Soyuz program makes history

[robkelk]

The first-ever ballistic descent of a crewed capsule took place today, when the second-stage booster of the launch rocket suffered an emergency shutdown. Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos and Nick Hague of NASA were aboard; both survived the descent and are reported as being in good condition.

AP: 2 astronauts safe after Soyuz forced to make emergency landing

[Bob Schroeck]

So that's what I heard a fragment of on the radio this morning. Wow.

Thanks for posting that, Rob.

[Dartz]

A succesful failure, so.

If that'd been a Vatican space program, neither astronaut or cosmonaut would've survived.

Either way, there's something a little bit rotten with the Russian space program. It's hard to escape the sense that quality control is starting to go out the window - either because of management growing fat on its laurels, or a workforce too afraid to report any issues that occur in production in case they get utterly shat on by a fat management desperate to scapegoat someone to hide their own ineptitude.

[robkelk]

Yeah. Two missions in the same year, in a program that's supposedly using mature technology. Something's wrong there.

[Epsilon]

It's probably just old technology, much like the space shuttles which NASA phased out because they were too dangerous or expensive.

[Black Aeronaut]

Just because technology is old doesn't mean it's dangerous. It's how its used that makes it dangerous.

As mentioned before, the Soyuz system is a mature one - its well understood and robust. There are no undocumented features, and thus far there seems to have been no gremlins left in the design.

This, more likely than not, was a manufacturing defect - one in a process where quality assurance program should not have failed because they know damn well what a defect will do. We just saw it happen.

[Norgarth]

Epsilon may have meant old as in 'they've been reusing that piece of equpment for 20 years and it's wearing out'

[robkelk]

Possibly... but the Soyuz rockets are single-use, IIRC.

[Epsilon]

Possibly... but the Soyuz rockets are single-use, IIRC.

Yes, but is the factory single use? Wear and tear doesn't just happen to the final product.

[Black Aeronaut]

Possibly... but the Soyuz rockets are single-use, IIRC.

Yes, but is the factory single use? Wear and tear doesn't just happen to the final product.

Generally, a good QA program renders that a moot point as the finished product is that which is inspected.