Roscosmos: An assembly error doomed our Soyuz, but we promise it won't happen again The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has completed its investigation into October’s Soyuz mishap in record time, pointing the finger of blame at problems during assembly. Mutterings emitted from the space agency earlier this week suggested that the issue was related to a sensor that detects stage separation of the booster. In …
Alexey Ovchinin is definitely in trouble for this: he had Nick Hague sitting right next to him throughout the launch yet somehow failed to notice him sabotaging the first stage of the rocket! Most likely a frank yet courteous exchange of words with Putin awaits him.
Just to get this story straight: The fault that caused a soyuz to misbehave and crew to climb to the escape pod has been identified and corrected. No BS with people blaming others or withholding information (Challenger, anybody ?), or escape routes too long and pods too far away for the nauts to gets out.
Whatever you say, the Russians have a track record nowhere near anybody else when it comes to space missions, like, 4 deaths in almost 70 years ? [have not checked] Their kit is rudimentary, but it usually does the job nicely - shit sometimes happens AND gets fixed ...
I do not like the Russian President or his Administration, but Roscosmos definitely know what they are doing!
Just to get this story straight: The fault that caused a soyuz to misbehave and crew to climb to the escape pod has been identified and corrected.
It may have been identified, but it has not been corrected. For a start, it has already happened and is therefore beyond correction. Beyond that, it's not enough to know that something was wrongly fitted; you also have to know why it was wrongly fitted. If it was accidental, can you be sure that further accidents will not occur elsewhere. And if it was sabotage - which seems at least possible - how do you know you have caught all the saboteurs?
Oh, and all that aside ,,, what "escape pod". Soyuz capsules don't have "escape pods".
It may have been identified, but it has not been corrected. For a start, it has already happened and is therefore beyond correction.
I obviously mean the manufacturing fault has been identified and procedures adhjusted, meaning any newly built soyuz will NOT have this manufacturing fault.
Soyuz capsules don't have "escape pods".
True, they landed in the crew capsule. Sorry!
As to Roscosmos security track record, read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents
Not saying accidents will not happen, just that their death toll is incredibly low, especially considering all the humans they put into orbit ...
When it comes to rockets (and aircraft), you don't compare fatalities.
You compare near-misses and vehicle losses, because vehicle losses aren't survivable.
Soyuz takes up to three people, while the Shuttle took up to seven. So you'd have to lose more than twice as many Soyuz to kill the same number of astronauts.
So given an equal death rate, you'd choose the Shuttle as you're half as likely to die.
Soyuz currently has very obvious quality problems, as there are now two that were launched in the last year with issues that should never have made it off the production line.
That is indicative of a manufacturing culture where mistakes are covered up, rather than fixed - the workers don't feel like they can say "oops, I broke it" without consequences to their livelihoods, and thus will hide that.
I work with a guy who used to be an aircraft heavy maintenance tech. We were discussing formal tool and component accountability procedures for a high quality line we are working and I asked how rivets and other fasteners in aircraft are accounted for as they are not serialized.
Tech: "They're not"
Me: ?
Tech: "You sweep and vacuum out the rivets and fasteners from wing tanks and whatever the best you can. That's why the fuel system has strainers and filters."
Me: ??
Tech: "Well, yeah, they have their limits. Thats why on your Airbus or Boeing the fuel intakes are not in the lowest part of the tank. Sometimes if the wing is gutted we will pull all the crap out of the sumps. Usually they're there forever"
Me: whimper
Tech: "To really eff things up you need a socket head floating around or similar, that's why we have accountability at that mass level. Every part, every shift"
I do love postmortems on incidents, whether techy or IT, at El Reg. Always guaranteed to bring out the best Harry Enfield style 'You don't waana do it like that from people who do every job perfectly (and if it fails it was someone else's fault). The press conference basically said the sensor got bent. It didn't say it was dropped or hammered in when it didn't fit. No one commentating (probably) has any idea what the sensor looks like and how robust it is. Or what the allowable bend might be. Maybe it was bodged, maybe it was fragile, maybe once installed it's not visible for external inspection - we don't know.
It's fair to wonder why a damageable sensor is a single point mission critical element, but not to extrapolate to systematic organisational failures on that basis. Spacecraft are designed to be light and engineering 'light enough to lift, strong enough to work' is always going to be a fine compromise.
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