Three hours before a new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, bringing the outpost back up to full staff for the first time in months, Russia racked up its fifth launch accident within a year.
A Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a military communications satellite failed to reach orbit after blastoff from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia. The botched launch is again due to an upper-stage engine problem.
Though the motor is different from the one used on the Soyuz rockets that fly Progress cargo and Soyuz capsules to the station, the trend is troubling.
AndesSMF wrote:Harkens back to the beginnings of the space age. Utterly unexpected.
"There are problems," Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said through a translator at a press conference
ANCFlyer wrote:
Now that said: Do we really want American's riding atop those things with a failure rate in Russia so high?
Thorben wrote:ANCFlyer wrote:
Now that said: Do we really want American's riding atop those things with a failure rate in Russia so high?
What is the alternative if Americans still want to go to the ISS?
Thorben wrote:Space X is certainly one of the most thrilling entrepreneurial endeavours currently going on, and I wish them all the best. But they are still somewhat away from bringing astronauts to the ISS, and until then the Sojus is the thing to take. It just had another successful launch and it is a proven workhorse, therefore I wouldn't worry too much about it.
