Joann Evans wrote in news:42F429A6.37695CE9
@frontiernet.net:

alex pozgaj wrote:

"Henk Boonsma" writes:

and that a rescue mission would have had to be sent up
to fetch the stranded astronauts.

With no guarantee whatsoever that the rescue mission wouldn't be bitten
by exactly the same problem, which would leave us with a few more people
stranded at the ISS and with 0 operational shuttles.

I wonder whether Russians would be able to mount enough rescue missions
to bring down the stranded original crew and the stranded rescue crew
before the ISS runs out of supplies.

Cheers, alex.

They claim they could.

I'm not so sure, but would this be the same spacecraft design that
once had fatal stabilization and parachute deployment issues, and vent
valve issues?

One can't neglect the root causes. The vent valve failure on Soyuz 11 was
caused by the jettison of the orbital and service modules after the deorbit
burn. Although they've fixed the vent valve, the three-module jettison
design has resulted in two other close calls, Soyuz 5 in 1969 (didn't
jettison when it should have) and Soyuz TM-5 in 1988 (almost jettisoned
when it shouldn't have).

Though they've at least flown the design (but never the same ship, of
course) enough times to have pretty well shaken out the bugs...

I wouldn't be that sure. Soyuz has been around a long time but has had a
very low flight rate over much of its history, so the total number of
flights isn't as high as people generally think. Soyuz has flown manned 82
times since the Soyuz 11 accident, while the space shuttle flew 87 times
between the 51L and 107 accidents. There could well be other Soyuz bugs
that simply haven't manifested themselves yet.

--
JRF

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