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#220
by
baldusi
on 17 May, 2015 22:36
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Before everyone jumps on the Proton is unreliable, time for Angara 5 bandwagon. Doesn't the Angara 5 also use the Briz M? Briz M which has been implicated in more than it's fair share of recent failures.
And Angara has just performed 2 flights, so it is a little bit early to speak about Angara's reliability.
If Proton's problems come from problems inside the organisation (quality control, underpayment, over-working, loss of experienced workers, etc.), it is likely, that these problems might as well affect Angara in the same way.
The Briz M does seem to have some reliability issues the question is are they QM or design related.
The Fregat supposedly had a design flaw where a a support that held both a hydrazine and helium lines acted as a thermal bridge causing the hydrazine to freeze under certain conditions.
It was actually a manufacturing documentation issue. It didn't stated through which of two possible paths to take the helium lines. And if it was routed next to the hydrazine line, on very long coast missions, it could freeze the hydrazine. It was random placement and it had to be a special mission. It's the sort of mistake that's very difficult to catch before hand. But it is a serious process failure. Given that it had something like 45 missions before, it's the sort of error that might happen. Gyros places incorrectly are not.
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#221
by
Prober
on 17 May, 2015 23:13
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I'm expecting Rogozin on site to "" at Khrunichev.
You know this is the 3rd Russian failure in a number of weeks.
Progress
1 missile test.
Pattern ?
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#222
by
kevin-rf
on 18 May, 2015 00:34
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Details on the failed missile test? I had not seen it in the regular spin cycle.
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#223
by
Notaris
on 18 May, 2015 01:06
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#224
by
FinalFrontier
on 18 May, 2015 01:10
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We should look to start a thread covering the Russian failures debate, while stressing everyone's gone through a bad period (been seeing those historical threads about those Titan failures in a row, etc.)
A central thread will allow the specific threads to stay specific. So if someone wants to set that up, probably in the Russian section as our Russian friends will have good input.
I have started a thread for this
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37601.0
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#225
by
woods170
on 18 May, 2015 07:18
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I'm expecting Rogozin on site to "" at Khrunichev.
You know this is the 3rd Russian failure in a number of weeks.
Progress
1 missile test.
Pattern ?
No pattern. 2015 Is rapidly becoming for Russia what 1986 was for USA.
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#226
by
Nicolas PILLET
on 18 May, 2015 07:57
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2015 Is rapidly becoming for Russia what 1986 was for USA.
2015 is rapidly becoming for Russia what 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 were... for Russia !
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#227
by
Galactic Penguin SST
on 18 May, 2015 08:51
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#228
by
Prober
on 18 May, 2015 14:11
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Details on the failed missile test? I had not seen it in the regular spin cycle.
Russian S300 Missile Fails to Launch
http://www.military.com/video/guided-missiles/surface-to-air/russian-s300-missile-fails-to-launch/4187044289001/
Neither 100% sure that this is the video of the incident a couple of weeks ago nor that it was for sure a S300. From what I read, it was a test of a surface-to-air-missile out of Plesetsk which failed. This is in contrast to the hint on the linked site, which mentiones Ukraine. Maybe someone else has better information.
that looks like the story but doesn't fit the story......it wasn't Ukraine it was a test from Plesetsk. Confused
Today woke up to Yahoo news of this: Russia restarts spacecraft after embarrassing failures AFP
"The engines of the Progress-M26M cargo transport craft were switched on at 0330 (0030 GMT) and worked for 1922 seconds," space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.
"As a result of the completion of the manoeuvre the altitude of the station's orbit was increased by 2.8 kilometres."
A first attempt to turn on the
Progress engines early Saturday failed"
Its this Progress failure that peaks my interest.
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#229
by
Chris Bergin
on 18 May, 2015 15:24
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Me too. I'm writing up the Progress reboost article.
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#230
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 18 May, 2015 15:47
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A first attempt to turn on the Progress engines early Saturday failed"
Its this Progress failure that peaks my interest.
This some info on this on the ISS
Expedition-43 thread.
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#231
by
DaveS
on 18 May, 2015 16:10
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#232
by
Steven Pietrobon
on 19 May, 2015 06:53
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2015 Is rapidly becoming for Russia what 1986 was for USA.
2015 is rapidly becoming for Russia what 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 were... for Russia !
I think only 2011 and 2013 counts which had four and two failures, respectively. 2012 and 2014 had one failure and one partial failure each. In comparison the US had one failure each in 2011 and 2014 and one partial failure in 2012. Russia was also launching up to twice as often as the US.
Year Russia US
2011 4/0/33 1/0/15
2012 1/1/27 0/1/13
2013 2/0/33 0/0/19
2014 1/1/33 1/0/23
2015 2/0/ 9 0/0/ 9Failures/Partial Failures/Total
That gives an average failure rate (using 0.5 for a partial failure) of 8.1% for Russia and 3.2% for the US.
Note that 2011 also had two consecutive failures with Proton-M/Briz-M and Soyuz-U.
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#233
by
Prober
on 19 May, 2015 16:09
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#234
by
Steven Pietrobon
on 20 May, 2015 05:42
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I forgot to add the Soyuz flights from Kourou! Updated table.
Year Russia US
2011 4/0/35 1/0/15
2012 1/1/29 0/1/13
2013 2/0/35 0/0/19
2014 1/2/37 1/0/23
2015 2/0/10 0/0/ 9
Failures/Partial Failures/Total
That gives a slightly better failure rate of 7.9% for Russia. The US is still the same at 3.2%.
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#235
by
dkovacic
on 20 May, 2015 06:27
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If you take away Proton failures (5/1/41) in the same period, it gives you 5.9% compared to the 13.4% for Protons. So their failure rate is worse than US, but I think that Protons are really in trouble.
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#236
by
dkovacic
on 20 May, 2015 06:41
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Furthermore in the same period, 25 out of 41 Proton missions were commercial contracts through ILS. Luckily they had just one partial failure (Yamal 402) , so all failures from this period were tied to Russian satellites. ILS has a dry spell since January 2014 for new contracts, so I think Protons are not going to be contracted any more through ILS.
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#237
by
the_other_Doug
on 20 May, 2015 11:35
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I will just note, in passing, that the Proton was considered less reliable than the R7-derived launch vehicles even back in the 1960s, when the Soviets failed to fully man-rate the Proton for manned Zond flights. Not that they wouldn't have flown men on it if they thought the Zond flight itself was survivable, to beat America to a manned flight around the Moon. But all subsequent manned vehicles designed to fly on Proton (thinking of TKS, specifically) were never flown with crews.
Just sayin'... it's not just a recent thing. Proton, while a really good medium-lift vehicle in terms of capability, has never been as reliable as the comparable American and European medium- and heavy-lift rockets.
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#238
by
Galactic Penguin SST
on 21 May, 2015 12:48
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Something that doesn't seems to be discussed yet is the history of this Proton rocket (#935-54) -
to which Andrey found out using the long serial numbers in the NK forum.
It turns out that its long serial number - 511
6907
974 - did show that it was completed in 2015 ("69" being the year number and "974" the block serial number - here Stan Black et al. can elaborate), BUT interestingly it directly follows the ill-fated Proton launching Express-AM4R 365 days ago, with its # being 511
4877
973 (despite the "48" showing it to be completed in 2013)!
This, combined with the serial number of the 3rd stage RD-0212 engine under scrutiny (535
4855312) as shown in a (now retracted) news report from the Russian newspaper
Izvestia (which correctly reported that the engine was completed in 2013), seems to point to the engines from both failures being from the same batch!
Could this be yet another of spaceflight failures that slipped past the investigators the first time? (won't be surprised since even Orbital did that.....)
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#239
by
MattMason
on 21 May, 2015 13:20
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I forgot to add the Soyuz flights from Kourou! Updated table.
Year Russia US
2011 4/0/35 1/0/15
2012 1/1/29 0/1/13
2013 2/0/35 0/0/19
2014 1/2/37 1/0/23
2015 2/0/10 0/0/ 9
Failures/Partial Failures/Total
That gives a slightly better failure rate of 7.9% for Russia. The US is still the same at 3.2%.
If my Google-Fu is certain, both 2011 and 2014 U.S. failures came from Taurus XL and Antares vehicles--both Orbital/Orbital ATK vehicles, but from different causes. ULA and its competitors have a sparkling record thus far.
