Re: DO we really need a new manned launcher?
From: Andrew Gray (andrew.gray_at_dunelm.org.uk)
Date: 08/09/04
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Date: 9 Aug 2004 21:39:52 GMT
On 2004-08-09, Peter Stickney <peter@adelphia.net> wrote:
> In article <4119b338.28928972@supernews.seanet.com>,
> fairwater@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) writes:
>> hallerb@aol.com (bob haller) wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>No shortage of problems but since it didn't kill anyone (recently) it's
>>>>>>"time tested." It's that type of superficial analysis based on symptoms
>>>
>>>Ahh crew deaths were early on. shuttles tend to have problems many years after
>>>design first flew. appears russia understands and learned from earlier
>>>mistakes.
>>
>> No, the Soyuz has had major problems across it's entire operational
>> lifetime.
>>
>>>even with a major malfunction the crew tends to survive, for instance that out
>>>of control landing, crew roughed up but survived....
>>
>> 'Tends to survive' is not the same as 'will always survive'. There
>> have been at least three accidents where the tendency was to kill the
>> crew, and they escaped only by the grace of $DIETY. (The recent out
>> of control landing is not on that short list.)
>
> It's probably worth pointing out that teh Suyuz has fewer flight, but
> as many accidents that have killed the entire crew as the Shuttle.
>
> (That's not being disingenous. The only reason that the Soyuz hasn't
> killed more people is becasuse it doesn't carry many people. So far,
> accidents in space that kill one crewmwmber have killed _all_
> crewmwmbers, and that doesn't look likely to change)
All accidents in a free-flying spacecraft are likely to kill all crew,
I'll agree with you that much. When it gets to inside larger objects, or
on EVAs, I wouldn't put money on a failure mode killing all
occupants/crew/other-words.
It's been close, before - some late incidents on Mir came close to
killing only portions of the crew, if memory serves (the glycol blob,
for example), and most Apollo flights were resplendent with failure
modes that could have killed two-thirds of the crew[1]. The very first
EVA came close to killing Leonov, I seem to recall. Luckily...
[1] Which brings a thought to mind. In a failure mode where the LM is
stranded on the surface, the CSM would return home solo. Of course, this
would likely be quite a bit later than they would otherwise have done...
The ELCSS et al likely wouldn't have a problem with this, but were there
other CSM systems which would only have a certain fixed lifespan? IOW...
what would the constraining factor be on a CSM's life?
-- -Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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