Soyuz TMA-11 Comes Home, More or Less...

spazhoward wrote:
Pat,

I thought maybe I was the only one who noticed the mistake in the NBC
animation.

They do that all the time; They always assume the front part has the
crew in it; even though it's obvious from the landing photos that it's
the middle module that gets recovered.

After reading a few of your posts, I can see you've spent
even more time than me reading about the Soviet... uh, excuse me, I'm
showing my age, now it's the "RUSSIAN" space program!


I've been studying their space program for around 35 years now, and even
visited the Cosmos Pavilion in Moscow way back in the late 1970's, and
got to go up into the replica of the Salyut 6 space station.
They took a lot of the fun out of studying it when they declassified so
much stuff under glasnost, and people suddenly realized that it was a
lot more screwed-up than anyone ever imagined, particularly in regards
to their manned Moon program.
I don't know if you've ever seen these; but one of the most interesting
things I found on the web were these shots of the Polyus/Skif military
space station (mock-up?) in military markings, with a red star on the
side of the rear modules:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/cargo.htm
That page also has images of it targeting and destroying a target in space.
Where you can get a lot of data on Soyuz landing systems is in those two
"Space Station Handbook" publications that Matson Press put out in 1992.
The recovery sequence in regards to parachutes is pretty involved, with
a total of three drogue chutes being deployed before the main chute
comes out.
Right now, Soyuz TMA-12 is docked to the station, and considering it was
probably built before the last two Soyuz spacecraft suffered their
reentry problems, the crew that will return on it must be looking
forward to that reentry with a lot of trepidation.
Richard Garriott is scheduled to return on it, but if it were me, I'd
hitch a ride back on the next Shuttle flight to the station.

MSNBC plays the clip at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619#24261472

I was already working online when the news aired last night on the
east coast, so I quickly e-mailed NBC News about the animation,
telling them I was just a nerd trying to be helpful.

Considering they had James Oberg on the broadcast, it's surprising he
didn't point out the problem with the animation to them.
I thought about emailing them, but figured they'd only be running the
animation once, so it probably wouldn't be worth the effort on my or
their part to re-do it.

Surprisingly, Tom
Costello responded within minutes, with one of their producers
ultimately sending me this e-mail later last night:

From: Monahan, Kevin (NBC Universal)
To: 'spazhoward'
Sent: Tue Apr 22 21:52:37 2008
Subject: NBC News thank you
I just wanted to write you in order to thank you for your e-mail this
evening. Because of your information, we were able to fix the graphic
for the rest of the country tonight in Tom Costello's piece.

That's some very fast animation work on their part.

Call
yourself a nerd if you want, but you helped us make a correction for
several million of our viewers tonight. Sorry for our mistake. Thanks
again,
Kevin Monahan
Nightly News with Brian Williams


There goes more of my potential glory! ;-)
Great work on your part, getting them to fix it.

Pat

On Apr 23, 11:06 am, spazhoward wrote:
On Apr 23, 2:02 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

...
James Oberg was just on NBC news saying the same thing.
This was accompanied by great animation of a joined orbital module and
descent module entering the atmosphere with the crew landing in the
orbital module. :-D
...
Pat

Pat,

I thought maybe I was the only one who noticed the mistake in the NBC
animation. After reading a few of your posts, I can see you've spent
even more time than me reading about the Soviet... uh, excuse me, I'm
showing my age, now it's the "RUSSIAN" space program!

MSNBC plays the clip at:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619#24261472

I was already working online when the news aired last night on the
east coast, so I quickly e-mailed NBC News about the animation,
telling them I was just a nerd trying to be helpful. Surprisingly, Tom
Costello responded within minutes, with one of their producers
ultimately sending me this e-mail later last night:

From: Monahan, Kevin (NBC Universal)
To: 'spazhoward'
Sent: Tue Apr 22 21:52:37 2008
Subject: NBC News thank you
I just wanted to write you in order to thank you for your e-mail this
evening. Because of your information, we were able to fix the graphic
for the rest of the country tonight in Tom Costello's piece. Call
yourself a nerd if you want, but you helped us make a correction for
several million of our viewers tonight. Sorry for our mistake. Thanks
again,
Kevin Monahan
Nightly News with Brian Williams

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone on the west coast saw the
animation and noticed if they got it right, and maybe just didn't
update the website (or maybe they just flipped the orbital module this
time and THOUGHT they fixed the animation?)

I just looked at their website, from the above link, and it was
accurate,
Soyuz DM attached to SM, with that combo coming in nose first, then
the SM separates, and the DM reverses it's position, and continues in
bottom first.

So, a good call to you for noticing that fault, and to MSNBC for
fixing
it right.

Andre

I just looked at their website, from the above link, and it was
accurate,
Soyuz DM attached to SM, with that combo coming in nose first, then
the SM separates, and the DM reverses it's position, and continues in
bottom first.

So, a good call to you for noticing that fault, and to MSNBC for
fixing
it right.

I'll be hornswaggled! I just went to the link I had posted in my
previous message, and they really DID fix the animation! That's not
the same animation Pat and I saw Tuesday night, and not the same
animation that was at that very link Wednesday morning. They really
did get it right this time. No kidding, all hail the NBC Evening News
for fixing things that fast! Glad to see they're so responsive, and so
interested in accuracy. Hey, maybe ALL of those people on TV really
have been telling me the truth all this time? Never again will I look
at a Ronco info-mercial with quite so much skepticism!

Pat, thanks for the Polyus/Skif link. And you are SO right about the
TMA-12 that's attached to the ISS right now. If I were working as QC
Director onboard the ISS, I'd float out there and hang a "Bonded, Do
Not Use" sign on the return ship right now! Once you find out your
assembly line has created non-conforming product, you're not supposed
to release anything for shipment until you've fixed the root cause and
inspected stock to make sure you're in the clear. But this is the
worst case, THIS PRODUCT HAS ALREADY SHIPPED!!! TO OUTER-FREAKIN'-
SPACE!!! With people essentially FORCED to get in it and ride it
home, no less! And soon, very soon, there will be NO viable
alternative to the Soyuz for a return vehicle (no one really believes
Orion will be finished on time and problem-free, do they?) Eek! What
a revoltin' development this is!

"Hornswaggled?" Hmmm... I think that's Russian for being reentered,
bass-ackwards!

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:54:03 -0700 (PDT), spazhoward
wrote:
No kidding, all hail the NBC Evening News for fixing things that fast!
Glad to see they're so responsive, and so interested in accuracy.

That's why they are #1 among the 11 American households who
still watch the evening network TV news.

Hey, maybe ALL of those people on TV really have been telling me
the truth all this time? Never again will I look at a Ronco info-mercial
with quite so much skepticism!

Yeah, that spray-on-hair from Ronco is every bit as believable as
the Orion project. Like money in the bank

Dale

Andre Lieven wrote:
So, a good call to you for noticing that fault, and to MSNBC for
fixing
it right.


Fortune favors the bold!
I got that email reply he did from MSNBC, and it would be up on a brass
plaque on the wall. :-)

Pat

spazhoward wrote:
I'll be hornswaggled! I just went to the link I had posted in my
previous message, and they really DID fix the animation! That's not
the same animation Pat and I saw Tuesday night, and not the same
animation that was at that very link Wednesday morning. They really
did get it right this time. No kidding, all hail the NBC Evening News
for fixing things that fast!


It does raise the question about how they can whip it up that fast.
A couple of years ago, James Oberg was just looking around for a
illustration of a Soyuz TMA firing its retro engine for a talk he was
giving, and having a hard time finding even that inside of a week.
MSNBC can apparently generate whole animations inside of a hour or two.
That's pretty impressive by any standards.

Pat, thanks for the Polyus/Skif link. And you are SO right about the
TMA-12 that's attached to the ISS right now.

That little problem hasn't even been mentioned yet in the press; it's
certain to emerge in the next week or so once Oberg's on to the scent.
This is the sort of stuff that results in Congressional investigations,
especially after TMA-10's unreported reentry problems.
This goes just the way it might, and Michael Griffin is out of a job for
covering things up.
I've got a ton of webpages bookmarked from that Buran website if you
want me to send you all the links to them sometime.

If I were working as QC
Director onboard the ISS, I'd float out there and hang a "Bonded, Do
Not Use" sign on the return ship right now! Once you find out your
assembly line has created non-conforming product, you're not supposed
to release anything for shipment until you've fixed the root cause and
inspected stock to make sure you're in the clear. But this is the
worst case, THIS PRODUCT HAS ALREADY SHIPPED!!! TO OUTER-FREAKIN'-
SPACE!!!

And think what's going to happen once the Soyuz assembly line has to
speed up, and _two_ Soyuz are needed as lifeboats on the ISS to get the
operational ISS six-person crew back.

With people essentially FORCED to get in it and ride it
home, no less! And soon, very soon, there will be NO viable
alternative to the Soyuz for a return vehicle (no one really believes
Orion will be finished on time and problem-free, do they?) Eek! What
a revoltin' development this is!


Not for me... I thought the whole ISS program was a convoluted mess from
the word go that would eat up huge amounts of money while yielding very
little useful data, and was mainly a bone thrown to "international
cooperation" and a public works program for the aerospace manufacturers
of all the countries involved in it after the end of the Cold War.
Like I said years ago, it can still perform a useful scientific purpose
as a artificial reef in the South Pacific. ;-)

Pat Flannery wrote:

I thought the whole ISS program was a convoluted mess from
the word go that would eat up huge amounts of money while yielding very
little useful data, and was mainly a bone thrown to "international
cooperation" and a public works program for the aerospace manufacturers
of all the countries involved in it after the end of the Cold War.

Credulous idealist. *I* started nine years earlier, thinking Space
Station Freedom was mainly a PR counterweight to SDI... and a bone
thrown to those who'd hypnotized themselves into believing that STS
had yielded CATS, and it was time for the next step on the von Braun
checklist.

Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com/

Monte Davis wrote:
Credulous idealist. *I* started nine years earlier, thinking Space
Station Freedom was mainly a PR counterweight to SDI... and a bone
thrown to those who'd hypnotized themselves into believing that STS
had yielded CATS, and it was time for the next step on the von Braun
checklist.


Well...I didn't get up on the web till 1998, so don't judge me by my
late start in hating the Freedom/ISS concept.
I instinctively hated it years before that, even when my contact with
with what was going on in space was limited to going over to Raugust
Library at Jamestown College and reading the newest issue of AW&ST. :-D
Seriously, I can still remember running into the Internet for the first
time, and sitting there slack-jawed about the implications of it.
The Internet is hands-down the most important invention of humanity
since the printing press, and will have the most profound changes to its
future since then.
They talked about nuclear energy being the greatest revolution in human
existence since the invention of fire...they were dead wrong...it's the
Internet that changes everything in regards to our future.
It will almost inevitably turn the nations and peoples of this planet
into a single united species that discusses political, theological, and
economic ideas with the ease that two neighbors living next door to each
other discuss the best means of dealing with weeds that they both have
in their lawns.
God, but what a wonderful time to be alive in the history of the species
that is homo sapiens-sapiens.
The Internet is The Big Monolith that the chimps are running their hands
over at dawn.
What I really get a kick out of is the old-school L5/Libertarian space
crew out of the late 1970's... back then, they were wild-eyed radicals
out to shake up the world and change the future of humanity itself.
Nowadays, thirty years later, they're a lot of balding guys that need
progressive bifocals, and never realized that the future really _did_
come along, and left them in its binary dust... like the Roadrunner
speeding past Wile E. Coyote and his faulty Acme Rocket Belt.
Yesterday's radicals are today's quaint and aging obsoletes. :-)

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
news:ALOdncnag5iz_Y3VnZ2dnUVZ_sSlnZ2d@northdakotat elephone...
Well...I didn't get up on the web till 1998, so don't judge me by my late
start in hating the Freedom/ISS concept.
I instinctively hated it years before that, even when my contact with with
what was going on in space was limited to going over to Raugust Library at
Jamestown College and reading the newest issue of AW&ST. :-D
Seriously, I can still remember running into the Internet for the first
time, and sitting there slack-jawed about the implications of it.
The Internet is hands-down the most important invention of humanity since
the printing press, and will have the most profound changes to its future
since then.

I've been on the Internet since about 89 or so I think. (There my be
postings from me on Usenet before then, but that was through a feed to
*FORUM on our MTS mainframe.

But I recall asking friends at other colleges for their email addresses and
getting either blank faces or "email? Only professers have that!"

I got my first client on the Internet in about 93 and haven't looked back
since then.

It definitely changes the way you think about things.


They talked about nuclear energy being the greatest revolution in human
existence since the invention of fire...they were dead wrong...it's the
Internet that changes everything in regards to our future.
It will almost inevitably turn the nations and peoples of this planet into
a single united species that discusses political, theological, and
economic ideas with the ease that two neighbors living next door to each
other discuss the best means of dealing with weeds that they both have in
their lawns.
God, but what a wonderful time to be alive in the history of the species
that is homo sapiens-sapiens.
The Internet is The Big Monolith that the chimps are running their hands
over at dawn.
What I really get a kick out of is the old-school L5/Libertarian space
crew out of the late 1970's... back then, they were wild-eyed radicals out
to shake up the world and change the future of humanity itself.
Nowadays, thirty years later, they're a lot of balding guys that need
progressive bifocals, and never realized that the future really _did_ come
along, and left them in its binary dust... like the Roadrunner speeding
past Wile E. Coyote and his faulty Acme Rocket Belt.
Yesterday's radicals are today's quaint and aging obsoletes. :-)

Pat




--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

I've been on the Internet since about 89 or so I think. (There my be
postings from me on Usenet before then, but that was through a feed to
*FORUM on our MTS mainframe.

But I recall asking friends at other colleges for their email addresses and
getting either blank faces or "email? Only professers have that!"

I got my first client on the Internet in about 93 and haven't looked back
since then.


Right now, Jamestown is having a major discussion as to whether the
"Alfred Dicky Public Library" :http://www.adpl.org/
should be moved to a new location, so that its present building can be
converted to the "Louis L'Amour Museum".
The building, one of the oldest and most beautiful in our town, is
considered "too small" for our city library; despite the fact that all
of its shelves are around only 75% full of books, and most of those
books average around 25 years old.
The main reason that anyone goes to it anymore is to read any of this
month's magazines, check out today's newspapers, or use its computers to
tie into the internet.
Since the library allows its subscribers to tie into a statewide
subscription service to read all the newspapers and magazines it
subscribes to on-line at home...as well as hundreds of others that
aren't in the library proper, the entire library is both redundant and
obsolete in our present world.
If anything is to be done, then the books and bookshelves can be
eliminated, and replaced with more computer consoles with the use of
only a fraction of the present space.
But that would be far too radical of a concept for Jamestown to embrace,
so I expect several millions of dollars to be spent on something that is
pointless from the very hour that the first brick is laid in its
construction.

You know, like the ISS in a vastly scaled-down form. ;-)

Pat