Yes i imagine that might well be so.
Its a very strange event though when you consider how many of these craft
have launched with no issues.
A tumbling or spinning craft which is outside of the automatic parameters
is pretty serious. If the tanks were emptied, could there have been a
leaking thruster perhaps?
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Greg (Strider) Moore" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

I see that they have effectively declared it a loss and in the news
group it
seems that the launches are being rescheduled to allow the time to sort
out
what happened.
Unfortunately it does not take much to create such a situation and as
nobody can go and look at it, its got to be done using existing data. I
bete
its something really simple and stupid, these things usually are at the
end
of the day. However if it is diagnosed as a problem that could affect
manned launches, then things get a lot more problematic.

It's a loss because the Progress reentered, uncontrolled, days ago over
the Pacific Ocean if memory serves.

The problem could be with the Soyuz launch vehicle, putting the next
Soyuz manned mission at risk. It has since been postponed and the
passenger, a singer from the UK, has said she is postponing her flight
for personal/family reasons (my guess is that her family does not want
her to die).


That would definitely qualify as a "personal/family" reason.

It may also be that Russia has quietly asked her to reschedule while they
sort things out, but want to save a bit of face.

Jeff

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Greg D. Moore
http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
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