It’s official: Singer Sarah Brightman has purchased a ticket to fly to ISS in a Soyuz capsule.
Irony of ironies: In order to buy her seat on a Soyuz capsule Sarah Brightman outbid NASA, bumping its astronaut out.
This was a win-win for the Russians. They get paid more by Brightman than by NASA (over $51 million), and they finally get that year long mission they’ve been campaigning for for years. Because Brightman has taken one of NASA’s seats, the U.S. agency was forced to agree to the extended mission in order to maintain a presence on the station throughout that time period. Otherwise, their astronaut would come home and be replaced by Brightman, but for only ten days.
The head of Russia’s manned program said today that the first yearlong mission on ISS will begin in March 2015.
This appears to be another case of the Russians trying to use the media to pressure NASA into agreeing to the mission. I hope it works.
Isn’t competition wonderful? The head of Russia’s space agency said today that they need to reorganize their industry in order to compete.
Key quote: “Unless we act now – we will cease to be competitive,” he warned.
I wonder why? Could it be there is a company out there selling launch capability at half the cost?
The competition heats up: Singer Sarah Brightman appears slated to be the next tourist to fly to ISS.
So that was what caused the delay: An avionics unit in the Soyuz capsule to be used to fly three astronauts to ISS later this month had problems in testing which required its replacement.
Three astronauts have safely returned to Earth from ISS.
More important, the Russians have now delayed the next Soyuz manned launch to ISS for a week due to “some malfunctions [that] have appeared in one of the devices of the decent module.”
They also say the delay is to avoid a flight conflict with the next Dragon mission on October 15. This is interesting in that the last word we had from NASA was that the Dragon launch could occur as early as October 5.
The Russian space agency has ordered the recall and inspection of every Briz-M upper stage used in their Proton rocket.
This is part of the on-going shake-up of the Russian rocket industry following the recent failures of the upper stage during several commercial launches. One interesting and positive note is that they expect to resume launches in October, which is extremely fast.
The competition heats up: India’s space agency celebrated its 100th launch today.
It is unclear whether the numbers include their failed launches. Regardless, India has a vibrant space program, modeled somewhat after the Russian system, a government space agency focused on gaining commercial market share. Whether that model can successfully compete in the commercial world remains unknown. Russia has had success, but only during a period when they were faced with few competitors. Now that the competition is heating up it is unclear whether Russia’s model will be flexible enough to compete.
What is clear about India, however, is that they are passionate about space exploration. Historically, even the Russian government model has worked when the country using it was the new kid on the block.
The competition heats up: Two Russian companies have announced a joint plan to build a suborbital spacecraft for tourism.
Sounds great, but Clark Lindsey has a very informative review of the history of these announcements from Russia, none of which has ever born fruit.
Russia has decided to delay the rest of its military launches this year, pending a full review of the upper stage problems of the Proton rocket.
The head of the Russian space center that built the upper stage that failed on two recent Proton launches has been fired.
Putin’s action here suggests the Russians are taking these problems seriously. especially with the looming competition from SpaceX. At the same time, the boss doesn’t actually build anything, and firing him won’t fix anything if there aren’t also changes on the factory floor.
