Roscosmos knows but will not disclose cause of Soyuz drilled hole
According to a statement by Dmitri Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russians now know what or who caused the drillhole in a Soyuz capsule, found when air began to leak from ISS in August 2018, but they will not reveal that information.
What happened is clear to us, but we won’t tell you anything”, Rogozin said at a meeting with the participants of a scientific youth conference. … We may have some secrets”, he said.
I wonder if NASA will accept this decision. I also wonder why this doesn’t raise the hackles of NASA’s safety panel, which seems so willing to stall the launch of American manned capsules for far less worrisome safety reasons, thus forcing us to use Russia’s Soyuz capsule instead.
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
According to a statement by Dmitri Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russians now know what or who caused the drillhole in a Soyuz capsule, found when air began to leak from ISS in August 2018, but they will not reveal that information.
What happened is clear to us, but we won’t tell you anything”, Rogozin said at a meeting with the participants of a scientific youth conference. … We may have some secrets”, he said.
I wonder if NASA will accept this decision. I also wonder why this doesn’t raise the hackles of NASA’s safety panel, which seems so willing to stall the launch of American manned capsules for far less worrisome safety reasons, thus forcing us to use Russia’s Soyuz capsule instead.
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
“What happened is clear to us, but we won’t tell you anything. … We may have some secrets.”
That is unsettling in so many ways. They want to keep secrets that effect the health and safety of crews? It seems unlikely that it is a military secret. They didn’t even say whether they were taking corrective actions to make sure that things like this hole never happen again. I’ve never been impressed with the Russians’ efforts at safety, and this reinforces my skepticism.
I certainly hope that they have talked to NASA in private about this, because this public statement is terrible.
Please tell me, again, why we partnered with these guys on ISS. I keep forgetting the advantages we were supposed to be getting from this partnership.
If Roscosmos told NASA what happened, then in my opinion NASA has a duty to disclose that information to the public. We pay for NASA’s services, and if there’s a serious safety issue we have the right to know about it. I would think that a deliberately-drilled hole in a spacecraft counts as a serious issue.
I can’t help but contrast this with the very public investigations into what happened with Challenger and Columbia. Admittedly, nobody died on board the ISS, but how can NASA be sure that the problem is fixed? How can they know that the next Soyuz going up won’t have more oopsie-holes?
I’m guessing that the Russians finally figured out who was responsible and that that person is now occupying a shallow excavation in some birch forest in the middle of nowhere, courtesy of the FSB. The reason there will be no public explanation is because the Russians do not wish to have to walk back any of their early smack talk about the problem being covert U.S. “sabotage.”