Re: Buran Website Finds So Far



Peter Stickney wrote:

More to the point, rather than just quoting the number of fatalities,
it should be noted that crew losses in each accident are 100%. The
only reason that Soyuz hasn't killed more people is that it doesn't
carry more people.



It's also a tough SOB, it will get you down alive in some pretty severe situations, like starting your reentry backwards, rolling down a mountainside, splashing down in a frozen lake, getting dragged along the ground by your parachute in high winds, or having your landing rockets fail- but you may end up have broken limbs or your teeth knocked out (like what happened on Soyuz 5). Soyuz has a backup manual alignment system, a backup retrosystem, and backup parachute system, which shows that the Russians are actually planing for things not to work right to some extent. It also has a launch escape system, which Challenger could have used. With the Shuttle one gets the feeling that either everything works very nearly optimally, or it's all over. I'd hate to think what would happen if it hit the atmosphere tail end first, or tried a ballistic reentry profile.

Pat
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