ESA astronaut decelerates from 28,800kph to zero in first bumpy landing The crew of the International Space Station is down to three after European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitski landed rather uncomfortably in the wilds of Kazakhstan. The duo departed the ISS in their Soyuz capsule at 0347 PDT (1037 UTC) and rotated 180 degrees to fire the engines in …
From the report: "...Explosive bolts shot off extraneous hardware, such as main engines and solar panels..."
I'd like to know a considerable amount more about this. Hopefully the discarded bits were shot off in such a way that they quickly descend into a path that results in them burning up in the atmosphere.
There's probably some very good engineering reasons for throwing away 'solar panels' and 'main engines' rather than re-using them, but I'm also thinking about the minor debris, etc. created by 'explosive bolts'. We repeatedly read about how bits-and-pieces moving at ~17000mph can completely ruin an astronaut's day, but on the face of it this is just putting more junk into an already junked-up near-space region.
Ok, so wasting any stuff like this is something of a bugbear for me. I'd like to think of some organisation sending up 'collector' craft (a whacking great magnet? :) ) to gather up loads of this junk, and bring it back down in one piece, so it might possibly be refurbished and re-used.
Steptoe & Son in Spaaaace!
Slight side issue, something I've not ben able to track down on 't internet... wasn't there an incident back in the late 60s/early 70s where the Chinese sent a load of 'space needles' up for some reason? Presumably those things are still whirling around up there...
The Soyuz has done its re-entry burn and is on the way down before it dumps the orbital and service modules so nothing gets to stay in orbit.
You're conflating two incidents in your last paragraph, the Chinese tested an anti-satellite weapon which resulted in a bunch of debris, and the Americans launched a load of copper needles in the 60s to see if they could create a reflective layer for long distance radio comms.
all the dumped stuff had to be taken up in the first place, if it causes a problem during landing then why not strip it up there and as additional shielding/building materials.
Ex1. Solar panels for example, surely there is no such thing as too much energy or even just not having to take more on some later mission when some is already availible for the phase of the mission that needs solar panels i.e. once it is actually in space. If it was me I would standardise on the parts so they could be easily assembled into additional storage space with the existing solar panels on the outside ready incase of failure of the ISS ones and also grows the ISS as countries use it.
Ex2. If the solar panels on the ISS fail then without spares/recycled parts availible it means a whole new trip, off schedule to boot which also makes it more expensive. I understand the reluctance in trusting used parts but if you have an abundance of spares then odds are that you will have enough to get the job done.
All this stuff costs money to make and move into orbit, cutting down on unnecessary starting weight also reduces the cost of space flight so why not plan ahead on the assumption that there will be continous flights rather than just when they can swing it. Is there some problem in commitment here?
If you remove the solar panels from a Soyuz before it leave ISS where does the Soyuz get power for the journey back to Earth?
Adding batteries adds mass and a requires a redesign. Most likely the batteries would be jettisoned instead of the panels so it isn't like we are reducing what gets thrown away. What we've done is made Russia rockets more complex to only deliver one panel set per launch. Soyuz panels aren't even a drop in replacement for anything on ISS. We'd need to launch hardware so the panels could be connected. If having replacement solar panels on station was a priority it would make far more sense to send up appropriate panels as cargo.
Always keep in mind it costs money to get material into space. The parts still attached while Soyuz is docked with ISS are still necessary to return to Earth. Unnecessary parts would have been discarded earlier in the mission.
"If you remove the solar panels from a Soyuz before it leave ISS where does the Soyuz get power for the journey back to Earth?" do you have any evidence to back this up? baring in mind that this is a powered landing and they get rid of the solar cells before using the heat shield.
"Always keep in mind it costs money to get material into space". This was the point, if it is worth taking up but not carrying down why not plan to leave it up there where it can be reused.
I can understand being "wasteful" during an emergency to save lives and if this landing was a proof to show that this system is reliable under extreme conditions then fair enough. However as was stated this grew from the soviet need to avoid sea based landings, something that surely is no longer an issue.
> do you have any evidence to back this up
Engineering is not politics.
Those panels are needed in case the Soyuz capsule does a few more orbits after leaving the ISS (or even if it doesn't go there in the first place). They are likely even parts of the waste heat radiation system. The on-board batteries are likely to run down a bit quickly, that's just how it was designed. Gemini didn't have any panels, I guess the US had chemical batteries large enough for the mission.
> if this landing was a proof to show that this system is reliable under extreme conditions then fair enough
No, looks like a dog-standard landing.
> However as was stated this grew from the soviet need to avoid sea based landings, something that surely is no longer an issue.
Absolutely not. Well, one could splashdown in the Aral sea, but ths demands waterproofing and floatatingproofing the whole system, a difficult job. Plus change the logistics of retrieval.
Americans like water, the Orion is foreseen to perform splashdowns. Crazy.
It was my understanding that the Americans chose water landings because they didn't have large enough tracts of land where nobody lived, unlike Russia which is enormous[Citation needed].
This means that US knowledge is on water landings and Russian knowledge is on ground landings. Long may this difference remain.
It was my understanding that the Americans chose water landings because they didn't have large enough tracts of land where nobody lived, unlike Russia which is enormous[Citation needed].
I don't claim to know why the splashdown was chosen as the preferred method by the US space program (there are trade-offs for each method), but it certainly has nothing to do with available land. Though smaller and more densely populated than Russia, the US has many areas with sparse population.
Not all models of Soyuz have included solar panels, and of course, even the ones that do carry batteries to provide power during the half of the orbit where the spacecraft is in the earth's shadow.
Soyuz can make water landings, although the only time it has done so, the capsule sank. Fortunately spacecraft make passably good submarines and the crew were recovered safely.
> soviet need to avoid sea based landings
I am led to believe (from popular science programmes and old Russian documentaries) that the only thing that Soyuz absolutely needs in order to land is some sort of Earth-like planet to land onto, the thing being for the rest equipped to handle any sort of condition, from jungle to desert to Arctic conditions, on land or water.
The article is written as if this was some sort of special landing? As far as I am aware (from the aforementioned sources) all Soyuz travel (up- or downwards) is character-building.
Standard KSP clean skies practice. Dump bits only when suborbital flight.
The reduced mass is useful because it reduces the heat shield requirement on the capsule, which reduces that mass, and therefore launch cost etc.
None of those bits dumped had heat shields, so they will tend to burn up very quickly.
@Sean o' bhaile na gleann: "I'd like to know a considerable amount more about this. Hopefully the discarded bits were shot off in such a way that they quickly descend into a path that results in them burning up in the atmosphere."
Needless to say, smarter men and women than you are responsible for getting this procedure right.
You know the saying: "You don't shit in your own backyard."...
If they did they could probably stand up and walk out of the capsule.
I can't help reading about "a new record for the amount of scientific work done " and think "Imagine that. And without the assistance of a PFY either."
My coat. It's a thick one because landing on the steppe can be chilly.
I'm sure it's an optical illusion I don't understand but, at around 2' 18" into the video a helicopter flies behind the parachute and is approximately the same size as the parachute.
As the parachute is closer to the camera, doesn't this imply that it is smaller than the length of the helicopter?
Is this something to do with extreme telephoto lenses?
First of all, telephoto lenses reduce or 'flatten' perspective whereas wide-angles lenses emphasise it.
Because the distance between the helicopter and the parachute is relatively small, but the distance between both of them and the camera is relatively large, from the camera's point of view both the parachute and the helicopter are more or less at the same distance.
The helicopter in the background is an Mi-8, the fuselage of which is 18.17 m long, and with an area of 1000 m2, when you subtract about 1/3 of the diameter of the parachute to allow for its curvature, you get an approximate effective width for the canopy of ~24 m. If you actually freeze the video and measure the width of the canopy and the length of the Mi-8 you'll find that the Mi-8 is smaller by about the right amount.
"First of all, telephoto lenses reduce or 'flatten' perspective whereas wide-angles lenses emphasise it."
Perspective is a function of the point of view - as you go on to correctly explain - and nothing to do with focal length. You could take the same picture from the same vantage point with a wide angle and telephoto lens, and both would show the same perspective and relative sizes of the objects in view.
"Perspective is a function of the point of view"
Yes, you're absolutely correct; the angle of view of a lens doesn't change perspective.
In retrospect, perhaps I should have said that telephoto lenses de-emphasise perspective instead of 'reduce or flatten' it, which may be interpreted as changing perspective.
The Soyuz landed in a depression so you didn't even get to see the rocket firing. Very disappointing. 5 minutes of boring parachute and then a bit of smoke/debris cloud.
You can see a much better Soyuz landing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo where you also have to wait around 5 minutes for the touchdown, but those 5 minutes are filled with interesting footage and music.
BTW, I still think Hadfield somewhat resembles the Montgomery Scott of the later Star Trek films (when he had a moustache).
That would have not happened but in an 'emergency' situation. IIRC, Russian offered 'help' during the Apollo 13 emergency, they would have been happy to put their hands on an Apollo command module.
While the US Navy and its allies had a worldwide presence, the Russian fleet was far smaller, and with less available harbours.
Landing inside Russia had also the benefit nobody else could monitor a landing, nor try to recover a capsule if anything went wrong. Remember that was the era when whole cities didn't appear on maps, and were named with numbers.
"That would have not happened but in an 'emergency' situation."
One needs to remember the time period, and the fact that in the days of Vostock, Voshkod and the earliest Soyuz shots, the Americans were playing catch-up, the people were paranoid and there was the usual overblown speculation from the engineering hoi-poloi speculating on the advanced science the Soviets were using (See: Popular Mechanic & the Soviet Atomic Powered Bomber of the 1950s etc)
I don't want to antagonize you, and the US has been my home for most of my life now, but I think you are kidding yourself when you assert the US wouldn't have salivated over a Soyuz bobbing around near one of their fleets. I'm not saying an incident would have been provoked, but a close-up examination of the craft would have been a top priority. It would be interesting to know which NATO aircraft carriers were sailing and where they sailed each time a Soviet manned mission was in progress.
Given the reaction typically afforded Soviet citizens who had unsupervised contact with The West, the Cosmonauts wouldn't have welcomed "rescue" anyway in all likelihood. Besides, they were and are patriots too, and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice gulag or no gulag.
If you look up the Apollo/Soyuz mission write-ups, you'll find that the Astros report being astounded at how primitive the tech the Cosmos had to live with was once the hatch to the adaptor module was popped. That was the true wonder of the mission happening at all - that each side was willing to let the other have a close up look, warts 'n' all.
Have a digibeer. Would that it could be real, and an evening spent discussing the golden age of the space race in some mutually agreeable hostelry.
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Aren't we getting a bit too blasé about all this?
At present it's still the ultimate trip a human can make and it's still one for which you won't get travel insurance at a sensible price because of the risk (although we're getting a LOT better at it). In terms of access to space we've barely passed the equivalent of the brothers Wright in aeroplane flight..
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