Tag: Russia

The dying Russian space program, from a Russian’s perspective

9:21 am

Link here. I have written previously about how Russia’s space effort seems to be steadily shrinking, month-to-month. This article gives the perspective from the point of view of a Russian who writes about space, and provides some concrete further examples of the program’s bureaucratic problems:

For example, the Russian space agency has been developing a “new” science and research module for the space station, “Nauka,” since 1995. More than two decades later, the module still awaits a decision on whether it should actually be completed.

Borisov asserts that this is because there are concerns about post-launch problems. “No official from Russia’s space industry wants to take responsibility for the laboratory module and its safety for use as part of the ISS, about which many questions have arisen,” he writes. (A translation of the 3,000-word article was provided to Ars by Robinson Mitchell).

The story is similar for Russia’s next-generation spacecraft, Federation. Instead of investing in this new vehicle designed for deep-space crew activities, which has been under development for a decade, Russia will likely opt to continue revising the Soyuz spacecraft, which first launched 52 years ago. This was before NASA’s Apollo capsule had flown.

The Putin government made a decision in the past decade to consolidate their entire space industry into one giant government-run corporation. In the process they eliminated all competition, and put every new project under the control of government bureaucrats whose first concern is not innovation and risk, but covering their behinds. As such, Russia has found it impossible to produce new space technology fast enough to compete.

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Failed Soviet-era Venus probe to crash to Earth between 2023-2025

12:59 pm

A failed Soviet-era probe to Venus that never left Earth orbit is now predicted to crash to Earth sometime between 2023-2025.

The Kosmos 482 interplanetary station, which was unsuccessfully sent towards Venus in 1972 by the USSR, may crash land on Earth between 2023 and 2025, astronomer and cosmonautics historian Pavel Shubin told Sputnik. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of the future crash site, but noted that it would be between 52 degrees north and 52 degree south latitude.

The astronomer has studied the data on Kosmos 482 orbit as well as its deterioration and detected that it started to degrade faster due to it getting closer to Earth and experiencing increased gravitational pull.

He also expressed confidence that the station would successfully reach the surface since it was adapted for entering the much harsher atmosphere of Venus so is able to endure stress of 300g and 100 atmospheres. The astronomer is anxious to study the station after it lands in order to analyze how prolonged exposure to open space affected its materials.

It is not likely that this probe will land anywhere where it can be recovered, as most of the Earth is ocean. However, the scientist’s hopes are not unreasonable, as it is always worthwhile for future engineering designs to study how the environment of space effects materials over long periods of time.

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More launch delays from Russia

10:00 am

Russia has decided to delay one of three commercial Soyuz rocket launches to 2019 due to unspecified “readiness” issues.

The launch of Soyuz-ST launch vehicle with a European satellite was initially scheduled for October 6, a source in the aerospace industry told Interfax. “However, evaluating relevant conditions and the launch vehicle’s readiness, the decision was made to move the launch to November 6,” the source said.

In all, three Russian launch vehicles were expected to take off from the Kourou Space Center by the yearend. Italy’s CSG-1 satellite was scheduled to be launched in November, which was to be followed by the launch of OneWeb’s pilot mini-satellites. Due to the delay of the European weather-forecasting satellite’s launch, the launch of two more rockets from Kourou was endangered. “One of the three launches has to be postponed until next year. This is most likely to be Italy’s CSG-1 satellite. However, a lift-off of satellites under the contract with OneWeb may be adjourned,” he said.

In addition, there was this story (behind a paywall) that noted that the only Proton-M launch in 2018 will also be delayed until 2019.

While such delays in rocket launches are not unusual and are an accepted part of the business, these delays for Russia do not help them. The technical problems in recent years that have caused many launch failures, combined with these delays, will further encourage their international customers to go elsewhere.

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The dying Russian space program

10:06 am

Three articles today illustrate starkly the sad state of the Russian space program.

The first story describes the serious problems for Russia’s first lunar probe in decades.

Its launch was originally scheduled for 2016 but was postponed to 2019 mainly because of lack of funding. Roscosmos allocated a budget of 4.5 billion rubles to NPO Lavochkin, Luna-Glob’s builder, as recently as October 2016.

Since then, almost everything has gone according to the plan, except with a crucial instrument called BIB, the probe’s inertial measurement unit. Provided by the Russian company NPO IT – located in the city of Korolyov, not far from ISS Mission Control – the BIB should provide the onboard computer with the necessary information to ensure guidance on the path from the Earth to the Moon.

However, BIB testing at NPO IT showed unexpected results, clearly indicating it was not working properly. The designers of this system noted it won’t be ready for the 2019 launch window, which resulted in NPO Lavochkin trying to replace it with a European equivalent called ASTRIX, designed by Airbus Defence & Space.

However, sanctions against Russia – from the European Commission in the fallout of the Ukrainian crisis – strictly forbid such a deal.

A different Russian instrument could replace BIB, but it won’t be ready in time, further delaying the mission to 2021 when many of its other instruments will be past their own due dates.

The second story describes the end of Russia’s Proton rocket, first built in the mid-1960s and since the 1990s has been its commercial workhorse. Faced with numerous failures and an inability to compete with SpaceX, it has lost its market share, and will now be replaced by Russia’s new Angara rocket. The problem is that Angara itself is not ready, and will likely not be operational until 2021, at the earliest.

The third article describes some of the reasons why Angara will take so long to be operational. Vostochny, Russia’s new spaceport, doesn’t have the necessary facilities, and it appears there is a disagreement within the Russian aerospace community about how fast those facilities can be built, or even if all are needed immediately. The top management in Roscosmos seems reluctant to switch all operations from Baikonur, probably for political reasons, while the expert quoted by the article says they should do it fast.

Either way, the entire Russian space program seems mired in bad technology, overpriced products, and poor and confused management. They have lost most of their commercial international customers, are about to lose NASA as well when Dragon and Starliner begin flying American astronauts, and do not have the resources to replace this lost income. Further, the top-down centralized management by the government of the entire aerospace industry has worsened these problems by stifling competition and innovation.

Russia might recover eventually, but for the next decade expect them to play a very minor role in space.

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Obama administration ordered a “stand down” of work to stop Russian election interference

10:02 am

The real Russian collusion: When it was evident that the Russians were trying to use the internet to interfere with the election in August 2016, the Obama administration instead ordered a “stand down” of any work that might have stopped that interference.

Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to “stand down” in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Michael Daniel, whose official title was “cybersecurity coordinator,” confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference.

…“Don’t get ahead of us,” [Rice] told Daniel in a meeting in August 2016, according to the book.

Daniel informed his staff of the order, much to their frustration. “I was incredulous and in disbelief,” Daniel Prieto, who worked under Daniel, is quoted saying in “Russian Roulette.”

“Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?” Prieto asked.

It appears that the Obama administration wanted the Russians to interfere with the election, and this desire was part of their effort at the FBI to frame the Russian collusion story on Trump. They needed the interference to justify the FBI Russian investigation, which had just been instigated in late July 2016. Stopping the Russians (and defending the American electoral process) was therefore not in their interest.

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UAE signs deal with Russia for UAE astronaut flight

9:50 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia signed an agreement this week to fly an UAE astronaut on a Russian Soyuz capsule to ISS in April 2019.

The mission will be a standard 10-day tourist mission, though of course they are not describing it like that. The announcement also does not state if the UAE paid Russia for this flight, but I expect so, just like any tourist flight. The price however was likely a lot less than Russia has been squeezing from the U.S. for its astronaut flights. UAE had also been discussing this with China, and the competition probably forced Russia to lower its price.

I had been hoping that one of the U.S.’s commercial capsules could have gotten this business, but because of the delays NASA has imposed on their initial launches, they haven’t yet flown, so they lost the chance to compete for this.

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S7 Space wants to build Soviet era rocket engines

9:14 am

The private Russian company S7 Space, which recently took over Sea Launch, wants to buy the blueprints and resume building the Soviet era rocket engines developed for the N1 heavy-lift rocket.

Russia’s S7 Space, part of the S7 Group, plans to build a plant in Samara to produce Soviet-designed NK-33 and NK-43 rocket engines for super heavy-lift launch vehicles and intends to purchase production capacities from the state-owned United Engine Corporation (UEC) for this purpose, S7 Space General Director Sergey Sopov said in an interview.

“We would like to buy from the state the well-known engines NK-33 and NK-43, produced earlier by the Samara-based Kuznetsov plant, as well as the documentation, equipment, technical backlog. In general, everything that has survived on this theme from the Soviet program. We intend to restore production and build our own rocket engine plant in Samara,” Sopov said in an interview to be published in the Vedomosti newspaper.

As with everything now in Russia, this company not only needs to buy the rights to these engines, it needs to get government permission to do this. Also, because it will take five to six years to get the new engine plant up and running, they plan in the interim to use the available engines left over from the 1960s. Considering the launch failure caused by one of these engines in an Orbital ATK Antares launch, I am not sure this is wise.

Overall, S7 Space has the right idea. The company wants to compete, and it wants to innovate. Whether it can do so in the top-down culture of Russia remains the unanswered question.

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Russia announces plans to build reusable rocket

9:17 am

I’ll believe it when I see it: Russia announced this week new plans to build a reusable smallsat rocket where the first stage would fly back and land vertically.

According to preliminary estimates, the reusable system will cut the cost of payload delivery by 1.5 or 2 times compared to traditional rockets. Every self-guided booster will be designed to fly 50 missions without replacement of its main engines burning a mix of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The system was expected to be based on mobile launchers and its maiden flight was scheduled for 2022, the FPI press release said.

If this project actually does happen, it will be because there has been a political shift within Russia’s government-run space industry. I suspect this because last week they cancelled plans to build a lightweight but expendable smaller version of Proton. Now they are aiming to build a reusable rocket instead. It appears that they have realized they need to cut their costs to compete, and the expendable Proton wasn’t doing it, while a reusable rocket might.

If this is true, then this is good news for Russia’s space future. At the same time, the slowness at which they have made this shift illustrates the disadvantage of their centralized government-run system. Instead of competition within Russia pushing many different independent companies to move forward quickly, all decisions must be made through political maneuvering within Roscosmos, a process that is always slower and more cumbersome.

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More budget cuts expected for Roscosmos

9:37 am

According to one story in the Russian press today, the Russian space industry, run by Roscosmos, is expected to experience more budget cuts due to a shortage of funds.

The Russian federal space program might face cuts as the Roscosmos state corporation is likely to suffer funding shortages amounting to 150 billion rubles (almost $2.4 billion) in the next three years, a source in the industry told Sputnik.

“The shortages of budgetary funds planned for allocation to Roscosmos from the previous parameters for the next three years is about 150 billion rubles … the lack of funds has already become a reason of delays in the development of interplanetary projects, slowing down construction of the second stage of the Vostochny Cosmodrome and the development of new rocket and space equipment,” the source said.

The shortfall almost certainly comes from a lack of international launch customers, most of whom have shifted their business to SpaceX because of the quality control concerns in the Russian aerospace industry. Whether Russia can regain any of this business in the coming years will depend wholly on whether they can demonstrate some reliability in their launch cadence, something they have failed to do for the past five years.

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Russia cancels new lightweight Proton

10:06 am

Russia has announced that it is canceling the development of a new lightweight Proton rocket, conceived as a way to attract new international commercial customers.

Russia’s Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center has decided not to go ahead with its project to develop the Proton-L (Proton Medium) two-stage launch vehicle (LV), a source at the center told Interfax.

“The project to create the Proton-L launch vehicle will not be pursued for financial reasons,” the source said.

Let me translate. They have not gotten sufficient international commercial orders for this two-stage version of Proton, and thus it will be unprofitable to build it. The lack of orders is likely linked to Russia’s ongoing quality control problems, along with rampant corruption, within its aerospace industry.

Unfortunately, the Putin government’s solution to the quality control problems and corruption has been to consolidate the industry into one corporation under government control, thus eliminating any competition inside Russia. Such an approach however has been found historically to routinely produce more corruption and quality control problems, as it has no built-in incentives to encourage improvement.

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Rogozin takes over Roscosmos

9:57 am

Former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has now officially been named the head of Roscosmos.

It appears Rogozin will continue the Putin government’s policy of consolidating the entire aerospace industry into Roscosmos.

Along with the new appointment, the Russian press reported on Rogozin’s plans to initiate yet another reorganization of Roskosmos to absorb Tactical Rocket Armaments company, specialized in battlefield missiles, and, possibly, the Almaz-Antei enterprise, developing anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.

This policy also suggests that Russia’s continuing fade as a major player in the international launch market will continue. They will focus on internal needs, but will no longer be able or willing to compete for business outside of Russia. Without any internal competition, and with corruption rife within these industries, Roscosmos under Rogozin will stumble along issuing press releases about future great projects, few of which will really happen, while it acts instead as a pork barrel jobs program for friends of Putin.

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UAE astronaut to fly to ISS on Soyuz?

11:39 pm

According to a story in the Russian press a tourist on a flight planned for 2019 could be replaced by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Russians and the UAE have signed a cooperative agreement, so this is possible. It could also be that the UAE has offered more money and thus moved up the queue. It could also be that this is premature. There have been many such stories in the past decade, but the Russians have not flown a tourist to ISS since 2009.

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Russian government audit finds $20 billion in “spending violations”

9:44 am

An audit by the Russian equivalent of the GAO has found more than $20 billion in “spending violations” within the government, most of which occurred in the defense and space sectors.

Other words for describing these “spending violations” might be “theft,” “embezzlement,” “misuse of funds,” or any number of more honest direct terms. The Russian government is simply very corrupt, and its culture includes the assumption by administrators and everyone else that it is their right to skim off as much as they can, for themselves.

Sadly, I do not see any reform occurring in the near future. This corruption is deeply ingrained, and the Putin government, also deeply entrenched, apparently likes it, as long as the thefts don’t become so obvious that nothing gets done, as happened at the new Vostochny spaceport during its construction.

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Rogozin to take over Roscosmos?

8:48 am

I wonder if he used a trampoline: Less than a week after Putin dumped Dmitry Rogozin from his cabinet, a story in the Russian press suggests he has been offered the job as head of Roscosmos.

Under the government-run centralized Russian system, it would not surprise me if Rogozin gets this job. With the government, no one ever gets fired, they merely get shuffled about from one job to another. Results are irrelevant.

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Putin dumps Rogozin

8:58 am

In a reshuffle of cabinet positions, Putin has replaced Dmitri Rogozin, putting a new man in charge of the Russian defense and space industry.

The new guy, Yuri Borisov, appears to have the title of Vice Prime Minister. I suspect Putin had grown tired of the continuing corruption and loss of market share under Rogozin’s watch during the past decade. I also suspect that Borisov will have little ability to change things. The problem isn’t the person in charge. The problem is Russia’s centralized top-down method of operations. It discourages competition and cost control, while providing no incentives for innovation and quality control.

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Russian to fly on Orion?

9:12 am

In negotiations between NASA and Roscosmos on their hoped-for partnership to build the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), it has been proposed that when SLS carries Orion and the platform’s Russian airlock to lunar orbit a Russian will go as well.

“Within the framework of talks, draft plans of future manned missions to the lunar stations have been made. Among other issues, the possibility to send one Russian cosmonaut as part of the crew of the Orion spacecraft that will drag the Russian airlock module to the moon is on the agenda. The Russian cosmonaut will have to ensure the integration of the module with the station,” the source said.

A source in Russia’s Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia) that would produce the module confirmed this information to Sputnik, saying that four manned missions were expected to be sent to the station and the Russian cosmonaut should accompany the Russian-made module during its transportation to the Earth satellite.

This all sounds so wonderful. Too bad it is so unconnected with reality. Congress has yet to provide any funds for LOP-G. At the moment, SLS/Orion is only funded through its first manned mission.

At the same time, I am getting the feeling that both NASA and Congress expect SLS/Orion’s $4 billion-plus annual budget that it has gotten since the program started in the late 2000s will simply continue, giving them the money to build this Potemkin Village in orbit around the Moon while funding the Russian contributions.

That’s what happened with ISS. The U.S. footed most of the bills for the Russian portion of ISS, and the Russians are now hoping we will do the same for LOP-G. Sadly, I also expect our corrupt Congress will go along, focused as they are in only distributing pork to local districts while encouraging a global international village having nothing to do with American interests. They see LOP-G not as exploring space, but as a jobs program, both here in the U.S. and in Russia.

And a jobs program is exactly what it is. Just like it will take SLS/Orion almost two decades to complete its first manned launch, LOP-G will likely not get anything built in orbit around the Moon for more than a decade. Don’t expect anything substantial assembled in lunar orbit before the mid-2030s, at the earliest.

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Source of yellow water in Russian section of ISS identified

9:41 am

The yellow water found in Russian section of ISS earlier this week was caused by the ordinary crust deposits that formed on the inside of a water-heating unit, what the Russians have labeled a “samovar” and we would probably call a teapot.

Limescale crust inside a ‘samovar’ whose service life had expired was the cause for the appearance of yellow water admixtures in the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS), First Deputy CEO for Space Systems’ Flight Operation and Tests at Energia Rocket and Space Corporation Vladimir Solovyov told TASS on Tuesday. “A household cause is behind the emergence of the yellow admixtures in the water. Routine limescale crust had formed in the water-heating unit, which had reached the end of its service life. There is nothing terrible in that as we are regularly confronted with such things on Earth. The problem is solved quite easily, we will just promptly replace this unit, which cosmonauts normally call ‘samovar’ with a reserve one,” Solovyov explained.

Anyone who has used a teapot to boil water for years will eventually have to replace it because of the development of a crust on its inside surface. This is what has happened here. It appears the Russian article today was in response to panicked news reports earlier in the week about the appearance of the yellow water and the need for the Russians to use water from the American segment while they pinned down the cause, a procedure that is quite routine.

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Russian lawmakers introduce legislation to ban rocket engine sales to U.S.

9:13 am

Link here. The article provides practically no information about the legislation or its chances of passing. Instead, it focuses on the past history behind ULA’s use of the Russian RD-180 rocket engine in its Atlas 5 rocket as well as the recent efforts to replace it.

Thus, I have no idea if this legislation signals a real threat to future ULA launches or not. Moreover, the article tries to make it sound that the U.S. is entirely reliant on this rocket engine, something that is simply not true.

Nonetheless, this story underscores again the need for ULA to find a different engine to power its rockets. They shouldn’t be dependent on a rocket engiine built by a foreign power that has political motives that sometimes conflict with those of the United States.

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Russia agrees to replace Angola’s first satellite, lost shortly after launch

9:24 pm

Russia has agreed to replace Angola’s first satellite, lost shortly after launch, and have the replacement paid for by both insurance and Russia.

The minister confirmed that payment for the production of the second satellite would come from the insurance reimbursement for the lost AngoSat-1 satellite worth 121 million US dollars. The rest of the cost will be paid by the Russian side. The overall sum of the project amounts to 320 million US dollars.

The AngoSat-1 telecommunications satellite was launched by a Zenit-2SB carried rocket with a Fregat booster on December 26, 2017 from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. Contact with the satellite was lost on the following day after the separation from the upper stage.

Essentially, this is another example of a Russian launch failure, as it appears the Russians have accepted blame for the failure.

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Russia’s Proton successfully launches military satellite

8:58 am

Russia’s Proton rocket today successfully launched the military satellite, Blagovest 12L.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the Proton had been Russia’s commercial mainstay rocket. This paragraph from the story reveals how much that business has shrunk:

The first Proton launch since last September, Thursday’s launch was the first of only three or four expected to take place in 2018. The only other Proton launches confirmed to be on schedule for 2018 are a commercial mission with Eutelsat 5 West B and Orbital ATK’s first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) – which is slated for no earlier than the third quarter of the year – and the deployment of an Elektro-L weather satellite for Roskosmos in October. An additional military launch could occur later in the year. Planned launches of the Yamal 601 communications satellite and the Nauka module of the International Space Station were recently delayed until 2019.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

11 China
8 SpaceX
4 ULA
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 Europe
3 India

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Russia throws in the towel

10:00 am

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who Putin had placed in charge of Russia’s space effort, today said in a television interview that it makes no sense for them to try to compete with SpaceX in the launch market.

“The share of launch vehicles is as small as 4% percent of the overall market of space services. The 4% stake isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside,” Rogozin said in an interview on the RBC-TV channel on Tuesday.

He estimates the real market of space services at approximately $350 billion, with the creation of payloads, and not the launch of these payloads in space, accounting for the bulk of the sum. “Payloads manufacturing is where good money can be made,” he said.

Translation: We can’t figure out how to cut our costs and build better and cheaper rockets without eliminating many government jobs, so we have decided not to try. And we are going to make believe this failure is a good decision.

In response to the competitive threat from SpaceX, Putin’s government decided to consolidate their entire space industry into a single government corporation, run by their space agency Roscosmos. This reorganization however has failed entirely. Rather than encourage innovation and a lowering of costs, it served to make Russia’s entire aerospace industry a servant of politicians, who are more interested in distributing pork than building an efficient and competitive business.

Rogozin is thus essentially admitting here that Russia has lost its international commercial space business, and is therefore rationalizing that loss by claiming they never really wanted it in the first place.

This story confirms that Russia will be launching far fewer rockets in the coming years. Their dominance as one of the world’s launch leaders is now fading.

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ESA successfully completes first parachute test for 2020 ExoMars mission

9:33 am

Early in March the European Space Agency successfully completed the first of a series of parachute tests for its 2020 ExoMars rover mission.

The focus of the latest test, conducted in sub-zero conditions in Kiruna, Sweden earlier this month, was the 35 m-diameter second main parachute. The test demonstrated the deployment and inflation of the parachute with its 112 lines connected to a drop test vehicle, via the deployment of a smaller 4.8 m-wide pilot chute.

This test only tested the parachutes deployment system. They still need to do this test at high altitudes to duplicate Mars’ conditions using high-altitude balloons.

When ExoMars reaches Mars, the parachute will act to slow the spacecraft down during descent. For the actual landing, they will be using systems designed and built by the Russians.

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Russia launches test smallsat on Soyuz rocket

2:30 pm

Russia today successfully launched a test smallsat on a Soyuz rocket.

No information has been released about the test payload, but the link above speculates it is a new lightweight remote sensing design.

This is the second of three launches scheduled for today. China is next, and soon.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings, for the moment:

8 China
5 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
2 Europe
2 India

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Further launch delays for Russia’s next ISS module & space telescope

9:18 am

The race to be last! Russia today announced that the launch of both its next ISS module as well as a new space telescope will be delayed until 2019.

The ISS module, Nauka, is years behind schedule, and is presently being cleaned of contamination in its fuel system that was found several years ago.

“Repairs of the MLM Nauka are taking longer than expected, and the deadlines are yet unclear. This means it will not be brought to Baikonur any time soon, and the launch will be postponed until 2019,” the source said.

It was reported earlier that the mission would be delayed for six months. “The delivery of the MLM Nauka to the Baikonur cosmodrome has been moved from September to late 2018. Hence, the module’s launch to the ISS has been provisionally delayed for another six months,” the source said. The launch was scheduled for September 2018 with the possible alternative date in March 2019.

The article also notes delays for Spekr-RG high-energy space telescope until 2019. The article might also describe delays for another satellite, though the writing is unclear.

Nauka was first built in the 1990s as a backup for ISS’s first module. In the early 2000s Russia decided to reconfigure it and fly it to ISS, with its launch scheduled for 2007. This means its launch is now going to be twelve years behind schedule.

It sure does appear that Russia’s Roscosmos is competing with NASA to see which government agency can delay its missions the longest. In fact, for fun, let’s put together the standings!

  • Nauka: 12 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2007, now 2019)
  • James Webb Space Telescope: 9 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2011, now 2020)
  • SLS/Orion: 8 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2015, now 2023)

Stay tuned. This race to the bottom is far from over. NASA could still win, especially because it has more than one project in the running.

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Failure history of the Russian launch industry

8:09 am

Doug Messier has compiled a detailed and what appears to be a complete list of all Russian/Soviet launch failures going back to 1988. As he says, “Launch failures are not a bug in the system, they’re a feature.”

What struck me most about his graph is the number of Soyuz rocket failures. For decades, various versions of this rocket have been used to bring astronauts up to either Mir or ISS, and because there have not been any launch failures during those manned launches, the impression given is that the Soyuz is one of the most reliable rockets in existence. Messier’s table proves that impression false, and also tells us that the Russians, and the United States, have been very lucky that no lives have been lost in the past three decades on any Soyuz launches.

The table also illustrates why commercial customers have been so quick to shift their business from the Russians to SpaceX. The Russians have not provided a very good or reliable product. Since 1988 there have only been two years, 2001 and 2003, in which the Russians had no failures. And the table indicates that their failure rate has increased in the past decade.

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