The launch failure marks an unprecedented mishap for the Russian space program, which has been dogged by a string of launch failures and other incidents.
Jesus fuck AP, your level of suck is “unprecendented”, except that it isn’t.
Our astrounaut’s life wouldn’t have been imperiled if only Congress had repealed the Magnitsky Act.
How can a launch failure be unprecedented when the next phrase says the program has been dogged by a string of launch failures? AP inquiring minds want to know.
Nice space station you got there. Pity if no one but us could get to it.
The above would be considered conspiracy-mongering by everyone but the guy who said that a drill hole in the station was “sabotage”.
This is unprecedented because there has never been a launch abort with a capsule separation while astronauts were aboard. They run tests of course, but this was real. The only other time a launch failure happened was with Challenger, and there they couldn’t separate the orbiter safely.
I know the AP articles usually suck, but this one had the facts and statements correct people, so ease up a bit. Launch incidents happen often enough to make you worry, but having it on a manned launch, where they are particularly careful, is a big deal.
The first real time indication of something wrong with Challenger was the conflagration and breakup of the whole stack. And yes there was no abort capability while the solid rocket motors were attached and firing even if they knew something was very wrong…
The astronauts yesterday were fortunate that things went wrong well above the atmosphere and aerodynamic forces didn’t come into play.
The normal flight sequence is: launch, separation of the excape rocket, discard boosters (the boosters are the cone-shaped rockets strapped to the center rocket tube), discard aero shell, first stage separation, second stage separation, docking with ISS.
Apparently the escape rocked separated as planned before booster separation. Something went wrong about the time of booster separation and, in response, the manned capsule (possibly still in its aerodynamic shell) was separated from the rocket.
The capsule then followed a ballistic trajectory (I.e. not powered - leftover velocity from the rocket & gravity shaped their trajectory), finally landing using the capsule’s parachutes and retro rockets.
The astronaut and cosmonaut are fine - on their return trip they experienced up to 7 Gs of force, but didn’t receive any serious injuries.
Here’s a YouTube video with Scott Manley that shows video and provides background & discusses the event.
(Scott is a space nerd that does a good job explaining space activities.)
The thing to watch in the video - a good booster separation looks like a plus-sign with the rocket as a bright dot in the center.
If that video has it right, it looks like they had a tank failure of some kind, either by impact with a booster or just something went wrong with the start sequence. It does look like the booster slewed sideways, but that may be something else as it’s not really clear…the video in the capsule sure shows them moving to the side where it cuts out (which also indicates a possible repoint of the antenna). Likely a pretty hairy moment, but they got back safely…the questions about what happens with ISS ops remain. Next year there should be more crew vehicles going to ISS, if they can get 1-2 Soyuz up in the meantime it should all work out.
And yes, I know all about Challenger, I was dashing a quick note off and didn’t have a chance to go into detail. Just like with Columbia, they did have some indications that something was not quite right, but not nearly enough time to read the telemetry and figure it out, and it wouldn’t have mattered…as soon as the boosters lit they were stuck until the separated. The thing I always find saddest about that is the crew likely lived until impact with the ocean…not likely conscious, they didn’t have full pressure suits, and they couldn’t escape anyways as they didn’t have parachutes. All that changed after Challenger, though it didn’t save the Columbia crew, but it could have if they got through the atmosphere to the point they could have bailed out.
Risk is always there in space travel, it’s just part of the business.