Photos of Soyuz descent module crash (touchdown)

[wayneflorida 0]

The US will pay 51 million per person for this. yekes
Have to admit the KISS principle gets the job done.

http://cryptome.org/info/soyuz-tma18/soyuz-tma18.htm

http://cryptome.org/info/soyuz-tma19/soyuz-tma19.htm

[shah269 0]

Man I don't know......doesn't look like a soft landing to me!
But apparently Borats home town isn't so bad!
Check out the hats they get!

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[pchapman 261]

Nice pics!

It's always interesting to see how the Russian design philosophy differed from the US one. E.g., landing retro rockets, and the use of 1 main and a sub sized reserve, rather than a single cluster of 3 canopies.

Has anyone landed on the sub sized Soyuz reserve canopy? Landing that could be a bit like being in a car crash. Rough but survivable -- sort of like a high G ballistic return trajectory that occasionally happens if there's a problem, compared to the normally planned entry profile.


For more info on descent rates and landing, I looked up the following:

European Space Agency on descent rates for Soyuz:

Quote

Fifteen minutes prior to landing at an altitude of 12 kilometres the parachutes begin to deploy while Soyuz is still at a speed of 900 km/h. First, two pilot parachutes open followed by a 24 square metre drogue chute, at an altitude of 10,5 kilometres. This slows the Soyuz to 360 kilometres per hour.

At this point the 1000 metre square main parachute opens, slowing the Soyuz to 25 km/h (7 m/s). Soyuz travels at an angle of 30 degrees for cooling purposes due to a special parachute harness. The capsule then changes to a vertical descent. As a backup, there is an emergency parachute half the size of the main parachute. This would be released automatically at a certain height.

At 4 km above the ground the heat shield is jettisoned, further reducing descent speed until one second before touch down. This is at a distance of 80cm above the ground when six soft landing engines fire to reduce the speed to 7 km/h (2 m/s). The Soyuz TMA spacecraft possess two engines, which reduce landing speed and forces by 15 to 30 per cent.

A longer description is on this NASA page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/soyuz/landing.html

[normiss 622]

Funny. Looks like their "response vehicles" are a Mercedes SUV and a KIA.


Wait...is that DUCT TAPE on the bridle???

[shah269 0]

Funny....you would think there would be some sort of "slider" to slow the opening of the thing?
Less of a shock to the system?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[skyrider 0]

How long we they in space? I see they can't stand up!

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

t's always interesting to see how the Russian design philosophy differed from the US one. E.g., landing retro rockets, and the use of 1 main and a sub sized reserve, rather than a single cluster of 3 canopies.

Historical note- both the Mercury and Gemini crafts landed under a single canopy. The US didn't cluster canopies on manned craft until Apollo. I seem to recall one manned Apollo craft landed essentially under 2 inflated canopies, the third one remaining uninflated. As best as I can recall there was one Russian mission, I think in the 60s, where a single-cosmonaut craft's attitude control was all f-ed up, and they finally had to re-enter the craft while tumbling. The craft never stabilized; the canopy deployed, but streamered, and the pilot was killed.

[Andy9o8 0]

Quote

How long we they in space? I see they can't stand up!

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's been standard Soviet/Russian cosmonaut recovery protocol for quite a long time now: keep the pilots off their feet for a while, if possible, to ease the transition back to gravity.

[CSpenceFLY 1]

Quote

How long we they in space? I see they can't stand up!

They just had lunch. It's the vodka.

[lawrocket 3]

That was Komarov on Soyuz 1 - just about 3 months after Grissom, White and Chaffee were killed on the pad in Apollo 1.

Here's the Soyuz 1 crash site: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/graphics/s/soy1crs3.jpg

The Soyuz 1 flight was a mess altogether - nothing went correctly. The automatic parachute was supposed to deploy but only the drogue came out. Komarov then manually deployed the reserve but the drogue did not cut away and the reserve tangled with the drogue.

I saw a picture of what was left of Komarov. I won't post it...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[NickDG 23]

The Russians are known for having a "working man's" space program and you've probably heard the following story. The U.S. spent 10 million dollars developing a pen that would write in zero gravity. While the Russians used a pencil.

As for reefing the opening of the Soyus parachute system it does have a drag chute that deploys before the main (like a tandem rig) and I imagine it's large enough to provide some speed reduction.

However, they did have some spectacular failures during unmanned testing. But right after the Apollo launch pad fire the Russians saw their chance to jump ahead of the U.S. so ready or not, they launched two spacecraft for an orbital rendezvous, docking, and crew transfer mission.

The entire mission was plagued with one problem after another, but they managed the transfer and the remaining cosmonaut, a fellow named Komarov, attempted to re-enter and land by himself. At first the auto-retro-fire system failed so Komarov had to fire the retro system manually to re-enter. And by this point in the mission Komarov had become pretty pissed off with all the problems he was having.

At the correct altitude the drag chute deployed but when the main parachute was to deploy nothing happened because the drag chute wouldn't release. Basically, Komarov had something familiar to all tandem instructors, a drogue in tow.

He manually fired the reserve parachute into the malfunction and it entangled with the drogue and that was the end of that. U.S. military listening posts in Europe reported as Komarov plummeted to his doom he was cursing up a storm about how his superiors could send men into space in a such a piece of shit. The blue streak tirade continued right up until Komarov's lights went out . . .

NickD

[FreeFlyer2100 0]

Something tells me that a 40 foot table is not going to big enough to pack that round.

[NickDG 23]

You know what this site needs more than anything? A feature I see on newer style forums. If you're in the middle of composing a new post to a thread the forum let's you know if someone posts ahead of you and actually lets you read it. I could have saved myself some typing, LOL . . .

NickD

[lawrocket 3]

Heck, Nick. You posted some details I didn't - like about the control systems. Komarov had little control, little power - nothing worked correctly.

And as far as the earlier question - these folks are in the ISS for roughly six months. Six months in zero g will leave you a couple of inches taller and pretty much unable to walk, low bone density, etc.

Space does, however, enable dudes to get some pretty rock hard boners!

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[skyrider 0]

Quote

You know what this site needs more than anything? A feature I see on newer style forums. If you're in the middle of composing a new post to a thread the forum let's you know if someone posts ahead of you and actually lets you read it. I could have saved myself some typing, LOL . . .

NickD

This forum is about the oldest set up there is...(cheapest) guess we get what we paid for!

[muff528 3]

Quote

Quote

You know what this site needs more than anything? A feature I see on newer style forums. If you're in the middle of composing a new post to a thread the forum let's you know if someone posts ahead of you and actually lets you read it. I could have saved myself some typing, LOL . . .

NickD

This forum is about the oldest set up there is...(cheapest) guess we get what we paid for!

People with common interests from all over the world can communicate, argue, share photos, etc almost instantaneously, but it still ain't fast enough!

[riggerrob 558]

Quote

Heck, Nick. You posted some details I didn't - like about the control systems. Komarov had little control, little power - nothing worked correctly. ...

...................................................................

Cosmonauts - in early Russian spacecraft - were little more than "cargo" in artillery rockets.
Which explains why the Russians were able to launch space missions months or years ago of - far more complex - American missions.

[riggerrob 558]

Quote

Nice pics!

It's always interesting to see how the Russian design philosophy differed from the US one. E.g., landing retro rockets, ...

.......................................................................

Russian paratroopers have been using retro-rockets for their cargo, artillery and light tanks since at least the 1960s.
Retro-rockets - for space craft - were just a minor change.

• Quote

[skyrider 0]

Quote

Quote

Quote

You know what this site needs more than anything? A feature I see on newer style forums. If you're in the middle of composing a new post to a thread the forum let's you know if someone posts ahead of you and actually lets you read it. I could have saved myself some typing, LOL . . .

NickD

This forum is about the oldest set up there is...(cheapest) guess we get what we paid for!

People with common interests from all over the world can communicate, argue, share photos, etc almost instantaneously, but it still ain't fast enough!

Who said anything about fast, it is antiquated...no auto url on http links , no pictures....plus what Nick mentioned!

[skyrider 0]

But as mentioned, we get our moneys worth!

[champu 1]

Quote

Have to admit the KISS principle gets the job done.

The best word I've come up with to describe the Russian space program is "rural."

They have made marked improvements to their computer and control systems to improve reliability, but they are effectively stuck in the same-ol-mission of the 1970s of ferrying people and cargo to LEO. The nice thing about Soyuz/Progress is it gives commercial companies a real world price point to beat.

The space shuttle had the opposite problem in that it couldn't decide what to be so it was just everything at once. It's almost a victim of its own success in wrapping up construction on the ISS. Now that we have a facility like ISS in LEO, we really don't need to keep lugging robotics, airlocks, fuel cells, payload bays, etc to and from orbit.

[billvon 2,400]

>but they are effectively stuck in the same-ol-mission of the 1970s of
>ferrying people and cargo to LEO.

Once you get to LEO you're halfway to anywhere; get to LEO and getting to the moon is a fraction of the effort, for example. LEO itself is a pretty attractive destination for science and industry.

>Now that we have a facility like ISS in LEO, we really don't need to keep
>lugging robotics, airlocks, fuel cells, payload bays, etc to and from orbit.

Well, we didn't even need the STS to do that. The wet-workshop concept would have gotten it built at a fraction of the cost. But we had the STS, so we figured we'd use it.

[Bertt 0]

Those are great photos. What do they do with that nasty, burned up spacecraft. Is it reusable, or are they for sale on E-bay.

You don't have to outrun the bear.

[NickDG 23]

I wouldn't doubt it. Everything in Russia is for sale. Rides into space, 2nd generation fighter jets, diesel powered submarines, etc. They are actually better than us when it comes to free enterprise . . .

NickD

[wayneflorida 0]

Quote

Those are great photos. What do they do with that nasty, burned up spacecraft. Is it reusable, or are they for sale on E-bay.

They use it for the steerage passengers.