Early this morning, got woken up by a phone call stating that there was an accident with the Soyuz (called 56S) during launch. I was immediately reminded of the last time I got woken up early in the morning to tell me that something went wrong...that was when we lost the Columbia crew during re-entry in 2003. Luckily, the Soyuz didn't explode like Challenger did in 1986, and it has an abort system which separated the capsule from the rest of the rocket and the crew was able to land back in Kazakhstan a few minutes later (experiencing 6-7 G's in the process). Crew is fine. Apparently, something "off-nominal" happened when the first stage booster was supposed to separate from the rest of the vehicle. And the abort system kicked in and saved the crew.
This is just a couple of months after I was called into Mission Control because of an unknown leak on ISS. Turns out, someone on the ground had drilled a hole in one of the Soyuz vehicles docked to ISS (55S) and patched it with glue, and no one realized it until that glue eventually came lose on-orbit and the station started to leak air. The Russians are still investigating, and the head of Roscosmos even hinted that one of the US crew may have drilled the hole. That obviously pissed off everyone here at NASA, the astronauts included. Our astronauts are not suicidal. But that's typical of this particular Russian to scapegoat someone else whenever anything happens in their space program. One time, when one of their Mars or Moon satellite launches failed, he stated that the US may have used some laser to destroy the communications of the satellite as it passed over some island in the Pacific.
And then last week I was on console for the other Soyuz (54S) undock and landing, and just as the returning crew were getting ready to climb into the Soyuz and close the hatches, they noticed damage to the internal hatch on the Soyuz (between two parts of the Soyuz). Luckily, the damage was not on the hatch seal, so they were able to close the hatch nominally and the leak check was successful (no leaks). They landed nominally with no issues.
They've also had two failures of Progress resupply vehicles in the last few years, so something strange is going on in the Russian space program. I don't know if it's merely a result of incompetence or corruption (or both). Corruption is such an endemic problem in Russian society. Every government official in charge of contracts and payments abuses their position for personal gain ("I've got to get mine"), which means less money gets down to the worker level, and the quality suffers accordingly. My poor Russian colleagues earn peanuts, but still continue to do the best they can with the resources they have. And even though they could make more money out in the real world, they still work there because they love the work. They have my ultimate respect.
This is just a couple of months after I was called into Mission Control because of an unknown leak on ISS. Turns out, someone on the ground had drilled a hole in one of the Soyuz vehicles docked to ISS (55S) and patched it with glue, and no one realized it until that glue eventually came lose on-orbit and the station started to leak air. The Russians are still investigating, and the head of Roscosmos even hinted that one of the US crew may have drilled the hole. That obviously pissed off everyone here at NASA, the astronauts included. Our astronauts are not suicidal. But that's typical of this particular Russian to scapegoat someone else whenever anything happens in their space program. One time, when one of their Mars or Moon satellite launches failed, he stated that the US may have used some laser to destroy the communications of the satellite as it passed over some island in the Pacific.
And then last week I was on console for the other Soyuz (54S) undock and landing, and just as the returning crew were getting ready to climb into the Soyuz and close the hatches, they noticed damage to the internal hatch on the Soyuz (between two parts of the Soyuz). Luckily, the damage was not on the hatch seal, so they were able to close the hatch nominally and the leak check was successful (no leaks). They landed nominally with no issues.
They've also had two failures of Progress resupply vehicles in the last few years, so something strange is going on in the Russian space program. I don't know if it's merely a result of incompetence or corruption (or both). Corruption is such an endemic problem in Russian society. Every government official in charge of contracts and payments abuses their position for personal gain ("I've got to get mine"), which means less money gets down to the worker level, and the quality suffers accordingly. My poor Russian colleagues earn peanuts, but still continue to do the best they can with the resources they have. And even though they could make more money out in the real world, they still work there because they love the work. They have my ultimate respect.
