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NASA Astronaut Details Fall To Earth After Failed Soyuz Launch (cnet.com)
After surviving an aborted launch to the ISS, NASA astronaut Nick Hague details his fall to Earth and shares what it was like inside the capsule. CNET reports: In his first interviews since surviving the largely uncontrolled "ballistic descent" back to Earth that followed, Hague told reporters on Tuesday that the launch felt normal for the first two minutes but that it became clear "something was wrong pretty quick." "Your training really takes over," Hague said, adding that he and [Russian Cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin] had practiced what to do in case of just such a launch-abort scenario. Hague also credited years of flight training, going back to his days as a U.S. Air Force pilot.
The escape procedure has been compared to being launched sideways out of a shotgun -- but while the shotgun is rocketing upward. Hague described the side-to-side shaking inside the capsule as "fairly aggressive but fleeting." "I expected my first trip to space to be memorable," he said. "I didn't expect it to be quite this memorable." Because of the combination of rocket-fueled ascent and the sudden sideways escape maneuver, the crew experienced a higher level of g-forces than during a normal flight. Once the Soyuz reached the top of its arc and began to descend, Hague said, what followed was really the same as a normal Soyuz landing, but with one major difference: The pair couldn't be certain where they were. "My eyes were looking out the window trying to gauge where we were going to land." Luckily, the capsule deployed its parachutes and landed on smooth, flat terrain where Hague and Ovchinin were met by rescue helicopters and whisked off for medical evaluations.
The escape procedure has been compared to being launched sideways out of a shotgun -- but while the shotgun is rocketing upward. Hague described the side-to-side shaking inside the capsule as "fairly aggressive but fleeting." "I expected my first trip to space to be memorable," he said. "I didn't expect it to be quite this memorable." Because of the combination of rocket-fueled ascent and the sudden sideways escape maneuver, the crew experienced a higher level of g-forces than during a normal flight. Once the Soyuz reached the top of its arc and began to descend, Hague said, what followed was really the same as a normal Soyuz landing, but with one major difference: The pair couldn't be certain where they were. "My eyes were looking out the window trying to gauge where we were going to land." Luckily, the capsule deployed its parachutes and landed on smooth, flat terrain where Hague and Ovchinin were met by rescue helicopters and whisked off for medical evaluations.
I totally parsed that as "astronaut's documentation falls to the ground, is found by bystander".
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Going down...
QA has deteriorated to the point where Soyuz could fail like this. That means further errors in construction were possible.
However, the US system had no real escape after launch. The shuttle scrapped its after-launch escape system to satisfy Congressional budget constraints and Apollo was very limited.
Both had superb launch-site escape systems, from rockets that could rip the command module clear for Apollo to zip wires for the Shuttle.
Failure may not be an option, but it is a possibility and it's often cheaper to replace a crew than to build correctly.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This should not be viewed as a failure, but as a great achievement. Correctly designed and functioning safety systems and protocols saved human life. This is infinitely more important than any space mission.
The fact that the Russian safety mechanisms kicked in and let them both return safely to earth is nothing short of an engineering miracle.
Compare to the fate of the Challenger launch, and then make up your mind which one was a failure, and which one was a successfully aborted launch.
on how reliable as a whole Soyuz system is. The successful healthy recovery of astronaut and cosmonaut when they literally fell from space, without any propelling cushion one would expect more cheer in the crowd. But no, since it is made by evil Soviet and Russian governments, let's just ignore the fact that this is one of the most astonishing events of the international space program in years.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The LES is specifically designed to work in the event of a catastrophic booster failure
Had the Soyuz rocket exploded, which is what happened with Challenger, NO "safety mechanisms" would've helped and they would have died in the same manner.
By impacting water at 200 g after they survived the explosion but had no way to safely get out during the subsequent fall?
It's widely assumed that most—possibly all—of the Challenger crew not only survived the breakup of the orbiter (which, incidentally, was due to aerodynamic issues following the explosion, rather than the explosion itself), but were, in fact, conscious for at least part of the fall. After all, the crew cabin was intact after the breakup, the estimated g-forces involved in the breakup likely weren't sufficient to cause major injury, there weren't signs of catastrophic decompression in the cabin, multiple air packs had been manually activated and showed usage consistent with the amount of time they were falling, and manually-operated controls that would have been relevant to re-establishing power in the event of an emergency had been toggled to non-launch positions.
So, actually, safety mechanisms might have saved Challenger's crew, though those mechanisms would have come at a cost beyond just the money involved, such as needing to reduce crew sizes rather substantially in order to make room for the safety mechanisms.