Third stage separation focus of Progress failure investigation
The circumstances behind the failure of Russia’s Progress freighter this week are now pointing to the moment when the freighter separated from the Soyuz rocket’s third stage.
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The circumstances behind the failure of Russia’s Progress freighter this week are now pointing to the moment when the freighter separated from the Soyuz rocket’s third stage.
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 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
Given all the chatter about abnormal burn time on the third stage and a cloud of debris, I wouldn’t be surprised if something in the third stage propulsion system failed/exploded. This would account for damage to the Progress that might have prevented deployment of the Kurs antennae and ruptured the Progress’ own propellant tanks, further accounting both for the uncontrolled spin and the talk about the flight controllers inability to pressurize the system.
It makes me wonder though, since this brings their modernized rocket into question, could they not fall back on the older design until the problem is traced? I can’t imagine that the Russians who have been flying this design for so many years would be as stupid as Congress was with the Saturn program and actually scrap the hardware used to build the stages. Naw, couldn’t be. In any case, this is a prime opportunity for Space X to pull everyone’s collective butts out of the fire.