Launch News Soyuz MS-10 Orbit Failure (developing story)

[kerlix]

Anybody speak Russian that can give an idea of what is being said between the soyuz and MC?

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk

 

[Urwumpe]

https://sputniknews.com/world/201810111068785038-accident-soyuz/

"According to preliminary data, the Soyuz accident occurred because one of the four first stage units hit the second stage and pressure dropped, the source reported."

Anyone else confirm this from another source?

That also fits to my visual observations of the staging, a failed booster separation with recontact. Question is just: Did the propulsive LOX vent fail or did a booster separate earlier than others?

 

[GLS]

Here they are!!!!
[ame="https://twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb/status/1050356518426763266"]https://twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb/status/1050356518426763266[/ame]

EDIT:direct link for the image as I can't see it in the post
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpOdqrmXUAApE3h.jpg:large

 

[4throck]

This is bad because it might provide a good excuse to end the ISS program, at a convenient time to also stop Dragon2 and CTS.

Whatever happens, this will be the decisive moment.
Human space flight either continues with multiple new vehicles and new players, or it ends right here... :hmm:

 

[Urwumpe]

Whatever happens, this will be the decisive moment.
Human space flight either continues with multiple new vehicles and new players, or it ends right here... :hmm:

I think it will rather be decisive for the Russian spaceflight, because it comes after a long string of small and large quality assurance failures.

The key question is: Can the ISS be kept in orbit unmanned long enough until a US capsule can fly safely? The current crew will have to return.

 

[Artlav]

So, what's the best by date on the soyuz currently docked at the station? End of the year or so?

Unless they pull out something like "we'll ground the current booster revision and launch an older one", the ISS would be uncrewed for quite a while.


A digest of the news from Russian sources:

-Cosmonauts are ok, no medical intervention was needed. They are being flown to a hospital in Baikonur for precautionary observation period.

-Rumours are going around that the stages weren't attached properly, causing an incorrect separation and collision. More precisely, the hinge bolt was missing at the top.

-There are no known inhabited locations within the debris rain field, multiple search teams are deployed to collect the pieces for investigation

 

[GLS]

The key question is: Can the ISS be kept in orbit unmanned long enough until a US capsule can fly safely? The current crew will have to return.

If the investigation/fix isn't finished by the time the current Soyuz reaches its life expectancy (late this year), the Russians can always launch the next Soyuz unmanned. If it works, the current crew can remain aloft for a few more months. If it fails, then those questions come into play as we watch the current crew land, leaving "space unmanned" for the first time in almost 20 years.

 

[Donamy]

Can they quicken the next mission, if they find a reason for the mishap, rather quickly ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Can they quicken the next mission, if they find a reason for the mishap, rather quickly ?

Depends - if the cause of the problem is less of technical nature than of human nature (quality assurance, sabotage), it could take much longer now.

Russia will have to make sure, that such threats to human life are impossible, and that could take a while, considering how complex spaceflight is.

---------- Post added at 15:46 ---------- Previous post was at 15:45 ----------

-Rumours are going around that the stages weren't attached properly, causing an incorrect separation and collision. More precisely, the hinge bolt was missing at the top.

-There are no known inhabited locations within the debris rain field, multiple search teams are deployed to collect the pieces for investigation

If that rumor would be true, it would be the really worst case. I would have preferred a stuck LOX vent valve in that case.

 

[Linguofreak]

I think it will rather be decisive for the Russian spaceflight, because it comes after a long string of small and large quality assurance failures.

The key question is: Can the ISS be kept in orbit unmanned long enough until a US capsule can fly safely? The current crew will have to return.

Nah. As unsafe as Soyuz might be at the moment, it's still safer than STS *ever was*.

 

[Urwumpe]

Nah. As unsafe as Soyuz might be at the moment, it's still safer than STS *ever was*.

Moderators, he is trying to bait me into a "Soyuz vs STS" flamewar! :lol:

 

[Xyon]

I will turn this car around if you two don't stop it!

 

[Linguofreak]

Nah, I'm not that partial to Soyuz. Just bitter that STS set US spaceflight back 50 years when we could still be flying Apollo to this day as America's workhorse manned spacecraft. Soyuz isn't a really great or special spacecraft on the tower-and-capsule principle, it's just the only one flying since Apollo was scrapped, so it wins by default.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Yeesh. What a hell of a thing to wake up to.

This'll light a fire under both SpaceX and Boeing.

 

[4throck]

Why make the new US capsules dependent on ISS dockings for qualification?

Can't they take astronauts for a few orbits and test the thing?
And if docking is really important to test on the first flights, why not launch a docking target....

With two capsules to test, a docking target makes perfect sense. Both could use it.
(It would make a great orbiter add-on...)

 

[Urwumpe]

Nah, I'm not that partial to Soyuz. Just bitter that STS set US spaceflight back 50 years when we could still be flying Apollo to this day as America's workhorse manned spacecraft. Soyuz isn't a really great or special spacecraft on the tower-and-capsule principle, it's just the only one flying since Apollo was scrapped, so it wins by default.

Well, and I disagree there. I think that the STS was the only way out of stagnation, because even as expensive as the STS was - Apollo was more expensive and far less capable. And any future capsule will not just be compared to Soyuz or Apollo, but also to the performance of the STS.

Even as much as I laugh often about the recent Powerpoint rockets of SpaceX: I think they are really the only program that tries to do something beyond STS and could really become the spacecraft, that the Shuttle should have been.

And about comparing safety, well, its too easy to compare a program with no LOCV in 15 missions to one that had two in 135 missions. How safe would Apollo have been, would it have been used exactly the same way as the Shuttle? We will never really know, because Apollo was not even made for it - it was never made to be reusable, never meant to be turned around on the ground and especially never made to do this in mere 54 days as it happened between STS-51-J and STS-61B. The Saturn V needed half a year to be assembled in first place, from the arrival of the first component at the cape to launch readiness review - and it needed seven times more workers for it than the STS.

But that is now getting far off the topic and I have to excuse for being annoying there.

Would I have to do a Space shuttle successor based on the Ultra project context, it wouldn't be Orion or Crewed Dragon or CST. It would be the BFR. Not that I especially like what I see there. But I see the spirit.

 

[Yuri_Gagarin]

Sorry to bump but I was crying for 30 hours that I missed it. You know, i will have to take the vcr and wait for December 20th and RT.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Why make the new US capsules dependent on ISS dockings for qualification?

Can't they take astronauts for a few orbits and test the thing?
And if docking is really important to test on the first flights, why not launch a docking target....

With two capsules to test, a docking target makes perfect sense. Both could use it.
(It would make a great orbiter add-on...)

Nah, NASA needs to bite the bullet and take a risk by flying an operational mission ASAP. There's a time and place for being cautious to the point of paranoia... This isn't one of them. It's spaceflight... It's inherently risky no matter how well you prepare, as today shows. But you cannot let the fear of failure stop you.

Put simply... Modern NASA wouldn't have made it to Apollo 11. They'd have thrown in the towel after Gemini 8.

 

[Thorsten]

Am I a pessimist or a realist when I say that I believed this was bound to happen (and will happen again), nobody should kid oneself that spaceflight is a risk-free game because 'now we've figured it all out'?

I don't think the rocket is more or less safe than it was - accidents generally seem to happen with a probability of order of a percent - which means you can have many trouble-free flights, but it doesn't mean that percent is not there. I'm mainly glad the crew got off lightly in this one...

 

[IronRain]

Am I a pessimist or a realist when I say that I believed this was bound to happen (and will happen again), nobody should kid oneself that spaceflight is a risk-free game because 'now we've figured it all out'?

IMO you're a realist. At my job we build our infra (IT wise) with the knowledge that servers WILL fail. It was this morning, just before launch that I thought: "I hope the persons who are responsible for the LES and QA never think "let's finish this really quickly and go home. It always works""