Russian Progress space truck crashes in Siberia The Russians have lost an unmanned Progress supply vessel which blasted off at 13:00 GMT today from Baikonur Cosmodrome en route to the International Space Station. The country's Roscosmos space agency issued a brief statement explaining that the third stage of the Soyuz rocket tasked with lifting the space truck had failed …
Soyuz- U
Total launches 745
Successes 724
Failures 21
2.8% Failure Rate.
Space Shuttle
Total launchers: 132
Successes: 130
Failures: 2
1.5% failure rate
So the space shuttle was actually more reliable.
Where did you get the 1,700 launches from? I imagine there is probably some "this site counted older version while other site didn't" thing going on.
Can't remember what the appropriate statistics are for N experiments with a binary outcome (success | fail) but my gut feeling is that the above is insufficient data to prove (within 2 standard deviations) that the shuttle was significantly more reliable.
Anyone care to supply the maths?
http://www.starsem.com/news/releases.htm
http://www.arianespace.com/arianespace/news-press-release/2011/6-28-2011-1773-soyuz-launch.asp
To be fair, they are probably counting *everything* in the soyuz family. There is a reliable site (ie not wakypedia) with the correct breakdown to each rocket type somewhere, but I can't immediately find it. They certainly didn't just start at 1500 though.
Even bigger bit of luck that what crashed was *not* a Soyuz but a Progress supply ship.
Same origins, different design.
You might also note early indications are the 3rd stage was to blame. Had this *been* a crewed mission they would have hit the abort button or manually separated if too high.
I think this is a bit of a coincidence. I'm not going to suggest sabotage like other commentards might, but these things have normally been quite reliable, and I think that this is the 6th launch failure this year for the Russians.
Normally after a couple of failures everyone is on their best behaviour and trying to not make any mistakes lest someone cut their nads off (or out, can't be sexist!).
Even more suspicious is that these failures are not all on a common platform...
The BBC report suggests..
"There are a number of factors that might prompt the ISS partners to lower the complement [of ISS]. One would be the desire to slow the use of those consumables, such as toilet parts, that are depleted more rapidly and therefore need more regular replenishment."
One wonders after watching the rocket blow up, whether those toilet parts are being depleted more rapidly than usual up there!
But bear in mind that manned launch configurations differ massively from unmanned launches, and that the pre-flight checks have different levels of risk assigned to them. In order to make launches as cost-efficient as possible compared with the risk, there's a fair chance that had there been people on the top of that stack, it wouldn't have launched.
is that in Soviet Russia, an object you normally do an action to or with, does that action to you instead. For example, "In Soviet Russia, television watches YOU!" - where normally *you* watch television. So a more apropos example for this subject might be something like "In Soviet Russia, the rocket flies into YOU!" - as opposed to you flying in(to?) the rocket. ;)
At some point I wonder if NASA will be forced to admit the ISS is the most expensive f__kup in space history. It has done very little for science and now that the only way to get there is looking more and more iffy wonder how long they will continue the charade. For what the ISS cost we could have went to Mars.
Sure it might seem like it, but seeing NASA, and the others have sights set beyond the planet when would you want to learn your toilet/water recycler had design issues when in space, and broke down(or something equally needed)? when its in orbit close to the planet, and you can get parts to fix it easily, or halfway to mars or even on the moon?
It might not seem it but in all honesty its a giant experiment in itself, and a giant test bed for different technologies.
Rockets and spacecraft fail. If you consider how few launches (of anything) have actually been made, the success rate is about what you'd expect from a highly complex system full of electronics and explody things. A key factor is a lanuch is rarely "standard" - things are different for each launch which makes it exponentially harder to identify failures. Until there is a viable financial reason to send things into space, getting there will be science: Very expensive experiments undertaken by governments and rich people.
"Well, obviously this ship wasn't placed right"
"You mean these ships need to be placed properly?"
"Oh absolutely! This one wasn't even in the right orbit!"
"Which orbit would that be, then?"
"Well, obviously the one where it crashed, you see..."
"So then you have orbits that aren't like that?"
"Of course! I don't want people thinking this ship was unsafe due to errors in the design or anything, it was simply not placed in the correct orbit..."
"So there are safer orbits, for the ships to be in?"
"Absolutely! There are plenty of orbits out there, after all."
"That are safer for the ship?"
"Definitely!"
"Such as?"
"Well, the ones where they don't crash into the earth during orbit, obviously."
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