NASA Astronaut Details Fall To Earth After Failed Soyuz Launch (cnet.com) 80
After surviving an aborted launch to the ISS, NASA astronaut Nick Hague details his fall to Earth and shares what it was like inside the capsule. CNET reports: In his first interviews since surviving the largely uncontrolled "ballistic descent" back to Earth that followed, Hague told reporters on Tuesday that the launch felt normal for the first two minutes but that it became clear "something was wrong pretty quick." "Your training really takes over," Hague said, adding that he and [Russian Cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin] had practiced what to do in case of just such a launch-abort scenario. Hague also credited years of flight training, going back to his days as a U.S. Air Force pilot.
The escape procedure has been compared to being launched sideways out of a shotgun -- but while the shotgun is rocketing upward. Hague described the side-to-side shaking inside the capsule as "fairly aggressive but fleeting." "I expected my first trip to space to be memorable," he said. "I didn't expect it to be quite this memorable." Because of the combination of rocket-fueled ascent and the sudden sideways escape maneuver, the crew experienced a higher level of g-forces than during a normal flight. Once the Soyuz reached the top of its arc and began to descend, Hague said, what followed was really the same as a normal Soyuz landing, but with one major difference: The pair couldn't be certain where they were. "My eyes were looking out the window trying to gauge where we were going to land." Luckily, the capsule deployed its parachutes and landed on smooth, flat terrain where Hague and Ovchinin were met by rescue helicopters and whisked off for medical evaluations.
The escape procedure has been compared to being launched sideways out of a shotgun -- but while the shotgun is rocketing upward. Hague described the side-to-side shaking inside the capsule as "fairly aggressive but fleeting." "I expected my first trip to space to be memorable," he said. "I didn't expect it to be quite this memorable." Because of the combination of rocket-fueled ascent and the sudden sideways escape maneuver, the crew experienced a higher level of g-forces than during a normal flight. Once the Soyuz reached the top of its arc and began to descend, Hague said, what followed was really the same as a normal Soyuz landing, but with one major difference: The pair couldn't be certain where they were. "My eyes were looking out the window trying to gauge where we were going to land." Luckily, the capsule deployed its parachutes and landed on smooth, flat terrain where Hague and Ovchinin were met by rescue helicopters and whisked off for medical evaluations.
Details Fall (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally parsed that as "astronaut's documentation falls to the ground, is found by bystander".
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I totally parsed that as "astronaut's documentation falls to the ground, is found by bystander".
Me too. I thought this was an entirely new kind of data breach!
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Came here with the same thought. Care should be taken to be aware of words that can be both nouns and verbs, especially when used in headline style with articles and prepositions missing. (Eg., "A NASA astronaut details his fall to Earth..." would be readable.)
The worst headline I ever saw was "QUAKE'S RUINS YIELD LIVES". The all-caps made the apostrophe disappear so it looked like "quakes", and EVERY WORD in that headline could be a noun or a verb. It literally took me 4 or 5 tries to parse it.
Happened to me also (Score:2)
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Same! ...
That line did not even make sense after reading it 4 or more times
We're on an express elevator to hell (Score:3)
They're lucky (Score:5, Interesting)
QA has deteriorated to the point where Soyuz could fail like this. That means further errors in construction were possible.
However, the US system had no real escape after launch. The shuttle scrapped its after-launch escape system to satisfy Congressional budget constraints and Apollo was very limited.
Both had superb launch-site escape systems, from rockets that could rip the command module clear for Apollo to zip wires for the Shuttle.
Failure may not be an option, but it is a possibility and it's often cheaper to replace a crew than to build correctly.
Re:They're lucky (Score:5, Informative)
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QA is deteriorating everywhere like softwares. :(
but while the shotgun is rocketing upward. (Score:1)
"... but while the shotgun is rocketing upward"
you mean the projectile..right?
the shotgun - the thing your holding that shoots the projectile....essentially goes nowhere.
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The shotgun would be moving upward, while the projectile is ejected to the side.
For the launch: The rocket is moving upward, the Soyus with the astronauts is ejected to the side.
This should not be viewed as a failure (Score:5, Insightful)
This should not be viewed as a failure, but as a great achievement. Correctly designed and functioning safety systems and protocols saved human life. This is infinitely more important than any space mission.
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Already +5 Insightful.
Survival during launch is incredible. Has this ever happened before?
The Google fails my search attempts, only showing complete failures...
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Soyuz launch aborts [wikipedia.org].
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Thanks, so this was the 2nd manned abort. That is incredible.
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Re:This should not be viewed as a failure (Score:4, Funny)
Survival during launch is incredible. Has this ever happened before?
It actually happens most of the time.
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Failure to use the word failure is my failure...
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This should not be viewed as a failure, but as a great achievement. Correctly designed and functioning safety systems and protocols saved human life. This is infinitely more important than any space mission.
It should be viewed as a failure. From failures you can learn and improve.
Also, the mission goal was not achieved, so clearly a failure.
A great success for the safety systems though.
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This should not be viewed as a failure, but as a great achievement. Correctly designed and functioning safety systems and protocols saved human life. This is infinitely more important than any space mission.
It is a success of the escape system, but a massive failure for the mission. Running your car into a tree is still a failure even if the airbag saves your life.
This was not a failure, Challenger was a failure (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the Russian safety mechanisms kicked in and let them both return safely to earth is nothing short of an engineering miracle.
Compare to the fate of the Challenger launch, and then make up your mind which one was a failure, and which one was a successfully aborted launch.
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Correct: Inflight breakup under aerodynamic forces, not an explosion (although fuel burst into flame after the breakup).
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Re:Oh BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
Had the Soyuz rocket exploded, which is what happened with Challenger, NO "safety mechanisms" would've helped and they would have died in the same manner.
By impacting water at 200 g after they survived the explosion but had no way to safely get out during the subsequent fall? [wikipedia.org]
It's widely assumed that most—possibly all—of the Challenger crew not only survived the breakup of the orbiter (which, incidentally, was due to aerodynamic issues following the explosion, rather than the explosion itself), but were, in fact, conscious for at least part of the fall. After all, the crew cabin was intact after the breakup, the estimated g-forces involved in the breakup likely weren't sufficient to cause major injury, there weren't signs of catastrophic decompression in the cabin, multiple air packs had been manually activated and showed usage consistent with the amount of time they were falling, and manually-operated controls that would have been relevant to re-establishing power in the event of an emergency had been toggled to non-launch positions.
So, actually, safety mechanisms might have saved Challenger's crew, though those mechanisms would have come at a cost beyond just the money involved, such as needing to reduce crew sizes rather substantially in order to make room for the safety mechanisms.
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They would have had to build an F-111 or B-58 style ejection pod with ablative heat shielding. Which would have weighed too much.
That said. I understand the seven crew was basically for propaganda. They never needed that many crew, for any mission.
A crew of 4 or 5 in a survivable pod would have been a near complete redesign.
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You do realize ejection seats aren't the only way to save the crew, right? For example, there was this Soyuz' launch a few days ago...
Whether you realize it or not, your entire first post is predicated on the false belief that Challenger's crew capsule didn't survive the explosion. It did. And because the crew cabin survived the explosion (and the crew died later on in a different manner than you thought), there's no reason to believe that the Soyuz' approach of using parachutes and heat shielding on the ca
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This reminds me (Score:5, Insightful)
on how reliable as a whole Soyuz system is. The successful healthy recovery of astronaut and cosmonaut when they literally fell from space, without any propelling cushion one would expect more cheer in the crowd. But no, since it is made by evil Soviet and Russian governments, let's just ignore the fact that this is one of the most astonishing events of the international space program in years.
Re: This reminds me (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes,
Because training astronauts is expensive. It's not a monkey in there.
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If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.
Chuck Yeager
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Pretty sure Chuck was repeating an OLD pilot line.
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Yes.
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It's not astonishing because the escape system has been designed that way for many decades. It's good Soviet engineering, not new innovation. Unfortunately Russia's space program has failed to add anything significant to the work of their predecessor state.
A parachute (Score:2)
I do not need an "inflight entertainment", I read a book usually, or an ultra modern transformer-armchair, or any other similar frills. I would like however to arrive to a destination in one piece, knowing that if there is a failure, someone thought of a plan B.
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The system is actually not too expensive, because a parachute is not an expensive technology. I wonder why there is still not such a system on passenger planes? I do not need an "inflight entertainment", I read a book usually, or an ultra modern transformer-armchair, or any other similar frills. I would like however to arrive to a destination in one piece, knowing that if there is a failure, someone thought of a plan B.
Systems like this are available on small planes, such as Cessnas [wikipedia.org]. It's a little more involved than just a parachute, you need a rocket to deploy the parachute, and all the controls to operate it without an accidental discharge or a failure to deploy.
They work fine on small propeller planes since they are lightweight and travel at slow speeds. For a 737-size plane, the weight would be too heavy and the plane travels too fast. Engineering the passenger compartment to be able to jettison would add a ton
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where parachute may help is if the aircraft is cripp.ed but flyable (like say all engine failure and gliding); so it can coast say 1000 ft above land/water and passengers can jump off. Even here crashlanding and staying ins
Iâ(TM)m Just Glad (Score:2)
Space Flight Is Not Routine (Score:1)