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Soyuz has problem during return to Earth

In returning three astronauts safely to Earth yesterday from ISS the Soyuz spacecraft experienced a technical problem immediately after its engines had fired, causing it to go to a backup system.

Moments after the completion of the braking maneuver, the emergency signal was heard inside the Descent Module and the communications between the crew and mission control discussed a failure of the first manifold in the integrated propulsion system of the Soyuz spacecraft and the switch to the second manifold. Kononenko first reported K1B (Manifold DPO-B) emergency at 05:02:54 Moscow Time and subsequently confirmed a switch to the second manifold. NASA later confirmed the problem, but did not provide any details.

There is no explanation what the “first manifold” is, though I suspect it is a direct translation from Russian for their term for a primary system. That the system automatically switched to its back-up is a good thing. That there was a failure of the primary system is not.

Once again, this raises more questions about the quality control throughout Russia’s aerospace industry. While so far none of the recent Soyuz problems, which have also included a launch abort and a still-unexplained drilled hole, have caused a loss of life. I fear that soon or later they will.

Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. The ebook can also be purchased direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

6 comments

  • Roland

    US: Apollo 1; 3 deaths, Challenger; 7 deaths, Columbia; 7 deaths Total: 17.
    USSR/Russia: Soyuz 1; 1 death, Soyuz 11; 3 deaths. Total: 4. Last deadly accident 1971.
    The numbers speak for themselves.

  • Wodun

    Not exactly Roland. For one you make apples and oranges comparisons and you also ignore the rate of serious incidents, launch and mission failures.

  • Edward

    Roland,
    As they like to say in investment, past performance is no guarantee of future results. For instance, there were almost two hundred X-15 flights before one killed its crew.

    The logic of only using “the numbers” rather than more realistic indicators is that we would also conclude that the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were completely safe, as well as the Lunar Module, Shenzhou, SpaceShipOne, Voskhod, and Vostok. We might even conclude that Apollo was only unsafe on the ground or as mounted to the Saturn IB rocket.

    That being said, I have noticed that every manned spacecraft that has flown more than fifteen crews has killed a crew. This does not bode well for manned commercial space, which plans to take many more than fifteen crews to space in each of its spacecraft.

    So far, we haven’t had any lost lives on space stations, but MIR came close on a couple of occasions.

  • Andi

    Another thing to consider is that the USSR ran a secretive and closed space program. They generally never announced launches until after the fact, and then only if they were successful, so we don’t really know how many failures they had.

  • Andi: Actually, we now have a very good handle on exactly what happened in the Soviet Union’s space program, including their failures. You should read Leaving Earth. I spent more than a month in Moscow interviewing several dozen cosmonauts, going back to Alexei Leonov, to find out what happened. There are really few secrets left from that time.

  • Andi

    Thank you for the update, Bob. I will definitely read Leaving Earth.

    Must have been a fascinating time in Moscow!

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