Has this ever happened before ?
A capsule carrying the two crew members of a Russian Soyuz rocket that malfunctioned on lift-off has landed safely in Kazakhstan. Russian Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague are reported to be "in good condition", both Nasa and Russian media said. Search and rescue teams are now en route to the landing site.
The rocket had taken off for the International Space Station (ISS) when it suffered a problem with its booster. The crew had to return in "ballistic descent mode", Nasa tweeted, which it explained was "a sharper angle of landing compared to normal". The Soyuz rocket had taken off at 04:40 Eastern time for a four-orbit, six-hour journey to the ISS. Mr Hague and Mr Ovchinin were due to spend six months on the station working on a number of scientific experiments.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45822845
"The first Soyuz flight was unmanned and started on November 28, 1966. The first Soyuz mission with a crew, Soyuz 1, launched on 23 April 1967 but ended with a crash due to a parachute failure, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. The following flight was unmanned. Soyuz 3, launched on October 26, 1968, became the program's first successful manned mission. The only other flight to suffer a fatal accident, Soyuz 11, killed its crew of three when the cabin depressurized prematurely just before reentry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft) Oh, and the lake incident... .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_23
ReplyDeleteBut any previous successful manned aborts during lift-off ?
ReplyDeleteThis article seems relatively comprehensive from a couple of years ago.. https://www.drewexmachina.com/2014/11/18/a-brief-history-of-launch-aborts/
ReplyDeletedrewexmachina.com - A Brief History of Launch Aborts
Rhys Taylor there was another sucessful manned Soyuz abort during lift-off back in the 1970s some time. But I forget when
ReplyDeleteThat poor crew pulled 20 gees, this mornings crew only pulled about 6.7 gees
Winchell Chung Right, yes. That's described in the article Ciro Villa posted. As far as I can tell that's the only comparable incident : a successful, manned abort without the ship reaching orbit but not exploding on the pad.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-T_No.39
ReplyDeleteen.m.wikipedia.org - Soyuz 7K-T No.39 - Wikipedia
Of course this probably means the end of the ISS
ReplyDeleteHonestly, we need a station with artificial gravity anyway. And that is not all that difficult to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteWinchell Chung no?
ReplyDeleteWell, in principle a spinning space station is possible. In practice it will be a nightmare to construct in space and the maintenance will be constant.
ReplyDeleteAdd the challenge of man-rating the monster and you can see why NASA is not enthusiastic.
Winchell Chung - But similar to what JFK said, we must do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. It would be highly beneficial for manned missions beyond low Earth orbit.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus
ReplyDeleteWell, not to put too fine a point on it, but JFK was a US President. And there is a remarkable lack of US Presidents demanding that we develop a spinning space station.
Winchell Chung - That's because we haven't had any true visionaries in a very long time.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lazarus
ReplyDeleteWell, alas, in our case "a very long time" equals "since JFK"
There have been multiple aborts to orbit. Apollo 12, 13, and several shuttle missions lost an engine. Not quite the same, but aborts are aborts.
ReplyDeleteWinchell Chung - Criminal isn't it?
ReplyDeleteThere is nice information about the Spacecraft Abort System in Wiki.
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Soyuz (spacecraft) - Wikipedia