Another Proton launch failure
Eight minutes into Saturday’s Proton launch, intended to place a commercial Mexican communications satellite in orbit, the Russian rocket failed and broke up.
The Russian launch failures just continue to add up. At this rate their ability to hang on to their commercial customers is becoming increasingly difficult.
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Eight minutes into Saturday’s Proton launch, intended to place a commercial Mexican communications satellite in orbit, the Russian rocket failed and broke up.
The Russian launch failures just continue to add up. At this rate their ability to hang on to their commercial customers is becoming increasingly difficult.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Makes one wonder what the successful launch rate was back in the cold war days when launches were largely kept secret.
BTW. Bob, this latest version of Captcha is terrible. Images are too fuzzy, requires typing an unreadable sentence, you have to identify things containing bread from several photos, etc. I am not a bakery expert.
Question about the possibility to hack into this rockets control system, what is the amount of information available for troubleshooting these failures if the craft is burned up in re-entry, How is it ascertained where in the chain of events this failure happened, and as D.K. Williams said, what was the cold war era rate of failures?
Given the apparent sad state of the Russian space industry do we need to be concerned about the reliability of the Soyuz vehicle? It has an outstanding record but one begins to have doubts. Does NASA have a plan B if our sole source transport to ISS fails? I’d like to see speedup of the American alternatives.
NASA? A Plan? Yeah, it’s call more pork.
Joking aside, Dragon is looking like the only reliable backup and it’s still a few years out. There are the others playing with mini shuttles but I personally would never fly in a winged vehicle in space.
The launch failure rates were much lower back in the cold war days.
The Soviet people still believed their governments propaganda and were far more consciences about their work.
Now they are into their third generation of techs doing the very same thing their grandfathers did on the same production lines. The quality and experience is all gone.
Exactly how much pride could they have in the rocket systems they are working on when their highest tech electronics are bettered by western high school kids home work projects. Or when the best computers they could put on the rockets are bettered by Iphones.
Failures at rates like this could only happen in a failing communist system. Any capitalist system would never tolerate bad workmanship on multimillion dollar projects. There would be far more quality checks all along the production line.
My software guy says that all you need to do is check the box that asks “I am not a robot.” Should be simple. Try again and let me know what you find.