Genesis Auger - End of Manned Capsule Worship?

... there have been 129 manned capsule landings with 1-failure
(Soyuz
1) and one
partial failure (Apollo 15 - one parachute collapsed ). Both of
those
failures were over 30-years ago.


It looks like parachute/capsules probably have about the
same failure rate as winged/reusables. What I'm wondering
is whether an event on live TV similar to Genesis, but with
people inside, would be more traumatic to the public (and
the program) than the shuttle losses weve seen. If a failed
chute happened, the astronauts would know it - and would
presumably be in communication all the way down...

And consider that if it had happened with a previous US
manned capsule, the capsule probably would have simply
splashed and sunk - a bit different event than getting
extended closeup views of cracked capsule sticking out the
desert floor.

- Ed Kyle

I agree that winged spacecraft and capsules have about the same number
of flights and failure rates.

I was surprised when I counted how many capsule flights there have
been.
Since Soyuz flights are not numbered 1 through 90, I didn't think
there had been that many Soyuz flights.

On this webpage is a picture of what was left of Soyuz 1 after it
crashed. Not much.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1


- Rusty Barton