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On 2018-10-15 07:46, Jeff Findley wrote:

If you look at Russia's overall rate of launch failures and Progress
vessels not making it to ISS (three so far), it's pretty damn clear that
this recent Soyuz failure with a crew on board isn't a one off failure.

Internally, Roscosmos would know if they reduced quality assurance or
what changes they have made that would result in a change in the safety
culture.

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.

They obviously need to get flights back to normal as soon as possible.
But internally, they should, by now, have enough data to justify
inceaseing quality assurance and fixing culture to ensure quality.

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

The more difficult part is change culture to remove blame. Let that
worker go to supervisor and be rewarded for showing he drilled hole ins
wrong place instead of him fearing reprissals and plugging hole with his
gum and then hiding it by screwing the control panel over it.

(The SNCF in their presentation to NTSB outlined the importance of this,
calling it "Just and Fair" policy that needs to come from the top to
cover everyone so nobody is affraid to go to their supervisor.)

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, as a launch
vehicle, is nearing the end of its life and the new launch vehicle meant
to replace it is literally taking decades to come online.

Out of curiosity, what is "old" about Soyuz being launched today?

Soyuz 2 is the latest series, but they're still quite similar to the
originals in many ways. In particular, the booster/core arrangement and
staging are pretty much the same as it's been since the R-7
launcher/ICBM days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2

But just look at the string of failures in the above chart. That's not
what you want to see in a new version of an existing launch vehicle.
Imagine if Atlas V or Delta IV had such a string of failures.

Also, look at the long list of planned launches. Soyuz isn't going away
anytime soon.

It seems to be that its performance is "good enough" and that it doesn't
justify spending megabucks on a new rocket (which is why it isn't
happening) and instead just improve the Soyuz which they have done over
the years.

They want to change launch sites to ones in Russia and get rid of
suppliers that aren't Russian. This decision was made in 1992, which is
when the Angara concept took shape. Now it's over a quarter of a
century later and Russia is still working on making it fully operational
from their new Russian launch site. So far Angara has flown *twice*.

Angara is the new vehicle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angara_(rocket_family)

Also, considering what SpaceX has achieved in terms of landing stages,
it would be wise for Russians to put their "new" rocket on hold while
they redesign it to be able to be re-used like Falcon9.

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?

Is there much of a point today to design a new non-re-usable rocket ?

Government launch contracts will still be a thing. Russia will no doubt
continue to launch their own payloads on their own launch vehicles as a
matter of pride and national security. Note these are part of the
reasons why they're working on their own launch site in Russia proper.

Jeff
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