Astronauts survive rocket failure.

[LewisM]

Roscosmos has not ruled out the probability of launching an unmanned Soyuz to bring them home - after all, it's not the Soyuz in question but the launch vehicle.

[LewisM]

Originally Posted by DeWynter

ONE failure? Well... Please DO research! What about recent hole in a space ship that was fixed with epoxy? What about all recent launches that ended up in the Pacific Ocean? There is even a saying "Submerged Space Fleet" about all these launches. Seriously, there are lots of articles on wikipedia with all incidents and failures. NASA is in a process of replacing all RD-0210/0211 & RD-0213/0214 with BE-4 from Blue Origin. It's happening. Slowly, but happening. The current Soyuz is based on the R-7 rocket from 1957. Yes, it's a very robust and reliable rocket, but it's 50 years old. Proton-M is faulty because of low quality components were used recently. The only new rocket they've got is Angara which is 25 years old and had only two (2) successful launches.

With all these glory Soviet space program had, everything that's happening right now is really breaking my heart.

Sorry, I'll stay away from Russia vs Ukraine debates simply because:
1. I'm not from Russia.
2. I'm not from Ukraine.
(Yet I do speak Russian as all former soviet people)

Soyuz-U - 765 successful launches, 22 failures. Loss of life: ZERO.

ALL Soyuz derivatives - loss of life dues to equipment failure: 4

US loss of life due to equipment failure: 14

(does not include training accidents, but actual missions. In Training, the US still surpasses the USSR/Russia)

As the old proverb goes - If it's not broken, don't fix it.

There isa disturbing fact that there may actually be sabotage, but that will come out after investigation. Or it could be simply a system that failed, just like on the Space-X flights, on the Space Shuttle accidents and so on.

Point is - getting to space is dangerous. Risks are associated with it.

[DeWynter (ILYA)]

LewisM, you are missing the point. I'm not talking about how well a rocket was engineered. I'm talking about current execution and quality control. They are two completely different things. You could have a brilliant and well created design, but if the execution is bad then the whole thing will fail. And that's the thing I'm talking about. You are saying theer were 765 successful launches. That's perfect! But majority of them were during Soviet era or right after that when quality control was a big thing. At that time people did care. Now people have different mentality with 'not my business' approach. You still have the same rocket, but if you are using some cheap soldering which is not designed for extreme temperatures in the space or if you are using some low quality elements then the rockets will be exploding or falling from the sky (read about Proton-M issue). Same with this drilled hole on IIS. It's not done intentionally. It's done by stupidity. And instead of properly fixing it it was glued. That the issues I'm talking about. Not about the faults in the rocket design.

[LewisM]

Quality control is an issue even in the best engineered systems - from the failures of the Space-X designs, to Space Shuttle failures (for 2 different reasons, both concerning maintenance and quality control). Being in the IT systems industry yourself, you would be well aware of issues with coding, software issues and so on. It happens in ALL systems, especially products by Cisco ()

This will NOT be the death knell for the Soyuz system - far from it.

Being VERY well aware of current Russian products and QC, I assure you your point of QC is incorrect. Perhaps in the 1990's - early 2000's, but not now, especially now since parts are no longer sourced from Ukraine or the Pribaltiks.

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

Interesting the news has used the words that Russia has commenced Criminal Investigation over the failed rocket launch. There might be a few worried engineers in this Putin witch hunt. This is a successful failure in that no lives were lost..a real bonus. The emergency plans worked.

[LewisM]

The emergency system has worked perfectly. It also worked the prior time, when the cosmonauts were MUCH higher and endured much higher g-loads - but lived (one had continual back problems, but many fighter pilots who eject also have similar back issues).

There was a fire on the launch pad of one Soyuz launch, and there the zero-zero escape system also worked flawlessly.

[DeWynter (ILYA)]

Of course it happens everywhere, but in some areas/companies/countries it happens more often than in the other. Yes, it happens with Cisco, Apple etc, but less often than say with a noname brand with very little budget. Currently bribe and kickback rates in Russia are extremely high. That lead to using cheap items. I mentioned Proton-M - used soldering flux that didn't meet requirements. Is that a good quality control? How you could use something that is known it would fail? And most failures happened during either the very first years (1965 - 1975, that's kinda expected) and the last years (2005 - 2017).

[LewisM]

Actually, bribe/kickbacks in Russia are now very SCARCE, due to the criminality of it - this is now very well documented. When I first went to Russia, everything was bribable, from Customs at the airport turning a blind eye, to Militia taking money for a speeding ticket etc. Now, you even offer, you go to jail. The crack down on corruption is enormous. Perhaps when you left your former CIS country, the corruption was rife. Not so now.

Corruption and QC issues are just as rife in Western industry - take the most recent grounding of supposed "state of the art" F-35 fighters - grounded after a catastrophic failure of a fuel system (much like perhaps the latest Soyuz). Does this mean an end for the F-35? Unfortunately (), no. There is a 900+ item list of known defects - some Cat 1 - in the F-35 that have been effectively hushed so the aircraft could meet deadlines imposed on it by Congress.

[silv (Annette)]

@Dean "I'm surprised no-one seems to have made the link between the recent drilled-hole 'sabotage' found on an ISS-docked Soyuz vehicle, and this failure event."

I did Originally, there were 3 astronauts scheduled for mission 57-58. A man called Andrei Babkin has been removed from the crew so that the unusual number of only 2 Sojus passengers were to be carried, with an additional 62kg payload in the third seat.

What if... Andrei got so pissed off ... that in his test sessions in the ready-to-launch devices he would still participate in as a fallback member, he punched that epoxy-hole and also added sugar or somesuch to the booster tank that exploded yesterday?

(There was an explanation to the 2-crew launch which involved adding an UAE astronaut for a 2 week stint on the ISS. Paying $80million or someink to the Russian company for the Sojus seat. This addition got postponed to 2019, though.)

[Tropo-Bob (Bob)]

More info about how this may affect future plans.

The most interesting line was that they were dusting off previous plans on how to operate an unmanned ISS. (Not an exact quote!)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-1...earth/10368826

[DeWynter (ILYA)]

LewisM, I clearly understand you have no idea what you are talking about when saying "bribe/kickbacks in Russia are now very SCARCE". It's waaaay too far from being truth. It's just got to another level. Funny enough - when I lived in my home country I never gave any bribe at all. I'm not saying I did it here in Australia, but I just pointing out that never happened to be back in old days. Never needed that. But currently all contracts, especially government, are kickbacked. Despite what you heard on TV. I still have friends and relatives there. Can you imaging that a company has a special account for kickbacks? If you think I'm a Russian hater then you are wrong. I'm just a realist and as I said when I see all that my heart breaks because I knew how good it was before.

[LewisM]

Then we agree to disagree.

Being in business in Russia - property/real estate ownership in Moscow, St. Petersburg and certain Siberian/Tuvinian locations as well as gas and oil shares - I have a pretty darned good idea how it all works. Used to be as you suggest, not now (talking circa 2006 til about 2012. Now significantly different).

Worst place for bribery - having dealt with them directly - has been Latvia. Absolutely astonishing levels of corruption. I believe they are also now ranked as the worlds money launderers (proceeds of crime etc). Lithuania and Estonia are not far behind. Never dealt with Belarus directly yet, so cannot comment there. Latvia...good lord... so long as you have US dollars, you can buy what/who ever you want.

[silv (Annette)]

The additional payload made possibly by kicking off Andrei Babkin contained a 3D printer (not the first though) and the "stuff" you use to print stuff with. I hope they'll be investigating and testing the "stuff" now on earth in regards to how the additional G-forces have possibly changed the particle binding in the powder structure.

The G-force during emergency crash landing was far higher than in a normal launch sequence - hence the impact on the powder is totally different. But still. I think it's well worth knowing what 1+ G does to the powder. Considering that in a longer space flight 3D printing must be the fallback measure when a part or tool fails (and neither duct tape nor epoxy can solve the issue) , it's necessary to know whether the normal launch sequence alters the binding capacity in any way.