Russian rocket doesn't make orbit

[Brian Lohnes]

This is an amazingly creepy story of a Russian dude who launched off pretty much knowing he was dead meat. They even have audio of him screaming and cursing out the engineers who sent him to his death.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?ft=1&f=1026

[BKBridges]

Big rockets are a technological Marvel...the shuttle was way over the top. The biggest problem is the power to weight ratio required to do anything useful. It leaves the safety margins in the dust as it were. Something goes wrong and things can get out of hand quickly. We used to have some fun with that at the place I used to work...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WelGeko_0ls
We blew up a lot more than we sucessfully launched...
BKB

[1970camaroRS]

The shuttle program is an interesting story. The original concept was to have a vehicle capable of multiple launches and recoveries in a short period of time (some even thought two or more in a day was possible). The only payload would be 6 to 8 people. The most promising designs was Boeing's Dyna-Soar. It was made of titanium and inconel and was only big enough to haul passengers. It would sit on top of a conventional rocket and glide to earth using the heat properties of the metals to absorb the reentry heat. No tiles to replace after every reentry (the biggest time consumer in the shuttle program). The DOD then got a hold of the concept and demanded a payload bay be added. This required many changes like adding more powerful engines that required a massive ammount of fuel. That required the huge external fuel tank. The drag and extra weight from that require additional heavy lift boosters just to carry the tank. The larger shuttle also created more heat as it entered the atmosphere and that required sacrifical tiles. In the end, the shuttle was doomed to ever be an efficient means to put men in space. It, however, was exactly what the DOD needed and NASA didn't need. So, NASA was stuck with it.

On an interesting note, the Soviet shuttle, the Beran, did get off the ground. It flew once on an automated unmanned orbit and was sucessfully launched and recovered just as our shuttle was. The AN-225 was built to shuttle it, piggy-back style just as our modified 747 does. However, the Soviet's didn't run out of money yet when it was decided that the large payload carrying shuttle was not all it was promised and they cancelled the program before wasting any more time and money. They hung their hats on the Soyuz.

You will notice in the article pointed out by Brian that the Soyuz 1 was launched with terrible results in 1967. It is still flying today having been updated over the decades, but the current design is essentially older than my 41 year old Camaro. And it is currently the only thing capable of carrying man into space. Remember, we once sent men to the moon often enough people got bored of how routine it seemed. My, how we have fallen.

[SuperBuickGuy]

This is an amazingly creepy story of a Russian dude who launched off pretty much knowing he was dead meat. They even have audio of him screaming and cursing out the engineers who sent him to his death.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/20...ge?ft=1&f=1026

You know there is audio of the Columbia and Challenger disasters that hasn't, and probably never, will be released (rightly so, IMO)... The one that is most freaky is the Mercury disaster where they got cooked inside the capsule (what keeps heat out, also keeps heat in). At least with Gemini it happened so fast that their brains couldn't have processed the information.

There is concern that NASA got the idea about shuttles from Moonraker (the book, not the movie with Mr. Codpiece Moore)

bored? Apollo 13 was not boring - true, by Apollo 17 the nation wasn't paying much attention - but that same design is still in use.

[1970camaroRS]

You know there is audio of the Columbia and Challenger disasters that hasn't, and probably never, will be released (rightly so, IMO)... The one that is most freaky is the Mercury disaster where they got cooked inside the capsule (what keeps heat out, also keeps heat in). At least with Gemini it happened so fast that their brains couldn't have processed the information.

There is concern that NASA got the idea about shuttles from Moonraker (the book, not the movie with Mr. Codpiece Moore)

bored? Apollo 13 was not boring - true, by Apollo 17 the nation wasn't paying much attention - but that same design is still in use.

Gemini and Mercury never had any fatal accidents. Apollo 1 had a fire during training. We were good after that until Challenger.

This quote also gives the percentages asked for earlier about safety per flight. Russians win.
"Twenty-two have died while in a spacecraft: three on Apollo 1, one on Soyuz 1, one on X-15-3, three on Soyuz 11, seven on Challenger, and seven on Columbia. By space program, 18 NASA astronauts (4.1%) and four Russian cosmonauts (0.9% of all the people launched) died while in a spacecraft."

What same design? Apollo's Saturn V? No, it's not. It was last used to launch Skylab in 1973.

[pdub]

Just curious, what is the ratio in manned Space flights?

I know we (the US) have killed 17 astronauts - 14 on shuttles (2 x 7) and 3 on the ground (the Apollo 1 fire). From all I could find on the net, the Russians have killed 8 in flight, although the site I found was slightly conflicting in those details. And there's no end to how many potential astronauts were killed in Corvettes during the Mercury program. A dealer in Cocoa Beach was GIVING the astronauts Corvettes for the publicity. Remember the astronauts were on the cover of Life magazine, etc. Add to that how many were killed in trainer jets, etc.

Those stats are padded by the fact that we built a delivery system that could kill seven at a time, and the Russians have never been able to orbit more than three.

So, more on stats, safe passenger miles, is what makes commercial airline flight the safest means of transportation. If you put 300 passengers on a jumbo jet and fly it 3000 miles, that's 900,000 safe miles according to the calculators. So it's no wonder air flight is safer.

So, if you put 7 astronauts on a shuttle and send them 3 miilion miles on a long mission, that's 21 million safe passenger miles.

No wonder cars are so dangerous by comparison as a means of transportation..

[SuperBuickGuy]

PW - you missed one. You had the Mercury rocket that exploded on the pad and killed a couple astronauts (think that was 2); but you also had the Gemini one where they got inside and had an electrical fire while waiting to take off (3 in that one) - and they couldn't get the astronauts out in time.

The trivia I don't know - I've heard conflicting reports about whether or not the Soviets lost an astronaut in space (ala Major Tom).

[1970camaroRS]

PW - you missed one. You had the Mercury rocket that exploded on the pad and killed a couple astronauts (think that was 2); but you also had the Gemini one where they got inside and had an electrical fire while waiting to take off (3 in that one) - and they couldn't get the astronauts out in time.

The trivia I don't know - I've heard conflicting reports about whether or not the Soviets lost an astronaut in space (ala Major Tom).

Mercury and Gemini never had any accidents that killed anyone. They had failures in unmanned launches, but that's it. Apollo 1 had the electrical fire that killed the 3 man crew.
Mercury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...manned_flights
Gemini: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...serial_numbers

The Soviets very well may have lost many Cosmonauts over the years, but they aren't talking and likely destroyed any evidence related to failure. Remember, glory of the union was paramount. Here's a list of possible lost Cosmonauts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts

And to clear up any confusion, here's a list of major space accidents resulting in death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._and_incidents

Also, if we include the Soviet R-16 rocket accident that killed 100+, including the head of their space program, then the statistics swing wildly in favor of NASA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

[SuperBuickGuy]

sure, anyone can wiki it.... I'm just too lazy - which one am I thinking about that exploded on the pad? I've seen pictures of the fire one - but from the outside there wasn't a lot to see... there was one that went up just a bit and landed on itself to a spectacular explosion (unless, of course you were the 2 meat sacks inside then your day, and those you were expecting after, pretty much sucked)

also, we start including collateral damage, we'd have to add those Corvette crash-test dummies from the early 60s

have you seen pictures of that explosion that killed the 100+? it's pretty spectacular because it wasn't "people killed in bunker", it was people hanging around the rocket while they were fueling it.... this world is a hard place to live in and be dumb.

[pdub]

sure, anyone can wiki it.... I'm just too lazy - which one am I thinking about that exploded on the pad? I've seen pictures of the fire one - but from the outside there wasn't a lot to see... there was one that went up just a bit and landed on itself to a spectacular explosion (unless, of course you were the 2 meat sacks inside then your day, and those you were expecting after, pretty much sucked)

also, we start including collateral damage, we'd have to add those Corvette crash-test dummies from the early 60s

have you seen pictures of that explosion that killed the 100+? it's pretty spectacular because it wasn't "people killed in bunker", it was people hanging around the rocket while they were fueling it.... this world is a hard place to live in and be dumb.

Well, when you look at the Soviets.....and if you want to count that... yeah, that rocket explosion was horrendous. Lots of non-technical people gathered around the totally fueled rocket when the second stage ignited due to a series of...yeah, really dumb mistakes. The second stage quickly ignited all the fuel in the first stage, and ..... well, whoomph. Toasted dignitaries.

No disrespect to the deceased anytime, but that was just....well, we didn't make any mistakes like that on such an awful scale.

Heck, who knows how many people the Russians killed in their space program? Or even still? I'm not real sure the Cold War is over. It's llike, welll.....we don't even know.

[1970camaroRS]

sure, anyone can wiki it.... I'm just too lazy - which one am I thinking about that exploded on the pad? I've seen pictures of the fire one - but from the outside there wasn't a lot to see... there was one that went up just a bit and landed on itself to a spectacular explosion (unless, of course you were the 2 meat sacks inside then your day, and those you were expecting after, pretty much sucked)

also, we start including collateral damage, we'd have to add those Corvette crash-test dummies from the early 60s

have you seen pictures of that explosion that killed the 100+? it's pretty spectacular because it wasn't "people killed in bunker", it was people hanging around the rocket while they were fueling it.... this world is a hard place to live in and be dumb.

The sad thing is I didn't have to wiki it, I already know all that junk. I'm an Aviation historian and photographer. I write for a few magazines in my spare time. I was just including the wikis to help clear things up.

The Mercury program, the race to put a man in space, had a very, very rough start. In fact, the odds of Alan Shepard surviving his flight were very slim given the track record before his flight.

And the rocket(s) that failed in spectacular fashion? That would be the Vanguard program, the race to orbit a satellite. I will have to copy and paste from Wiki, because this is a long, sad list.

Vanguard TV3 - December 6, 1957 - Failed to orbit 1.36 kg (3 lb) satellite
Vanguard TV3 Backup - February 5, 1958 - Failed to orbit 1.36 kg (3 lb) satellite
Vanguard 1 - March 17, 1958 - Orbited 1.47 kg (3.25 lb) satellite
Vanguard TV5 - April 28, 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg (22 lb) satellite
Vanguard SLV 1 - May 27, 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg (22 lb) satellite
Vanguard SLV 2 - June 26, 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg (22 lb) satellite
Vanguard SLV 3 - September 26, 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg (22 lb) satellite
Vanguard 2 - February 17, 1959 - Orbited 10.8 kg (23.7 lb) satellite
Vanguard SLV 5 - April 13, 1959 - Failed to orbit 10.3 kg (22 lb 11 oz) satellite
Vanguard SLV 6 - June 22, 1959 - Failed to orbit 10.3 kg (22 lb 11 oz) satellite
Vanguard 3 - September 18, 1959 - Orbited 22.7 kg (50 lb) satellite

All that died were satellites. You can see a whole bunch of awesome videos here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um55bIf1nAI&feature=related

[pdub]

Camaro, I used to be a space buff too, not at all anymore.

I would contend that Glenn took a much greater risk on the Atlas rocket than Shepherd and Grissom did riding the Redstone. That Atlas thing just might blow up. At the time, I don't think any of America knew the drama behind it.

It was all propoganda and hoopla. That Atlas rocket might just blow up, but John Glenn sat on it. Maybe stupid, maybe a hero, but I don't think I would have done that. Die or famous. Or famous for dying. Well, I'm older now, so I'm a whole lot more conservative in my decisions now than I was when I was young. John Glenn risked his life to an extreme when he rode that particular rocket. So much that I think he wanted fame or death. Because that's what was at stake.