Mir Spacecraft: Worst collision in the history of space flight [video] | Hacker News Reader

Mir Spacecraft: Worst collision in the history of space flight [video]

bbc.com

136 pointsZeljkoS38 comments

Strictly thinking, Space Shuttle Columbia colliding with foam was worse[0] than this.

It is amazing how Mir courted disaster[1] but ended its mission without fatalities or serious injuries. I wonder what if anything could be learned from this?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir#Accidents

"Shit happens." Both scenarios could have played out with opposite endings (e.g. there have been other debris strikes in previous Shuttle missions, without fatal consequences), with very small changes in inputs.

There's plenty of things to be learned from each, but I don't see anything those incidents would have in common, except "IN SPAAAACE!".

What they have in common is one is BBC's candidate for "Worst collision in the history of space flight" and the other one is mine.

Agree with your comment on opposite endings for small changes in inputs.

The debris collision happened about 20km up, and the orbiter began to break up at an altitude of around 70km (on the way back down, of course), so teeechnically speaking neither event happened in space.

Man, my inner nitpicker really came out on that one.

There is no clear boundary of the atmosphere, so technically speaking no event ever happens in space.

Actually we've defined a boundary at 100km https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line

Yep, just because there's no clear physical boundary doesn't mean there isn't a clear line separating "in space" from "not in space."

It is a surface, not a line :)

And it isn't very clear either, since the sea level isn't very well defined as it changes all the time :)

Heh, you're doing it again! The actual water level is constantly changing, but "sea level" is typically defined to some fixed level. Although there is more than one definition to pick from.

Yes, and I can continue until you run out of definitions to cling to :)

Sea level is (presumably) defined in terms of the center-of-mass of the Earth. This center of mass is constantly changing (even as a side-effect of the rocket moving).

Changes smaller than your ability to measure them don't really matter. Especially when we're talking about being ~30km below the definition's altitude.

And here I thought this was a nitpicking subthread.

Ah yes! But at this point it only works if you're nitpicking over the definition of "clear," since the "in space" bit is now settled.

Right? Maybe I missed a nit!

>It is amazing how Mir courted disaster[1] but ended its mission without fatalities or serious injuries.

Mir is a space station with a crew size of two. Its not a vehicle that regularly does re-entry. Comparing it to the STS makes no sense and reveals a certain amount of bias on your part. Often when something foreign is criticized on HN, there's always some poster making a half-assed "but, but the US is worse" argument for whatever reason. Its standard Whataboutism. A propaganda technique from the Soviets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Not everything has to have this cold war us vs them mentality. Space station docking systems is an interesting topic, its a shame you had to drag mindless whataboutism into it.

No, its not amazing no one died on it. Space stations are historically very safe with zero deaths in all of humanity's space history. This collsion with the Progress supply ship is interesting from a historical perspective and may answer questions on why the US never got into unmanned remote control solutions like the Soviets did.

> in a test intended to establish whether Russia could reduce the cost of Progress missions by eliminating the Kurs automated docking system. At 09:18 UTC, whilst under the control of Vasily Tsibliyev, the Progress spacecraft collided with the space station's Spektr module, damaging both the module itself, and a solar panel.

Source: wikipedia.

If you're like me and have no intention of installing flash here is an alternative video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM7fTLLmgbk

For others, the video linked here doesn't tell the whole story, so you're better off watching the one in the article if you want to know how it ends! :)

Here's a direct link extracted with youtube-dl.

http://cp401491-vh.akamaihd.net/i/,mps_h264_med/public/news/...

Or if like me you do have flash installed but the site crashes the plugin...

Or just browse the article with a mobile user-agent. Big site like this cannot cut themselves from big market like iOS or Android, so there is always a non-flash version available.

One thing that was unclear to me - they say that they had to retreat to the Soyuz escape vehicle as a safety measure, which is understandable. Then he says that because the space station was tumbling out of control due to the impact, they had to fire the retro rockets to counteract the spin and bring things under control again - did they mean they used the Soyuz capsule retro rockets? Or did they manage to deploy the ones on the space station itself (if indeed it was fitted with retro rocket packs)??

If they used the Soyuz retro rockets, then I would think that was a feat in itself - if they had to use the gimbals on the capsule attached to a outer portion of the station to ascertain the pitch and roll of the main structure and counteract it.

The interview was not specific, and I couldn't find any clear info via Google so thought I would ask in case anyone here might know & could clarify.

Side note: The volume on BBC's media player goes to 11.

This story was told better in the book [1]. Specifically the part where they used a Soyuz to re-align the space station. They didn't think it would work, because it was the first idea they came up with and it seems so genius. They spent hours looking for a second solution before trying it. Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir

Another short video by the BBC about the same incident with an interview with Sasha Lazutkin, one of the Cosmonauts on the station at the time but not the one controlling the cargo ship: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p028l07k

It's time to add [FLASH] tag to HN.

It's time for BBC and other major news providers to stop serving Flash content.

Let's start small by disabling auto-play.

Won't someone think of the advertisers‽

Unfortunately it seems like we added that nonsense into HTML5 :(.

Worse, Firefox told me that my plugin wasn't safe, then the Mozilla Foundation demanded that I create an account with them, otherwise: No security updates for you!

Is Mozilla slowly going evil?

(1997) might be a good addition to the title.

Is the article from 1997, though? It's dated as 2016.

"Mir spacecraft 1997 collision: Worst collision in the history of space flight"

That doesn't answer the question.

The event is from 1997, this article is dated June 22 2016.

The astronaut looks 20 years older in the video than on Mir.

What would Sherlock Holmes deduce?

It's a new interview so no.

Yes, an article about a long gone space station is about a long ago event. Shocking! It's a new article though.

I think one concern is that if you're not familiar with Mir, and the fact that it's long gone (or if you're just skimming titles on HN), the title by itself could be seen as suggesting that the worst collision in the history of space flight just happened recently. Putting a year, or maybe calling it "Reflections on the worst collision..." or something like that, would get rid of that ambiguity.

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