Russian launch pad incident raises concerns about future of space station

"We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership."

See full article...

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

Well, all I can say is that this is how our Russian teacher explained it to us, and he had done his advanced study at the Sorbonne, Moscow and Perm. He also remarked that contrary to many statements there is distinct variation in Russian pronunciations ("A lot of the people who wrote textbooks probably never got further than Moscow".)

There are many regional accents, just as there are for English (e.g. compare Cockney vs. U.S. Southern English, vs. the Queen's English), or any other widely used language. That's, as they say, neither here nor there.

The pronunciation of o and e mutate under stress, so the letter o varies according to whether it has the stress or not. This is in fact the audible difference in the pronunciations of замок, lock, and замок, castle. Only one o in a word is pronounced as o, and then only if it has the stress.

That's true of many letters. However, it doesn't alter the fact that ё is a distinct and separate vowel from e, despite them looking kind of similar as written. Here's the full Cyrillic alphabet, along with a rough pronunciation guide for each letter:

(note that some of the pronunciations as shown are only approximate, since there's actually no equivalent phoneme in English. For instance, э and ы both require a sort of strenuously wide opening-up around the glottis, that English speakers can't easily reproduce, and that don't occur in any examples of English - or any Germanic/Nordic or Romance - speech, even across all the many regional accents that I've ever encountered. And e.g. 'р' is strongly 'rolled', similar to how it is in Spanish - rather than the soft/rounded English r.)

I suspected I may be looking at older texts than you are. But, not having thought about it before, I decided to check the pravda.ru website. Not only do they almost never use ё but if you use their search engine it treats ё and e as equivalent.

Here's a snapshot of pravda.ru front page as of right now:

Spoiler

I underlined all the instances of ё where it does or should appear - and in only one case out of three did they actually write 'e' instead, and had they done this during a written exam, they'd have had a point docked for it.

As for treating e and ё as 'equivalent' for search indexing purposes, that's a heuristic shortcut intended to make things easier for the user. Google, for instance, expends great effort to correctly reinterpret various (and especially common/widespread) typo and misspelling patterns in search queries. Modern Russian search engines would do similar things.

I'll stick with my former teacher, thanks.

I was born, grew up, and completed education in Russia through grade 8 (and with straight 5's - equivalent of American A's - in Russian language). I think I know what I'm talking about...

 

[Markkf]

Assuming that this leads to the end of the ISS, would any replacement station orbit at the same altitude? As long as they stay under the inner Van Allen belt, what's the tradeoff between orbital height and atmospheric drag? The delta V shouldn't be that different.

Any replacement will most definitely be in an orbit or inclination not easily reached from a Russian launch site. I’ve often wondered why manned space flight & space stations dont use polar orbits.

 

[Markkf]

Please explain how “NASA is letting spacex become the sole supplier” exactly? What could they do differently?

They aren’t funding their own successful alternative. They couldn’t even prop up a commercial competitor. Honestly they shoulda funded a JAXA or ESA alternative. Woulda been less corrupt than Boeing/ULA.

 

[EllPeaTea]

Any replacement will most definitely be in an orbit or inclination not easily reached from a Russian launch site. I’ve often wondered why manned space flight & space stations dont use polar orbits.

Radiation levels are higher in polar orbits.

 

[2021Ars2021]

Let’s not get too judgy: Who among us not forgotten to put our car into “Park” before leaving it?

Not me

 

[Wickwick]

The problem isn't boosting the station, it's attitude control. The ISS uses gyros for most of its attitude control, but they need to be occasionally desaturated. And a mix of Progress and Zarya (or maybe Zvezda) are used for that. If Progress can't fly, they can't do it. So that leaves Zarya, but that needs to be refuelled, by Progress.....

There's 5 pages of comments to get through so perhaps someone has already pointed this out. However, if gyros are saturating, that means the Station is subjected to an uneven torque when integrated over its orbit (due to solar pressure, gravity gradient, whatever). One can rotate the Station 180 deg. about any axis to work to unload the two axes perpendicular to that. It might put the Station in a non-ideal orientation for science, but it will succeed in unloading the wheels if that becomes critical.

 

[NetMage]

Hatred for its leaders is complete justified, but try to have some empathy for all the innocent people who are suffering as their country is destroyed under the misrule of an amoral sociopath.

There are an awful lot of non-leaders who are complicit or active participants in war crimes every day.

 

[Wickwick]

I'm all for replacing the ISS, but "measuring" the science isn't useful.

The ISS research is completely different from the JWST. It's not even apples and oranges, more like apples and bacon.

The science may be different, but the money funding each program is not. Budgets are finite and compromises between disparate research activities must be made all the time. As such, it's very common to have to compare the relative "value" of the science of any program. That's how JWST was selected for funding in the first place - at its original budget. It never would have been funded at its actual budget.

 

[Wickwick]

I think you are greatly overestimating how much angular momentum it is that they need to dump. The 4 control moment gyros on the ISS only total up to 19,000 N-m-s. A single draco is 90 lb (400 N). With a 1.5 m moment arm it would produce a torque of 600 N-m, a couple of orders of magnitude under what IDSS can handle. At a 10% duty cycle it would take all of 5 min for one thruster to desaturate them. It would burn a grand total of 4 kg of propellant in the process. As I was trying to indicate, you could build this into a reboost, by introducing an asymmetry to the thruster firings. Instead of thrusting like normal through the CoM, they would intentionally fire offset from it and could induce whatever torque direction they like while reboosting.

Additionally, the Dracos on a Dragon don't point straight along the centerline. If the docking mechanism can handle the torque (it should), one could just use thrust on one side of the capsule at a time to induce a torque about the Station even if docked on a line through the c.g.

 

[Wickwick]

I read the sequence as being "Big platform withdrawn into protective chamber. Locking pins not installed. Checks on locking pins not done. Sign-off on locks was/was not done. (We await investigation on these points). Rocket ignited. Flame backwash enters cavern as expected, it's hell in there, nudges the barrier wall out a little, it acts like a sail and the whole structure gains momentum is pushed and falls into the pit."

Agreed that it's an egregious error of a crucial part that has too much riding on it to not have multiple cross-checks or fail-safes already in place.

So I agree with your conspiracy theory of "how can we exit this costly program in a way which looks like an accident".

(I edited your quote (with respect) to talk to the event sequence)

The exhaust plume creates a strong vacuum around it (Bernoulli's equation). If the door isn't secured, there's a large suction force acting on anything nearby.

 

[Wickwick]

The ISS had a number of (now failing) political goals with it. And rational efficient tax expenditures the US sure isn't when it comes to space and the need for pork budgets. Or defense. Or agency funding...

The ISS and the purchases of Russian (formerly Soviet) engines had a political goal that was successful and is now complete. The goal was to keep rocket scientists gainfully employed long enough that they age out of likelihood that they could be radicalized and hired by rogue states.

 

[rocketgeekinfl]

Looks like Elon will be getting a few launch contracts for cargo and crew for the next two years.

 

[Glorified Desktop Support]

The ISS and the purchases of Russian (formerly Soviet) engines had a political goal that was successful and is now complete. The goal was to keep rocket scientists gainfully employed long enough that they age out of likelihood that they could be radicalized and hired by rogue states.

And now Russia is the rogue state, making war on Europe.

 

[Steve austin]

They aren’t funding their own successful alternative. They couldn’t even prop up a commercial competitor. Honestly they shoulda funded a JAXA or ESA alternative. Woulda been less corrupt than Boeing/ULA.

NASA’s own “recent” efforts in crewed launch (Orion and SLS) have certainly not been impressive, so don’t seem a great model to follow. NASA did fund 2 (so redundant) suppliers for Commercial Crew, and the one that was considered low risk is the one that hasn’t been successful. You can’t force success - they did their best, by making the contracts fixed price, so there is strong incentive for success, and none for failure. There is zero chance they could have funded an external alternative, and no guarantee that it would be successful if they had.

 

[Markkf]

In a recent statement from Roscosmos, the person responsible for not securring the platform has been named. Elonovic Muskzov has been fired from the agency and his whereabouts are unkown.

There is no way one person is responsible for everything. more likely one to do, one ti check and a third to sign off. Anything less is ridiculous.

 

[SparkE]

They wouldn’t be having these problems if the Russians had STEAM CATAPULT TECHNOLOGY!

 

[ajmas]

In the meantime, Europe is absent in the list of options. This just feels like another reminder as how disorganised or unmotivated Europe seems to be, for offering space flight solutions, especially crewed. Arianne Space is the only real operator and their focus seems to be mainly be with heavy lifters.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

There are an awful lot of non-leaders who are complicit or active participants in war crimes every day.

The majority of Russians who haven't managed to emigrate, and a minority who have but remain tethered to Russian disinfo channels, are basically brainwashed at this point. They're the equivalent of Fox News-addicted MAGAs in America, but probably even to a greater extreme. They're bombarded and saturated daily with Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda, narratives, and outright lies - and they're largely cut off from countervailing sources of information, reportage, or critique. They're in particularly dire straights if they don't have a good command of any language other than Russian, because then even internet access doesn't help much (though free availability of automated translation ought to be helping some, by now.)

So yes, there's an awful lot of odious delusion as well as confident ignorance at play in Russia today, but the blame/responsibility for that is overwhelmingly on the Putin regime, not the hapless peons, many of whom literally don't know any better... It's almost back to the bad old days of the Soviet Union, the way things are now over there.

 

[PsychicToaster]

The problem isn't boosting the station, it's attitude control. The ISS uses gyros for most of its attitude control, but they need to be occasionally desaturated. And a mix of Progress and Zarya (or maybe Zvezda) are used for that. If Progress can't fly, they can't do it. So that leaves Zarya, but that needs to be refuelled, by Progress.....

Don’t forget ISS is showing stress fractures in the module they dock the Soyuz to do those boosting operations. Probably why we aren’t talking about extending the life of ISS.

 

[Bill Swallow]

Just turn off the computer ? Or if need a laptop get a ThinkPad that would park itself when detecting flight or fast motion

This may come as quite a shock to you, so you may want to sit down.

Automatic head-parking mechanisms did not magically appear out of nowhere with the first generation of hard disk drives.

In fact, many early models, when powered off, would allow the read/write heads to simply lose Bernoulli-effect aerodynamic lift and simply land on the platters wherever they happened to be positioned at the time.

And given that drives of that generation used soft oxide coatings on the platters instead of harder plated media, the heads, in landing, would gouge bits of the data-containing oxide off of the platters. Eventually leading to noticeable data loss.

[In bad cases (cough CMI cough), the drive had an internal optical sensor to provide fine positioning data for the head actuator - which, horrifyingly, was not a voice coil but a stepper motor! This sensor was guaranteed to slowly become obscured by the clouds of oxide bits floating around inside the drive, like floaters in an eyeball, and be unable to position the heads accurately, adding to the drive's staggering degree of unreliability. But this issue would occur whether the heads were parked or not.]

The first solution was software - at first, manually launched before powering down - that would command the heads to move to a safe location. Later on, this was implemented automatically, and eventually built into the drive's hardware.

Since we're discussing the early days - say, the 1980s - getting a system that would park itself (or 'detect flight or fast motion') would have required the invention of time travel.

A simple program to park the heads was judged to be much cheaper and easier.

EDIT: Sorry, that was probably snarkier than was called for, but I hadn't had my coffee yet (hey, it's Saturday). My first comment on the subject, in reply to ClusteredIndex, specified 'the early days of the IBM AT' - i.e, mid-1980s - but I can see how that got dropped out of subsequent comments on the topic. Anyway, cheers, and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

 

[ZenBeam]

There's 5 pages of comments to get through so perhaps someone has already pointed this out. However, if gyros are saturating, that means the Station is subjected to an uneven torque when integrated over its orbit (due to solar pressure, gravity gradient, whatever). One can rotate the Station 180 deg. about any axis to work to unload the two axes perpendicular to that. It might put the Station in a non-ideal orientation for science, but it will succeed in unloading the wheels if that becomes critical.

I was pondering changing the orientation as well. My concern was how non-ideal it would be for the solar panels and radiators. You can rotate 180 degrees in the plane where they stay roughly facing the same direction, but 180 degrees in the other two planes has them both facing entirely the wrong direction. I was thinking they could probably find some solution, but that it might require careful power conservation if the panels have to be aimed too poorly.

 

[Bill Swallow]

The exhaust plume creates a strong vacuum around it (Bernoulli's equation). If the door isn't secured, there's a large suction force acting on anything nearby.

As Mythbusters demonstrated, a quite similar effect can be experienced by standing on the edge of a Subway platform when a train comes through at speed. Albeit on a much smaller scale.

 

[Whatexit]

Let’s not get too judgy: Who among us not forgotten to put our car into “Park” before leaving it?

I did that. Once, 50 years ago. I was in the laundromat when someone said that a car had rolled across the parking lot. I looked out the window, and my old car, which had been parked in front of the laundromat, had rolled down a slight slope to the edge of the nearby street. I ran out and saw that it had narrowly missed a low wall that ran to the edge of the driveway. It had come to rest against the fender of a car parked on the street. Sure enough, shift lever was in D. I re-parked it, put transmission in Park and parking brake on, then ran to the parked car. Slight dent in the fender. Figured I should do the right thing and leave a note with my name and phone number. Just as I finished writing it, the car owner walked up. I explained the situation, and asked if she could give me the repair cost before getting the insurance company involved. She agreed, and handed me her business card. Assistant United States attorney. Wow. Anyway, repair was about $300. I paid her, no increase in my insurance. I always both verify car is in Park and use the parking brake. No more incidents.

 

[Waco]

I suspect those days are quickly disappearing. Manual vehicles are a quickly dying breed. With thr various types of automatics getting better mpg and still holding pretty significant HP numbers, and EVs not using a transmission at all, I expect them to be gone outside commercial vehicles and a very very small number of extremely enthusiast focused sports cars (and those are quickly shifting towards manumatics and dual clutch setups in many models).

Oh, absolutely.

I was just pointing out that there wasn't ever a brake interlock on the 4Runner starter...

 

[Bill Swallow]

I was pondering changing the orientation as well. My concern was how non-ideal it would be for the solar panels and radiators. You can rotate 180 degrees in the plane where they stay roughly facing the same direction, but 180 degrees in the other two planes has them both facing entirely the wrong direction. I was thinking they could probably find some solution, but that it might require careful power conservation if the panels have to be aimed too poorly.

How long are we talking about, for a gyro desaturation? I would think that wouldn't take a protracted amount of time. My suspicion is that mechanical stresses on the station modules, some of which are already cracked and leaking, would be the big argument against changing the orientation, not solar panels and radiators.

 

[OrvGull]

They wouldn’t be having these problems if the Russians had STEAM CATAPULT TECHNOLOGY!

Clearly the water deluge caused the magnets to get wet.

 

[OrvGull]

I'm unaware of any older vehicle with a starter interlock for both the clutch and the brake. It's usually just the clutch.

I've seen both a clutch and a neutral sensor, on some cars. Agree that I've never seen a brake sensor on a manual car, but almost all the ones I've driven were 1980s or earlier.

 

[ZenBeam]

How long are we talking about, for a gyro desaturation?

I don't know

I would think that wouldn't take a protracted amount of time. My suspicion is that mechanical stresses on the station modules, some of which are already cracked and leaking, would be the big argument against changing the orientation, not solar panels and radiators.

They have to desaturate the gyros, though. I think they have no choice but to have stresses in the opposite direction. They can trade higher stresses for a shorter time, versus less stress for a longer time, but the integrated total is the same. They can make that same trade whether they're using thrusters or changing the orientation, although likely with different limits.

Edit: Maybe they can have the stresses in the same direction? I need to think on that. But either way, they have the same trade they can make, and the same integrated total they need to hit.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

For better or worse, I see effectively zero chance that Congress (or the various successive administrations) would have agreed to spend $400 billion on pure science space missions. Crewed space missions have a more visceral appeal to them (for political, prestige, or other reasons), do a better job of spreading dollars to the usual suspects, and are more understandable to them and their constituents. While it is quite likely those 40 flagship missions would contribute more to overall science, I don’t think science per se is that important to the people who would have to approve the money.

Edit: typo

Plus, Ballast Bill got his ride.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

Which mostly just taught us that microgravity is really bad for humans, and people coming to a body with gravity after a long-duration mission better have other humans available to help them when they arrive and are weak as kittens. But we're pressing ahead with Mars anyway, so we've clearly decided to disregard that lesson. Zero net value.

You are talking about years long stays in zero gravity, and extreme caution on NASAs behalf. 7 km/sec from LEO allows for 4-6 months transits before they are back into a relatively strong gravity field.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

Looks like Elon will be getting a few launch contracts for cargo and crew for the next two years.

Not from Russia. They can’t afford it.

 

[Mandella]

How long are we talking about, for a gyro desaturation? I would think that wouldn't take a protracted amount of time. My suspicion is that mechanical stresses on the station modules, some of which are already cracked and leaking, would be the big argument against changing the orientation, not solar panels and radiators.

As I understand it, they already do adjust the orientation of the ISS frequently anyway. As a case in point when a new docking is about to occur the station adjusts itself to make the approach easier. Then of course there are the frequent reboosts, and even occasional dodges out of the way of other orbital objects.

 

[stefan_lec]

I think the overall plan is for the SpaceX deorbit vehicle to provide the grunt, while Progress and Zarya provide the finesse with attitude control.

Thanks! Any chance they could use that custom deorbit dragon, or maybe cygnus, to handle the attitude control instead?

Dragon has quite a bit of potential off-axis thrust, which might provide enough control authority, depending on what they need. Won't the gyros still be available for getting the initial orientation lined up, too?

I have no idea where the deorbit dragon will be relative to the station's CG, though, that could affect things significantly.

 

[Ted.Starchild]

I'm just waiting for Roscosmos leadership to declare sabotage and that again it was Serena Auñón-Chancellor. Again their misogyny will probably lead them to claim she was dating someone at the facility and her "female emotions" caused her to lose it over a failed romantic relationship and sabotage the door.​

https://meincmagazine.com/science/202...am-just-threw-a-nasa-astronaut-under-the-bus/

Standard operating procedure to cover up the fact their looting has degraded Roscosmos maintenance and operations to the point where major accidents are an annual event.

Sabotage claims already hit Russian social networks. Photos with hand-painted note are circulated as 'proof'. Only caveat is that photo was taken in 2016 in Vostochny and note was aimed at construction contractor (contractor did not pay worker salaries for months).

 

[Ted.Starchild]

I checked 25-page thread on Novosti Kosmonavtiki forum.
Major points:
1. This 'cabin' big and complex part of ground infrastructure. Not transportable and not designed to be dismantled. 'Months' would be needed to rebuild as crash project, even if some parts can be cannibalized elsewhere.
2. Soyuz pad at Vostochny was not designed to launch Soyuz or Progress crafts. Substantial modifications of pad hardware would be needed to accommodate Progress. Soyuz launches from Vostochny is completely unrealistic.
3. Propaganda message are pushed that pad will be repaired very fast. But this may be immediate post-disaster propaganda 'damage containment'.

 

[redneckteck]

I checked 25-page thread on Novosti Kosmonavtiki forum.
Major points:
1. This 'cabin' big and complex part of ground infrastructure. Not transportable and not designed to be dismantled. 'Months' would be needed to rebuild as crash project, even if some parts can be cannibalized elsewhere.
2. Soyuz pad at Vostochny was not designed to launch Soyuz or Progress crafts. Substantial modifications of pad hardware would be needed to accommodate Progress. Soyuz launches from Vostochny is completely unrealistic.
3. Propaganda message are pushed that pad will be repaired very fast. But this may be immediate post-disaster propaganda 'damage containment'.

If one could identify them correctly, there are likely plenty of Russian technicians that have the knowledge to get repairs done quickly. Not having the organizational and incentive structures in place is a massively bigger problem. Even bigger than the material logistics.

I don't know Russia. I do have considerable experience with poorly functional American companies. Their employees suddenly became far more effective at different companies, mostly after the poor one folded.

 

[Cthel]

I checked 25-page thread on Novosti Kosmonavtiki forum.
Major points:
[snip]
3. Propaganda message are pushed that pad will be repaired very fast. But this may be immediate post-disaster propaganda 'damage containment'.

So we should expect an announcement in January that the pad is fully repaired, and then for completely unrelated reasons™ the next Soyuz launch from the pad won't be for another 2 years?

 

[Asbestos Muffins]

Thing is, most of those microgravity experiments could've just as easily - and far more cheaply - been accomplished by launching as payloads on dedicated satellites. Just about the only experiments not so easily replaceable, were ones involving astronaut health studies during long-duration missions.

a lot of experiments on the ISS are not cost effective as stand alone experiments though.