Soyuz TMA-11 Landing

[DaveS]

(2) An explosive bolt firing failure which lead to head-forward reentry until the bolt eventually detonated from the temperature buildup (an intended safety measure).
Pros: Evidence by Peggy Whitson of the late PAO separation. Evidence of Yury Malenchenko about unusual combination of lights at the SUS control panel, yet he pretend that he cannot remember exactly, which lights were alit. Might be proved if the OO-SA hatch's titanium edge has the traces of melting or foaming, like that of Soyuz-5.
Contras: No one of the astronauts mentioned expiriencing negative gees or extreme tumbling yet.

Actually according to Bill Gerstenmaier who spoke with the crew shortly after they returned, they did report off-nominal motion in the capsule shortly after entering the atmosphere.

Here's a quote from the earlier tele-conference with Gerstenmaier on the Soyuz TMA-11 entry:

So, they felt a general kind of jostling in their seats that they had not felt before and that was prior to the initiation of the ballistic mode on the spacecraft and after the separation command. During that period of time, they experienced some off-nominal motion. They physically felt some off-nominal motion in the spacecraft.

 

[simonpro]

That's entirely different to experiencing a negative g entry. The word "jostling" implies that they experienced unusual vibrations or (as I have been saying) they experienced unusual yaw motions. At no point have any of the crew said they felt the capsule was inverted.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Actually according to Bill Gerstenmaier who spoke with the crew shortly after they returned, they did report off-nominal motion in the capsule shortly after entering the atmosphere.

Here's a quote from the earlier tele-conference with Gerstenmaier on the Soyuz TMA-11 entry:

Still not descriptive enough to say what kind of motion that was, did it happen due to aerodynamic forces acting on the capsule or due to DRCS jets firing?

 

[SiberianTiger]

More from the cosmonauts' post-flight interviews

Yi Soyeon:

During the descent I saw a lot of fire around the capsule. At first I was scared very much, because it was such strong. I thought we might burn up. But when I looked at faces of Yuri and Peggy I haven't seen an anxiety in their face expressions, and this calmed me down.

Yuri Malenchenko:

We had to perform the capsule egression with no side help. I have seen the local people who came by automobiles, there were about 15 people surrounding the craft. They were extremely surprised and had no who we were and where did we come from. One of them asked, pointing at the reentry capsule: "Is this your boat?" Another one asked us if we had been paradropped from an airplane. Eventually, I managed to prove to each one of them that we had come from the International Space Station. They nodded but found it hard to believe that we ever came down from space and keep asking us again. Finally, they have seen the spacesuits and thus got assured that we were cosmonauts.

:lol:

Yuri Malenchenko again:

You can see, we didn't die and wasn't going to. We needed no urgent help after landing. The search and rescue teams has reached our site about 40 extra minutes later the touchdown, because we landed 400 kms away from the intended point. This is a pretty quick responce in the conditions we've got. During that time the local people helped us to extract the necessary equipment from the capsule, such as a satellite phone and a GPS receiver. Those items were difficult to get to, because the reentry module laid upside down. Finally, we've spotted a search plane coming and several S&R helicopters.

 

[Urwumpe]

(3) Explosive cable connection cut failure - a variation of the previous, with only difference that the half-separated PAO tumbled on a "rope" before the plug plate jettison.
Pros: ?
Contras: ?

Well, lets analyse the effects. When the cable connection plate does not get jettisoned or jettisoned completely, the PAO would be effectively still connected to the SA. As the cable connection is pretty rigid, the PAO would not get far away from the heat shield. In fact, as the capsule fires it's RCS for orienting for reentry, the PAO might be so close to the heat shield, that it impacts with it during early reentry. The heat shield is not really made for this, so chances are high that the heat shield would get severely damaged before heating takes place. The worst kind of problem you can have inside an ablative heat shield are cracks. They cause the heat shield to scatter massive parts of it before these parts had absorbed enough energy and even worse, open paths for the hot and pressurized plasma (dynamic pressure will be quite high on the heat shield) to enter the heat shield and cause damage inside it - or even even damage the aft shell of the capsule.

Also if the cable connection would have failed to separate, there would be clues for it on the hull of the capsule and the cable connection plate on the SA would be heavily damaged.

So, the only pro would be, that this connection can in fact cause enough bias to the capsule dynamics that the autopilot would detect an error and enter ballistic mode. But entering ballistic mode with the PAO still attached would have resulted in strong tumbling, which the crew would have noticed. Also the collision risk of heat shield and PAO would have been far higher.


I think from the photos of the capsule after landing, and the rough time line known, a strong misorientation during ballistic reentry can be ruled out. You can't fly the Soyuz capsule upside down during hot reentry and have no unusual damages on the nominal downwind side.

Also, I have not heard of any indications of smoke or fire inside the capsule. The Korean astronaut even explicitly said, that the flames outside had been impressive, but the capsule inside stayed cool. Either nothing unusual for a ballistic reentry happened or she is the best actress to ever fly in space.

 

[ijuin]

The soyuz capsule is designed so that even if it enters hatch first the aerodynamic forces will flip it so the heatshield faces prograde.
It's quite a nifty bit of design, and if it hadn't been done that way there'd be at least one or two more dead crews.

My point, I believe, is that the crew would have known that they were decelerating the wrong-way-forward, because they would have been pulled out of their seats toward the control panels rather than pressed into their seats. 10 G's of this "eyeballs-out" acceleration as opposed to the preferred "eyeballs-in" acceleration--i.e. towards one's own back--causes capillaries in your eyes and nose to burst, so the flight surgeon would have noticed it as well.

 

[SiberianTiger]

My point, I believe, is that the crew would have known that they were decelerating the wrong-way-forward, because they would have been pulled out of their seats toward the control panels rather than pressed into their seats. 10 G's of this "eyeballs-out" acceleration as opposed to the preferred "eyeballs-in" acceleration--i.e. towards one's own back--causes capillaries in your eyes and nose to burst, so the flight surgeon would have noticed it as well.

Actually, it's being debated only if the "upside-down" deceleration took place in the initial phase after entry interface passing, with g loads still not quite noticeable by the crew as a heavy load. The top side is still too thin to sustain plasma flow all the way down, so a scenario in which the PAO remained firmly attached to the SA would certainly spell death on the crew.

 

[tblaxland]

Another James Oberg article FYI:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5412

 

[simonpro]

Absolutely mindboggling. I really don't know what to say, it's a shame to have seen someone so respected to have sunk to this level. He's certainally lost all credibility in my eyes, and probably a lot of other people's too.

 

[Urwumpe]

Not really something new from the facts... and much worse from the political stuff. I don't think Oberg does a good judgment about Russia, when he reinforces the rumors instead of giving Russia time to finish the investigations and create better facts.

Especially going down to conspiracy level is not really helpful. That can be done AFTER the investigation, if you are still not happy with the facts... but somebody who claims to be expert for Russian spaceflight should know better about it.

Pusillanimous pussy-footing with Russian paranoia about their passion to conceal their 'dirty space laundry', and diplomacy-dictated toleration of brush-offs and continued cover-ups, is no way to keep faith with the lost Columbia astronauts, and with their predecessors in Russia and the U.S. And it's no way to keep future names off the already too long list of spaceflight casualties.

Would be the first time, Russia behaves like NASA in investigations. Since the mid-80s, USSR and later Russia had been very open regarding accident investigations (for example publishing technical material together with new results from investigations). Oberg should know that. I remember he did a NASA study about the safety of Soyuz landing systems. This article sounds like he had forgotten his own research.

 

[tblaxland]

I remember he did a NASA study about the safety of Soyuz landing systems. This article sounds like he had forgotten his own research.

I think he made the same political mistakes back then. From the article linked above:

I studied the open literature for insights into Soyuz landing anomalies that might make its role in medical evacuation more problematical. The final report was critical of inadequate Russian candor:

 

[SiberianTiger]

Pusillanimous pussy-footing with Russian paranoia about their passion to conceal their 'dirty space laundry', and diplomacy-dictated toleration of brush-offs and continued cover-ups, is no way to keep faith with the lost Columbia astronauts, and with their predecessors in Russia and the U.S. And it's no way to keep future names off the already too long list of spaceflight casualties.

Especially going down to conspiracy level is not really helpful. That can be done AFTER the investigation, if you are still not happy with the facts... but somebody who claims to be expert for Russian spaceflight should know better about it.

Ah, way too familiar speech. JimO may be stuffed up with facts like a goose with apples and he often has good points. However, you won't need a spyglass to see his strong bias. This is not only his customary spitting towards Russian space in his articles, I spoke to some Russian journalists who have been writing him emails trying to correct whatever things he got wrong in his publications - and none of such emails ever got answered.

What's worst, his scribblings make up a good feed for Two Minutes' Hates at this side, which I regret to observe from time to time.

Anyway, I decided it for myself that I will just regard James Oberg's articles as another source of facts when he has something to prove them with, and disregard his opinions.

 

[Urwumpe]

Engineers should not make their findings depend on politics. A formal "I was not able to draw reliable conclusions because of the lack of data" is better than accusations.

That is a path that leads to corruption.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Engineers should not make their findings depend on politics. A formal "I was not able to draw reliable conclusions because of the lack of data" is better than accusations.

That is a path that leads to corruption.

There's a multitude of ways to avoid the 'lack of data' when you study things. If you don't have an evidence, first and foremost would be a simulation. For now, it's not quite completely clear yet, if the separation bolts did fire, how many of them, and, if there was a failure here, why did it happen (defective bolts or electic discharge undercurrent). If we don't have enough patience for the official conclusion to be born, let's just wait for the people come back from their work this Monday evening and start their unofficial postings at blogs and forums.

Having gathered this kind of information, anyone can rival James Oberg in pace of burning 'facts' delivery.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Capsule pictures not published before

Well, this picture even deserves to be called an art, IMO:

Parachute container and egression hatch exposed:

Pitching jets compartment with a crack. It's not quite clear when this crack did form. However, this is a possible source of the reported smoke in the cabin:

Egression hatch close up:

The hatch's egde. It can be seen that it suffered no substantial thermal damage. What seems to be a circular crack is a trace left by a pulling rope during parachute deployment.

 

[Brad]

This last picture scares the bejesus out of ME! :titanic: If I was the commander on that flight I would certainly have a few choice words with a few people.

 

[SiberianTiger]

This last picture scares the bejesus out of ME! :titanic: If I was the commander on that flight I would certainly have a few choice words with a few people.

Okay, if you mind the "groove", it's supposed to be here. Soyuz is NOT a reusable vehicle, so it has got all rights to come back as a pile of garbage as long as it brought the crew home safely and happy, hasn't it?

 

[ryan]

Okay, if you mind the "groove", it's supposed to be here. Soyuz is NOT a reusable vehicle, so it has got all rights to come back as a pile of garbage as long as it brought the crew home safely and happy, hasn't it?

and you gotta take in account that the Soyuz lands on land, not water so it's more banged up than other spacecraft are on re-entry.

 

[Chode]

Well, this picture even deserves to be called an art, IMO:

This photo is great!

Yuri Malenchanko (the cosmonaut on the right) doesn't look too happy to be back on Earth after 6 months in space (maybe because he is sitting on hard ground instead of the traditional padded chair). And who is that guy on the left?

Regards

 

[tl8]

Good for a caption contest