Russia’s only manned launchpad damaged badly during yesterday’s launch
During the successful Soyuz-2 rocket launch yesterday carrying three astronauts to ISS, the “mobile service platform” used to transport the rockets to the pad (similar to the strongback used by Falcon 9 rockets), collapsed into the flame trench below it.
According to preliminary estimates, repairs of the service platform, known as 8U216, could take up to two years and it was not immediately clear whether some kind of makeshift arrangement would be possible to support multiple cargo and crew launches to the ISS in the interim. There was some possibility that duplicate hardware could be borrowed from the mothballed Site 1 in Baikonur or from similar facilities at other launch sites. There were four Soyuz pads in Plesetsk at one point, including an unused existing structure at Site 16, also one pad operated in Vostochny.
The Plesetsk pads however are at higher latitude, and any spacecraft launched from there would have difficulty rendezvousing with ISS.
It appears that the failure was the result of inadequate maintenance at Baikonur, or another example of the poor quality control that has plagued Russia’s aerospace industry for the past two decades.
Unofficially, violations of operational procedures, stemming from increasingly scarce maintenance of the facility in the past few years, were blamed for the collapse of the structure. According to another rumor, the mobile platform was not properly secured in its underground shelter before launch, which let the blast wave from the rocket exhaust pull it off its guide rails into the flame trench.
This wasn’t the only failure for Russia in the past day. At its now rarely used Yasny military launch site witnesses reported a rocket exploding after launch yesterday. Though images are available confirming something went wrong shortly after lift-off, no other information has been released by Russia.
Russia planned to launch a Progress freighter to ISS in late December. That launch will now likely be delayed. In fact, the pad damage threatens the entire supply stream to ISS, requiring possibly additional American cargo missions (which almost certainly SpaceX can provide).
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
During the successful Soyuz-2 rocket launch yesterday carrying three astronauts to ISS, the “mobile service platform” used to transport the rockets to the pad (similar to the strongback used by Falcon 9 rockets), collapsed into the flame trench below it.
According to preliminary estimates, repairs of the service platform, known as 8U216, could take up to two years and it was not immediately clear whether some kind of makeshift arrangement would be possible to support multiple cargo and crew launches to the ISS in the interim. There was some possibility that duplicate hardware could be borrowed from the mothballed Site 1 in Baikonur or from similar facilities at other launch sites. There were four Soyuz pads in Plesetsk at one point, including an unused existing structure at Site 16, also one pad operated in Vostochny.
The Plesetsk pads however are at higher latitude, and any spacecraft launched from there would have difficulty rendezvousing with ISS.
It appears that the failure was the result of inadequate maintenance at Baikonur, or another example of the poor quality control that has plagued Russia’s aerospace industry for the past two decades.
Unofficially, violations of operational procedures, stemming from increasingly scarce maintenance of the facility in the past few years, were blamed for the collapse of the structure. According to another rumor, the mobile platform was not properly secured in its underground shelter before launch, which let the blast wave from the rocket exhaust pull it off its guide rails into the flame trench.
This wasn’t the only failure for Russia in the past day. At its now rarely used Yasny military launch site witnesses reported a rocket exploding after launch yesterday. Though images are available confirming something went wrong shortly after lift-off, no other information has been released by Russia.
Russia planned to launch a Progress freighter to ISS in late December. That launch will now likely be delayed. In fact, the pad damage threatens the entire supply stream to ISS, requiring possibly additional American cargo missions (which almost certainly SpaceX can provide).
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Let’s throw open our Overton windows and connect some dots, even if most people seldom bother to do this. (Does anyone remember James Burke’s popular TV series Connections? I’m guessing that Robert does…)
https://en.wikipedia.orgwiki/Connections_(British_TV_series)
As this post — and the general trend of many such posts in the past — makes clear, Russia’s space program is in desperate trouble, and “decline” barely scratches the surface of what appears to be happening to their capacity to remain a space faring nation. From aging, unmaintained infrastructure to stifling centralization under an inept, politically constrained bureaucracy*, their moribund space sector seems to have totally lost whatever mojo it once possessed, and there seems to be no coherent plan to fix any of this. (In present day Russia, does its Duma ever have oversight hearings about such things?)
*Yes, we’ve also seen this here in the United States under several past administrations. Think, for example, of the long period in which US astronauts had to hitch rides to the ISS with the Russians.
Yet, despite all of this, Russia under Mr. Putin grinds relentlessly forward in its own forever war in Ukraine, and — if you believe the talking heads in Europe — is planning on invading all of the rest of the former Warsaw Pact nations as soon as it becomes convenient. Somehow the notion of a continent-devouring Russian army that lacks both the national infrastructure and the finances to support it** even as it barely manages to fight Ukraine to a draw does not seem realistic, but this is what we are being asked to believe.
**Recall that here in the (bad old) USA, we proceeded with both the Vietnam War *and* the Apollo program, even at the cost of stagflation in the 1970s. Looking back, all this was accomplished at what was arguably the peak of American civilization / the American Century, and one wonders if we could ever accomplish such a thing again. Capitalism in Space, however, might give us a shot…
Similarly, there is the question of why Mr. Putin proceeds with such a costly and unsustainable war when there are so many signs that his country is sliding into irrelevancy in the modern world, short of being a gas station for the Chinese and the Indians. While I do not believe that he is a “nice” person, Russia’s leader has always seemed to be just as much of a nationalist and a promoter of Russian / Slavic culture as Mr. Trump is a fan of American culture here at home.** Indeed, unlike Biden and his friends, he actually seems to LIKE his country and its people and, in his way, want’s what’s best for them. *Why,* then, does he seem to be so indifferent to his country’s precipitous decline and the pursuit of a costly war that he has already essentially won?
**I have always believed that one of the chief reasons that Mr. Putin is so despised by the Council on Foreign Relations / World Economic Forum crowd is precisely because he is a *nationalist* and doesn’t subscribe to the idea that nation states are evil and obsolete. He seemingly loves Russia and its unique national culture, and this CANNOT BE ALLOWED. See, for example, https://somacles.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/alexander-dugin-fourth-political-theory.pdf
In light of all of this, is Putin as senile and misguided as Joe Biden, as narcissistic as Trump, or is there something else going on here.
Why, in light of all of the mounting pressures on his country, does Putin blindly persist in the stalemated, world War I-like slaughter in Ukraine? What does he “get” from this, especially if he truly loves his country / culture / civilization? And can’t he — or anyone else in Russia — look at what’s left of their space program and draw some rational conclusions about what needs to be done?