raw is actually relatively simple. Most cameras will have to have the pre-debayer/pre-jpeg readout of the sensor somewhere. As long it isn't completely hidden behind some opaque hardware, find it, write it to a file, there's your raw! This not to make light of work Vitaly and Grand did early in CHDK, getting to the point where you can do that is a big job.
A bit OT, but CHDK raw doesn't necessarily buy you a lot. You get a little more dynamic range, and you can do white balance after the fact, but it's only 10bpp (some newer cameras are 12 bit, but only about 10 bits are significant. wth Canon ?), and the sensors and optics are major factors in quality. It's useful in some specific situations, but raw isn't going give your P&S snaps the same quality you get from a much more expensive camera that has native raw capability.
The stuff done by the Digic DSP (rather than the plain jane ARM946ES that runs the OS, UI and CHDK) hasn't been deeply explored. You might be able to get color accent back, if your hack-fu is sufficient. The fact it hasn't been done isn't by itself a sign that it is impossible, it more frequently means no one has spent a lot of time in that particular area. Of course, if you did spend the time, you might find that it is in fact not possible. The canon firmware code is complicated enough (~3MB of machine code and data for the a540) that there are huge areas that no one has really dug into. The features that exist in CHDK are the result of someone scratching a particular itch.
Even that isn't right. Several of the Mir visitors should be on that list too, and perhaps a couple of other shuttle passengers (Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud for example). Certainly Helen Sharman counts as a female tourist, since she essentially won her ride a sweepstakes. Toyohiro Akiyama might count as a tourist too, although I suppose you could argue that he was a journalist on assignment.
The only thing that makes the Space Adventures tourists different is that they paid their own way, which isn't actually a defining characteristic of a tourist.
Point is, history shows us that the most hazardous portions of spaceflight is takeoff and reentry. I don't think that any space program has lost somebody in orbit.
Aside from Soyuz 11, there have been a number have come frighteningly close. Apollo 13, the Mir fire and collision all could have been fatal if the dice had fallen another way. Takeoff and reentry are certainly the most dangerous, especially if your measure is chance of fatality per time, but per mission the risks of the other parts are significant. Also remember that a lunar mission involves an extra takeoff and landing. Nevertheless, I agree with your essential point.
My gripe with the GGP was the idea that Apollo was felt to be a relatively safe program at it's end, just because it didn't kill anyone in flight. 15 manned flights (11 for the lunar program, 3 skylab, 1 ASTP) isn't a big enough sample to support that conclusion, especially given the number of problems that arose, and that fact that some of them (Apollo 7, 9, Skylab, ASTP) were LEO only. Some those involved in the program are reported to have felt that, having reached the moon, it was time to quit before they killed anyone.
Re:Why Then Not Now?
on
Back to the Moon
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Wrong, by the end of the program, Apollo was a proven system and as I recall had high marks for safety. The Orbiter is and always has been an experimental system, hence the problems.
Not really. Apollo was on vary thin margins in a lot of circumstances, and had plenty of life threatening failures. Apollo 13 is the most dramatic, but it is far from the only close call. Fundamentally, it was high risk. Based on the history of other launchers and spacecraft, it is hard to imagine Apollo wouldn't have killed someone (aside from Apollo 1) if it had flown as many times as the shuttle.
It's more about altitude and ballistic coefficient than size. With a some exceptions, un-manned satellites tend to be put in higher orbits, which don't encounter enough atmosphere to make them decay within their operational lifetime. Hubble (which is just barely within reach of the shuttle) is good for many years between reboosts. You might ask, "then why not put ISS at hubble altitude ?" but if it were, the shuttle wouldn't have the payload to bring up the pieces.
Even where atmospheric drag isn't a big factor, many satellites do have propulsion systems, because there are other things that perturb the orbits.
To answer the question, they could boost it somewhat higher, but have chosen not to. Lower orbits give leave more payload for visiting craft, although that must be weighed against extra fuel for reboosts. Reboosts also affect the launch windows for visiting craft. You might look at the graph the GP posted and think "OMG it's falling out of control" but that is not the case. It's at the current altitude because thats where they decided they wanted it. Reboosts are normally done with Progress and Shuttle engines, not the SM engines that failed.
They can't put it too high or it would be out of reach of the spacecraft that are supposed to service it. Even if they could reach it, you reduce the payload they can get there. Also, if you go too much higher you start hitting the lower edges of the Van Allen belts, which is bad for both the equipment and crew.
The true use of the space station is that is shows that a long term spaceship can't be built in small sections over a long period of time without the whole assembly obsoleting itself or wearing out before it starts its main mission.
Even if that was true of ISS (which is a stretch at the very least), it doesn't prove it for the general case. In particular ISS is designed to be occupied and used while it is under construction, and designed to be serviced on orbit. If you were designing a deep space craft, you would make different choices.
For the sake of argument, presume that the spacestation had been designed to travel to mars. By adding high thrust ion engines and power plants, this could have been done.
Only if you completely redesigned most of it. ISS is designed for LEO. To make it work in deep space would require major changes. The thermal control, power and navigation systems are designed for LEO.
However an assembly as large as the space station and typical for the requirement, loses over a mile of altitude a day in earth orbit and will burn up in the atmosphere within 1 year of ceasing to re-adjust its orbit higher.
ISS loses ~100 meters/day when it is on the lower edge of it's nominal orbits. Maybe 200 meters if solar activity is really high. Incidentally, if it lost a mile per day, it would burn up in a matter of months or less, depending on the starting altitude.
What has been really learned is that complex space ships of conventional design will age too soon to be of much use other than to learn how fast things wear out and wear down in a space environment.
Not at all. Many of the original components are working fine, and the ones that have failed have definite, identifiable and fixable reasons for failing. Although ISS is an awfully expensive way of doing it, it does provide significant lessons in building long duration crewed spacecraft. Far better to learn these lessons in LEO rather than on the way to mars.
I'm pretty sure some of NASAs crew escape systems produced similar G-loads, given that the Russians pretty much lifted that design from Max Faget. I don't have a reference handy, but I'm pretty sure Apollo and Mercury were in the same ballpark. Gemini was a whole different ballgame...
I thought one of the records set for sustained human Gs was on a rocket sled... Ah yes, Dr. John Paul Stapp.
Ejection seats are another area where people are exposed to high Gs. The Gemini seats were particularly infamous. Both rocket escape systems and ejection seats balance the chance of injury to the crew against the risks of not getting them away fast enough.
Good stuff, as long as I only have to read about it:D
While one should be skeptical that pressures as great as 12.50G let alone 20.00G would ever be experienced during space travel
They already have been. While normal trajectories don't expose the astronauts to loads that high, aborts and other off-nominal situations do. For example, the first attempts to fly Soyuz T-10 and Soyuz 18
Sucking foam into your turbo pumps is just as bad, for starters. Never mind how the foam actually behaves when it is in contact with -423F LH2. Or the risks of having it in direct contact with LO2...
You are incorrect. Please read the CAIB report (see chapter 3, part two here http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/PDFS/VOL1/PART01 .PDF). The foam that destroyed Columbia was the old foam. The 'new foam' was only used on machine sprayed areas, while hand formed areas used the old foam.
Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.
F3.27 Foam loss occurred on more than 80 percent of the 79 missions for which imagery was available to confirm or rule out foam loss.
F3.28 Thirty percent of all missions lacked sufficient imagery to determine if foam had been lost.
The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.
On the other hand, I haven't seen this slowing anything down. Again, I have no evidence. This is strictly an opinion.
Then perhaps you aren't familiar with how the industry works. If every developer actually made a good faith effort to ensure their software didn't violate any patents, software development would grind to a standstill.
The smaller companies (historically a major source of innovation) have to just cross their fingers and hope no one sues them. The larger ones waste a huge amount of effort building defensive patent portfolios, and even that doesn't stop patent trolls like Eolas.
It is also instructive to consider what the world would be like if we had the current system of software patents from day 1. Imagine a world where TCP/IP and HTML had been kept proprietary. The open development that spawned the Internet we know today would have been impossible. If AT&T had patented the basic techniques used in UNIX, there would be no linux, BSD, and probably no windows either.
I gotta disagree with that statement. They certainly still go boom.
The recent (October 2002) photon M2 launch failure is a good example (there's a truly spectacular video of it floating around, but I'm not gonna subject the only host I know of to/.)
Or the zenit launch failure in the '90s that left a big smoking hole where the launch pad was. Both these involved the rocket failing shortly after liftoff, basically falling out of the sky fully fueled. When the tanks break up, you get many thousands of pounds of fuel and oxidizer nicely mixed. What happens after that is usually "Boom!"
Most US, European and Japanese launchers have range safety (aka self destruct) systems, which help if the vehicle is actually flying, but they aren't likely to make difference if the failure happens very near the pad.
I suspect the tanks that the OP asked about are actually quite far away, and just look close due to the foreshortening effect of a long lense.
Yet I still can't grasp what exactly is wrong with software patents.
If you believe the fundamental purpose of the patent system is to promote innovation for the advancement of society as a whole, then it should be obvious that not only does the current system not work, but it does the exact opposite. This is not unique to software patents, but they are one of the grosser examples, and started us down the slippery slope which has lead to business model patents and even storyline patents
If you think the purpose of patents is to enrich a few, at the expense of innovation and the population at large, then it obviously works.
Without the ability to shield innovation through patents, the software industry would have less reason to research and advance, and less means to support its constituents.
This is demonstrably false. Look at all the software innovation which happened before software was patentable. Now stop and think if every one of the technologies underlying modern computers and the Internet had been patented. Do you really think that, if every bit of software had been patented since 1960, there would have been more innovation ? The the PC and the Internet would be better than they are today ?
Tim Berners-Lee recently posed the question (paraphrased) "what would the Internet be like today if I had patented http ?"
I hope it is obvious that the end result would have been something much less useful than what we have now.
Or how about the point of view of another software innovator John Carmack
Actually, I do honestly believe the system is inherently flawed, not just that it is administered poorly.
Damn near every product or idea of value has clear, traceable roots to things that have gone before, which a lawyer can easily argue are within claims filed with patents. If every innovation was protected by patent, and every product actually paid full heed to all the patents that could lay claim to it, you would basically not be able to build anything without spending far, far more time tracking down who you need to pay licensing fees to than you spend producing things of value. If a law looks absurd when applied with perfect enforcement, it isn't a good law.
Relatively few great things would disappear without patent protection. Would I stop trying to come up with innovative software? Would Intel stop trying to come up with innovative hardware? There are probably some valid cases in drug research, but I contend that most of what drives the economy takes a net negative effect from the patent system. For large companies, it is a parasitic legal cost to keep a competitive set of trading cards. For small companies, it is a sword of Damoclese hanging over their heads.
The maximum Soyuz crew is three. Soyuz 1 had only one test pilot aboard. Whereas the shuttle has a maximum crew of 7. Soyuz has killed 4 crew members, both accidents in the infancy of the vehicle. Whereas the shuttle has killed 14.
Which doesn't really support your original claim that Soyuz is 'much safer'. At best it shows it is might be slightly safer, but the sample size is small enough that is statistically pretty meaningless. Especially if you start to look at the other close calls Soyuz has had: Soyuz 5the first attempt of Soyuz 18 the first attempt at Soyuz t-10
The first 2 of those were only non-fatal by a large amount of luck.
The above obviously aren't in the same league as the early incidents, but do show a system that is encountering a significant loss of redundancy on nearly every flight. If you go back over the Mir era flights, you will find plenty more, although the Russians were even less inclined to talk about them.
I'm not trying to bash Soyuz... if you offered me a seat today, I'd jump on it. I'm just pointing out that the commonly held assumption that it is a whole lot safer than the shuttle doesn't really add up.
I haven't forgotten anything, you just haven't done your research.
You are confusing the Soyuz launch vehicle with the manned orbital spacecraft. They are two completely different things. The manned spacecraft (which is the point of interest in comparing the safety of manned systems) has flown less than the shuttle, and has had just as many fatal accidents.
By my count the manned soyuz spacecraft has flown about 94 manned attempts, of which 2 failed to reach orbit, and 2 more did reach orbit, but resulted in the loss of the entire crew. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_program
Before you jump in and say that the 'manned' soyuz spacecraft has flown unmanned missions too (both on the Soyuz booster and on Proton in the Zond program), take a look at the success rate of those flights. If you count them, soyuz is far worse than the shuttle (but it's not quite a fair comparison, since the shuttle is not intended to fly unmanned, and is not expendable.)
The soyuz booster has a quite good record see http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/logsum.html
As of 2004, the R7 based boosters have 1554 successes 1638 orbital missions, for a success rate of about.95. If you count only the later Soyuz variants it goes up to.97 or so. That makes it pretty much an industry leader, but there are others in the same range.
The shuttle booster system has about 116 launches with one or two failures (depending whether you call Columbia as a booster failure, which is questionable.)
When it comes to crew safety Soyuz is a lot better than the NASA shuttle anyway.
Not really. Soyuz record in 'fatal accidents per flight' is slightly worse. Both systems have had 2 fatal incidents, but soyuz has flown less flights. Total fatalities Soyuz is a lot less, but so is crew carried per flight.
From a statistical point of view, its pretty much a wash. On could argue that soyuz fatalities happened early in the program, so it is more mature now, but OTOH, Soyuz has also had a lot of close calls, including ones that resulting in mission failure and serious injury to the crew. On the most recent landing they had an unplanned loss of cabin pressure. Many of the other recent flights have also had significant issues.
Did I miss something? I thought that in space there is no 'drag', so once something is in orbit, it stays in orbit... or are they not in 'space' per-se, but still in some very very low density part of the earth's atmosphere?
Yes, you missed something. There is no sharp cutoff between space and atmosphere. Even much higher orbits than ISS are subject to some drag.
The claim is that the rate of loss is increasing as the orbit decays but also states that, if nothing else, the shuttle will be there in 9 weeks.
We all know shuttle schedules are highly reliable... In actual fact, the May shuttle date is more of a planning target than a firm date.
This certainly isn't an emergency yet, but it has the potential to be quite serious. The decay rate increases drastically the lower you go. Below a certain point, progress doesn't have enough fuel and thrust to get you out of the hole. Orbital decay is also highly variable depending on solar activity (it was this that caused Skylab to crash earlier than expected). While we are supposed to be near a solar minimum, it doesn't look much like one. On the upside, ISS itself has it's own engines (smaller than the progress main engines) and progress has other thrusters as well. I'm not sure if the docked soyuz can be used for reboost, but ISTR that they have the capability to transfer fuel in both directions so it is possible.
If you really can't tell the difference between the level of insanity required to disrupt their Internet, and the level of insanity required to initiate a nuclear conflict against substantial deterrent, there really isn't much more to say. One is obviously plausible in the near term political environment, and the other is completely nuts.
Clearly, Europe (and the rest of the world) is more worried about the plausible case than the completely nuts one. Especially since they have a deterrent against the completely nuts case already.
You might, as a thought experiment, consider what the American view would be if the major internet bodies were (through some historical accident) based in France. I'll take a wild guess that the "oh it has worked up to now" argument wouldn't be nearly as popular.
I hate to break it to you, but France already *does* have a nuclear arsenal. So does the UK. Not enough to wipe out the US perhaps, but enough to make nuking Europe a very, very bad idea. A couple hundred sub launched nukes is far from "nothing stopping us".
Moreover, much of Frances motivation for having their own nuclear force was to avoid depending on the US, allowing them to pursue a more independent foreign policy. While acting as a deterrent against the US probably wasn't the major motivation, it would be unreasonable to assume that wasn't a factor. It puts certain bounds on what actions the US can rationally consider. National governments and policy are subject to change, and a wise government prepares for those eventualities beforehand.
The EU is building their own GPS system for much the same reasons.
American citizens may see their country as one that is always the 'good guys' but the rest of the world certainly doesn't.
It's true that the combustion of gasoline isn't complete; if it were, you wouldn't get any pollutants. The combustion of any hydrocarbon produces (ideally) only H2O and CO2. All of the additional pollutants are products of incomplete combustion.
This is nonsense. First of all, CO2 *is* a pollutant. Secondly, as another poster pointed out, you still get NOx emissions because your engine isn't breathing pure O2. This isn't a product of incomplete combustion, but rather heating air in the reactive environment of the combustion chamber. Neither the N nor the O came from your fuel, so you can't claim it's unburned fuel. You also get various things from heating the lubricants.
Unburned hydrocarbons are pollutants generated by IC engines, but they aren't the only ones. By volume, they are a tiny fraction.
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raw is actually relatively simple. Most cameras will have to have the pre-debayer/pre-jpeg readout of the sensor somewhere. As long it isn't completely hidden behind some opaque hardware, find it, write it to a file, there's your raw! This not to make light of work Vitaly and Grand did early in CHDK, getting to the point where you can do that is a big job.
A bit OT, but CHDK raw doesn't necessarily buy you a lot. You get a little more dynamic range, and you can do white balance after the fact, but it's only 10bpp (some newer cameras are 12 bit, but only about 10 bits are significant. wth Canon ?), and the sensors and optics are major factors in quality. It's useful in some specific situations, but raw isn't going give your P&S snaps the same quality you get from a much more expensive camera that has native raw capability.
The stuff done by the Digic DSP (rather than the plain jane ARM946ES that runs the OS, UI and CHDK) hasn't been deeply explored. You might be able to get color accent back, if your hack-fu is sufficient. The fact it hasn't been done isn't by itself a sign that it is impossible, it more frequently means no one has spent a lot of time in that particular area. Of course, if you did spend the time, you might find that it is in fact not possible. The canon firmware code is complicated enough (~3MB of machine code and data for the a540) that there are huge areas that no one has really dug into. The features that exist in CHDK are the result of someone scratching a particular itch.
The only thing that makes the Space Adventures tourists different is that they paid their own way, which isn't actually a defining characteristic of a tourist.
My gripe with the GGP was the idea that Apollo was felt to be a relatively safe program at it's end, just because it didn't kill anyone in flight. 15 manned flights (11 for the lunar program, 3 skylab, 1 ASTP) isn't a big enough sample to support that conclusion, especially given the number of problems that arose, and that fact that some of them (Apollo 7, 9, Skylab, ASTP) were LEO only. Some those involved in the program are reported to have felt that, having reached the moon, it was time to quit before they killed anyone.
It's more about altitude and ballistic coefficient than size. With a some exceptions, un-manned satellites tend to be put in higher orbits, which don't encounter enough atmosphere to make them decay within their operational lifetime. Hubble (which is just barely within reach of the shuttle) is good for many years between reboosts. You might ask, "then why not put ISS at hubble altitude ?" but if it were, the shuttle wouldn't have the payload to bring up the pieces.
Even where atmospheric drag isn't a big factor, many satellites do have propulsion systems, because there are other things that perturb the orbits.
To answer the question, they could boost it somewhat higher, but have chosen not to. Lower orbits give leave more payload for visiting craft, although that must be weighed against extra fuel for reboosts. Reboosts also affect the launch windows for visiting craft. You might look at the graph the GP posted and think "OMG it's falling out of control" but that is not the case. It's at the current altitude because thats where they decided they wanted it. Reboosts are normally done with Progress and Shuttle engines, not the SM engines that failed.
They can't put it too high or it would be out of reach of the spacecraft that are supposed to service it. Even if they could reach it, you reduce the payload they can get there. Also, if you go too much higher you start hitting the lower edges of the Van Allen belts, which is bad for both the equipment and crew.
BTW: another good description of the recent failure can be found at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/619/1
I thought one of the records set for sustained human Gs was on a rocket sled... Ah yes, Dr. John Paul Stapp.
Ejection seats are another area where people are exposed to high Gs. The Gemini seats were particularly infamous. Both rocket escape systems and ejection seats balance the chance of injury to the crew against the risks of not getting them away fast enough.
Good stuff, as long as I only have to read about it :D
Sucking foam into your turbo pumps is just as bad, for starters. Never mind how the foam actually behaves when it is in contact with -423F LH2. Or the risks of having it in direct contact with LO2...
Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.
The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.Then perhaps you aren't familiar with how the industry works. If every developer actually made a good faith effort to ensure their software didn't violate any patents, software development would grind to a standstill.
The smaller companies (historically a major source of innovation) have to just cross their fingers and hope no one sues them. The larger ones waste a huge amount of effort building defensive patent portfolios, and even that doesn't stop patent trolls like Eolas.
It is also instructive to consider what the world would be like if we had the current system of software patents from day 1. Imagine a world where TCP/IP and HTML had been kept proprietary. The open development that spawned the Internet we know today would have been impossible. If AT&T had patented the basic techniques used in UNIX, there would be no linux, BSD, and probably no windows either.
I gotta disagree with that statement. They certainly still go boom.
/.)
The recent (October 2002) photon M2 launch failure is a good example (there's a truly spectacular video of it floating around, but I'm not gonna subject the only host I know of to
Or the zenit launch failure in the '90s that left a big smoking hole where the launch pad was. Both these involved the rocket failing shortly after liftoff, basically falling out of the sky fully fueled. When the tanks break up, you get many thousands of pounds of fuel and oxidizer nicely mixed. What happens after that is usually "Boom!"
Most US, European and Japanese launchers have range safety (aka self destruct) systems, which help if the vehicle is actually flying, but they aren't likely to make difference if the failure happens very near the pad.
I suspect the tanks that the OP asked about are actually quite far away, and just look close due to the
foreshortening effect of a long lense.
...or the fact that the "underlying technology" of snort is, and has always been available to anyone on the internet.
If you believe the fundamental purpose of the patent system is to promote innovation for the advancement of society as a whole, then it should be obvious that not only does the current system not work, but it does the exact opposite. This is not unique to software patents, but they are one of the grosser examples, and started us down the slippery slope which has lead to business model patents and even storyline patents
If you think the purpose of patents is to enrich a few, at the expense of innovation and the population at large, then it obviously works.
Without the ability to shield innovation through patents, the software industry would have less reason to research and advance, and less means to support its constituents.
This is demonstrably false. Look at all the software innovation which happened before software was patentable. Now stop and think if every one of the technologies underlying modern computers and the Internet had been patented. Do you really think that, if every bit of software had been patented since 1960, there would have been more innovation ? The the PC and the Internet would be better than they are today ?
Tim Berners-Lee recently posed the question (paraphrased) "what would the Internet be like today if I had patented http ?"
( I can't find the exact quote, but here's a link that conveys the general idea http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1390 )
I hope it is obvious that the end result would have been something much less useful than what we have now.
Or how about the point of view of another software innovator John Carmack
Actually, I do honestly believe the system is inherently flawed, not just that it is administered poorly.
Damn near every product or idea of value has clear, traceable roots to things that have gone before, which a lawyer can easily argue are within claims filed with patents. If every innovation was protected by patent, and every product actually paid full heed to all the patents that could lay claim to it, you would basically not be able to build anything without spending far, far more time tracking down who you need to pay licensing fees to than you spend producing things of value. If a law looks absurd when applied with perfect enforcement, it isn't a good law.
Relatively few great things would disappear without patent protection. Would I stop trying to come up with innovative software? Would Intel stop trying to come up with innovative hardware? There are probably some valid cases in drug research, but I contend that most of what drives the economy takes a net negative effect from the patent system. For large companies, it is a parasitic legal cost to keep a competitive set of trading cards. For small companies, it is a sword of Damoclese hanging over their heads.
John Carmack
source: http://lists.erps.org/archives/erps-list/msg05386. shtml
Now stop and think. The above or two people who are the quintessential 'lone innovators' that the patent system is supposed to protect.
Which doesn't really support your original claim that Soyuz is 'much safer'. At best it shows it is might be slightly safer, but the sample size is small enough that is statistically pretty meaningless. Especially if you start to look at the other close calls Soyuz has had: Soyuz 5 the first attempt of Soyuz 18 the first attempt at Soyuz t-10 The first 2 of those were only non-fatal by a large amount of luck.
Nor is recent history flawless:a ttery_p.html
s .html
4 0428.html
- Loss of cabin pressure on TMA-6 landing http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9888881/
- Thruster malfunction on TMA-5 http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma5.html
- battery problems on TMA-5 http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2005/04/soyuz_b
- Pyro accident and H2O2 tank problems in TMA-5 prelaunch processing. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp10/statu
- Fuel pressurization problem on TMA-3 http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/exp8_soyuz_0
- Flight computer failure/ballistic landing on TMA-1 http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma1.html
The above obviously aren't in the same league as the early incidents, but do show a system that is encountering a significant loss of redundancy on nearly every flight. If you go back over the Mir era flights, you will find plenty more, although the Russians were even less inclined to talk about them.
I'm not trying to bash Soyuz... if you offered me a seat today, I'd jump on it. I'm just pointing out that the commonly held assumption that it is a whole lot safer than the shuttle doesn't really add up.
You are confusing the Soyuz launch vehicle with the manned orbital spacecraft. They are two completely different things. The manned spacecraft (which is the point of interest in comparing the safety of manned systems) has flown less than the shuttle, and has had just as many fatal accidents.
By my count the manned soyuz spacecraft has flown about 94 manned attempts, of which 2 failed to reach orbit, and 2 more did reach orbit, but resulted in the loss of the entire crew. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_program
Before you jump in and say that the 'manned' soyuz spacecraft has flown unmanned missions too (both on the Soyuz booster and on Proton in the Zond program), take a look at the success rate of those flights. If you count them, soyuz is far worse than the shuttle (but it's not quite a fair comparison, since the shuttle is not intended to fly unmanned, and is not expendable.)
The soyuz booster has a quite good record see http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/logsum.html .95. If you count only the later Soyuz variants it goes up to .97 or so. That makes it pretty much an industry leader, but there are others in the same range.
As of 2004, the R7 based boosters have 1554 successes 1638 orbital missions, for a success rate of about
The shuttle booster system has about 116 launches with one or two failures (depending whether you call Columbia as a booster failure, which is questionable.)
Not really. Soyuz record in 'fatal accidents per flight' is slightly worse. Both systems have had 2 fatal incidents, but soyuz has flown less flights. Total fatalities Soyuz is a lot less, but so is crew carried per flight.
From a statistical point of view, its pretty much a wash. On could argue that soyuz fatalities happened early in the program, so it is more mature now, but OTOH, Soyuz has also had a lot of close calls, including ones that resulting in mission failure and serious injury to the crew. On the most recent landing they had an unplanned loss of cabin pressure. Many of the other recent flights have also had significant issues.
Yes, you missed something. There is no sharp cutoff between space and atmosphere. Even much higher orbits than ISS are subject to some drag.
This certainly isn't an emergency yet, but it has the potential to be quite serious. The decay rate increases drastically the lower you go. Below a certain point, progress doesn't have enough fuel and thrust to get you out of the hole. Orbital decay is also highly variable depending on solar activity (it was this that caused Skylab to crash earlier than expected). While we are supposed to be near a solar minimum, it doesn't look much like one. On the upside, ISS itself has it's own engines (smaller than the progress main engines) and progress has other thrusters as well. I'm not sure if the docked soyuz can be used for reboost, but ISTR that they have the capability to transfer fuel in both directions so it is possible.
Your analogy is still bogus.
If you really can't tell the difference between the level of insanity required to disrupt their Internet, and the level of insanity required to initiate a nuclear conflict against substantial deterrent, there really isn't much more to say. One is obviously plausible in the near term political environment, and the other is completely nuts.
Clearly, Europe (and the rest of the world) is more worried about the plausible case than the completely nuts one. Especially since they have a deterrent against the completely nuts case already.
You might, as a thought experiment, consider what the American view would be if the major internet bodies were (through some historical accident) based in France. I'll take a wild guess that the "oh it has worked up to now" argument wouldn't be nearly as popular.
I hate to break it to you, but France already *does* have a nuclear arsenal. So does the UK. Not enough to wipe out the US perhaps, but enough to make nuking Europe a very, very bad idea. A couple hundred sub launched nukes is far from "nothing stopping us".
Moreover, much of Frances motivation for having their own nuclear force was to avoid depending on the US, allowing them to pursue a more independent foreign policy. While acting as a deterrent against the US probably wasn't the major motivation, it would be unreasonable to assume that wasn't a factor. It puts certain bounds on what actions the US can rationally consider. National governments and policy are subject to change, and a wise government prepares for those eventualities beforehand.
The EU is building their own GPS system for much the same reasons.
American citizens may see their country as one that is always the 'good guys' but the rest of the world certainly doesn't.
This is nonsense. First of all, CO2 *is* a pollutant. Secondly, as another poster pointed out, you still get NOx emissions because your engine isn't breathing pure O2. This isn't a product of incomplete combustion, but rather heating air in the reactive environment of the combustion chamber. Neither the N nor the O came from your fuel, so you can't claim it's unburned fuel. You also get various things from heating the lubricants.
Unburned hydrocarbons are pollutants generated by IC engines, but they aren't the only ones. By volume, they are a tiny fraction.