8 ms·

While the US had better tech and improved design they all tested the shit out of things before going live and then ran live tests on unmanned rockets, many of w

by evgen 6y ago

While the US had better tech and improved design they all tested the shit out of things before going live and then ran live tests on unmanned rockets, many of which exploded quick spectacularly. Soyuz might be safe now, but that safety was paid for by many near-misses and in several cases in cosmonaut blood. Your statement regarding US vs Soviet approach to the space race is simply wrong.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago
> As of 2020, there have been 15 astronaut and 4 cosmonaut fatalities during spaceflight. Astronauts have also died while training for space missions, such as the Apollo 1 launch pad fire which killed an entire crew of three The numbers don't really seem to support your assertion that NASA is generally much safer than Soviet/Russia
- valuearb 6y ago
  At least 126 technicians and cosmonauts were killed by accidents during the Soviet space program. It’s rumored that additional cosmonauts died on missions that the Soviets covered up.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    We also lost all three astronauts in a test of the Apollo capsule which doesn’t count as flight but I think we would agree still counts in the buckets of blood both programs have spent. If you do more tests which kill more people before declaring the system good, you don’t get to not count those people like it’s a different color of money in some bureaucratic dystopia.
  - kens 6y ago
    As far as technicians, I've always felt sad for the two Space Shuttle technicians who died in 1981 after entering a nitrogen-filled engine compartment (John Bjornstad and Forrest Cole).
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Three died in that accident. The third lingered for a couple years before passing.
    - hansthehorse 6y ago
      It's very sad but it's not a bad way to go. I was a nuclear plant supervisor for about 20 years. One day the temp started to increase in the control room. The 3 AC units were behind the control room so I headed there to check on things. Another guy said he'd go with me. These things are as big as locomotives. Well while we were in the room a refrigerant relief valve lifted with a huge roar. Turns out, amazingly, the relief was designed to vent into the room. We made it to the card reader to get back into the control room but my card kept being rejected. I felt myself sliding down the wall and next I knew I was sitting in a chair in the control room feeling better and better. If my buddy hadn't decided to come with me I would have died in that room. There was no panicky brain screaming "we need air" or any feeling of being O2 short. It was just normal breathing. If you're going to end it all that's the way to do it. I wrote an incident report with the obvious suggestion to vent the reliefs outside. It was modified the next outage.
      - snet0 6y ago
        "But what if we vent the toxic gas into the place where you go to see if there's a problem with the toxic gas..."
  - avmich 6y ago
    That's likely to include the Nedelin catastrophe ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe ) - "The most recent estimated death toll, released by Roscosmos on the 50th anniversary of the accident and originating with agency engineer Boris Chertok, was that 126 people had died, but the agency qualified the number by saying that the actual number could be anywhere from 60 to 150 dead."
    - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
      The Nedelin catastrophe was an ICBM test run of a rocket with hypergolic fuel that exploded on the launch pad; there was the 1980 launch pad explosion of a (military) sattelite launcher that killed 44 people and injured 43. The Russian version of the article says that hydrogen peroxide filters were produced with catalytic materials, this was later fixed after another launch almost failed in the same manner (it doesn't say how that blast was avoided), initially they suspected an action of the ground crew to have causes the blast in 1980. Both blasts were kept secret until Perestroika in 1989. both explosions were on rockets with hypergolic fuel. The Russian wikipedia article also has a list of 'other failures' - these are fires in an ICBM silo in Russia in 1960 - eight dead; the US had a fire in a Titan II bunker in 1965 that killed 53 and another one in 1980 that killed one man; also Brazil had a fire of a liquid fueled rocket that killed 21, also on start preparations. (and another blast in Plesetsk in 1973 that killed seven http://www.plesetzk.ru/index.php?p=1973&d=doc/disaster http://www.plesetzk.ru/index.php?p=1973&d=doc/disaster - wikipedia doesn't list everything) Rocket fuel can be very dangerous stuff! At least liquid methane/oxygen aren't hypergolic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Plesetsk_launch_pad_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Plesetsk_launch_pad_disas... https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5_%D0%9F%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA_(1980) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%81...
      - derivagral 6y ago
        I've always loved Ignition![0] for the perspective it gives on working with the chemistry of this stuff. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-Univers...
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  But the U.S. has sent 3x as many citizens into space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nat... So combining with your statistic the U.S. has a fatality rate of 4.4% versus Russia's 3.3%. Given the low N it's probably within margin of error.
  - Someone 6y ago
    I don’t think it makes an enormous difference, but not all of those US citizens flew in US rockets (nor did all Russian ones) Also, quite a few of those did multiple flights. Looking at that list, I think that moves the needle in favor of US rocket safety.
    - avmich 6y ago
      Soviet spaceflights were quite long compared to American - Salyut-6 and Salyut-7 both had more expeditions than Skylab, and that's before Mir, while Shuttles were limited to about a month in space per flight. Of course launch and landing are more dangerous phases of flight - Apollo-13 notwithstanding - so it makes harder to pinpoint an objective measure for safety.
  - ggreer 6y ago
    At least 60 of those Americans were sent up on the Russian Soyuz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_human_spaceflight_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_human_spacefli... Also, How are you doing the math to get a 4.4% fatality rate? The numbers are much lower than that. Soyuz has launched 394 people and killed 4 of them. The most recent fatality was 50 years ago. The Shuttle launched 833 people and killed 14 of them, most recently in 2003 (8 years before the program ended). That gives Soyuz a fatality rate of 1.0% and the Shuttle a fatality rate of 1.7%. In other words: You're 70% more likely to die if you ride the Shuttle instead of Soyuz. The more you look into the specifics, the safer Soyuz seems. The Soyuz deaths were early in the program while the Shuttle deaths happened when the program was mature. (Soyuz 11 was the last fatality and it was the 10th manned mission. STS-51-L was the 25th Shuttle mission and was considered to be safe enough for a civilian teacher to ride along. Oops.) Soyuz's design is inherently safer. It has a launch escape system (which saved the crew of Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L).[1] The Shuttle did not. Soyuz's heat shield is much more robust than the Shuttle's. Soyuz's crew section is on top of the rocket, reducing the chance that any falling debris (or shrapnel caused by an explosion) will harm the crew module. Lastly, Soyuz uses liquid fueled rockets that can be shut off at any time. The Shuttle's solid boosters could not be throttled or shut off. All of these design decisions make for a simpler and safer vehicle. If I had to pick one, I'd ride Soyuz for sure. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L
- evgen 6y ago
  Both had two vehicles lost in space/reentry, the shuttles just held more astronauts. In terms of percentage of fatal missions the two were roughly equivalent, with Soviet failures front-loaded into less sophisticated and less safe early vehicles while the US failures were later on an overly-complicated system design.
Layke1123 6y ago
Challenger? What's your point? That Russia didn't beat the US into space? I thought the west at least accepted that fact. Or do you just have to believe the US is ALWAYS "superior"?
- Layke1123 6y ago
  Downvoting again? Rather than articulate a response?
  - avmich 6y ago
    I was confused by "Russia didn't beat US into space" - you probably meant "to the Moon" (manned flights), while USSR had quite a few space firsts.
    - Layke1123 6y ago
      No, I meant that the above response calling the other user wrong is wrong itself. The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general. But yet, if I say this, I will be immediately downvoted because if I suggest that anything other than the established order in the US is the best system, the powers that be as well as the indoctrinated individuals that frequent this place would rather just shut that conversation up than to engage it meaningfully.
      - alentist 6y ago
        > The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general. What makes you think that? If they had such a wonderful "way to structure and run society in general", why did the USSR and its satellite states have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bloc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bl... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_executions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_e... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

by evgen 6y ago

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

> As of 2020, there have been 15 astronaut and 4 cosmonaut fatalities during spaceflight. Astronauts have also died while training for space missions, such as the Apollo 1 launch pad fire which killed an entire crew of three The numbers don't really seem to support your assertion that NASA is generally much safer than Soviet/Russia

valuearb 6y ago
At least 126 technicians and cosmonauts were killed by accidents during the Soviet space program. It’s rumored that additional cosmonauts died on missions that the Soviets covered up.
- hinkley 6y ago
  We also lost all three astronauts in a test of the Apollo capsule which doesn’t count as flight but I think we would agree still counts in the buckets of blood both programs have spent. If you do more tests which kill more people before declaring the system good, you don’t get to not count those people like it’s a different color of money in some bureaucratic dystopia.
- kens 6y ago
  As far as technicians, I've always felt sad for the two Space Shuttle technicians who died in 1981 after entering a nitrogen-filled engine compartment (John Bjornstad and Forrest Cole).
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Three died in that accident. The third lingered for a couple years before passing.
  - hansthehorse 6y ago
    It's very sad but it's not a bad way to go. I was a nuclear plant supervisor for about 20 years. One day the temp started to increase in the control room. The 3 AC units were behind the control room so I headed there to check on things. Another guy said he'd go with me. These things are as big as locomotives. Well while we were in the room a refrigerant relief valve lifted with a huge roar. Turns out, amazingly, the relief was designed to vent into the room. We made it to the card reader to get back into the control room but my card kept being rejected. I felt myself sliding down the wall and next I knew I was sitting in a chair in the control room feeling better and better. If my buddy hadn't decided to come with me I would have died in that room. There was no panicky brain screaming "we need air" or any feeling of being O2 short. It was just normal breathing. If you're going to end it all that's the way to do it. I wrote an incident report with the obvious suggestion to vent the reliefs outside. It was modified the next outage.
    - snet0 6y ago
      "But what if we vent the toxic gas into the place where you go to see if there's a problem with the toxic gas..."
- avmich 6y ago
  That's likely to include the Nedelin catastrophe ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe ) - "The most recent estimated death toll, released by Roscosmos on the 50th anniversary of the accident and originating with agency engineer Boris Chertok, was that 126 people had died, but the agency qualified the number by saying that the actual number could be anywhere from 60 to 150 dead."
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    The Nedelin catastrophe was an ICBM test run of a rocket with hypergolic fuel that exploded on the launch pad; there was the 1980 launch pad explosion of a (military) sattelite launcher that killed 44 people and injured 43. The Russian version of the article says that hydrogen peroxide filters were produced with catalytic materials, this was later fixed after another launch almost failed in the same manner (it doesn't say how that blast was avoided), initially they suspected an action of the ground crew to have causes the blast in 1980. Both blasts were kept secret until Perestroika in 1989. both explosions were on rockets with hypergolic fuel. The Russian wikipedia article also has a list of 'other failures' - these are fires in an ICBM silo in Russia in 1960 - eight dead; the US had a fire in a Titan II bunker in 1965 that killed 53 and another one in 1980 that killed one man; also Brazil had a fire of a liquid fueled rocket that killed 21, also on start preparations. (and another blast in Plesetsk in 1973 that killed seven http://www.plesetzk.ru/index.php?p=1973&d=doc/disaster http://www.plesetzk.ru/index.php?p=1973&d=doc/disaster - wikipedia doesn't list everything) Rocket fuel can be very dangerous stuff! At least liquid methane/oxygen aren't hypergolic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Plesetsk_launch_pad_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Plesetsk_launch_pad_disas... https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5_%D0%9F%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA_(1980) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%81...
    - derivagral 6y ago
      I've always loved Ignition![0] for the perspective it gives on working with the chemistry of this stuff. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-Univers...
fpgaminer 6y ago
But the U.S. has sent 3x as many citizens into space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nat... So combining with your statistic the U.S. has a fatality rate of 4.4% versus Russia's 3.3%. Given the low N it's probably within margin of error.
- Someone 6y ago
  I don’t think it makes an enormous difference, but not all of those US citizens flew in US rockets (nor did all Russian ones) Also, quite a few of those did multiple flights. Looking at that list, I think that moves the needle in favor of US rocket safety.
  - avmich 6y ago
    Soviet spaceflights were quite long compared to American - Salyut-6 and Salyut-7 both had more expeditions than Skylab, and that's before Mir, while Shuttles were limited to about a month in space per flight. Of course launch and landing are more dangerous phases of flight - Apollo-13 notwithstanding - so it makes harder to pinpoint an objective measure for safety.
- ggreer 6y ago
  At least 60 of those Americans were sent up on the Russian Soyuz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_human_spaceflight_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_human_spacefli... Also, How are you doing the math to get a 4.4% fatality rate? The numbers are much lower than that. Soyuz has launched 394 people and killed 4 of them. The most recent fatality was 50 years ago. The Shuttle launched 833 people and killed 14 of them, most recently in 2003 (8 years before the program ended). That gives Soyuz a fatality rate of 1.0% and the Shuttle a fatality rate of 1.7%. In other words: You're 70% more likely to die if you ride the Shuttle instead of Soyuz. The more you look into the specifics, the safer Soyuz seems. The Soyuz deaths were early in the program while the Shuttle deaths happened when the program was mature. (Soyuz 11 was the last fatality and it was the 10th manned mission. STS-51-L was the 25th Shuttle mission and was considered to be safe enough for a civilian teacher to ride along. Oops.) Soyuz's design is inherently safer. It has a launch escape system (which saved the crew of Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L).[1] The Shuttle did not. Soyuz's heat shield is much more robust than the Shuttle's. Soyuz's crew section is on top of the rocket, reducing the chance that any falling debris (or shrapnel caused by an explosion) will harm the crew module. Lastly, Soyuz uses liquid fueled rockets that can be shut off at any time. The Shuttle's solid boosters could not be throttled or shut off. All of these design decisions make for a simpler and safer vehicle. If I had to pick one, I'd ride Soyuz for sure. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L
evgen 6y ago
Both had two vehicles lost in space/reentry, the shuttles just held more astronauts. In terms of percentage of fatal missions the two were roughly equivalent, with Soviet failures front-loaded into less sophisticated and less safe early vehicles while the US failures were later on an overly-complicated system design.

Layke1123 6y ago

Challenger? What's your point? That Russia didn't beat the US into space? I thought the west at least accepted that fact. Or do you just have to believe the US is ALWAYS "superior"?

Layke1123 6y ago
Downvoting again? Rather than articulate a response?
- avmich 6y ago
  I was confused by "Russia didn't beat US into space" - you probably meant "to the Moon" (manned flights), while USSR had quite a few space firsts.
  - Layke1123 6y ago
    No, I meant that the above response calling the other user wrong is wrong itself. The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general. But yet, if I say this, I will be immediately downvoted because if I suggest that anything other than the established order in the US is the best system, the powers that be as well as the indoctrinated individuals that frequent this place would rather just shut that conversation up than to engage it meaningfully.
    - alentist 6y ago
      > The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general. What makes you think that? If they had such a wonderful "way to structure and run society in general", why did the USSR and its satellite states have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bloc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bl... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_executions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_e... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor