JF Mezei wrote on Tue, 16 Oct 2018
14:48:28 -0400:

On 2018-10-16 06:56, Jeff Findley wrote:

Not necessarily. If the lower QA was a result in worker dissatisfaction
due to not being paid on time (which has happened) then Roscosmos may be
blissfully unaware that something changed that they never intended.


Statistics showing higher failure rates should be "in your face" to
uppoer managemenrt that there is a quality assurance problem.


Eventually, sure, assuming 'upper management' pays any attention to
the data.


If errors
increase for whatever reasons (such as workers being tires, not being
paid etc), it means that the Q/A is not detecting those errors and needs
to be improved.


Wrong approach. What you're describing is not a QA failure. It's a
QC failure and you can't 'inspect in' quality on the back side.


And then with a proper Q/A, those doing it will go back to management
and tell them that it costs X% more to build the rocket because of all
the problems that need to be fixed, and all those problems are caused by
workers not being paid and being demoralized.


Not what will happen. What will happen is that they will go back and
say it will cost more BECAUSE OF MORE QC.



But without a budget increase, such a thing wouldn't be possible. I
don't pretend to know everything that goes on inside Roscosmos.


But this is where failures come into play. Losing $100m in revenues from
a launch because rocket went kablooey and you can pinpoint the cause to
bad Q/A which would cost $300,000 to fix should become a no brainer in
terms of finances.


You don't seem to know the difference between QA and QC.


On the other hand, if the mentality is that the government will pay for
any rocket that exploded with no financial penalties to Roscosmos and
those who build them, then there is no incentive to improve Q/A unless
the government gets concerned about its image and wants to make sure
Soyua is seen as a reliable transport that Russia can be proud of.


'Concern about image' is why you get the bad culture.



look at their string of failures over the last 10 to 20 years and can
see that failures are higher than they were when they were being funded
by the Soviet Union.


When Air Canada was privatized in late 1980s, it started debt free,
owning its aircraft, but still bloated inefficient operation. It
replaced lost government subsidies by progressively selling its aircraft
to lessors and leasing them back. This allowed AC to continue its cushy
existence till it had no aircraft to sell at which point it went under
CCAA (Canadian equivalent to Chapter 11). It even spun off its frequent
flyier programme and maintenance facilities.

But that was the rude awakening it needed to become a commercial entity
since it now had no assets and no government to bail it out. This was
roughly 2003-2004. It has since been more or less profitable and is even
going to buy back its frequent flyer programme.

It basically will take a "survival" event for a significant change in
corporate culture.


Non sequitur much?



That requires a culture change, which is a hard thing to do. When your
origins are that of an organization once run by the iron fist of the
Soviet Union, I think this sort of culture change would be doubly hard.


Soyuz is built by Progress Rocket in Samara which appears to be
controled by Roscosmos. (is this correct?). As long as the government
will inject additional money to compensate for the loss of a rocket,
there is no incentive to fix the problems. But if the loss of a rocket
represents real hardship, then Roscosmos would pretty quickly insist
Progress Rocket gets its QA back in shape and ensure no mistakes go
unchecked.


You're talking about QC, not QA.


Either way, the news that Progress/Roscosmos don't have equal QA for
cargo vs manned launches should get the insurance companies on the case
because they will likely raise rates to launch satellites and that makes
Soyuz a less atrractive launch vehicle.


I don't think launch insurance works the way you think it does.



Soyuz 2 is the latest series, but they're still quite similar to the
originals in many ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2


So basically an upgrade to Soyuz, like Falcon9 got an upgrade with Block
5. The capsule got significant upgrades over time and is still called
"Soyuz". And the current Soyuz

Note that the current Soyuz isn't the original 1966 models as is
asserted in this model.

Soyuz 11A511 (1966-1975)
Soyuz-L 11A511L (1970-1971)
Soyuz-M 11A511M (1971-1976)
Soyuz-U 11A511U (1973-2017)
Soyuz-U2 11A511U2 or 11A511K (1982-1995)
Soyuz-FG 11A511U-FG (2001-today)
Soyuz-2 14A14 (2006-today)

So when Soyuz 2 becomes "mainline" it will likely to be called "Soyuz"
just like Soyuz-FG (current mainline) is called "Soyuz".


No, it won't. Look at the bloody dates for Soyuz-2. It went
"mainline" in 2006. Still called Soyuz-2.



It's taken them a quarter of a century to get this far with their "new"
launch vehicle. Do you really think they'll scrap everything and start
again in the hopes that 25 years from now they can compete with Falcon 9
and Falcon Heavy?


Fair point. But Suyuz-2 started in 2006 so 12 years, not 25. I was
mislead by someone else who claimed Soyuz-2 was a new rocket. It's just
an upgrade on existing Soyuz.


It didn't 'start in 2006'. They were finished developing it in 2006
and started replacing other Soyuz models with it. Soyuz-FG is no
longer being built and will be replaced as a manned launcher by
Soyuz-2 in 2019 or so.

It's astonishing to me that you could go and find the historical model
history but were apparently unable to read any further.


--
"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