Launch of unmanned Russian supply ship fails
An unmanned Russian supply spaceship bound for the International Space Station has failed to reach its planned orbit, prompting concerns over its impact on the activities in space.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, says the spacecraft Progress was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10 pm local time on Wednesday. It was carrying more than 2.6 ton load of food, water and equipment for the Space Station.
But the agency says 5 minutes 25 seconds after liftoff, the spacecraft strayed from orbit because of a problem in its third engine. Some of its debris is believed to have crashed in eastern Siberia.
It is not thought that the failure will have any immediate impact on the activities of the 6 astronauts currently on board the space station since they still have enough supplies for more than 2 months.
But there is concern over the longer-term impact on space activities since the Russian spacecraft is the only means of transportation to and from the space station after the US space shuttle was decommissioned last month.
A change of crewmembers is scheduled for September and the planned return of the Japanese astronaut in November could be affected if there is a prolonged investigation into the cause of the accident.
Thursday, August 25, 2011 07:17 +0900 (JST)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_06.html
This is part of why I’m so excited about SpaceX. They’re doing a test flight to the ISS at the end of November. It was supposed to be a test-only with no real payload, but it may offer an opportunity if there’s something vital needed to fill in a gap.
Good To know. I hate that we rely on others to do our own missions.
I think (hope!) the failure of the Russian Progress supply mission will boost the commercial companies’ (like Space-X) building of vehicles into high gear. This could start a new “space race” for who gets NASA contracts to do supply runs/Astronaut swaps. Space-X seems to be ahead of the game right now. I’m really excited about their November test launch to the ISS. I’m still hoping that there will be more than one company to have viable vehicles to go to low Earth orbit…that way we have back-up options when something fails…and something always fails…eventually.
There is also this Orbital Science Corp’s Cygnus spacecraft in development as well. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/news/cygnus-arrives.html
~Shooter Out
True, Cygnus is a thing, but it’s mostly a paper-spacecraft right now. Even if they get it flying, Orbital Science has gradually turned into an ‘olde aerospace’ company (ala Lockmart & Boeing) over the past couple decades and can’t seem to innovate the way they used to.
When they entered the field with their MD-80 launched Pegasus system, everyone was blown away. But they seem to have pretty much fallen back on a business method that involves using surplus boosters to expensively launch payloads with a nominal upper stage. I prefer SpaceX and put my money behind them because they’ve got an expandable booster configuration (check out the Falcon 9 heavy, directly derivative of the currently flying Falcon 9) that can be scaled up to do 120K lbs to LEO. Super heavy boosters that can have an economy of scale? That’s wicked. Add in a man-rated capsule that can soft land anywhere in the world or even the moon or Mars, and you’ve got a wicked package.
True, SpaceX has a decided time advantage in the commercial cargo competition thanks to a NASA contract awarded in 2006 for both the Falcon 9 booster and the Dragon cargo capsule. However the Dragon capsule is incapable for sustaining a crew over the period of 12 months for a flight to Mars and back and while it may be able to soft land on Mars it does not retain the capability to take off again. Additional vehicles and flight hardware will be needed before any trip to our nearest planet neighbor. The Falcon Heavy booster might help our ability to carry those additional vehicles and hardware into space, though. And I can’t wait to see one take off from the newly constructed SpaceX Falcon launch pad out at Vanderburg.
While I have no love for Orbital Sciences, they do present an opportunity for a competitor. Unlike the Russians, Cygnus would give us a third option in the man-rated/cargo capable capsule market. At the very least any technical innovation Orbital Sciences develops with Cyngus with be available for inclusion in Dragon or Lockheed’s Orion. I suspect the well-timed publicity photo of Cygnus was in direct response to the Russian Progress failed launch yesterday.
What’s my beef with Orbital Sciences? They destroyed the first satellite I ever helped build in 1996 during a Pegusus launch failure: HETE. I haven’t paid attention to them ever since. You say they can launch a Pegusus off of an MD-80? I thought they only had an L-1011.
Anyway, competition can only breed better successes and in that light I’m happy to see Orbital Science’s Cygnus on the move.
~Shooter Out
Sorry, you’re right re: Pegasus, I thought it was an MD-80 but got my planes mixed up.
Obviously the Dragon cannot alone sustain a crew for the transit time to Mars, I don’t think anyone suggested that, but if you combine it with something else like a Zvezda/Mir class core module and upper stage boosters that use storable propellant and you can engineer a fly-by of Mars for orders of magnitude less than NASA quotes. Some heavy development would be needed to work out a system for getting off Mars again if you were to do a lander mission instead, absolutely agreed, but I betcha it could still be done cheaper than some of the ridiculous proposals NASA kept trotting out in front of Congress.
I’m still not 100% sure I see Orbital Science as a viable competitor, last I heard they had no plans of man-rating their cargo ship, making it roughly equivalent to the ESA’s and Japanese resupply vessels. If that’s changed, then awesome, but if it’s just a Boeing paper capsule with a label on it, then meh, we shall see.
Sorry to hear about HETE, that sucks. Most of the stuff they did afterwards (like their Taurus booster stuff) grew progressively less cool and required standing on the shoulders of the Cold War directly (because they used discarded missiles) which was neat, I suppose, but not really viable for any long term program.
Dragon and Falcon both seem to be designed for a wide variety of missions without the usual wastage that comes along with that goal. The Shuttle famously failed at being a ‘jack of all trades’, but it looks like SpaceX has figured out a way to make space modular. The Falcon Heavy cross-tankage is a great example: Why spend a zillion bucks to fine tune a completely new heavy booster stage when you can find a cost/performance sweet spot with parallel burning/actively tanking side by side boosters? For anyone who hasn’t seen it, they add two copies of the first stage and hook them all together so all three are firing but the outside ones are keeping the tanks on the middle booster filled. When the outer boosters run out, then separate and the middle stage just continues to burn. Screw fine tuning an SSME or shaving a gram of titanium here and there, bring economy of scale to the picture and the prices will drop.
know what would be a cool thing to do with this law degree I’m going to get: frak my plans to work for innovative financial access programs and instead do the regulatory work that the commercial space industry is going to need done in the next two decades. That would be cool… almost as cool as being an astronaut…
I took a course at the Academy: Law 420 - Space Law. It was my favorite class ever there. I learned in depth about the Outer Space Treaty, The Moon Treaty & the START/INF treaties that govern current international space law. I can only imagine as space debris becomes greater and therefore present a larger danger to on-orbit systems that the commercial sector will begin to practice space law on a scale we’ve never imagined before. Not to mention commercial space flight, the commercialization of asteroid mining and the potential for non-terrestrial commercially led colonization.
~Shooter Out
WOW! Shooter, that sounds awesome! I wonder if I will be able to find anything remotely like that while I’m in law school. Good question to ask admissions counselors as I start interviewing… In all seriousness, this is a realm where law is going to struggle to fit a context that it hasn’t previously faced. There is the public v. commercial aspect, national security concerns galore, and the international law aspect. There are some extremely cool things that firms will want to and be able to do but for legitimate concern from the U.S. and other governments–when is that or is it not a sufficient reason to block a project? I would love to explore that in one of my electives.