Failure to Launch

[typefitter]

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 ****, idiots.

 

[Azrael]

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

MAGA, etc.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

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

 

[HanSenSE]

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

 

[Starman]

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 ****, idiots.

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 **** Or Get Off The Pot decision points.

 

[DanielSimpsonDay]

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 ****, idiots.

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

/too soon

 

[swingline]

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

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

 

[typefitter]

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

/too soon

Unfortunately, that particular ballistic descent often explodes on reentry.

 

[Starman]

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.

 

[Batman]

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.

 

[qtlaw]

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.

 

[typefitter]

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.

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.

 

[Batman]

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 **** Or Get Off The Pot decision points.

2010 or thereabouts was also a major turning point. That was when Obama drove the final nail in the coffin by basically canceling the manned space program as we knew it (including the Shuttle's successor that was behind schedule) in favor of "studying" future endeavors that had no chance of happening any time soon and other projects that didn't involve manned missions.

The studies and projects, of course, wound up being all over the map and did nothing definitive other than ensure we'd gradually bow out of manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future. Probably a generation or more, since you wind up starting from scratch rather than picking up where you left off. Even the projects he proposed as an alternative were with the stated purpose of launching manned missions 20-25 years down the road.
Obama seemed very much in the "we can spend that money on things down here" crowd that never grasps how beneficial space exploration can be. He also didn't seem to grasp that you need to keep building on what you learn. If you chart the history of the early space program, every mission taught NASA something crucial to getting to the moon. Each one was a necessary step. What Obama did was wipe the slate clean instead of learning from the past.
Obama paid some political lip service to supporting manned spaceflight when objections were raised, but it was clear he never was fully behind the U.S.' continued involvement in it. It just wasn't a big priority for him and his agenda and he treated it accordingly. Now here we are, eight years later, and the cost of getting things back to where they were even 20 years ago might be too prohibitive to actually do it.

 

[Batman]

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.

Did @BTExpress hack your account for that post?

 

[Starman]

No worse, really, than it's been since the shuttles were mothballed.

Supposedly both the Boeing and SpaceX crew modules are scheduled to fly unmanned missions next winter/ spring on the Falcon Heavy, with manned flights coming by early summer.

Barring unforeseen disasters, you'd guess at least one system would be "operational" by next fall.

 

[Starman]

2010 or thereabouts was also a major turning point. That was when Obama drove the final nail in the coffin by basically canceling the manned space program as we knew it (including the Shuttle's successor that was behind schedule) in favor of "studying" future endeavors that had no chance of happening any time soon and other projects that didn't involve manned missions.

The studies and projects, of course, wound up being all over the map and did nothing definitive other than ensure we'd gradually bow out of manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future. Probably a generation or more, since you wind up starting from scratch rather than picking up where you left off. Even the projects he proposed as an alternative were with the stated purpose of launching manned missions 20-25 years down the road.
Obama seemed very much in the "we can spend that money on things down here" crowd that never grasps how beneficial space exploration can be. He also didn't seem to grasp that you need to keep building on what you learn. If you chart the history of the early space program, every mission taught NASA something crucial to getting to the moon. Each one was a necessary step. What Obama did was wipe the slate clean instead of learning from the past.
Obama paid some political lip service to supporting manned spaceflight when objections were raised, but it was clear he never was fully behind the U.S.' continued involvement in it. It just wasn't a big priority for him and his agenda and he treated it accordingly. Now here we are, eight years later, and the cost of getting things back to where they were even 20 years ago might be too prohibitive to actually do it.

In 2010 the US economy was still staggering up off the mat in the worst economic crisis in 80 years. It was not a fertile time to propose a new multibillion dollar spending program.

The guy who really dropped the ball was Clinton.
On Jan. 21, 1993, he should have called up NASA and said, "Let's assume I'm going to be president for 8 years. How many shuttle flights do we plan in those 8 years?"
NASA guy: "Let's be realistic and say 40. Optimistic, 48. Things go wrong, 30 or so."
Clinton: "OK, given what we know about system reliability, and don't bull**** me now, how many of those flights will likely result in death of the crew."
NASA guy: "Cough, ahem. Oh well we have complete confidence in our systems, etc etc."
Clinton: "Enough bull****."
NASA guy: "Cough, ahem, cough cough ... One or two."
Clinton: "OK, **** it. As soon as you hang up the phone, start working on a replacement launch system. Call me back tomorrow with some ideas."

 

[Batman]

In 2010 the US economy was still staggering up off the mat in the worst economic crisis in 80 years. It was not a fertile time to propose a new multibillion dollar spending program.

Fair point, but he wasn't shy about proposing and pushing other new multibillion dollar spending programs -- one in particular -- that were more palatable to his political agenda.
And my bigger point was that if the other missteps you pointed out were key moments in the death of the program, the decisions made in 2010 and 2011 were the executioner's blow.

 

[Starman]

Fair point, but he wasn't shy about proposing and pushing other new multibillion dollar spending programs -- one in particular -- that were more palatable to his political agenda.
And my bigger point was that if the other missteps you pointed out were key moments in the death of the program, the decisions made in 2010 and 2011 were the executioner's blow.

Well, the one program of course was health care.

There are few people who support space programs more than me, but if the choice is between the space program and a functional health care program, I'll go for health care.

Don't forget also the Congress was run by the opposition party which was hell-bent and sworn in blood they weren't going to let Obama accomplish anything, at all, period.

And, as part of the sequesterization/Starve The Beast plan the GOP suckered Obama into, he couldn't spend 10 cents on any non military program without first finding cuts somewhere else to "pay for it."

 

[Neutral Corner]

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

"What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!"

 

[Neutral Corner]

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.

That's dead on.