Russian space freighter lost | Hacker News Reader

Russian space freighter lost

bbc.co.uk

63 pointsColinWright25 comments

Am I right when I say that this is a pretty huge coincidence? As far as I can see Soyuz rockets almost never fail and Proton rockets only fail from time to time.

Excluding this incident, Soyuz rockets had one partial and one complete failure during the last decade (and more than 115 flights during that time). The variant that is now used exclusively for manned flights had 33 flights and no failures. Soyuz-U – the variant used for this flight – seems to be the real troublemaker. It’s responsible for the only other complete failure during this decade.

Proton had more than ninety launches in that decade and five failures.

Those Russian rockets are very mature and usually don’t fail.

Two human crew return missions from the ISS were also partial failures.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/thespace.htm (the bottom 2 entries)

those are space ship failures, not rockets. the current failure is one of a rocket (delivery vehicle).

You can't make valid inferences about the relative failure rates of the Soyuz rocket variants from two data points.

I wasn’t really trying to, I was merely trying to point out an interesting lead. Whether the type of rocket used has anything to do with this is, however, a very interesting and relevant question, especially considering that the ISS depends on Soyuz launches for replacing the crew.

Soyuz-U is quite old, has few flights today and will soon be completely replaced by other Soyuz variants. It doesn’t do any manned flights anymore. I bet it would be a huge relief if Roscomos were to find out that it’s really the type of rocket (and only this type of rocket) that had something to do with the failure.

A manned Soyuz flight to the ISS is coming up soon, it would be best if Roscomos wouldn’t have to delay that one. But in order to do that they have to find the reason for the failure and fix it.

This is the worst time for a Progress mission to fail. None of the previous Progress missions failed. And now? The first one after the Shuttle retires fails. The timing would be comical if it weren’t so serious.

Consequences for the ISS could be serious. The six person crew might have to be reduced to three people.

This is the second Russian rocket failure in a week. On 18 August, a Proton vehicle put a telecommunications satellite in the wrong orbit. In December, another Proton failure resulted in top Russian space agency officials losing their jobs.

Here's hoping that SpaceX can fill the gap - they're due to do the first delivery in November: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

  Here's hoping that SpaceX can fill the gap

this might become a little problem for the Russians. until now their cost structure and reliability put them into a very comfortable position (especially for the launch of small to middle-sized satellites).

it's not always a pleasure for western costumers to deal with the Russians in the space field, due to their (legitimate?) space arrogance.

It’s definitely legitimate arrogance. (Well, I don’t know if arrogance can ever be legitimate but if I concede that it were they are definitely legitimately arrogant.)

When SpaceX can be successful that may change but only slowly.

  [..] that may change but only slowly.

which is still a very optimistic assumption.

until now their cost structure and reliability put them into a very comfortable position

even given a lower launch cost, SpaceX has a long way to go to demonstrate similar reliability...which if thought of the right way can also affect launch costs. Sending up two slightly cheaper, more more unlreliable rockets instead of one slightly more reliable but a hair more expensive is not something many people would be willing to do.

I remember attending a presentation by Elon Musk on SpaceX a few years back (late 2007, I believe). At that point, SpaceX's future was very uncertain with their two launches failing.

I recall him describing the Proton as the most reliable vehicle ever engineered by humans.

I think that SpaceX is great, but, is there really a gap to fill, in this case? Where does this gap begin?

? The gap is in time--the time between now and when the next resupply mission will be authorized to fly. In the case of Progress, it is uncertain when that will be.

the gap is absence of competition. Monopoly situation is bad for everybody, including the monopolist itself who degrades into the state of not giving a damn f&ck about any-/everything.

Spacecraft programs run on science, not hope.

It is preposterous to think they will replace NASA on any level. It's amateur hour now.

Huh? It looks like SpaceX might be able to supply the ISS with cargo very soon. If that works people will follow not to long after that.

Sure, they are paid by NASA to do that but currently NASA is completely unable to supply the ISS with anything.

NASA is awesome at putting together science missions. SpaceX (currently) doesn’t want to do that, you can’t even compare the two in that respect. But what’s so bad about launching all your stuff with rockets from a private company?

The SpaceX engineers are certainly not amateurs.

NASA itself disagrees with you.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110824prog44p/ -- another take on the topic.

"Russian space agency says a problem with the upper stage propulsion system caused a premature shutdown and the vehicle's catastrophic failure."

I love the euphemisms that space industry uses, when they mean "the rocket exploded" (or, in this case, turned back and fallen). The most epic one is "lithobraking" :).

Also, sad news.

"uncontained fragmentation"

"Vanguard rocket undergoing rapid unplanned disassembly shortly after launch at Cape Canaveral "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_(rocket)

They also lost 3 navsats (Glonass) in December last year

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-russia-satellites-orbit....

Why leave out "Progress" from the title of the article here?

(I noticed NPR doing the same thing on the radio which told me that some Russian spaceship without, apparently, a name, was lost. Sort of as if, since it's Russian, we shouldn't care about the details.)

Thank you President Obama for saving the space shuttle program!

After all, it would be idiotic to trust another country with something as important as manned space exploration.

It is equally idiotic to cancel a spaceship program until another one is in the air. What a relief!

This has nothing to do with Obama. STS was planned for decommission in the Bush era. Blaming it on Obama is reactionary tripe.

Also, Soyuz is STILL the most reliable launch system on the planet after Delta II, and the most reliable manned system.

In addition this was a failure of a Soyuz-U, not a Soyuz-FG which is used for crew rotation. The QA process on the two is quite different, and it appears (still too early to tell, but it is likely) that this error was a QA failure.

Shuttle needed to be retired to move forward with anything else, as the program costs were too high to realistically move forward with any other development work with the current NASA budget.

Soyuz is so good that Arianespace will be launching it from their Guiana Space Center starting later this year:

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...

This is in addition to the existing Ariane 5 heavy launcher and the new Vega launcher:

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services/launch-services-o...

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