The Real Soyuz Problem - Looking Past the Smoke and Flames by Jim O

Space Balls wrote:

Great read!

Yeah, I agree.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5412

Yikes! I want the ISS partnership to work, but jeez folks...why not let
the
rocket scientists figure out what's wrong with the capsule?! This is
getting to be ridiculous.

lol, shows the Russians also have bad managers in charge, just like NASA.

e.g. The Americans get blamed almost
immediately for a power surge during solar array construction...etc...then
it turns out it was in fact something else (Look...I'm not pointing
fingers).

Old habits are hard to break. Blame the Americans, we'll also blame the
Cosmonauts. One of the articles I read had the Soyuz commander quickly
defending himself, stressing the fact that he followed procedures. He
wanted to make sure he didn't become the focus of the problem, like what
apparently happened on Dennis Tito's flight.

I listen to John Shannon on the MMT meeting briefs dissect dings in the
Shuttle TPM in full disclosure, then I read this article on the finger
pointing going on over there and it really concerns me. It seems like
we're
at least trying to learn from our mistakes. I think our Russian partners
need to be a bit more objective.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/5722676.html
....Apollo 15 was in use by the U.S. the last time there was a Soyuz
fatality...

No graveyard engineering going on in Russia, what is it? Over 30+ years now
without a fatality.

The Soyuz vehicle is overall safe, but they need to let the scientist do
to
science and get the damn politicians out of the loop. Uh...we all just
want it fixed...we're not trying to screw anyone here!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/space/5732136.html
....Griffin has said the normal 1-in-75 risk of having a fatal shuttle
accident would rise to 1-in-12 if the shuttle flew two missions a year for
five more years...

Wow, Griffin quotes reasonable risk numbers. So, the Shuttle if extended
would be around the same risk as the new Soyuz with no fix. Assuming the
new TMA Soyuz has a problem that was introduced with it's last upgrade that
was made to extend it's on-orbit design lifetime. They are up to TMA-12, if
the next one causes fatalities, it'll be 1-in-12.

So, if the TMA upgrade introduced the problem, I wonder what they did? More
insulation / debris protection? Tighter tolerances on various fittings? New
manufacturing techniques to make it cheaper to build?

Look at the last problem NASA had with the ET wiring problem, years to just
figure out that the swage (compression) fittings needed to be soldered.
Lots of extra, expensive, long lead time hardware changes just to debug
what was fairly obvious. A thermal problem, open circuit, only when cooled.

Maybe that's what's wrong with the Soyuz, fitting gets stuck when heated or
cooled? Wiring get loose when heated or cooled? Maybe all the ballistic
entry's occurred because of too much sunshine in the days leading up to the
entry? Or, the connectors being in the shadow too long?

There is still a lot of time to mitigate the risks of another occurrence
before the entry of the current Soyuz.

I totally disagree with Mr. Oberg's conclusion that...
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5412
....With future Soyuz flights becoming the sole crew access to the space
station for many years, NASA needs to be an integral part of every incident
investigation - not just be on the distribution list for executive
summaries, whenever they are ultimately issued. There is a window of
opportunity for NASA to press for this participation, due to the naming of
an outside expert to head the investigation...

NASA knowingly dug the hole they find themselves, they should quit digging
and hand the shovel to Private Enterprise. Going down this path to get a
budget increase from Congress, or permission to purchase more tickets to
ride the Soyuz, isn't the solution. And, trying to turn the Russians into
just another NASA contractor, most definitely isn't.

When Peggy Whitson flies home from Moscow, and she doesn't want to fly on a
Tupolev aircraft she shouldn't purchase a ticket from Aeroflot, or ask the
FAA to inspect Aeroflot to make sure they're Tupolev's are up to date.

Flying the Shuttle, or relying on one vehicle for Station access is a recipe
for disaster.
--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

"Craig Fink" wrote in message
...
Space Balls wrote:

Great read!

Yeah, I agree.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5412

Yikes! I want the ISS partnership to work, but jeez folks...why not
let
the
rocket scientists figure out what's wrong with the capsule?! This is
getting to be ridiculous.

snip

I think this discussion misses a central point. The
Russians experienced a moderately serious technical
problem with one of their space ships. *Any engineer
can tell you, those things happen* if you do
anything. Of course, us Americans don't see any such
accidents with *our* hardware in space -- we have
only some 50-year-old stuff we use as little as
possible. As vs the Russians who are well into their
*second thousand* of launches.

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy]

On May 1, 11:08 am, "Martha Adams" wrote:
"Craig Fink" wrote in message

...

Space Balls wrote:

Great read!

Yeah, I agree.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5412

Yikes! I want the ISS partnership to work, but jeez folks...why not
let
the
rocket scientists figure out what's wrong with the capsule?! This is
getting to be ridiculous.

snip

I think this discussion misses a central point. The
Russians experienced a moderately serious technical
problem with one of their space ships. *Any engineer
can tell you, those things happen* if you do
anything. Of course, us Americans don't see any such
accidents with *our* hardware in space -- we have
only some 50-year-old stuff we use as little as
possible. As vs the Russians who are well into their
*second thousand* of launches.

Apparently Russian designed capsules have very good failsafe modes.

The astronauts survived, right? Twice, right? Or was it three times?

If this had been Orion they would have been digging their charred
bodies out of a smoking hole in the ground somewhere in Texas.

And they would have done nothing, and then launched again.

"Martha Adams" wrote:

I think this discussion misses a central point. The
Russians experienced a moderately serious technical
problem with one of their space ships.

Not "a" event, but rather _three_ events... With the third seeming to
be a repeat of the second.

Of course, us Americans don't see any such
accidents with *our* hardware in space -- we have
only some 50-year-old stuff we use as little as
possible.

Please point out what 50 year old hardware the US is using, and while
you are looking up dates - check the design dates of the Soyuz
booster.

As vs the Russians who are well into their *second
thousand* of launches.

An intelligent observer might note that despite the impressiveness of
the raw numbers, the actual success rate is virtually
indistinguishable from that of boosters flown much less often.

A less intelligent observer is too overawed by the raw numbers to
think shallowly. Let alone deeply.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

There is much discussion on distrust that the russians will seriously
investigate this issue and work to find a resolution.

Is there any possibility that the real problem is one of communicatiosn
between the russian universe and the NASA/western universe where we just
aren't told what the russians are doing and thus assume they are doing
nothing and trying to hide the problem under the carpet ?

Post Columbia, NASA said the foam problem had been fixed. But it took a
number of post-columbia flights before NASA finally narrowed down the
problem and the last flight was the first one without foam issues.

One big thing NASA did was to add cameras everywhere and recorded as
much as possible to try to find out exactly what happened.

Look at the ECO sensors. That also took a number of flights before NASA
concluded it was a design issue and not just a one-off anomaly, at whcih
point, it decided to really study the problem and found out a connector
was at fault.

Considering that there is far less cameras/instrumentatiion on he Soyuz,
no arm to peek at its back and that the problem happens shortly before
re-entry, there isn't much time for them to investigate exactly what
goes wrong.

Consider also the possibility that while there may have been multiple
ballistic re-entries, what if they were all caused by different
underlying problems and that after each such problem, they did fix the
underlying problem (but another one propped up). One case might have
been a computer glitch. Another case might have been faulty wiring, and
this last case, might be the SM refusing to divorce the re-entry capsule.

As armchair critics, it is easy for us to view the russians as trying to
hide the problems and trivialise their impact. But is that really a
fair accusation considering that we are not there, we don't speak
russian and rely on translated tidbits instead of the full story ?

Russia underestimates the western thirst for technical information about
its space programme and it should provide far more information in english.

John Doe wrote:

As armchair critics, it is easy for us to view the russians as trying to
hide the problems and trivialise their impact. But is that really a
fair accusation considering that we are not there, we don't speak
russian and rely on translated tidbits instead of the full story ?

Given the history (including recent history) of Russia hiding problems
and trivializing their impact... Yeah, it's fair accusation.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL