"The first rule of Government spending: why have one, when you can have two at twice the price?"
- S.R. Hadden (Contact, 1997)
Baikonur's only crew-capable pad busted after Soyuz flight
The pad used by Russia to send Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) sustained damage during yesterday's crew launch, according to Roscosmos. While the Russian space agency confirmed "damage to several launch pad components" and said spares were available, it provided few specifics. Anatoly Zak of …
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Friday 28th November 2025 22:57 GMT Oneman2Many
Bit of a strange one. There is a service structure under the rocket, it gets slid to the side and protected by a massive barrier during launch and all that seemed to go OK. But sometime after launch the structure slid back under and into the flame trench while flipping over. Its pretty much toast (metaphorically speaking, lol) and no chance of repairing it. The actual pad, tower, arms and everything else appear OK but I am guessing they can't launch. Apparently there is a spare at another site (maybe Vostochny ) but its not the sort of thing you can DHL over, its too big to take by road or rail and its Biakonur is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and land locked. So either transport it chopped up or build a new one locally.
Of course they always of the option of Kourou but aside from the political issues, they don't have manned capability.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 09:26 GMT Flocke Kroes
On the third hand ...
Another story is the service structure was retracted into its bunker but not locked into place. Rocket exhaust got behind the blast shield and blew the structure out under the rocket which drove it into the flame trench. I would normally prefer to avoid speculation and wait for the accident report. In this case I expect more accuracy from some of the speculation. The difficult bit will be identifying which speculation is closest to reality.
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Thursday 4th December 2025 19:30 GMT MachDiamond
Re: On the third hand ...
"It might not have been 'blown' out of place, it might have been 'sucked', by the venturi effect of the rocket blast next to it."
Scott Manley has done a good video showing what is likely to have happened and why Russia is in a bind since Baikonur is their only existing launch site that is handy for ISS.
I would expect they could knock up something quick and dirty to manage for the next couple of years even if it's not very optimized. Even if it's just a platform they can drive around a few scissor lifts on top of.
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Monday 1st December 2025 14:22 GMT imanidiot
The structure basically rolls on 2 rails on either side of the vertical supports under the launch platform and has a large blast shield fitted on the flame trench side that prevents the exhaust gasses from damaging the structure when in the retracted position. If the platform isn't locked down this shield basically acts like a giant sail and pushes on the whole platform and pulls it from it's alcove and into the flame trench.
There's more photos of the construction and damage here: https://russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_r7_31.html#cabin and more info on the service platform itself is here: https://russianspaceweb.com/vostochny_soyuz_ko.html
You are correct that taking a "spare" from anywhere else is basically as much work as just building a new one at Baikonur.
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Monday 1st December 2025 23:25 GMT Lon24
The clearing of the damage and fast rebuild in-situ with the associated lifting gear is just the people and equipment that may have been subborned as sappers and kit in the ongoing 'special military operation'.
That and Roscosmos being bust may make recovery a hard choice between the ISS and Putin's territorial ambitions.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 03:14 GMT MachDiamond
Not really
It was shown with the Starliner dilemma that SpaceX doesn't keep a ready Crew Dragon or one in an advanced state of construction that can be launched in short order. NASA should make that a requirement with any new contracts for crewed spacecraft to make sure there are backups in place should there be a need. China is doing that and it's recently come in handy.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 08:33 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: Not really
Space is never that simple.
2024-05-02 Crew 8 dragon moves to zenith port to make the forward port available for Starliner
2024-06-06 Starliner docks with ISS forward port.
Both ports sre occupied. Another Crew Dragon cannot dock until one of the above leaves. The crew are needed to maintain the ISS and the Dragon cannot leave without them or they would have no ride home. NASA wanted to study Starliner's service module (which would be destroyed on the return trip) so Starliner could not leave.
2024-08-?? Crew 8 scheduled return. Delayed because Crew 9 had not arrived because they had no-where to dock.
2024-09-06 Starliner leaves. Two extra seats had been fitted to the Crew 8 Dragon so everyone had a ride home. This is the first opportunity for another Dragon to dock with ISS.
2024-09-10 Polaris Dawn flies on a Crew Dragon (not to ISS). This is only 4 days after Starliner has left.
2024-09-26 Crew 9 scrubbed (weather), proving that it was ready 20 days after it had a place to dock. It was probably ready and waiting since before the scheduled departure of Crew 8.
2024-09-28 Crew 9 launches with two astronauts.
2024-10-23 Crew 8 finally leaves, delayed waiting for the arrival of Crew 9 then weather.
The Starliner crew are now needed on the ISS to do the work that the missing members of Crew 9 would have done. They have a ride home ready and waiting but cannot leave until after Crew 10 arrives scheduled for 2025-03-12.
2025-01-20 A new regime takes over the US government.
At this point there was a stream of bovine excrement about Biden leaving astronauts stranded at the ISS. Trump and Musk talked drivel about a rescue mission. Such a mission was technically possible but going early would have had consequences because NASA only had a budget for a fixed number of crew rotations:
*) Mission durations could have been extended to divide ISS's remaining life span by the number of missions. This would have eaten into the reserve endurance of the capsules that might be needed for a future Starliner problem.
*) Someone could have paid for an extra Dragon flight. No one offered.
2025-03-14 Crew 10 launches
2024-03-18 Crew 9 returns
Trump took credit for rescuing the 'stranded' astronauts 'early' - using the precise plan selected by NASA during the Biden administration, and only two days later than scheduled.
SpaceX has 5 active Dragons. The shortest turn around time I found was 4 months. They could do ISS crew rotations with one Dragon on standby all the time, launch a short mission every month and have another spare during those non-ISS missions. There isn't enough demand to keep 5 Dragons busy - including keeping spares ready.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 23:02 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Not really
Obviously they couldn't send another if there isn't parking, but that doesn't mean a spare can't be sitting on Earth ready to go. After Columbia, NASA was only flying Shuttle missions when they had a backup ready to launch.
Things don't always go to plan. A Dragon docked at ISS could get whacked by a rock and wind up unusable for crew. It might make sense to load it up with trash and send it down either with the intention of trying to recover it or in a trajectory that is most likely to burn it up. I was looking at a photo the other day of ISS that showed a radiator peeled apart from some sort of impact or failure. Things in orbit are not safe.
The backup plan should be sorted out in advance so there's no "Someone could have paid for an extra Dragon flight". It's in the contract and budget from day one.
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Monday 1st December 2025 09:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not really
The backup plan is to leave astronauts up there for a bit longer. There's (IIRC) about 6 months of reserve food etc on the ISS, so why rush?
Butch and Suni where fully trained astronauts and happy to stay up there doing useful work, which gave NASA and Boeing a chance to check out the calamity capsule properly before deorbiting it. Doing that meant they couldn't park another dragon, so no point launching one early.
Of course they can't publicly state this while His Orangeness is in power as that would contravene his declarations and therefore lead to massive budget cuts.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 14:34 GMT FirstTangoInParis
Re: Starliner to the rescue!
> For any cosmonauts with fully paid up life insurance
I’m pretty sure most life insurance companies would consider this to be an adventure and therefore charge a fortune or decline cover. I suspect the relevant space agency covers this. But then the cost of say a million quid for insurance payout is peanuts in the space industry.
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Saturday 29th November 2025 14:01 GMT lglethal
Re: Ain't that convenient
Whilst cynicism directed at anything Russian is usually a good plan, here I would say there are too many things against it.
1) the ISS rides are a massive cash cow for Roscosmos and one of the few things keeping the lights on. Cash is king in Russia right now. So I can't see them turning off one of the few taps.
2) the perfect functioning of the Russian rockets was one of the few techs that Russia had to crow about. So no more launches means a massive loss in prestige.
3) Taking out your own launch pad is a massive embarrassment. Even if you're spaceX. So for Russia this is not cool.
4) if there was really a plan here, then you would have the various Government talking heads speaking in such a way as to imply the government knows that they're doing. The fact that they are staying silent, says this was not a planned event.
Just my thoughts on the topic...
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Sunday 30th November 2025 12:09 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Ain't that convenient
Not sure where Roscosmos gets it's money, but I didn't think NASA paid them for launches any more.
According to the font of wiki-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-28
However, NASA and Roscosmos were negotiating to extend their seat exchange program beyond 2025, and in April 2025, NASA announced that Christopher Williams had been assigned to the crew.
So Williams just launched on a rideshare-swap deal, which presumably avoids the need for cash changing hands.
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Sunday 30th November 2025 11:27 GMT Sandtitz
Re: Ain't that convenient @NetMage
"How exactly are the launches to ISS a cash cow?"
IDK if it's a cash cow anymore. Used to be. NASA purchased 71 Soyuz seats for roughly $4 billion between 2006-2020.
Things started going downhill as SpaceX delivered Dragon 2 and replaced Soyuz; sanctions after Ukraine war; Roscosmon boss Rogozin going nuts. The OneWeb fiasco didn't really help Roscosmos in long-term.
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Monday 1st December 2025 14:52 GMT phuzz
Re: Ain't that convenient @NetMage
Russia's space program is in such a state, they've had to resort to buying surveillance satellites from China.
(I'm surprised there's not been more reporting on this, just for the opportunity to have a headline like "Russia buys satellites on Temu!" or similar.)
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Saturday 29th November 2025 23:09 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Interlocks
"If this is down to something not being locked in place, you would have thought it sensible to have instrumentation is place so that a launch could only proceed if everything had been configured correctly."
Not everything will have a sensor on it which is why there's lengthy checklists. The checklists can be interlocked. I was watching a flight vlog of a Phenom 300 and the checklists are digital so if a step isn't checked, I expect it will nag about it and flash up warnings. For a large rocket launch, each section can have that in addition to paper checklists so the flight director can scan their display for deficiencies. If somebody ticked a box (and there will be a log) and the step wasn't done, the axe man will get some work put in their calendar.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
