View Single Post
  #3  
Old October 25th 18, 06:05 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default Russia returns Soyuz rocket to flight

Jeff Findley wrote on Thu, 25 Oct 2018
07:08:05 -0400:

As expected, Russia returned the Soyuz launch vehicle to flight in a
startlingly short amount of time.

Russia returns Soyuz rocket to flight with Lotos-S1 mission
written by William Graham October 24, 2018
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018...ight-lotos-s1-
mission/

From above:

Thursday's launch had originally been scheduled to take place
last week but slipped a few days in the immediate aftermath
of the MS-10 launch.


Note that this is not a manned launch, so it's a different model of
Soyuz (but has the classic R-7 Stage 1 and Stage 2 configuration).
This launch (and two others) are part of their mitigation strategy.
They want three successful launches before a return to manned service.


Naturally, this schedule slip of just a few days indicates how
thoroughly Russia investigated the failed crewed launch of Soyuz and how
diligently they inspected this Soyuz launch vehicle for any other
quality control problems. /s


Not a crewed launch. The next two won't be, either. Note that SpaceX
only did a four month pause to investigate a much more serious issue
that was, at least initially, much less understood.


Of course, NASA Spaceflight rarely paints less than a perfectly rosy
picture of anything that NASA does, so I didn't expect them to be openly
critical of Russia's launch operations. After all, NASA keeps telling
us that everything is fine and that we'll continue to fly NASA
astronauts on Soyuz. Nothing to see here, just move along.


They seem to have a pretty good handle on what happened and why and it
sounds like a 'one off' issue.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world."
-- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden