Failure to Launch

This is one of those crazy stories that falls through the cracks because we live in even crazier times. A Soyuz rocket, meant to carry an American and a Russian into orbit for their stint aboard the International Space Station, failed about ninety seconds into launch.

Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure Forces Emergency Landing for US-Russian Space Station Crew

The crew survived only because the Soyuz, which is an old and normally sturdy horse of a rocket, has an evacuation system that worked, separating the crew capsule from the doomed rocket and depositing them, via a terrifying ballistic descent, several hundred kilometres from their launchpad.

It's important to note that the Russians have a much better manned safety record than the Americans. They haven't lost a crew since 1971.

HOWEVER, the Soyuz is on a serious cold streak, including a suspected case of sabotage on a capsule this summer.

And, of course, because America has weird priorities, it currently has no capability of sending its own astronauts into space, leaving it entirely dependent on the Russians to crew their shared space lab. How that happened should be the stuff of congressional investigations.

In semi-related news, the Air Force is currently in the middle of spending $97 billion on 100 new Stealth bombers that hopefully will never be used.

Holy fuck, idiots.

 

We also just grounded our entire trillion $ fleet of F-35s.

MAGA, etc.

 

What’s good for Northrop Grummond is good for America...

 

At first I thought this was a Poin thread, but then I thought, "This is a job for Space Force."

 

How it happened is actually quite simple:

1. Nixon in 1972 mandated the adoption of the inherently-unsafe lateral stack design for the space shuttle, making any kind of escape system impossible and effectively condemning at least one (as it turned out, two) crews to death, and also committed the US to using the shuttle as its one and only manned launch system. (The then-extant Apollo-Saturn system had 100% launch success (as well as a fully operational launch escape system). The Saturn 1B would have been a fine low-orbit launch vehicle while Saturn V could have handled heavy lift missions. But Nixon wanted to get rid of Apollo/Saturn as fast as he could, since it was the gleaming golden legacy of John F. Kennedy.)

2. In 1986, after the Challenger disaster confirmed the defects of the lateral stack design, Reagan failed to immediately order development of an entirety new launch system.

3. Ditto in 2003 as Junior Bush failed to order a new launch vehicle system after the Columbia disaster made it apparent the shuttle system must be retired ASAP.

4. All other administrations in the time frame were complicit in these failures. But 1972, 1986 and 2003 were the major Shit Or Get Off The Pot decision points.

 

I thought you were on the commode and this thread was related to your Chron's Disease.

/too soon

 

Don't forget GE and Raytheon and Boeing and Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. They're plucky little mom 'n' pop companies, too.

 

Unfortunately, that particular ballistic descent often explodes on reentry.

 

There hasn't been a real coherent wrapup written by anybody who has half a clue how the Soyuz actually works yet, but piecing together some fragrnentary comments, it appears that one or more of the four strap-on boosters may not have jettisoned at the proper time, throwing the entire vehicle into off-center flight and forcing an abort.

Contrary to the army of snarkmeisters on the intertoobs, it does appear the Soyuz suborbital abort procedure came off pretty much as planned.

 

How hard can this be to figure out? It's not rocket science.
Oh, right.

 

Look around, this is the same theme running throughout our great country; after the 60's, the approach has been to be less investment into our infrastructure (well except for the militarization of our police forces in the aftermath of 9/11) and more tax cuts and application of band-aids in lieu of solid investments.

 

I think the Soyuz is one of humanity's great machines. It's had an amazing reliability and safety record since the 1960s with only minor modifications, and its launches, unlike the shuttle, were almost always on schedule. It can lift off in blizzards. But I find it unconscionable that the Americans are totally reliant on the Russians for the ferrying service, and the last few launches of the Soyuz have exposed something sinister in the Russian program. This is a pretty bad spot for NASA.