Re: Re: “Did nobody stop to think what might happen in an emergency in space?”

Cryptoengineer  <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/27/2024 1:40 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 26 Aug 2024 16:34:21 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

The still use Soviet Soyuz boosters.
>
One might note that Putin desires the return of the Sovyetky Soyuz.

>
They may use them (and lose them) but do they understand them well
enough to pair their spacecraft with ours?

 
They routinely dock with the international space station, so the
answer is yes.

>
The US and the USSR jointly agreed to use a compatible docking
port over 50 years ago - remember Apollo-Soyuz in 1975? Its still
in use.
>
The Soyuz launcher, btw, is one of the most reliable rockets ever
built. There have been over 1700 launches.

It kind of varies depending on variant. Soyuz-FG was pretty good, 70
launches with just one failure but Soyuz-U was less so, a whopping 786
launches but also 22 failures (that they acknowledge!).

And the record for the current version, Soyuz 2, is worse than U...
One source gives: 160 orbital plus 1 suborbital, with 4 full failures
and 2 partial.
Another say: 178 total launches, with 7 full or partial failures,
sources differ.

The corresponding statistics for the current version of Falcon 9,
Block 5 is: 311 orbital launches, 1 failure (Starlink 9-3), no partial
failures. That's a failure rate more than an order of magnitude lower
than Soyuz 2's record! and until very recently it 300+ launches with NO
failures.

And if we take the entire programs (all Soyuz vs all Falcon 9 & Falcon
Heavy) it's a convincing "win" for SpaceX (by a factor of roughly 2 to
3). But yes, the Soyuz as a whole it probably deserves the "one of"
even if the Soyuz 2 doesn't, though mostly through sheer numbers
launched during the Soviet era.

Which is why even before Russias invasion of Ukraine the insurance
premium for Falcon 9 was noticeably lower than that for Soyuz, whether
launched from Russia (lots of recent failures) or by ESA (no faiures
but only got up to 9 launches AFAIK).