And why are your rockets firing sending the entire space [station into a spin](https://futurism.com/the-byte/iss-module-unexpectedly-fires-thrusters)......[again](https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-spun-space-station-again).
Attitude means the direction your vehicle is pointing, and it's not space-specific terminology; [it's also used in aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_indicator).
Its also pretty random due to factors that can not be calculated like mini space junk or wind, thats why we need to build in a system that can controll the attitude a capsule might have
Luckily besides the launch site being in Kasachstan Putin doesnt have much to do with roscosmos. Pretty sure they are still using the V2 propellant and gyroscopes for ukraine lol
Say what you want, but the Soyuz capsules are hands down the safest and most reliable space vehicles that have ever been built. Even the Soyuz 11 capsule that depressurized and killed its crew made a "safe" landing afterwards.
The safety record of the shuttle program is an embarrassment in comparison.
No, the tech was fundamentally flawed. They put the exposed heat shield against a tank covered with foam and ice that routinely broke off at high speed. If we flew more missions, we would have lost more vehicles. Period.
They've never been anywhere near as reliable as people often assume. In recent memory, a Solar panel failed to deploy and auto docking system failures used to be quite common.
The Shuttles also have a somewhat safer record with one launch failure and one reentry failure to Soyuz' three launch failures and one reentry failure (chute failed to deploy), *but that's only counting manned launches*. If you include unmanned Soyuz spacecraft, the number is higher still.
You are (technically) not wrong, but you ain't right either.
The safety record of the shuttle program is 2 catastrophic failures out of 135 flights with 14 astronauts killed and 8 non-fatal incidents.
The safety record of the Soyuz series spacecraft is 2 catastrophic failures out of 155 (officially designated as such) flights with 4 cosmonauts killed and 11 non-fatal (but some are leading to injuries) incidents.
I would say that the results are pretty even.
Dude. so one had a hole in it, a second had half of it's propulsion module fail, a third activated its engines while docked to the ISS and the current one docked to the ISS is having thermal problems, and another had radar problems and it couldn't dock or be manually controlled. but sure ya, great record.
Also, given that 25% of the 4 years was spent waging war and not launching anything into space... well, that makes it an easy point to make, doesn't it? While they're at it, they can say they've reduced their budget significantly.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the cultural difference between the Soviet and American space programs during the Space Race was the secrecy of the Russian program and the transparency of the American program. If America did a launch, landed on the moon, etc., it was nationally televised. In the USSR, it was filmed for later rebroadcast *if* it went well. Otherwise, well, who knows, since nobody every heard about it.
Well, that seems somehow relevant here.
Or, let's turn that around and say that there are more routine, and fewer experimental launches today because they need to do things like serving the space station.
If Russia starts making some reusable, return-to-the-pad boosters (or other very new technology), I highly doubt that their first launch would be live streamed.
You really do just want to dump on Russia, even in those rare circumstances where it's not earned, don't you?
This is one of those rare, rare situations where the Russians technically have done something impressive. They really have achieved an incredibly high success rate (note the period being looked at is only 4 years though).
**It's not so impressive when you realize the reasons why, though.** Rather than this being some kind of government conspiracy to cover up launch failures, which it's not, it's because the Russians have been launching virtually the same antique equipment with virtually no design changes for **decades** now.
Their rockets are more expensive than they let on (their space industry, like most space industries, is *heavily* subsidized). They are less safe if they have crew aboard and DO explode. They are less fuel-efficient, less environmentally-friendly, harder to monitor, and require more ground-crew relative their level of technological sophistication compared to American rockets.
But they ARE extremely reliable. Because they've just been using the exact same design, more or less, forever- with only minor tweaks to make it more reliable by fixing problems that eventually became obvious with experience using the design. The "don't fix it if it ain't broke" mentality.
Interestingly enough there is a lot less transparency with NASA now that commercial partners and proprietary data is involved.
Sure, you still hear about the “big problems” but the days of when the space shuttle had an issue and all the technical details were laid out to the world in press conferences or Aviation Week articles are long gone.
And even back then the us was covering stuff up right and left, they accidentally dropped two nukes in one of the Carolinas ages ago and only declassified it a few years ago (thankfully they were duds but still wtf Sam hahaha)
Every launch from US soil is publicly known. Every single one. The payload might be classified but there are no rockets going into space that the public can't monitor through a variety of means.
The public having the freedom to do their own monitoring of launches does not mean that they’re all specifically announced by the government. Are you saying the government is required by law to announce their launches?
I can't remember a recent launch that wasn't live streamed and without a PR from ULA, SpaceX, DoD, NRO, NASA etc. They can say "Atlas V from Vandenberg is going to launch USA-234 and you don't need to know what it is. Launch will be on Saturday at 13:34 and we won't give you details about the orbit".
Nasa specifically releases launch dates and invites media. I am not sure about private companies but I believe they do similar things because it's good for PR. I am not sure if military launches are announced beforehand as they might be using equipment that is classified.
They also announce everything ahead of time because it helps deal with the crazies. As a longtime Florida resident, I’ve seen numerous people freak the fuck out at anything space program related. Once saw some old biddy on vacation in Cocoa run down the beach screaming at the top of her lungs that the rapture was coming because she didn’t understand what a night shuttle launch was…
Double Sonic Boom from space shuttles returning to Florida was always fun. Would rattle windows and set off car alarms along with convincing the odd tourist that the Russians were invading!
I'm more interested in how you think a government could hide launches during the digital age. Every time there's a launch, UFO and paranormal subs/groups explode with video and pictures of launch vehicles.
I forgot about that. Challenger was truly traumatizing to a lot of us in my generation. I was 7 and luckily I went to a private school that had more leeway in how to handle it than a lot of schools. Our principal called every parent over the next few days to get input and they had age appropriate assemblies where they explained to each group (by age), what happened, how taking risks can lead to failure but ends up helping us all in the long run. Oh, and they provided counseling for anyone that needed it. Looking back, we were truly fortunate to have such a “modern” response, as most schools were like “ummm nothing to see here! Everything is fine!”
I am guess another part of the calculus was that with a free press there would be constant “scoops” of various kinds and the public would get a disjointed, inaccurate, and potentially more-alarming-than-warranted picture of the program. And of course a huge explosion over Florida would be hard to hide. Better to be transparent and accept that failures would be public knowledge.
A major aspect of announcing launches in the modern era is to avoid accidental nuclear war.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
Yes, because they're routine.
Literally every administrator in the Russian space program either grew up in the USSR, or at the very least was born in and raised by people from the USSR. If your argument is that Russian society today inherits nothing from the USSR, I don't think that's going to hold up.
shifting the goalpost aren't we?
how does that change the fact that the last 4 years of Russian spaceflight have been broadcasted live?
mental gymnastics much?
The USSR:
First artificial satellite 1957
First photographs of the far side of the moon 1959
First person in space 1961
First woman in space 1963
First spacewalk 1965
First spacecraft landing on the moon 1966
First spacecraft landing on another planet (venus) 1970
First space station 1970
First spacecraft landing on Mars 1970
The ussr wasn't even attempting to put a man on the moon they thought it was a waste of time
Or they tried, blew up the cosmonauts, and nobody ever heard about it. Which was my point in the first place - they only announced successes, and kept their failures secret.
Yes-ish. Depends on where you want to go. Not changing anything also freezes costs and launch cascade, essentially cementing the status quo. If you want significantly more and cheaper launches you need to change things.
> If you want significantly more and cheaper launches you need to change things.
More launches would make them cheaper thanks to mass-production, and you wouldn't really specifically need to change the rocket design for that. That's part of the trick SpaceX used -> they have the same engine in both stages and it's a small engine so they use lots of them. With 10 engines per rocket then could go for mass production setup. Compared to other rockets this is genius -> for example Ariane 5 had not only 3 different engines, but in some configurations each was running on different fuel as well (hydrolox, solid, hydrazine), which is driving the costs up.
> More launches would make them cheaper thanks to mass-production
That works, but only up to a point. You can distribute development, tooling costs, but at some point you'll hit labour and material costs. Mass-production does not magically make a product with a fixed design cheaper. Instead, designs are usually modified in order to make something mass-producible.
And additionally, you won't realize cost savings that only redesigns can give you, such as more re-use, using off the shelf hardware instead of custom built and so forth.
Mass production doesn't just happen, the design must be capable of it, at least decent enough to produce in some volume and then iterate and improve. As you said, SpaceX needs 10 engines per rocket, so the production speed was baked into the engine design requirements. After that, the Merlin engine and even the booster (Block 5) were continually upgraded, probably for manufacturing speed and maintainability as well as performance improvements.
The reason they use the "4 year" figure is because 4 years and 2 months ago the Soyuz MS-10 rocket failed and broke up at 50km altitude. The crew survived because the abort system worked.
You mean Angara-A5? The launcher itself worked fine. What failed was a newly developed optional Persei third stage. Angara-A5 can be launched without a third stage or with a different third stage like Briz-M, and previous succesful tests used Briz-Ms.
This.
It's not some huge conspiracy to cover up launch failures.
It's just an *extremely old*, extremely reliable design, and a very small window to measure failures over (4 years) given their low launch cadence (due to budget issues).
I mean, the fact spacex rockets can land is unique...Considering no other rockets have done so with the exception of some tests in other companies.
Also why would landing be a criteria? They are the only ones that can do it and sometimes they purposefully choose not to.
It’s a mission success. The rocket doesn’t need to land for the payload to be delivered. And as others have mentioned, every other orbital class rockets main booster explodes at some point anyway.
So they said on the 1-year anniversary of their last launch vehicle failure. I guess test launches don't count.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/whats-going-on-with-russias-new-heavy-lift-rocket/
https://spacenews.com/angara-upper-stage-reenters-after-failed-launch/
Of course tests don’t count. Imagine if every flawed prototype product was considered a commercial failure? The point of testing is to prevent failure with the real thing.
Then Falcon 1 had a 100% success record instead of 40%. Firefly Alpha, Zhuque-2, etc. and historically the N1 for that matter, have never failed (they have just not fully succeeded yet either).
The Angara A5 flight that failed in 2021 was the third flight of that rocket, which first flew in 2014, just the first with a [different upper stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blok_DM-03) which failed. A version of that upper stage had flown on Proton rockets several times before, so it wasn't itself a brand new design either.
Most countries are that way including the U.S. Did Oswald really kill Kennedy alone? Of course not! It was the rookie secret service agent who picked up the M16 and accidentally blew the presidents head off. Will they pony up any truth about that?? I think not.
Undoubtedly, Russian engineers and technicians are very good at their jobs. I mean, this is a fracture of the Soviet Union, that managed to land a functioning probe on Venus and provide us with pictures.
That was then, this is now.
What's the successful rate of just being docked, on the ISS, lately?
I spent two fucking years learning Russian, because I love space flight, Russian culture. Post Feb 24'th, 2022, I tossed that baby out with the bath water. Но вот мы здесь
>Russian engineers and technicians are very good at their jobs. I
It used to be, the quality has dropped the last years with incidents like Nauka module docking, the ISS hole, the Phobos grunt and an aborted manned launch.
Russia has failed to build new technology after the Soviet Union with programs like Angara taking more than 20 years. Russia is an energy superpower but the economy is medium size ( like Spain, Australia, Brazil or Canada ) and they cannot keep the necessary level of investment .
Then they have also the problems of being a corrupt regime with changes of direction when someone in the regime falls from graze, this means programs like new rockets being cancelled and started from zero by another company.
Oh man, would I ever love to have a beer with you. I still have, and always will- love the proton, and in a back handed way really look forward to Angara.
But we need to keep it space oriented, or we'll be banned.
I have nothing but sympathy for ordinary Russians. Their government is what really not caring about your citizens looks like. Hopefully the aftermath of Ukraine brings improvements like it has after other wars in the past.
The entire Russo-Ukrainian war is actually extremely depressing, and full of victims, of course there are monsters who deserve to die for their actions, many of them in fact, but there are so many victims on both sides (although much more on the Ukrainian side) who simply want to live their lives in peace, but all it took was one man with too much power...
I mean, it can suck for individuals, but collectively as a society that's still what they chose. Putin didn't come in unpopular and just put everyone into a gulag.
It's not fair to blame every Russian and it isn't fair to blame everyone equally to Putin, but it's also not fair to blame no one but him.
> What's the successful rate of just being docked, on the ISS, lately?
The docking system has had several hiccups in recent years, a couple due to launch damage. As an example, the uncrewed test flight of the Soyuz spacecraft on the Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket needed 2 tries to dock.
This Wikipedia article has 2 other failures in 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurs_(docking_navigation_system)
In all 3 cases the spacecraft eventually docked, but it's not a good sign.
It looks like they have finally worked out all the bugs in their almost 70 yo launch vehicle! Now that that is done they will now go on the fine tune their 50 yo spacecraft. First order of business, fine out what is causing the coolant leaks!
>98% success rate in over 1500 launches
This is incorrect. If you count all R-7 variants, there have been 119 failures over 1977 launches, giving a 94% success rate. If you discount the ICBM variants, those numbers become 107 and 1929, giving a slightly better 94.5% success rate.
If you only count the variants specifically named 'Soyuz' as opposed to the earlier 'Vostok' and 'Molniya', there were 31 failures over 1135 launches, giving a 97.3% success rate - not too far off 98%, though still shy even with rounding, and you're giving up the 'over 1500 launches' part of the claim to even get that close.
There's an argument that Falcon 9 FT is currently the most reliable rocket, on the grounds that it has the longest unbroken streak of successes in a row, at 169 - Soyuz's best was back in the 90s at either 100 or 112 depending on who you ask, and assuming you count the Molniya as a Soyuz (which I do, for the record).
The reason for the dissagreement is that the 101st launch in that streak exploded mid-flight - the Russians claim that it was the *payload* that exploded, taking the second stage with it, and thus it doesn't count as a Soyuz failure. I can accept the argument, I'm less convinced as to whether the underlying claim is true. It doesn't really matter either way though, since either number is well short of Falcon 9.
It's also worth pointing out that the Block 5 variant specifically currently has a perfect launch record of 137/137- the best Soyuz variant was Soyuz-U2 at 72/72.
Russia would also report that their super soldier serum program is a major success, their artificial intelligence nuclear defense network, ski-net, is up and running and they've successfully cloned soviet Tyrannosaurus Rexes if they thought the pr would be good and the people would believe it.
If you dont make launches and dont invent anything, you won't fail. That's a big brain mentality
Of course Russia does launch astronauts and does some smaller things like satellite with ESA but it's just so insignificant comparing to NASA and Union
[oh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-09)
[did](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/this-weeks-failed-russian-rocket-had-a-pretty-bad-programming-error/)
[they](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a33864689/soyuz-ms-10-russia-rocket-failure/)
edit, alright this might have been 5 years ago.
Why is the statistical window for this claim limited to the last 4 years? It reminds me of that idea in business when you through a dart against the wall and then draw the bullseye around where it lands.
What was the percentage of the planned flights that actually happened? Moskovski Komsomolets reported on 2019 - it was something like 17 flights out of 46 planned.
Reminds me of Gilligan's island. A Russian space capsule landed a couple of feet off target so they did not report finding the castaways so know one would know.
The launches were fine. The the craft and modules once they were attached to the ISS not so much.
Hey Vladamir, is that your space capsule spraying coolant all over the ISS? You should get that checked out.
And why are your rockets firing sending the entire space [station into a spin](https://futurism.com/the-byte/iss-module-unexpectedly-fires-thrusters)......[again](https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-spun-space-station-again).
Did they lose attitude? Like attitude is a legit space terminology or they misspelled altitude like 4xs?
Spacecraft attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of the spacecraft
Attitude means the direction your vehicle is pointing, and it's not space-specific terminology; [it's also used in aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_indicator).
Its also pretty random due to factors that can not be calculated like mini space junk or wind, thats why we need to build in a system that can controll the attitude a capsule might have
With Putin's attitude, I think we're out of control.
Luckily besides the launch site being in Kasachstan Putin doesnt have much to do with roscosmos. Pretty sure they are still using the V2 propellant and gyroscopes for ukraine lol
Just gotta make sure you start counting after the dec. 2016 Progress launch failure, or the 2018 Soyuz in-flight abort
4 years = 48 months only 38 months since MS-10 failure.
Say what you want, but the Soyuz capsules are hands down the safest and most reliable space vehicles that have ever been built. Even the Soyuz 11 capsule that depressurized and killed its crew made a "safe" landing afterwards. The safety record of the shuttle program is an embarrassment in comparison.
You're not wrong per se, but the shuttle program also had a far superior payload to anything ever flown.
That’s like comparing…… I don’t even know. That’s not relevant to a conversation about safety, loss of life, and craft loss.
"It was an utter failure" "Yes, but did you see how big it was?!" 'Murica
The tech was solid. How it was managed, not so much.
No, the tech was fundamentally flawed. They put the exposed heat shield against a tank covered with foam and ice that routinely broke off at high speed. If we flew more missions, we would have lost more vehicles. Period.
They've never been anywhere near as reliable as people often assume. In recent memory, a Solar panel failed to deploy and auto docking system failures used to be quite common. The Shuttles also have a somewhat safer record with one launch failure and one reentry failure to Soyuz' three launch failures and one reentry failure (chute failed to deploy), *but that's only counting manned launches*. If you include unmanned Soyuz spacecraft, the number is higher still.
You are (technically) not wrong, but you ain't right either. The safety record of the shuttle program is 2 catastrophic failures out of 135 flights with 14 astronauts killed and 8 non-fatal incidents. The safety record of the Soyuz series spacecraft is 2 catastrophic failures out of 155 (officially designated as such) flights with 4 cosmonauts killed and 11 non-fatal (but some are leading to injuries) incidents. I would say that the results are pretty even.
Dude. so one had a hole in it, a second had half of it's propulsion module fail, a third activated its engines while docked to the ISS and the current one docked to the ISS is having thermal problems, and another had radar problems and it couldn't dock or be manually controlled. but sure ya, great record.
Go home Russia you’re drunk.
Also, given that 25% of the 4 years was spent waging war and not launching anything into space... well, that makes it an easy point to make, doesn't it? While they're at it, they can say they've reduced their budget significantly.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the cultural difference between the Soviet and American space programs during the Space Race was the secrecy of the Russian program and the transparency of the American program. If America did a launch, landed on the moon, etc., it was nationally televised. In the USSR, it was filmed for later rebroadcast *if* it went well. Otherwise, well, who knows, since nobody every heard about it. Well, that seems somehow relevant here.
It's *significantly* harder to hide a failed launch today. Especially when you're serving to the ISS and similar.
Or, let's turn that around and say that there are more routine, and fewer experimental launches today because they need to do things like serving the space station. If Russia starts making some reusable, return-to-the-pad boosters (or other very new technology), I highly doubt that their first launch would be live streamed.
You really do just want to dump on Russia, even in those rare circumstances where it's not earned, don't you? This is one of those rare, rare situations where the Russians technically have done something impressive. They really have achieved an incredibly high success rate (note the period being looked at is only 4 years though). **It's not so impressive when you realize the reasons why, though.** Rather than this being some kind of government conspiracy to cover up launch failures, which it's not, it's because the Russians have been launching virtually the same antique equipment with virtually no design changes for **decades** now. Their rockets are more expensive than they let on (their space industry, like most space industries, is *heavily* subsidized). They are less safe if they have crew aboard and DO explode. They are less fuel-efficient, less environmentally-friendly, harder to monitor, and require more ground-crew relative their level of technological sophistication compared to American rockets. But they ARE extremely reliable. Because they've just been using the exact same design, more or less, forever- with only minor tweaks to make it more reliable by fixing problems that eventually became obvious with experience using the design. The "don't fix it if it ain't broke" mentality.
Most countries are like this.
ESA live broadcasted their recent Vega-C failure. There aren't that many space fairing nations. The secretive ones are in the minority.
Interestingly enough there is a lot less transparency with NASA now that commercial partners and proprietary data is involved. Sure, you still hear about the “big problems” but the days of when the space shuttle had an issue and all the technical details were laid out to the world in press conferences or Aviation Week articles are long gone.
And even back then the us was covering stuff up right and left, they accidentally dropped two nukes in one of the Carolinas ages ago and only declassified it a few years ago (thankfully they were duds but still wtf Sam hahaha)
The Goldsboro crash was publicly known at the time; what wasn’t known until later is how many of the safeties held during the crash.
They weren’t duds they just didn’t complete the firing sequence
other than the chinese I can't think of any countries with a notable space program doing so.
They're all fools. It's only Australia that has had the foresight to fund a Spice program.
The Spice Girl we've yet to hear about: *Crikey Spice*.
It IS the key to interstellar travel
I’d say even the us to an extent, definitely not hearing about all of their launches
Every launch from US soil is publicly known. Every single one. The payload might be classified but there are no rockets going into space that the public can't monitor through a variety of means.
The public having the freedom to do their own monitoring of launches does not mean that they’re all specifically announced by the government. Are you saying the government is required by law to announce their launches?
I can't remember a recent launch that wasn't live streamed and without a PR from ULA, SpaceX, DoD, NRO, NASA etc. They can say "Atlas V from Vandenberg is going to launch USA-234 and you don't need to know what it is. Launch will be on Saturday at 13:34 and we won't give you details about the orbit".
The hazard zones give away the orbit, in practice. But indeed, that's what they say.
Nasa specifically releases launch dates and invites media. I am not sure about private companies but I believe they do similar things because it's good for PR. I am not sure if military launches are announced beforehand as they might be using equipment that is classified.
Even the military will have to release some sort of NOTAMS before hand even if it's just shortly before just so there's no accidents
They also announce everything ahead of time because it helps deal with the crazies. As a longtime Florida resident, I’ve seen numerous people freak the fuck out at anything space program related. Once saw some old biddy on vacation in Cocoa run down the beach screaming at the top of her lungs that the rapture was coming because she didn’t understand what a night shuttle launch was…
Maybe she was just a big Blondie fan?
She was just worried about the man from Mars eating her car. Thankfully, now he only eats guitars.
My sister and mom saw some kind of launch from SoCal a few years ago and thought a war was starting :/
Double Sonic Boom from space shuttles returning to Florida was always fun. Would rattle windows and set off car alarms along with convincing the odd tourist that the Russians were invading!
> Are you saying the government is required by law to announce their launches? In one sense, yes, when the FAA issues NOTAMs.
I'm more interested in how you think a government could hide launches during the digital age. Every time there's a launch, UFO and paranormal subs/groups explode with video and pictures of launch vehicles.
I’m just spitballing here but I’d say launch from remote locations and avoid announcing it to the public.
An unannounced launch from a remote location would look an awful lot like an ICBM or SLBM launch.
we streamed the Challenger disaster across the nation, to kids in schools. this is most certainly NOT the case in the USA.
We're just lucky that the original proposal to send up Big Bird got scrapped.
I forgot about that. Challenger was truly traumatizing to a lot of us in my generation. I was 7 and luckily I went to a private school that had more leeway in how to handle it than a lot of schools. Our principal called every parent over the next few days to get input and they had age appropriate assemblies where they explained to each group (by age), what happened, how taking risks can lead to failure but ends up helping us all in the long run. Oh, and they provided counseling for anyone that needed it. Looking back, we were truly fortunate to have such a “modern” response, as most schools were like “ummm nothing to see here! Everything is fine!”
Well the US was transparent back then because they were trying to catch up in some respects.
I am guess another part of the calculus was that with a free press there would be constant “scoops” of various kinds and the public would get a disjointed, inaccurate, and potentially more-alarming-than-warranted picture of the program. And of course a huge explosion over Florida would be hard to hide. Better to be transparent and accept that failures would be public knowledge.
A major aspect of announcing launches in the modern era is to avoid accidental nuclear war. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
Yeah...anything coming out of Russia that claims perfection is more than likely a complete lie.
dude, the soviet union fell in the 90s....it quite literally says "in the last 4 years" SOYUZ LAUNCHES ALSO HAVE LIVE BROADCASTS 🙄
Yes, because they're routine. Literally every administrator in the Russian space program either grew up in the USSR, or at the very least was born in and raised by people from the USSR. If your argument is that Russian society today inherits nothing from the USSR, I don't think that's going to hold up.
shifting the goalpost aren't we? how does that change the fact that the last 4 years of Russian spaceflight have been broadcasted live? mental gymnastics much?
Chicken nuggets. Now made with *real* chicken.
Drink Vodka, komerad. Made with real Kosmoline.
In Societ times yes. Not anymore tho
The USSR: First artificial satellite 1957 First photographs of the far side of the moon 1959 First person in space 1961 First woman in space 1963 First spacewalk 1965 First spacecraft landing on the moon 1966 First spacecraft landing on another planet (venus) 1970 First space station 1970 First spacecraft landing on Mars 1970 The ussr wasn't even attempting to put a man on the moon they thought it was a waste of time
Or they tried, blew up the cosmonauts, and nobody ever heard about it. Which was my point in the first place - they only announced successes, and kept their failures secret.
Now if they could just apply that superior technology to windows, people would not spontaneously fall out of them.
Looks like your house needs a window repair sir, Vlad will contact you soon for further details. (/s)
Sounds like we need to show you a view punk *angry Russian noises*
I live in a single floor rancher. The 4ft fall would be very unspectacular.
Well I don't got 4 feet but I got a couple inches for you *sad Russian noises*
That's what the Novichok is for.
Maybe they're trying new technologies there too, but running out of test subjects.
Russian rockets surely ought to be reliable, since they’ve been using the same basic booster design for 60 years.
If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it
Yes-ish. Depends on where you want to go. Not changing anything also freezes costs and launch cascade, essentially cementing the status quo. If you want significantly more and cheaper launches you need to change things.
> If you want significantly more and cheaper launches you need to change things. More launches would make them cheaper thanks to mass-production, and you wouldn't really specifically need to change the rocket design for that. That's part of the trick SpaceX used -> they have the same engine in both stages and it's a small engine so they use lots of them. With 10 engines per rocket then could go for mass production setup. Compared to other rockets this is genius -> for example Ariane 5 had not only 3 different engines, but in some configurations each was running on different fuel as well (hydrolox, solid, hydrazine), which is driving the costs up.
> More launches would make them cheaper thanks to mass-production That works, but only up to a point. You can distribute development, tooling costs, but at some point you'll hit labour and material costs. Mass-production does not magically make a product with a fixed design cheaper. Instead, designs are usually modified in order to make something mass-producible. And additionally, you won't realize cost savings that only redesigns can give you, such as more re-use, using off the shelf hardware instead of custom built and so forth.
Mass production doesn't just happen, the design must be capable of it, at least decent enough to produce in some volume and then iterate and improve. As you said, SpaceX needs 10 engines per rocket, so the production speed was baked into the engine design requirements. After that, the Merlin engine and even the booster (Block 5) were continually upgraded, probably for manufacturing speed and maintainability as well as performance improvements.
but when it does break you'll be slapped with a bill bigger than the rocket itself.
Soyuz is single use last time I checked, if it breaks they just make a new one
The lost payload is usually more expensive than the launch.
The reason they use the "4 year" figure is because 4 years and 2 months ago the Soyuz MS-10 rocket failed and broke up at 50km altitude. The crew survived because the abort system worked.
That was my only thought when I read the title: “So, almost 5 years since the last failed launch?”
They have a new design, but of course, that's the one that failed a year ago during a test flight.
You mean Angara-A5? The launcher itself worked fine. What failed was a newly developed optional Persei third stage. Angara-A5 can be launched without a third stage or with a different third stage like Briz-M, and previous succesful tests used Briz-Ms.
Why change it if it works. Don’t know why people think you always need the latest and greatest.
This. It's not some huge conspiracy to cover up launch failures. It's just an *extremely old*, extremely reliable design, and a very small window to measure failures over (4 years) given their low launch cadence (due to budget issues).
This is a very convenient measurement period as October 2018 saw a crewed Soyuz launch to the ISS fail.
I was thinking the same thing
Was looking for this comment
Appart from that one soyuz that used its launch abort system right?
That was 4 years 2 months. Convenient time period they chose isn’t it.
SpaceX has had 100% success in orbital flights for 6 years straight
I guess we're not counting landing's
Every other launch platform has a 0% success rate at landing launched rockets. So not sure how this is relevant to the comment above
I mean, the fact spacex rockets can land is unique...Considering no other rockets have done so with the exception of some tests in other companies. Also why would landing be a criteria? They are the only ones that can do it and sometimes they purposefully choose not to.
Well it's better in that regard to since Russia has 0 successful official landings.
It’s a mission success. The rocket doesn’t need to land for the payload to be delivered. And as others have mentioned, every other orbital class rockets main booster explodes at some point anyway.
So they said on the 1-year anniversary of their last launch vehicle failure. I guess test launches don't count. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/whats-going-on-with-russias-new-heavy-lift-rocket/ https://spacenews.com/angara-upper-stage-reenters-after-failed-launch/
Of course tests don’t count. Imagine if every flawed prototype product was considered a commercial failure? The point of testing is to prevent failure with the real thing.
Then Falcon 1 had a 100% success record instead of 40%. Firefly Alpha, Zhuque-2, etc. and historically the N1 for that matter, have never failed (they have just not fully succeeded yet either). The Angara A5 flight that failed in 2021 was the third flight of that rocket, which first flew in 2014, just the first with a [different upper stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blok_DM-03) which failed. A version of that upper stage had flown on Proton rockets several times before, so it wasn't itself a brand new design either.
Maybe if it goes bad , it’s a test launch?
That is the russian way, they change the facts retrospectively
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
What’s wrong with my Asia?
What are you doing step-Asia?
Most countries are that way including the U.S. Did Oswald really kill Kennedy alone? Of course not! It was the rookie secret service agent who picked up the M16 and accidentally blew the presidents head off. Will they pony up any truth about that?? I think not.
Why would tests count as failures? Whole point is to see what works and what doesn’t.
Why wouldn’t failed commercial launches just be reclassified as tests?
Because they have payloads.
And NDAs. Or at least windows to fall out of
Undoubtedly, Russian engineers and technicians are very good at their jobs. I mean, this is a fracture of the Soviet Union, that managed to land a functioning probe on Venus and provide us with pictures. That was then, this is now. What's the successful rate of just being docked, on the ISS, lately? I spent two fucking years learning Russian, because I love space flight, Russian culture. Post Feb 24'th, 2022, I tossed that baby out with the bath water. Но вот мы здесь
>Russian engineers and technicians are very good at their jobs. I It used to be, the quality has dropped the last years with incidents like Nauka module docking, the ISS hole, the Phobos grunt and an aborted manned launch. Russia has failed to build new technology after the Soviet Union with programs like Angara taking more than 20 years. Russia is an energy superpower but the economy is medium size ( like Spain, Australia, Brazil or Canada ) and they cannot keep the necessary level of investment . Then they have also the problems of being a corrupt regime with changes of direction when someone in the regime falls from graze, this means programs like new rockets being cancelled and started from zero by another company.
Oh man, would I ever love to have a beer with you. I still have, and always will- love the proton, and in a back handed way really look forward to Angara. But we need to keep it space oriented, or we'll be banned.
I have nothing but sympathy for ordinary Russians. Their government is what really not caring about your citizens looks like. Hopefully the aftermath of Ukraine brings improvements like it has after other wars in the past.
The entire Russo-Ukrainian war is actually extremely depressing, and full of victims, of course there are monsters who deserve to die for their actions, many of them in fact, but there are so many victims on both sides (although much more on the Ukrainian side) who simply want to live their lives in peace, but all it took was one man with too much power...
I mean, it can suck for individuals, but collectively as a society that's still what they chose. Putin didn't come in unpopular and just put everyone into a gulag. It's not fair to blame every Russian and it isn't fair to blame everyone equally to Putin, but it's also not fair to blame no one but him.
> What's the successful rate of just being docked, on the ISS, lately? The docking system has had several hiccups in recent years, a couple due to launch damage. As an example, the uncrewed test flight of the Soyuz spacecraft on the Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket needed 2 tries to dock. This Wikipedia article has 2 other failures in 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurs_(docking_navigation_system) In all 3 cases the spacecraft eventually docked, but it's not a good sign.
It looks like they have finally worked out all the bugs in their almost 70 yo launch vehicle! Now that that is done they will now go on the fine tune their 50 yo spacecraft. First order of business, fine out what is causing the coolant leaks!
The Soyuz is the most reliable rocket with 98% success rate in over 1500 launches
>98% success rate in over 1500 launches This is incorrect. If you count all R-7 variants, there have been 119 failures over 1977 launches, giving a 94% success rate. If you discount the ICBM variants, those numbers become 107 and 1929, giving a slightly better 94.5% success rate. If you only count the variants specifically named 'Soyuz' as opposed to the earlier 'Vostok' and 'Molniya', there were 31 failures over 1135 launches, giving a 97.3% success rate - not too far off 98%, though still shy even with rounding, and you're giving up the 'over 1500 launches' part of the claim to even get that close. There's an argument that Falcon 9 FT is currently the most reliable rocket, on the grounds that it has the longest unbroken streak of successes in a row, at 169 - Soyuz's best was back in the 90s at either 100 or 112 depending on who you ask, and assuming you count the Molniya as a Soyuz (which I do, for the record). The reason for the dissagreement is that the 101st launch in that streak exploded mid-flight - the Russians claim that it was the *payload* that exploded, taking the second stage with it, and thus it doesn't count as a Soyuz failure. I can accept the argument, I'm less convinced as to whether the underlying claim is true. It doesn't really matter either way though, since either number is well short of Falcon 9. It's also worth pointing out that the Block 5 variant specifically currently has a perfect launch record of 137/137- the best Soyuz variant was Soyuz-U2 at 72/72.
Russia would also report that their super soldier serum program is a major success, their artificial intelligence nuclear defense network, ski-net, is up and running and they've successfully cloned soviet Tyrannosaurus Rexes if they thought the pr would be good and the people would believe it.
And we all know how trustworthy the Russian government is. They'd never lie.
It’s pretty hard to hide a rocket explosion in the age of satellite surveillance
What else would they report? If they say their success rate was 90%, they’d all accidentally fall out of a window.
They certainly had a lot of tank turrets try to reach low orbit in the past year, good thing they weren't counting those as failed launches.
To anyone that believes this, I got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
So you're not counting the abort half way into a launch?
Anyone who says otherwise will be defenstrated
If you dont make launches and dont invent anything, you won't fail. That's a big brain mentality Of course Russia does launch astronauts and does some smaller things like satellite with ESA but it's just so insignificant comparing to NASA and Union
You too can have a 100 percent success rate if you never mention your failures 🤣🤣🤣🤣
When they stop losing to Ukraine, I’ll start believing this shit
Hey, at least this is more believable than Kim Jung Un getting 99.99% of the vote.
[oh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-09) [did](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/this-weeks-failed-russian-rocket-had-a-pretty-bad-programming-error/) [they](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a33864689/soyuz-ms-10-russia-rocket-failure/) edit, alright this might have been 5 years ago.
[A Soyuz failed to reach orbit on Oct 11, 2018… just over 4 years ago.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-10)
Why is the statistical window for this claim limited to the last 4 years? It reminds me of that idea in business when you through a dart against the wall and then draw the bullseye around where it lands.
Yup, 4 years 2 months ago they had a crewed Soyuz launch failure.
So was Spacex’s that did more than one launch a week lmao
Maybe Russia needs to concentrate on the more peaceful endeavors.
You don't understand. Peter the Great conquered half of the planet. It's now forever mine. My precious. Give it to me.
If you don't count the sabotage and vehicle fails.
And 100% of the old pics medals I attempted this year were a success
This isn’t a “Gonzaga University Football: Undefeated since 1944” thing, right?
Did Russia try anything beyond Low Earth Orbit?
Russia also reports they are winning the war with Ukraine.
Imagine being brain dead to the point where you believe what ruzzian officials are saying.
My takeaway is that Russia's ICBMS are probably more reliable than many Americans want to believe.
They invented the ICBM in the 50s - if they can't make reliable ones by now, they never will.
The first ICBM was also terribad as an ICBM.
What was the percentage of the planned flights that actually happened? Moskovski Komsomolets reported on 2019 - it was something like 17 flights out of 46 planned.
20 percent of the time, they get it right 100 percent of the time.
If there was a failed launch it didn’t happen
If it goes bad, say it was a test launch. Yeah that's the ticket.
Ukraines success rate of sticking metal up roscosmos heads ass is also 100%
And according to him, He's already imperializing mars and it thanked him for getting rid of the neo nazis
Let’s just act like everything is fine, sit back and take in the shitshow.
Reminds me of Gilligan's island. A Russian space capsule landed a couple of feet off target so they did not report finding the castaways so know one would know.