Progress ISS launch fails!

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:07:27 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Today's launch of a Progress cargo ship to the ISS has failed:
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/
The upper stage malfunctioned and the cargo ship reentered the atmosphere.
You know, if SpaceX can get that Dragon launch sped up, it would be pure
gold as far as positive publicity for them.


Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

(shudder)

Brian

On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:23:59 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

On 8/25/2011 2:51 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:07:27 -0800, Pat
wrote:

Today's launch of a Progress cargo ship to the ISS has failed:
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/
The upper stage malfunctioned and the cargo ship reentered the atmosphere.
You know, if SpaceX can get that Dragon launch sped up, it would be pure
gold as far as positive publicity for them.


Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

Yeah, we lucked out on that one. The Atlantis did give the ISS a big
altitude boost though, just when it really could use it, so the extra
mission certainly proved worthwhile.
What's the score on the ATV and HTV? When are their next launches scheduled?

HTV-3: January 12, 2012. This date has been a bit in flux due to the
Earthquake and Tsunami. It might have slipped to February.

ATV-3 "Edoardo Amaldi": March 7, 2012


Brian

On 8/25/2011 2:51 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:07:27 -0800, Pat
wrote:

Today's launch of a Progress cargo ship to the ISS has failed:
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/
The upper stage malfunctioned and the cargo ship reentered the atmosphere.
You know, if SpaceX can get that Dragon launch sped up, it would be pure
gold as far as positive publicity for them.


Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

Yeah, we lucked out on that one. The Atlantis did give the ISS a big
altitude boost though, just when it really could use it, so the extra
mission certainly proved worthwhile.
What's the score on the ATV and HTV? When are their next launches scheduled?

Pat

On 8/25/2011 6:28 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:

What's the score on the ATV and HTV? When are their next launches scheduled?

HTV-3: January 12, 2012. This date has been a bit in flux due to the
Earthquake and Tsunami. It might have slipped to February.

ATV-3 "Edoardo Amaldi": March 7, 2012

So if there is any long delay getting Progress and Soyuz back flying
again, Dragon will be the next spacecraft to arrive there.
I'll bet NASA doesn't have any regrets now about making it a docking
mission rather than just a orbital flight test; any supplies it can
carry are bound to come in handy on the ISS, and Musk could use this (if
it works) as a really great propaganda opportunity for SpaceX.

Pat

On 8/25/2011 11:50 PM, Pat Flannery wrote:

So if there is any long delay getting Progress and Soyuz back flying
again, Dragon will be the next spacecraft to arrive there.

The Russians have removed a Soyuz 2 rocket from the pad at the Northern
Cosmodrome at Plesetsk and delayed its launch, so it can undergo checks
after the Progress failu
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...check_999.html
So it seems they may suspect what went wrong may not have been something
just with that particular Progress booster.

Pat

On Aug 25, 3:51*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:07:27 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Today's launch of a Progress cargo ship to the ISS has failed:
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/
The upper stage malfunctioned and the cargo ship reentered the atmosphere.
You know, if SpaceX can get that Dragon launch sped up, it would be pure
gold as far as positive publicity for them.

Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

(shudder)

Brian

I just wish that we still had Shuttle for a few more flights.
-Mike

I just wish that we still had Shuttle for a few more flights.
-Mike

exactly, it was pure miss mangement on the part of nasa and congress
to end shuttle before a replacement was flying

In sci.space.history message
, Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:51:24, Brian Thorn
posted:

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:07:27 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Today's launch of a Progress cargo ship to the ISS has failed:
http://spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/
The upper stage malfunctioned and the cargo ship reentered the atmosphere.
You know, if SpaceX can get that Dragon launch sped up, it would be pure
gold as far as positive publicity for them.


Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

No great additional problem. If STS-135 had not been able to remove the
four people that it delivered, there would have been four extra on ISS,
reducing by one whenever a Soyuz came up with an empty seat and another
departed full. Resources allowed for that, with margins, AIUI.

When the Progress failed, that's a non-delivery of resources, and a
probable delay in delivering empty seats.

In that case, the thing to do is to send down promptly a Soyuz with
three people (a minimum of crew and a maximum of castaways, of course).
Now there are seven people on the station rather than ten, and the
resources that would have sustained ten dropping to six should surely be
enough for seven dropping to three, even with one missing delivery.

Obviously Russia would need to produce an extra Soyuz to (almost) make
up for those empty seats lofted, unless Dragon cargo goes so well as to
allow earlier manned Dragon.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05.
Website http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc. : http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/ - see in 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm estrdate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.

Dr J R Stockton writes:

Obviously Russia would need to produce an extra Soyuz to (almost) make
up for those empty seats lofted, unless Dragon cargo goes so well as to
allow earlier manned Dragon.

Which makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to offer China
some experiments with docking to the ISS. Having another nation able to
rig up some help would help a lot in the long run.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 22:21:42 +0100, Dr J R Stockton
wrote:

Can you imagine the situation we'd be in now if STS-135 had been
unable to land and we had extra people on ISS for the next year?

No great additional problem. If STS-135 had not been able to remove the
four people that it delivered, there would have been four extra on ISS,
reducing by one whenever a Soyuz came up with an empty seat and another
departed full. Resources allowed for that, with margins, AIUI.

When the Progress failed, that's a non-delivery of resources, and a
probable delay in delivering empty seats.

Which becomes a big problem. Not an issue for the normal complement of
six on ISS, but with the Progress failure, that is now seven on ISS
(three would have come home immediately under the baseline STS-135
Safe Haven plan.) More utilization of resources until HTV and/or ATV
arrive early next year, undetermined duration until Progress and Soyuz
arrive. Dragon C2 can possibly be loaded more heavily with supplies,
but it is still an unknown.

In that case, the thing to do is to send down promptly a Soyuz with
three people (a minimum of crew and a maximum of castaways, of course).

That was the baseline plan anyway, leaving seven on ISS. ISS wasn't
designed to support more than six over the long term. Seven was
already pushing, allowed due to prepositioning of extra supplies by
STS-135 itself. Seven plus failure of cargo delivery gets...
interesting.

Now there are seven people on the station rather than ten, and the
resources that would have sustained ten dropping to six should surely be
enough for seven dropping to three, even with one missing delivery.

The resources were already for seven. In this hypothetical STS-135
Safe Haven scenario, we're now in "resources for seven depleting more
rapidly due to loss of resupply."

Obviously Russia would need to produce an extra Soyuz to (almost) make
up for those empty seats lofted, unless Dragon cargo goes so well as to
allow earlier manned Dragon.

Russia can't produce an extra Soyuz. They're not Hondas, you'll have
to wait a couple of years to get an extra Soyuz. It would have taken
well over a year before the last STS-135 crewmember came home under
the baseline plan. Progress failure/Soyuz standdown complicates
matters a lot.

What I do wonder about, is, "would NASA have allowed SpaceX to launch
a Dragon with seats, but unmanned, to go to ISS and bring home the
stranded STS-135 crew?" That should be possible if push came to shove.

Brian