Can a crew from ISS return home without mission control support?

[hypervelocity]

Say everyone was asleep... very asleep here on Earth and a crew from the ISS needed to get back down. They have time, a return vehicle, fuel & consumables.

Can they make it back home safely without any contact whatsoever to mission control / operators?

[magnemoe]

21 minutes ago, hypervelocity said:

Say everyone was asleep... very asleep here on Earth and a crew from the ISS needed to get back down. They have time, a return vehicle, fuel & consumables.

Can they make it back home safely without any contact whatsoever to mission control / operators?

pretty sure an Soyuz  can preform an reentry burn without ground control, lower Pe as in manual and you will reenter. accuracy will be an bit poor I assume but its hard to miss Russia. 
But if they suddenly get no contact with any ground stations I would not reenter unless you was out of food. 
I assume the pilot on an Soyuz is trained in this, say antennas or radio systems is down. 

Edited October 1, 2019 by magnemoe

[sh1pman]

12 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

but its hard to miss Russia. 

Kazakhstan is a bit easier to miss.

[Scotius]

What kind of question is that?

After Wikipedia:

"Cooper turned to his understanding of star patterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere.^[41] Precision was needed in the calculation; small errors in timing or orientation could produce large errors in the landing point. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier."^[42]"

Whole article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cooper#Mercury-Atlas_9

[magnemoe]

34 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Kazakhstan is a bit easier to miss.

This but you only need to land somewhere flat. As Scotius says its procedures for it, burn to drop Pe to default height and you will deorbit at position further ahead. 50 km is not an issue. 
 

[tater]

In yoga shorts, via the Chinese station, yes

[YNM]

9 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

Say everyone was asleep...

Kinda difficult since there are ISS control centres on all timezones (Canada-US, Europe-Russia, Japan).

The problem is rescue once crew has re-entered.

Edited October 2, 2019 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

Even Vostok crew could.

[TheSaint]

7 hours ago, tater said:

In yoga shorts, via the Chinese station, yes

LOL

[jadebenn]

8 hours ago, tater said:

In yoga shorts, via the Chinese station, yes

A bit off-topic, but the shot of the wind whisking off the station's solar panels as it begins to enter the upper atmosphere is absolutely beautiful. That and the following scene are my favorite depictions of re-entry in all of fiction.

[kerbiloid]

They should make a solar panels windmill, like on Skylab but with 8 blades panels.
And land the station on autorotation.

[Guest]

This was an actual project, called Roton. Didn't pan out, but reentry using helicopter blades (powered or not) isn't new, and seems to be viable. Soviets were looking into it, too, at one point.

[hypervelocity]

10 hours ago, YNM said:

Kinda difficult since there are ISS control centres on all timezones (Canada-US, Europe-Russia, Japan).

The problem is rescue once crew has re-entered.

thanks! the sleeping scenario was to frame the question in not-so-dire terms (i.e. everyone's dead)

so yeah - my intent was to tackle a return home without land aid - what would happen if they managed to hit land? (obviously the crew would have no chance if they landed on the ocean)

18 hours ago, Scotius said:

What kind of question is that?

After Wikipedia:

"Cooper turned to his understanding of star patterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere.^[41] Precision was needed in the calculation; small errors in timing or orientation could produce large errors in the landing point. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier."^[42]"

Whole article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cooper#Mercury-Atlas_9

i'd say this one is an interrogative grammatical structure with a request for information, as oppossed to commonly referred-to rethorical questions - I hope this answers your... question.

Edited October 2, 2019 by hypervelocity

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

This was an actual project, called Roton. Didn't pan out, but reentry using helicopter blades (powered or not) isn't new, and seems to be viable. Soviets were looking into it, too, at one point.

Yes, it's a helicopter abort mode, and by some reasons was popular in Soviet technical rocket mind.

34 minutes ago, hypervelocity said:

(obviously the crew would have no chance if they landed on the ocean)

Depends on presence of boats around. The Soyuz capsule can float  (if no additional hit happens, like it was irl), and the crew has swimming suits.

[razark]

1 hour ago, hypervelocity said:

...what would happen if they managed to hit land?

Hopefully, someone would notice them returning.  If there's no communications, and it's a crapshoot where they're coming down, they should be prepared for a long survival situation in potentially hazardous conditions.

The only obvious result is that eventually the crew draws straws to see who they eat first.

[Guest]

They should probably aim for some densely populated place like Europe or the US coasts. Soyuz has instruments for entry planning, and even Vostok had the Globus for that purpose (now they have a virtual Globus on the MFDs). If survival is of more importance than not landing on someone's house, they could likely try to land somewhere like central Poland, or any area which is flat and has a lot of fields, but not giant horizon to horizon ones like in central US.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

thanks! the sleeping scenario was to frame the question in not-so-dire terms (i.e. everyone's dead)

so yeah - my intent was to tackle a return home without land aid - what would happen if they managed to hit land? (obviously the crew would have no chance if they landed on the ocean)

i'd say this one is an interrogative grammatical structure with a request for information, as oppossed to commonly referred-to rethorical questions - I hope this answers your... question.

For mir this would be an real issue during the fall of the Soviet Union. 
Its pretty easy to see an setting there the control center would be offline and others to busy to worry about mir, yes you probably have an backup but if this is also offline and you have an emergency.  

An capsule could loose all communication but this would be unlikely as its multiple channels, voice and data+ redundancy but plausible. 
For ISS no as its has so many systems, all of the Soyuz has multiple too. 

[YNM]

9 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

what would happen if they managed to hit land? (obviously the crew would have no chance if they landed on the ocean)

I've heard that all astronauts are issued special FAI/IATA/ICAO visa, and they have their passports with them, so legality is not a problem.

I'm not sure if the Soyuz are still equipped with rifles / pistols. We knew they were equipped with one as it came in handy for a bear at one point.

Astronauts are fluent in many languages, so communication is not so much of a problem.

tl;dr they should be fine. Except for a water splashdown in the middle of deep ocean that is.

[Nuke]

17 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

This was an actual project, called Roton. Didn't pan out, but reentry using helicopter blades (powered or not) isn't new, and seems to be viable. Soviets were looking into it, too, at one point.

never underestimate the amount of energy you can store in rotor blades. i had to stop flying my rc heli around the house because i didnt want to decapitate the hordes of small children it would attract. and it was just a 400.

 

i think the thing that really damned the roton was that it was supposed to be an ssto design.

Edited October 3, 2019 by Nuke

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, YNM said:

I've heard that all astronauts are issued special FAI/IATA/ICAO visa, and they have their passports with them, so legality is not a problem.

I'm not sure if the Soyuz are still equipped with rifles / pistols. We knew they were equipped with one as it came in handy for a bear at one point.

Astronauts are fluent in many languages, so communication is not so much of a problem.

tl;dr they should be fine. Except for a water splashdown in the middle of deep ocean that is.

Pretty sure passport is not needed, assume landing in the wrong country after an emergency deorbit works the same as emergency landings of planes. 
You don't get into trouble with US immigration if your on plane from Mexico to Canada and it need to s emergency land in the US. 

Takeoff on the other hand require you to first go to Russia then to Kazakhstan. 
 

[YNM]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

You don't get into trouble with US immigration if your on plane from Mexico to Canada and it need to s emergency land in the US. 

Not the case in every country, with every nationality - esp. considering astronauts are often also members of the armed forces.

They do have their passports with them in space, and I think they do have special provisions in it.