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| Re: Another Russian Failure in Space (971945) | |||
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Re: Another Russian Failure in Space |
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Posted by WillD on Fri Aug 10 01:55:59 2012, in response to Re: Another Russian Failure in Space, posted by Train Dude on Thu Aug 9 15:15:47 2012. Why would I want to address the current Russian spaceflight failure? They've had a spate of them lately. You mentioned the Progress resupply ship failures, but there also was the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars which was lost before leaving LEO. They also cancelled the Rus-M booster in favor of using the smaller Angara modular rocket, with the accompanying Vostochny launch site on the Amur River and next generation PPTS capsule both in doubt. The last time the Russians had a successful interplanetary probe was back in 1988, despite three attempts.NASA needs to get away from buying seats on Soyuz capsules as soon as possible. The Space Shuttle was going to be retired as soon as Columbia disintegrated in 2003, so it was incumbent upon NASA to get its replacement up and operating as soon as possible. The rocket and capsule combination they selected, the Orion capsule atop the Ares I rocket, were due to begin flying in 2011, but that became 2017-2018 as the poor design made its impact felt. That's a delay of more than twice the original timeframe within which it was to be implemented. It certainly wasn't the Orion capsule's problem as it will fly an unmanned test mission next year. With the Ares I being put out of its misery by NASA under the Obama Administration our manned spaceflight program now falls to the entrants in NASA's commercial crew competition. These three providers are contracted to provide manned spaceflights to the ISS by 2016. By comparison, that's a year less than was originally scheduled for the Ares I/Orion combination, and less than half the time eventually slated develop that rocket. Given this if you don't want to see NASA using Russian spaceflight providers then why are you deriding the commercial manned spaceflight program which will insure we're freed from using Russian Soyuz capsules as soon as possible. |
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