One down, two to go. Russia inches closer to putting a crew on Soyuz while celebrating 50 years since the first Return To Flight

While the Hubble Space Telescope gingerly spun its gyros back to life, China and Russia were busy lighting the business ends of rockets with varying levels of success in this week's round-up. One down, two to go for Soyuz Russia returned its troubled Soyuz booster to flight last week with a successful launch of a Lotos …

[phuzz]

It'll be interesting to see what the results of the investigation into the MS-10 failure are.

Most of the rumours right now are pointing to one of the boosters failing to separate from the core correctly, and that system is common across all of the versions of the Soyuz rocket, probably all the way back to the original R7 launcher. So launching a Soyuz 2 does go some way to reassuring everyone that the failure was a one off, but hopefully they're taking a look at their quality control procedures, as that's where my money would be on the actual problem lying.

[Voland's right hand]

they're taking a look at their quality control procedures

They are. One of the nearly immediate steps by RosKosmos was to install of CCTV in the assembly hall (surprisingly enough they did not have any) as well as start to record on video key procedures in the final assembly and inspection.That was already in the press (sorry, can't be a***ed to dig the actual publication, it can be easily located if you can punch in the relevant incantations into Google).

[Spazturtle]

We know what went wrong, we just don't know why. The boosters use compressed gas to push themselves away from the rocket, in this case on one of the boosters the valve didn't open so the booster didn't fall away and instead crashed into the rocket.

"They are. One of the nearly immediate steps by RosKosmos was to install of CCTV in the assembly hall (surprisingly enough they did not have any) as well as start to record on video key procedures in the final assembly and inspection."

The issue with what they are doing is that it will only make things worse. They added higher penalties to making a mistake, people can now be sent to prison for mistakes, even if they report the mistake when it happens. This is what causes people who drill holes in the wrong place to decide to fill it with epoxy instead of reporting it.

[defiler]

Zhuque 1

Am I missing something or are solid rockets not just like fireworks? You light them, try to keep them going in the right direction, and they'll fizzle out in their own time. No throttle, no abort.

Putting three of them together seems a bit hit-and-hope for putting something into a planned orbit, no? Still, I am not a rocket scientist / engineer...

[Crisp]

Re: Zhuque 1

Apparently turn off and on-able solid rocket motors are a thing.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19740028513

[defiler]

Re: Zhuque 1

@Crisp

Well, my! I had no idea.

Still, restarting the motor would need some kind of ignition mechanism (as would second and third stages), or mixing hypergolic powders in the chamber, which pretty-much torpedoes the "simple" aspect of solids...

Best left to people who know what they're doing, or have enough space to blow thing up in...

[Floydian Slip]

Re: Zhuque 1

You should have a look at Nammo and the rocket that will (hopefully) be used by Bloodhound SSC. The rocket uses high test hydrogen peroxide (HTP) as the oxidiser and synthetic rubber as the fuel. Apparently you can really turn it on and off as required. Hybrid rockets like this are safe and controllable, as well as being lower cost and greener than alternative methods.

http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/project/car/engines/rocket-engine

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Zhuque 1

Safe being a relative term of course...

[defiler]

Re: Zhuque 1

The "safe" version of bomb-in-a-tube.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Zhuque 1

The "safe" version of bomb-in-a-tube.

That is the correct description of any rocket. Doubly so for any solid one. As anyone who has tried to build a rocket by themselves (instead of buying off-the-shelf motors) can tell you the line between a boom and a take off is extremely fine and your creation is not going to take off unless you are very close to it.

Disclaimer - I had the headmaster read me and my friends the riot act after a rather spectacular and not very successful attempted launch of a DIY job from the grass knoll next to the school (with his windows facing it). Not saying what was the motor made of due to UK thought crime statutes (despite the fact that the key chemicals cannot be procured in most high school chemistry labs any more).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Zhuque 1

"Hybrid rockets like this are safe and controllable, as well as being lower cost and greener than alternative methods."

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.

[Anonymous Coward]

Safe?

""Hybrid rockets like this are safe and controllable, as well as being lower cost and greener than alternative methods."

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of."

Safety in rocket launches isn't the same as, say, safety in swimming pools. As has been pointed out, a rocket capable of putting a useful payload in orbit at reasonable cost has to be engineered very close to the bone.

But if you've got a hybrid rocket that uses HTP (high test peroxide) as an oxidiser and synthetic rubber as fuel, you've got something that's fundamentally safer than most other rocket motor designs.

Unlike many oxidisers, HTP isn't inclined to explode or cause massively rapid fires. Granted, the stuff will decompose into hot oxygen and water and set fire to pretty much anything inflammable given half a chance, but it's less iffy as a rocket motor oxidiser than nitrous oxide (Virgin Galactic's engine supplier had a tragically fatal accident developing an engine using that) or liquid oxygen.

Unlike solid fuel engines that currently fly, it's easy enough to turn off and turn on a hybrid engine, especially one that uses catalytically decomposed HTP as the oxidiser: they have no need for an ignition system.

And given that a hybrid engine only needs one pump, for the oxidiser, it's got fewer parts to go wrong than a conventional liquid fuelled rocket engine.

Then you can take into account other factors: if you're using HTP as the oxidizer, you can use it to run the oxidizer turbopump by simple catalytic decomposition. And that turbopump will be pumping a liquid that's at ambient temperature, being driven by a not very hot mixture of oxygen and steam. All this gives you much simpler engineering than many other high performance rocket engines.

So yes, Nammo's right: their design is fundamentally safe, controllable, and low cost - at least when compared to many other approaches they could have used.

Greener? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not: if you use hydrogen and oxygen, your combustion produces nothing but water. Nammo's design produces water and carbon dioxide. But bulk hydrogen these days is mostly produced from oil, which is not a carbon-free source.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Hybrid Rockets

A hybrid combines (some of) the complexity and cost of a liquid rocket and (some of) the inflexibility of a solid rocket. Solid rockets are very powerful, simple and cheap, while liquid rockets are very controllable and have very much higher performance.

In the most common configuration of hybrid rocket, a solid fuel is burned with a liquid oxidiser. The flow rate (and hence burn rate) of the oxidiser is controlled by the oxidiser pump/valve, but the burn rate of the fuel is affected by the exposed surface area of the fuel grain, which is in turn dependent on how much of the fuel has already been consumed. If you attempt to throttle the engine by reducing the oxidiser flow, it runs increasingly rich and performance suffers. You can certainly turn them off if you need to, but they can't throttle nearly as well as liquid rockets.

[Wellyboot]

Interesting final line.

>>> A mission to drop a lander and rover on the far side of the moon in the form of Chang’e 4 is scheduled for December this year. <<<

To communicate with the lander & rover on the far side will require at least one relay satellite in lunar orbit. From what I know of the lunar surface the far side is more evenly cratered with far less of the large flat (sea) areas that the Apollo missions landed on. Difficult for rovers unless they only plan to explore a single big crater.

If this is practising for the planned Mars trip in a couple of years they seem to be well on schedule.

[JK63]

Re: Interesting final line.

I haven't studied the design, but I suspect the lander would separate from the transport stage to become the relay. Similar to the lunar module separating from the Command and Service Modules of Apollo.

[phuzz]

Re: Interesting final line.

They launched the/a relay satellite in May.

[Danny 14]

pfft. Just put mechjeb on the rocket. Combine it with some onion staging and you're all set for a decent kerbin, i mean earth payload.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to the engineers, surely?

"One of the lessons learned from Space Shuttle accidents has been to “listen to the hardware”. A hole drilled in a Soyuz orbital module and a failed launch indicates the hardware is speaking loud and clear."

From my reading, the big lesson from the Space Shuttle disasters was "listen to the engineers". In the case of the Space Shuttle, the hardware was known by the engineers to be a bit iffy, to need tender loving care in operation, and the cause of both disasters were issues that the engineers knew about but management were wilfully blind to.

The thing about the Soyuz launcher is that the hardware design is proven reliable in decades of service. It's nothing like - well, fragile isn't quite right, but you know what I mean - as the Space Shuttle system. A hole drilled in an orbital module isn't the hardware speaking: it's a sign of iffy quality control (or a nutter), an entirely human issue. And if a Soyuz launch fails these days, again that's not a fundamental problem with the hardware - it can't be, it's been in reliable service for so long. It's got to be down to human error somewhere, most likely ultimately attributable (as with the Space Shuttle) to some sort of management cockup. I'd bet on sloppy quality control, with a side bet on "caused by some recent changes".

In this case as with the Space Shuttle, the answer is: "Listen to your engineers, your technicians": they'll explain what's wrong and how to fix it.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Russia returned its troubled Soyuz booster to flight last week...

Is it fair to call it troubled after a single failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troubled?

@Sorry that handle is already taken:

"Is it fair to call it troubled after a single failure?"

Well, strictly speaking, a launch failure is indeed "trouble" and some writing up news stories do like to put a bit of a <ahem> "shine" on things.

This is the best report I've found on the launch failure in question:

<http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-ms-10.html>

Me? I'm hugely impressed that not only has the launcher in question provided such a low failure rate, but also that the launch escape system worked perfectly in this case and the crew survived reportedly uninjured (but I bet they had a few bruises - which any sane person would class as "practically uninjured all things considered").

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_sas.html

"Technical specifications of the emergency escape system (original version)

G-loads on the crew (in case of failure at T+400 seconds in flight) Up to 21"

I did read something intriguing about the launcher involved here:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-fg.html

"However the Roskosmos leadership was pressing the industry to retire the FG variant as early as 2019 to cut costs and avoid problems with Russian security services, which put serious obstacles in obtaining avionics and associated technical assistance from Ukraine's Kommunar plant. As a result, at least one of previously planned launches of Soyuz-FG in 2020 could be performed in 2019, industry sources said."

Given that, one can't help wondering if the launch failure was caused in part by the workers being pushed into rushing things

[Spazturtle]

Re: Troubled?

"I'm hugely impressed that not only has the launcher in question provided such a low failure rate, but also that the launch escape system worked perfectly in this case and the crew survived reportedly uninjured"

The SAS wasn't used in this case, it is ejected just prior to booster separation. The SAS is far too powerful to be needed at that altitude. At that stage of the launch the 3rd stage is used as the emergency escape system, it fired it's engine for a brief while and then drops the capsule.