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

Soyuz TMA-11 with Yi So-yeon, Yuri Malenchenko and Peggy Whitson has
landed in Kazakhstan, 400 km from its intended landing spot.

Was this another ballistic entry? I take it that horseshoes isn't a
popular game in Russia

Dale

Errr, that "isn't" was meant to be an "is"- as in
"close enough only counts in horseshoes and
hand grenades"

Being 400 km off with an intended landing at
KSC would probably make the news, as well as
quite a splash...

Dale

Dale Carlson wrote:
Soyuz TMA-11 with Yi So-yeon, Yuri Malenchenko and Peggy Whitson has
landed in Kazakhstan, 400 km from its intended landing spot.

Was this another ballistic entry?


Yup, that's two off-target landings in a row:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/04/19/skorea.soyuz/

Pat

On Apr 19, 8:39 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Dale Carlson wrote:
Soyuz TMA-11 with Yi So-yeon, Yuri Malenchenko and Peggy Whitson has
landed in Kazakhstan, 400 km from its intended landing spot.

Was this another ballistic entry?

Yup, that's two off-target landings in a row:http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/04/19/skorea.soyuz/

Pat
According to Spaceflight Now and Space.com, it was an 10g ballistic
reentry. If memory serves me correctly, this means there was a problem
with the guidance system.
This is the third time a Soyuz T spacecraft has come down in this
manner.
The first time it happened, the crew was so disabled from high g
levels that they could not stand up and had to crawl on hands and
knees after they got out of the reentry module.

On Apr 19, 5:59*am, Dale Carlson wrote:
Soyuz TMA-11 with Yi So-yeon, Yuri Malenchenko and Peggy Whitson has
landed in Kazakhstan, 400 km from its intended landing spot.

Was this another ballistic entry? I take it that horseshoes isn't a
popular game in Russia

Dale

Tonight NBC news had some locals who had seen it come down and one
said "the parachute was on fire". Discounting any possible confusion
with "thump down"this is a whole other story. Could ballastic
reentry have done this (if true)? Sort of reminds me of Komarov's
reentry...................Doc

On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:06:21 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Tonight NBC news had some locals who had seen it come down and one
said "the parachute was on fire". Discounting any possible confusion
with "thump down"this is a whole other story. Could ballastic
reentry have done this (if true)? Sort of reminds me of Komarov's
reentry...................Doc

Were there reports that the parachute was on fire as it was coming
down? What I read simply said the chute was on fire when the recovery
team reached the capsule. Seems like that could have been caused by
a brush fire or something ignited by the landing rockets. But either
way, it wasn't a soft landing, as the capsule was embedded 30cm into
the ground (unless, of course, it landed in a bog or something).

I liked the comment by the official blaming the crew- saying that they
overshot because they had selected a ballistic reentry without telling
mission control. What a bunch of irresponsible thrillseekers

Dale

On Apr 19, 4:58 pm, Dale Carlson wrote:
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:06:21 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Tonight NBC news had some locals who had seen it come down and one
said "the parachute was on fire". Discounting any possible confusion
with "thump down"this is a whole other story. Could ballastic
reentry have done this (if true)? Sort of reminds me of Komarov's
reentry...................Doc

Were there reports that the parachute was on fire as it was coming
down? What I read simply said the chute was on fire when the recovery
team reached the capsule. Seems like that could have been caused by
a brush fire or something ignited by the landing rockets. But either
way, it wasn't a soft landing, as the capsule was embedded 30cm into
the ground (unless, of course, it landed in a bog or something).

I liked the comment by the official blaming the crew- saying that they
overshot because they had selected a ballistic reentry without telling
mission control. What a bunch of irresponsible thrillseekers

Dale

I saw a mention of fire in the Reuters report.
But I would trust aerospace news media more for accurate information

M wrote:
Yup, that's two off-target landings in a row:http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/04/19/skorea.soyuz/

Pat

According to Spaceflight Now and Space.com, it was an 10g ballistic
reentry. If memory serves me correctly, this means there was a problem
with the guidance system.


It's designed to default to ballistic reentry if the guidance system
does anything even slightly abnormal prior to or during reentry.
The Russians consider a survivable high-G reentry much preferable to a
abnormal one that results in the destruction of the capsule. I don't
know if they've fixed this problem yet, but for a long time they'd been
reusing guidance computers out of returned capsules due to a lack of a
indigenous supply source for them after the USSR broke up.
However, this many ballistic reentries shows a completely unacceptable
level of reliability on the part of the guidance system.
The Soyuz TMA presently uses the Argon 16 computer, a 70 kg analog type
prehistoric monster of a thing dating from 1973. From TMA-13 (this was
TMA-11) forward, this will be replaced with a improved one, the TsVM-101
Here's info on the two computer systems:
http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/argon16.htm
http://suzymchale.com/kosmonavtka/soyuz.html
The new one weighs less than 1/7 as much as the old one.
BTW, this is interesting - a history of Soyuz control panel layouts:
http://suzymchale.com/kosmonavtka/soyconsole.html

Pat

wrote:

Tonight NBC news had some locals who had seen it come down and one
said "the parachute was on fire". Discounting any possible confusion
with "thump down"this is a whole other story. Could ballastic
reentry have done this (if true)? Sort of reminds me of Komarov's
reentry...................Doc

Soyuz 5 suffered parachute heat damage when it started reentering
pointy-end first after the service module failed to separate.
In Komarov's case the parachutes barely got out of the storage
containers due to a foul-up during construction.
If the chute was damaged or was smoldering during landing, that would
suggest either a problem with the pyrotechnic deployment system or
something very abnormal during reentry that exposed the forward body of
the spacecraft to reentry heating. damaging the hatches over the main
and reserve chutes, such as tumbling or wobbling of some sort.
During a ballistic reentry the capsule is put into a slow roll for
stability and even heating of the heat shield and exterior.
If it wasn't put into that roll, it might start wobbling on the way down.
Interesting facet of the story is that for some reason the landing was
about 20 minutes later than expected:
http://www.wtte28.com/template/inews...te28.com.shtml
That suggests a late or not completely successful retro burn, as the
ballistic reentry would get you down faster than the normal one. What's
really odd is a retro burn 20 minutes late would put you _way_ off
course, in fact it might put you down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
If there is a problem with the retro engine (they have deleted the twin
nozzle back-up engine on the TM and TMA IIRC) SOP says to do a series of
orbits till in the intended reentry area again, not to fire the retro
late, as landing in rough territory can be fatal.... you might end up
rolling down a mountain like Soyuz 18-1, or hanging in a tree with
hungry wolves around the spacecraft, like Voskhod 2 (one notes that
those wolves get a little larger, closer, and more hungry every time
Leonov tells that story. Soon, I expect them to be described as
werewolves.) ;-)
Another possibility would be a complete failure of the retro engine and
a reentry burn done via the RCS engines for braking.
That would be hard to do in a way that would put you down in a predicted
spot.
I think a lot of interesting things about this mission's end will come
out in the next few days.

Pat

Dale Carlson wrote:
Were there reports that the parachute was on fire as it was coming
down? What I read simply said the chute was on fire when the recovery
team reached the capsule. Seems like that could have been caused by
a brush fire or something ignited by the landing rockets. But either
way, it wasn't a soft landing, as the capsule was embedded 30cm into
the ground (unless, of course, it landed in a bog or something).


In calm wind conditions, the chute could come down directly over the
capsule, and be ignited by a fire started by the landing rockets.
Chute jettison is manual, and normally occurs a few seconds after landing.
If the crew was stunned by the force of impact or the high G's of
reentry, they may have delayed the jettison of the chute.
(I've got a photo of a landed Soyuz that got dragged quite a ways
through the snow before the crew could manage to jettison the chute.)
But that's odd...if they did land in a bog, the landing motors
shouldn't have started a fire.
Generally, a hard landing means the landing motors didn't fire, so no
burning chute in that situation either.
This could point to a damaged chute causing higher-than-expected landing
velocities
I don't know if the crew can see the chute as they descend under it, as
their side windows don't give them much of a view upwards, and the belly
periscope is jettisoned prior to reentry.
So unless they noted a abnormally high descent rate, chute damage may
have gone undetected by the crew.

Pat