the Nasa broadcast began to speak of a failure. Shaky footage from the capsule's cabin seen during the live broadcast appeared to show objects floating mid-launch. The crew told mission control they felt weightless, an indication of a problem during that stage of the flight. Agitated voices flooding the radio link between mission control and the capsule could be heard on the Nasa broadcast. Details and the exact sequence of events remain unclear, but shortly afterwards the crew initiated an abort and ejected their capsule from the rocket. Judging by the time at which the failure took place, it involved separation of the rocket's second stage -- just before the ship would have ignited the third stage for its final kick to exit the atmosphere. A commentator on Nasa's live broadcast later said that rescue teams had reached the capsule's landing site and the two-person crew were in "good condition."
The Space Shuttle was originally proposed in the 1960s, and designed in the 1970s. Back then, spy satellites used film. After a full roll was shot, it was ejected, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, and an elaborate system was in place to capture those film canisters in mid-air. When all the film aboard a spy satellite was used, it became a billion dollar paperweight in orbit.
The point of the Space Shuttle was to go into orbit, dock with a spy satellite, and re-load it with new film canisters. That's why the Shuttle's cargo bay was exactly the size to hold a spy satellite (which not coincidentally is about the same size as Hubble - in fact they're just a HST pointed at the ground instead of at the stars). As long as the cost of each Shuttle mission was less than the cost of building and launching a new spy satellite, it was worth it to the USAF. The USAF was hoping for one Shuttle launch every week to restock its spy satellites with fresh film. At that frequency, the rocket stages you throw away become prohibitively expensive. So the Shuttle was designed with as many re-usable parts as possible.
Unfortunately for the Shuttle, during its development, spy satellites began switching to electronic camera sensors. These could simply beam the resulting images down to Earth via radio, obviating the need for film. Consequently, by the time the Shuttle finally flew, the USAF no longer needed it for its original purpose. And the Shuttle never flew more than about a dozen times a year, with average interval between flights being more than 2 months. The huge development, facility, and staff maintenance costs which were supposed to be amortized by spreading it over 50 launches a year, were instead spread over just 5 launches a year. Resulting in a per-flight cost which far exceeded the cost of conventional rockets.