In article ,
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On 2018-11-04 08:24, Jeff Findley wrote:

I swear we went over this when SpaceX lost a Falcon 9 on the pad when
the COPV let loose. It's a very similar situation. Here we go again.

Falcon 9 happened at ground in dense air with lost of availabhel ambient
Oxygen.

I was asking specifically at that altutude whether ambient air would be
sufficient to support combustion. Ignition could come from sparks of
metal rubbing agaist metal, or from the core's exhaust, or even fuel
touching the booster's engine bell(s).

I assume there is still sufficient wind at that altitude that fuel
leaking from core would quickly move down to below the stack ? (as well
as continued acceration of core done by core's engines before they shut).

Outside the core's bells, would there be enough residual O2 from the
tanks to allow the leaked kerosene to burn, or is all of the O2 used up
by the time the exhaust leaves the engine bell?

You said, and I quote using cut-and-paste, "QUESTION: at that altitude,
would releasing large amounts of kerosene cause an explosion". Which
you "conveniently" removed from this reply.

There was no explosion and could be no explosion because that would have
required mixing of fuel and oxidizer. End of discussion on a the
"explosion" that could not have happened.

The Russian launch program has a failed safety culture.

No. The Russian launches have see an increase in failures. The types of
faulures *seem* to point to quality assurance/safety culture defficiencies.

And just what on God's green earth would cause so many failures over so
many years of two designs that have been flying (and slightly evolving)
for more than half a century? Was every single one an "act of God"?

No, the data is clear. Designs that are robust and should not fail
continue to fail due to **** poor quality control. Look at each
incident individually and you'll see human error after human error that
was not caught before launch.

If you were granted powers like those NASA commissions, you could then
spend the time to access al the information and do the interviews and
make a conclusion that this is the case, cite specific areas where it is
properly imploemented and areas where it isn't etc etc. And inrnally,
the russians may very well have done that. Or they may be doing this on
a case by case basis. (for instance after hole drilled in wring place,
and now with the push button damage).

You could potentially also find that the crews performed as documented
in mating procedures and it was the procedures which were wrong all
those years and had a low risk of damage to sensors, and this time, that
risk materialised. The vlame shifts away from assembly workers and move
to the engineers who designed the mouting hardware/procedures in a way
that wasn't failsafe.

You would blame failures of designs that are *this* old on engineering
errors? Bull****. That's not what we're seeing here. You go look at
the reasons for each failure. The information is there, on the
Internet, and you'll see what I have seen over the years which is
manufacturing error after assembly error after operational error (e.g.
programming the launch vehicle with the wrong launch location). Design
errors on Soyuz and Proton launch vehicles are few and far between.
There have been some of these on the upper stages, but that's not the
cause of the majority of Russian launch failures over the last 20 years.



How many more failures will it take before the Russians realise they
need to change the culture? How much business must they lose before
Russians change it? I don't know.
....
I don't claim to know what is wrong with their program. I am merely
poiting out that lots could be wrong and you can't draw conclusions from
what little information we get.

And that's the point. Lots of various individual "causes" are found but
nothing is done to fix the bigger problem. Furthermore, they show zero
signs that they are even willing to admit that there is a bigger
problem. Every time there is an "incident" it is "resolved" far too
quickly to address the underlying cultural problems with their (lack of)
quality control.

What we are seeing is the Russian space program's funding being cut by
ending of foreign ISS related payments, rapid decline in commercial
launches (due to **** poor reliability and relatively high cost), and
decreased government funding. Their budget is getting cut in every way
possible.

No one but the Russians can fix this. But the attitude of their
government administrators is that the beatings will stop when morale
improves.

Stick a fork in it, the Russian space program is done.

Jeff
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