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Old October 12th 18, 08:18 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure Forces Emergency Landing of Soyuz!

JF Mezei wrote on Fri, 12 Oct 2018
12:59:09 -0400:

On 2018-10-12 06:55, Jeff Findley wrote:

There is a connection between the two so that the automated abort system
on the capsule can be triggered.


So except for triggering abort, the Dragon crewed vehicle is just an
inert payload on top of the automated remotely controlled Falcon 9?


I know you can never be bothered to look things up before you make
ignorant statements, but you should read the Falcon 9 payload
integration document.


I would have expected the crew would have had more control over it and
would get far mroe feedback/telemetry from it.


Why would you expect that? What is the crew going to do?



NASA has already said that the vehicles for the commercial crew test
flights are not the "long pole in the tent". At this point the
certification "paperwork" is what will take the most time.


Does this mean that SpaceX is physically ready to launch it with people
in it, and it has concluded the design/build and testing of it ?


It means just what it says. However, let me say a bit more. The
first Crew Dragon capsule has completed testing and been delivered to
the Cape. They're currently loading parachutes, fuel, test sensors,
and other consumables, which I can't imagine would take very long if
they needed it done right now. This capsule is the test article for
DM-1, the unmanned orbital test flight.



This puts us squarely in the position many of us feared. NASA is
dragging its feet on the certification part while continuing to fly on
Soyuz which is clearly not as safe as one would hope.


Yesterday's event seems to point to it being safe. A slight malfunction
detected, abort triggered automatically and crew are safe and sound.


'Safe' vehicles don't get in situations where big pieces (like the
booster rocket) fail and they have to exercise their emergency
systems.



Besides, we all know how quickly Russia resumes flights after
"incidents" like this. They're very quick to find what they think is
the *one* cause, correct it, and start flying again. They will ignore
all other "distractions" in the interest of time.

NASA, on the other hand, identifies all possible issues with the
spacecraft and/or vehicle and fixes all of them before they fly again.
This tends to find *many* lingering issues that should have been fixed
in the past but never were. Just look at what they did after Apollo 1,
Challenger, and Columbia.


How long did it take for NASA to find Columbia was damaed during launch
due to falling foam? A couple of days, right?


That was hardly the only thing they found. Go read the report.


It seems to me that it spent months and months debating the management
mentality that allowed this known problem to persist. The actual
mechanical problem got circumscribed very quickly.


How things seem to you is frequently not in exact 1:1 accord with our
present reality.


It seems to me that yesterday's failure was not "spectacular". No big
explosions. Just an alarm and automated ejection and safe landing of
crew. For all we know all was find with the stage but a faulty sensor
caused the alarm.


Well, perhaps that's all YOU know, but those of us who are paying
attention know that there was a booster failure that caused the core
stage to shut down. Preliminary reports indicate that one of the
strap ons failed to separate cleanly and hit the core stage, damaging
it. The question is why this happened and is it a single event
failure or could it happen again? That's what they're investigating.



I have one final thought. Russia is the only country on the planet
still launching people on top of a launch vehicle which is *directly*
derived from an ICBM.


And solid rocket boosters for SLS arent directly derived from ICBMs?


No more so than any solid or liquid rocket is.


Isn't the whole point of mandating solids for SLS to help ATK continue
to keep the ability to produce solids for ICBMs ?


Yes, but you once again seem to not understand things.


And out of curiosity, how does Soyuz's ICMB origins (as opposed to just
being old) make it different from Falcon 8? Wouldn't the design have
evolved over the years to make Soyus into its own rocket instead of an
ICBM launcher?


The first two stages (the strap ons and the core stage) aren't
significantly different from the original R7 ICBM.



Those lower stages on the Soyuz launch vehicle,
which appear to have failed to separate cleanly on this launch, are
pretty much the same as the first ICBM from the USSR.


The NASA astronaut at yesterday's press conference said the failure
happened just after clean separation of the boosters.


He was wrong. One of the four strap ons failed to separate cleanly
and struck the core (second) stage, causing it to shut down. I doubt
he said "clean separation" because he has no way to know that.



necessarily the best thing to use on an orbital launch vehicle. For
example, Falcon 9 was deliberately designed to use no pyrotechnics for
its separation events.


Pyros make things really hard to re-use. NASA used plenty of them on
its Shuttle, didn't it ?


I wouldn't say 'plenty' and most of them were for emergency systems.


AND THIS JUST IN:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45842731

"Speaking in Moscow, Nasa head Jim Bridenstine said he expected a
December mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to go ahead as
planned."

To me, this points to initial investigation pointing to either a sensor
malfunction when everything was working well, ...


Nope. You really need to avoid giving serious consideration to how
things 'seem' to you or what you think facts might 'point' to. You
are almost inevitably wrong.


... or they already identified
what failed and know what to check on the new rocket before granting it
right to fly.


They know WHAT happened. What they don't know is WHY it happened.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson