More details revealed about what caused the damage on that Russian launchpad
Anatoly Zak at russianspaceweb.com has uncovered more details behind the collapse of the mobile platform at Russia’s only manned launchpad at Baikonur.
According to one rumor from Baikonur, the mobile platform was retracted and moved back to the rocket as many times as five times, as the specialists tried unsuccessfully to secure it in its parking position inside its shelter, after the routine call to retract the platform had been issued during the final countdown less than an hour before launch.
When the personnel was finally ordered to evacuate the pad some 30 minutes ahead of the liftoff, the decision was made to leave the platform in its parking position inside its shelter without securing it properly rather then to postpone the launch. It was not immediately clear who made a decision to proceed with the launch despite this clear violation of launch criteria.
The veterans of the center speculated that the mission management had been under pressure to go ahead with the launch so not to disappoint high-ranking officials and as many as 3,000 paid tourists who came to the remote center to witness the event.
Sounds remarkably reasonable. Zak’s report also adds that Russian officials say they will have a new mobile platform in place and the launch pad operational by April 12, 2026, the day when Russians annually celebrate Yuri Gagarin’s first human flight in space.
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
Anatoly Zak at russianspaceweb.com has uncovered more details behind the collapse of the mobile platform at Russia’s only manned launchpad at Baikonur.
According to one rumor from Baikonur, the mobile platform was retracted and moved back to the rocket as many times as five times, as the specialists tried unsuccessfully to secure it in its parking position inside its shelter, after the routine call to retract the platform had been issued during the final countdown less than an hour before launch.
When the personnel was finally ordered to evacuate the pad some 30 minutes ahead of the liftoff, the decision was made to leave the platform in its parking position inside its shelter without securing it properly rather then to postpone the launch. It was not immediately clear who made a decision to proceed with the launch despite this clear violation of launch criteria.
The veterans of the center speculated that the mission management had been under pressure to go ahead with the launch so not to disappoint high-ranking officials and as many as 3,000 paid tourists who came to the remote center to witness the event.
Sounds remarkably reasonable. Zak’s report also adds that Russian officials say they will have a new mobile platform in place and the launch pad operational by April 12, 2026, the day when Russians annually celebrate Yuri Gagarin’s first human flight in space.
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
“Go fever,” it seems, is an equal-opportunity and transnational curse.
The inability to properly secure the mobile platform, even after several tries, was probably the result of some relatively minor problem, or set of problems, that might well have been avoided with more comprehensive and timely maintenance of the system. Little bits of “rot” accumulate and eventually result in a major misadventure.
In any event, the Russians have made their brag, stuck a flag in the ground anent April 12, 2026 and all we can do now is await results. Personally, I think they are unlikely to make their pre-announced deadline, but we shall see.
If true, this turned out to be an extremely expensive spectator event for Roscosmos.
But it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened at Baikonur (See the Nedelin catastrophe for the most expensive one).
I remain grateful that Anatoly Zak is out there reporting on the Russian space industry, because he’s got to be the best English language source right now.
That sounds similar to the rush to launch Soyuz 1. Fortunately this didn’t result in loss of life.
Very good podcast episode.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tragic-flight-of-vladimir-komarov-and-soyuz-1/id1521870190?i=1000570569013
Here is the part that was to keep the drawer from sliding out:
https://russianspaceweb.com/images/centers/baikonur/031/r7_pad_mobile_platform_stop_1.jpg
How hard is it to find some chain and put through all that even if it doesn’t line up perfectly?
I suppose I shouldn’t be mad as forgetful as I am about meds
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25412111/
Even a good mother who is snowed under driving from place to place can foget the toddler in a back seat. We should never say “Oh, I’d never do X.”
Wasn’t Russia’s entire space industry (virtually, if not entirely) subsumed within Roscosmos in order to improve the quality control problems that their industry was experiencing?
Bypassing proper procedures is a clear quality control violation in anyone’s book, and yes, we most definitely be saying that we wouldn’t do X. We have written procedures just for the purpose of assuring that nothing is left undone. I have written quite a few, and quality engineers and quality inspectors were required to buy off that certain procedures were indeed performed correctly and completely. It looks like Russia is continuing its tradition of messing up their quality control department, so one wonders why they bother to have one.
I hope that this speculation is apocryphal, as it is too terrible of an event for us to contemplate. Do we really want Americans flying on spacecraft that are so shoddily managed and operated? Do we want such poorly operated spacecraft maneuvering anywhere near our delicate manned space stations? It would be much more reassuring if the guess was incorrect and that the problem happened accidentally rather than intentionally, but if such speculation is reasonable for Russian operations, then we really cannot dismiss it lightly.
Edward wrote, “Wasn’t Russia’s entire space industry (virtually, if not entirely) subsumed within Roscosmos in order to improve the quality control problems that their industry was experiencing?”
1. The take-over by Roscosmos and the Putin government occurred before the quality control problems became plainly evident. It wasn’t done to correct these problems, but to re-establish the Soviet-era centralized top-down structure that Putin so highly admires.
2. Such a structure is the exact opposite of what you do if you want to improve quality and encourage innovation. It eliminates all competition, which is what feeds such things. Without that competition the goals of corruption, laziness, and misaligned goals take over.
And so we have a damaged Soyuz launchpad for stupid reasons, and frozen o-rings destroying Challenger when the problem was recognized and warned against, and foam destroying Columbia when the problem was evident and ignored for years.
Buran in better times:
https://fiftyonepointsix.com/deep-cuts-vol-1-24591cdb98d2
Star City
https://x.com/AppleTVNewsHub/status/1998070281949089971
They tried several times to re close the strong back arms and they would not lock into place.
First sign something is bent.
I love watching people slam their car doors a hundred times with out even looking to see if the lock is broke or the door is bent.
Then they complain when it opens going down the road.
“It eliminates all competition, which is what feeds such things. Without that competition the goals of corruption, laziness, and misaligned goals take over.”
Hmm. Something doesn’t sound right about that. Haven’t we been told, these past many decades, that a free-market capitalist economy, where the competition exists, steals from the poor in order to enrich the rich? And haven’t we been told that centrally controlled marxist governments take from those who are able and give to the needy? It is sort of like the fallacious 1930s Robbin Hood tale, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (rather than the more traditional stealing from the corrupt Normans and using it to pay King Richard’s ransom).
Without corruption, how is anyone in a centrally controlled marxist economy supposed to get rich? He can’t steal from the poor, because unlike the poor in a free market capitalist economy, the needy who receive the earnings of the able don’t have anything to steal.
Why not be lazy, in the centrally controlled marxist economy? It isn’t like they are going to get any more if they work harder or work smarter or work at all. Everyone gets exactly the same as everyone else (except for the corrupt party members, who are taking more than their fair share).
And how can the goals be misaligned, when the goal is for the majority of the benefits go to party members, just like in NAZI Germany or communist Russia (AKA Soviet Union)?
So, when party members travel to the middle of nowhere in order to see a rocket launch, they sure as something had better see a rocket launch. It was a long voyage out there, and there aren’t any luxury hotels around for them to stay overnight while the ground crews fix some minor problem with the ground support equipment (I recently heard someone call it ground service equipment).
“… and foam destroying Columbia when the problem was evident and ignored for years.”
Yeah, that may have been a misaligned goal, because the goal should have been crew safety, but the overriding goal was to use government-approved materials that were environmentally friendly rather than materials that were adequate for the integrity of the structure. Come to think of it, the same applies to Challenger’s O-ring problem, where NASA’s engineers could have taken the safety concern more seriously than they took the Thiokol report of ten months before that said it was OK to launch at such cold temperatures.– Thiokol put the safety goal below the contractual goal of being able to launch at those low temperatures.*
Maybe that centrally controlled marxist government isn’t as good as they told us after all. At least in the free market capitalist economy even the poor still have something worth stealing.
______________
* To be fair to the NASA engineers, they did ask Thiokol which was it: was it safe per the report or unsafe per that night’s alert, which used the same charts and graphs to say that it was unsafe as had been used in the report to say that it was safe. Today we know which it was, but that night it was confusing, and Thiokol chickened out and let the low-temperature launch capability — the contractual requirement — rule the argument.
If Boisjoly’s March 1985 report had said that it was OK to launch at that temperature as long as the air temperature was declining from a higher temperature but not safe if it was rising from a soak at a lower temperature, then possibly both goals could have been accomplished, where Thiokol demonstrates contractual compliance and NASA does not launch a wildly unsafe Space Shuttle.
There are many other “if only” cases in the Challenger disaster, most of which involve fully understanding the problem rather than the many assumptions made.
Which may bring us back to the Artemis II heat shield, discussed in many other threads. We engineers want to fully understand a problem before determining a solution. If we don’t understand what is happening, then how can we be sure that we solved it safely and successfully? If we think we understand a problem, but don’t, then at least we thought we had solved it, but if we apply a solution knowing that we still don’t understand it, that is when we get Challengers, Columbias, Chernobyls, and other disasters that we knew better than to let happen.
Edward wrote, “Maybe that centrally controlled marxist government isn’t as good as they told us after all.” [emphasis mine]
You see, “they” have been telling you the wrong things. Rather than teach history using books comparable to the ones I have written, our educational community decided post-1960s that such “pro-American, pro-capitalist” histories were simple-minded and jingoistic propaganda, and kids needed to be educated to a more nuanced point-of-view, covering other ideas from Europe and elsewhere that hadn’t ever worked, but sounded soooooo much more wonderful!
Anyone who has read any of my histories knows they would make a perfect choice for educating any American high school or college kid the basics of American space history, from a decidedly positive view of American culture, politics, and the Cold War. Which apparently is why they have never been picked up by any educational institution in my life time.
Oh, wait. I forgot to get into the “competition” part, where we keep trying to improve our products rather than rest on our laurels, thinking we have done the best that is possible (or got too lazy to make it any better). Competition makes us find more efficient uses of resources, making our products cost less and more desirable than the other companies’ products. . Competition makes us find ways to improve the capabilities of our products, making them more desirable than the other companies’ products. Competition makes us find ways to improve the reliability of our products, making them more desirable than the other companies’ products.
The Space Shuttle had no competition, in the U.S., so no one bothered to make improvements. Falcon 9 had competitors in the works, so SpaceX quickly started developing the much improved Starship, capable of interplanetary travel, meeting a seven-decade-old goal — and five-decade-old expectation — of manned travel to Mars.
Looks like they were wrong about the advantages of centrally controlled economies.
“Anyone who has read any of my histories knows they would make a perfect choice for educating any American high school or college kid the basics of American space history, from a decidedly positive view of American culture, politics, and the Cold War. Which apparently is why they have never been picked up by any educational institution in my life time.”
The history of America shows that the early settlers rejected the quickly-failed marxist type ideas of the Pilgrims. That type of economy resulted in few people working much, and that resulted in starvation, illness, and death of half the settlement. Once free-market capitalism was tried, they produced so much that they shared with their Indian neighbors, who had shown them the eccentricities of corn (maize) and fishing. The Pilgrims were farmers, they knew how to farm, but not how to fish, and they didn’t know that corn required a powerful fertilizer, such as half a fish.
Unlike the dictatorial monarchies of the rest of the world, America had freedom, free markets, and capitalist energy, allowing this nation in a mere three centuries to become powerful enough to save the world from tyranny. Twice.
The same boom is happening in space right now. For half a century or so, governments controlled all aspects of space, from access to exploration, to commercial use (e.g. communication). There was very little advancement in all that time, including the abandonment of the Moon in favor of less adventuresome uses of space (e.g. mere exploration). Within a decade of the beginning of commercialization of space, one company had a plan to colony Mars, improving on the dreams and goals of other companies. We now have companies planning on manufacturing in the free fall of space. Many other companies are testing technologies in low Earth orbit, which hadn’t happened under the governmental control of space. Once again, free market capitalism is showing its vast superiority over centralized governmental control.
What a decade we live in, right now, and what a decade we will have next!
Edward: I may have missed it, but it seems you omitted one of the best parts about competition: it’s fun. There is excitement in meeting and exceeding a challenge. If the effort falls short; regroup and retry. Learn from the failure. Give the challenge another shot. It will be fun.
I think one of the main strengths of competition has been missed in these comments. Failure is either corrected or weeded out. When Sears, Toys-R-Us, and Kmart failed to deliver as good as the competition, they went away. The ones that are successful can grow as the ones that fail Get Out Of The Way.
Subsidized entities only last as long as the ones doing the subsidizing think they are benefiting. Stratolaunch bird after Allen passed became an albatross. Starship will either succeed or disappear as will New Glenn as both of them are subsidized by wealthy patrons until success. When wealthy patrons lose interest, failed projects disappear.
Decades after Sam Walton passed, Walmart is still a booming enterprise because it delivers. Who has seen a Montgomery Wards store lately?
That’s not something I would brag about. I miss Service Merchandise too.
I recall that there was strenuous Russian objection to the first autonomous Dragon – ISS docking, to the point of irritation and anger expressed by the onboard Russian crew! Did this reflect concern with the NASA safety approach, or an attempt to forestall the loss of Russian monopoly over ISS personnel flights?
Edward writes, “The Space Shuttle had no competition, in the U.S., so no one bothered to make improvements.”
Exactly.
But imagine an improved, far safer Shuttle with a reusable main engine and private sector hustle and esprit de corps dedicated to cost savings and shortened launch turnaround times. In short, a Shuttle program that fulfilled all that it originally promised when Columbia debuted back in 1980.
To the engineers in the audience, has something like the Space Shuttle outlived its usefulness, or is there any justification for building a better, new technology version? Or, is Starship — and variants thereof — effectively the new Shuttle?
Soviet workers saying.
They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.
Milt asked, “is Starship — and variants thereof — effectively the new Shuttle?”
I said yes to this question, the day after Musk announced his plans to build Starship in 2017. It would use and upgrade much of the shuttle technology, enhanced by what SpaceX had learned flying Falcon 9. And its goal would be to achieve the original shuttle goal, cheap and quick reusability.
Falcon is quick and cheap.
Starship is an unknown.
I’d feel safer in Buran
I think people are forgetting exactly why the Shuttle was built to the specifications it had.’
That leads directly to why it was outdated by its third flight. Technology passed up its first primary job.
As for Buran the Soviets ONLY built it for propaganda. They cared so little for it that they let its hanger crush it long forgotten and never even put in a museum. I think the second unfinished unflown one was turned into an oligarchs child’s playhouse parked in a back yard.
I do wonder if some western spies even when into them and photographed everything inside them to check the tech level. I notice the west never really even mentioned them as anything important or notable.
pzatchok:
I think the loss of Buran is tragic. Say what you will, and many have, it still represented the cutting-edge of spaceflight for that society, and it did fulfill the one-and-only mission requirements. More the loss, in that the Russians would have probably let it go for cheap.
Blair Ivey wrote: “I may have missed it, but it seems you omitted one of the best parts about competition: it’s fun.”
That is an argument that appeals to men, but women tend to be more cooperative than competitive. To say that competition is fun makes them think that we are boys playing games in space or in business.
____________
John hare wrote: “I think one of the main strengths of competition has been missed in these comments.”
True. Weeding out those who do not continually improve is an advantage (it is one of the reasons that colleges have weed-out classes, a big surprise for students, after high school). Resources are not wasted on inferior companies, methods, or products (or students), and it helps to drive the innovation and improvement process that is inherent in competition. There are many other advantages to competition, which is one of the reasons it is a major factor in nature.
As I like to say, profit is the reward for finding better efficiencies.
____________
Milt asked: “To the engineers in the audience, has something like the Space Shuttle outlived its usefulness, or is there any justification for building a better, new technology version? Or, is Starship — and variants thereof — effectively the new Shuttle?”
Robert is correct. It took free market capitalists to make a better Space Shuttle, and Starship is one version. “Something like” the Space Shuttle still has uses, but other types of rocket or launch vehicle are also useful and sometimes or often preferable.
One of the problems with the Space Shuttle is that it combined cargo with passengers, making it an expensive way to launch cargo (e.g. satellites) to orbit. That was one of the failings of the Congressional ruling that all U.S. payloads would launch aboard the Shuttle.
Sierra Space is working toward two versions of their smaller version of the Shuttle: one is cargo and the other is passenger. Early in the Shuttle development, while they were still working out requirements and methods, NASA had wanted two versions, one that was for astronauts and another for payloads only. NASA lost that argument, because the development costs would be too great for the stingy administration, at the time.
Starship has some downsides, but it has advantages for the mission to Mars that it is designed to perform. Other companies can find several improvements that will do better for other popular missions. These improvements may seem like the Shuttle or like Starship, but they may actually be very different.
Just watched a video about the docking system on the Dragon.
NASA offered theirs for free but Space X built their own for a fraction of the cost. From millions of dollars for the custom Boeing system to thousands of dollars and far less weight for the McDocker system.