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Am I right when I say that this is a pretty huge coincidence? As far as I can see Soyuz rockets almost never fail and Proton rockets only fail from time to time
by ugh 15y ago
Am I right when I say that this is a pretty huge coincidence? As far as I can see Soyuz rockets almost never fail and Proton rockets only fail from time to time.
Excluding this incident, Soyuz rockets had one partial and one complete failure during the last decade (and more than 115 flights during that time). The variant that is now used exclusively for manned flights had 33 flights and no failures. Soyuz-U – the variant used for this flight – seems to be the real troublemaker. It’s responsible for the only other complete failure during this decade.
Proton had more than ninety launches in that decade and five failures.
Those Russian rockets are very mature and usually don’t fail.
- iwwr 15y agoTwo human crew return missions from the ISS were also partial failures. http://www.astronautix.com/articles/thespace.htm http://www.astronautix.com/articles/thespace.htm (the bottom 2 entries)
- RomP 15y agothose are space ship failures, not rockets. the current failure is one of a rocket (delivery vehicle).
- idlewords 15y agoYou can't make valid inferences about the relative failure rates of the Soyuz rocket variants from two data points.
- ugh 15y agoI wasn’t really trying to, I was merely trying to point out an interesting lead. Whether the type of rocket used has anything to do with this is, however, a very interesting and relevant question, especially considering that the ISS depends on Soyuz launches for replacing the crew. Soyuz-U is quite old, has few flights today and will soon be completely replaced by other Soyuz variants. It doesn’t do any manned flights anymore. I bet it would be a huge relief if Roscomos were to find out that it’s really the type of rocket (and only this type of rocket) that had something to do with the failure. A manned Soyuz flight to the ISS is coming up soon, it would be best if Roscomos wouldn’t have to delay that one. But in order to do that they have to find the reason for the failure and fix it. This is the worst time for a Progress mission to fail. None of the previous Progress missions failed. And now? The first one after the Shuttle retires fails. The timing would be comical if it weren’t so serious. Consequences for the ISS could be serious. The six person crew might have to be reduced to three people.