soyuz the underappreciated workhorse?

[crazyewok]

Eveyone knows about the shuttle, its taught in every primary school to kids and held up as a example of human tecnology.

But if you asked the everyday person what a soyuz is you would likely get blank stares or told its a bean vegans eat.

It had a better saftey record than the shuttle, has shown itself to be rather sturdy and tough and is the only remaing human orbital capable spacecraft thats even been copied succesfully by china.

So i want to honour this venrable little ship.

[jwenting]

and if you asked in Russia it'd be the reverse. Except the Shuttle would be mentioned as an example of the failures of Imperialist American Capitalism.

[crazyewok]

and if you asked in Russia it'd be the reverse. Except the Shuttle would be mentioned as an example of the failures of Imperialist American Capitalism.

Well it was a failure so they would get that bit right!

[Themohawkninja]

Well it was a failure so they would get that bit right!

... to avoid another debate on this... the shuttle had 137 missions with two failures, built the ISS, launched and repaired the Hubble space telescope, and is the only fully reusable orbiter that has ever flown.

Not a failure by a big enough shot to orbit the Earth.

[m1xte]

Does shuttle program have anything to do with this miserably short list?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterrestrial_bodies

Delta wings are cool. Average Joe want delta wings.

[crazyewok]

And responisble for causing more deaths than any other type of manned vessel.

Great it helped build the iss and fixed a telescope and yes was reuseable (though not totaly) but it had a dissmall saftey record!

If you had to go up and were given a choice between the soyuz or shuttle what one would you choose based on what was less likely to kill you?

[Kryten]

Shuttle had two loss-of-crew incidents in 135 missions, Soyuz has had the same in less missions (114), as well as two loss-of-mission incidents due to launch failures, compared to zero for shuttle. There's also the two incidents of improper separation before re-entry, leading to crew injury (Soyuz 5 and TMA-11), and the one where the landing retrorockets failed, again causing injury (Soyuz 5 again), neither of which have any kind of equivalent in shuttle missions. More people being killed on the shuttle is purely due to the larger crew size.

[Themohawkninja]

Eveyone knows about the shuttle, its taught in every primary school to kids and held up as a example of human tecnology.

But if you asked the everyday person what a soyuz is you would likely get blank stares or told its a bean vegans eat.

That's because, as you say, the Soyuz is a workhorse. In a decade (if it's not replaced), I could give the same honor to the Delta-II (minus the "firsts" that the Soyuz has, but nobody knows what the Saturn IB is either), but nobody would know what the Delta-II is either, despite all of its work.

It had a better saftey record than the shuttle, has shown itself to be rather sturdy and tough and is the only remaing human orbital capable spacecraft thats even been copied succesfully by china.

So i want to honour this venrable little ship.

It all depends on what you call "Soyuz".

If we use the broadest definition: "All rockets designated Soyuz", we come to 963 launches with 24 failures, or 0.025 failures per launch. In contrast, the Shuttle, with 137 launches and 2 failures has only 0.015 failures per launch.

Therefore, the Soyuz, depending on the definition, is less reliable than the Shuttle.

[Kryten]

He's talking about the Soyuz spacecraft, not the Soyuz rocket.

[Themohawkninja]

And responisble for causing more deaths than any other type of manned vessel.

Great it helped build the iss and fixed a telescope and yes was reuseable (though not totaly) but it had a dissmall saftey record!

If you had to go up and were given a choice between the soyuz or shuttle what one would you choose based on what was less likely to kill you?

By that definition, the Shuttle.

The Shuttle killed more people, because it held 7 people, not 3 like the Soyuz. It's more accurate to go off of the number of failures than number of deaths.

Not to mention I'll be landing like I would in a commercial jetliner, instead of nearly smacking into the ground due to retro-rockets firing a few feet above the surface to save my bones.

[crazyewok]

Both the loses with the soyuz were with the first models. After the bugs were ironed out in the mid 70's they have had losses.

With the faluire of the engine seperation both ships survied reentry with the crews recieving only minor injurys.

The shuttle loses 1 tile on its wing and it burns up? And 1 small o ring faliure and it explodes?

To me that just shows the soyuz can take a beating and still return its crew alive while the shuttle is extremly fragile.

So still would rather ride in the soyuz, better to return with broken bones than to return as vaporised molecules.

[BlackBicycle]

There. Read and weep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)

"Despite these early fatalities, Soyuz is presently widely considered the world's safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system, as demonstrated by its unparalleled length of operational history."

And that "shuttle" thingie IS a white elephant, imho....

[Themohawkninja]

There. Read and weep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)

"Despite these early fatalities, Soyuz is presently widely considered the world's safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system, as demonstrated by its unparalleled length of operational history."

And that "shuttle" thingie IS a white elephant, imho....

What is considered, and what is are two different things. I could consider a particular president to be the best, but that doesn't mean that they are.

Either way, the margins aren't that much for or against either craft. They are both about equal in safety.

The Shuttle just so happens to hold more cargo personnel, and is more reusable (unless that external tank takes up a lot more mass than I thought).

I will agree that it's an elephant though. No matter how nicely I've heard about how lightly you can touch it down... all the pilots still use the term "brick" to describe how it flies, and I can see why.

[crazyewok]

Plus you have to accept the soyuz catostrophic failures were at the start with the early models.

The shuttle had its faluires throughout its career indicating core design faults.

[Themohawkninja]

Plus you have to accept the soyuz catostrophic failures were at the start with the early models.

The shuttle had its faluires throughout its career indicating core design faults.

Which may have been fixed if it wasn't canceled. Plus, only one can really be considered a design fault. The o-ring failure was weather (and thereby the fault of whoever allowed the launch) related, not technically design-related (+1 for unexpected self-healing issues!).

[crazyewok]

Still the soyuz has proven to be very tough and has survived some difficult rentrys.

The shuttle on the otherhand is far more fragile.

[Themohawkninja]

Still the soyuz has proven to be very tough and has survived some difficult rentrys.

The shuttle on the otherhand is far more fragile.

Wings can disintegrate, and parachutes can fail to deploy. Both have happened, and both resulted in the deaths of their crew.

[Kryten]

The only reason we know it can survive some 'difficult rentrys' is because it went through them-due to failures in the core design: you're trying to use failures to argue for safety. Volynov only survived through sheer luck, and TMA-5 showed the issue was never fixed.

[crazyewok]

Wings can disintegrate, and parachutes can fail to deploy. Both have happened, and both resulted in the deaths of their crew.

Both issues fixed very early on and see problems of the 1970's

[crazyewok]

The only reason we know it can survive some 'difficult rentrys' is because it went through them-due to failures in the core design: you're trying to use failures to argue for safety. Volynov only survived through sheer luck, and TMA-5 showed the issue was never fixed.

But i would rather a craft that does some times fail yet can still (barring the early 70's models) get me home alive than a craft that fails lesd often but is so fragile when it does means certain death.

[Tiberion]

There. Read and weep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)

"Despite these early fatalities, Soyuz is presently widely considered the world's safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system, as demonstrated by its unparalleled length of operational history."

And that "shuttle" thingie IS a white elephant, imho....

Heh, what am I weeping about? Something a random person typed on Wikipedia?

You are welcome to have that opinion, but in MY opinion its based on bias and not reality. Failures do not operate 30 years and launch 130 times. Its possible to realize the shuttle had issues and shortcomings without writing it off as a failure or a bad idea. Use a little reason in your thought process.

Soyuz is great, its the epitome of the old engineering axiom "Keep it simple, stupid" - its also been limited to one very specific mission profile for most of its life, and without other supporting facilities built by both NASA and the Russians, it wouldn't have been a very useful spacecraft.

NASA never really developed a workhorse people-launcher. The Shuttle served that role and a half-dozen more, and its pretty much the opposite of the KISS axiom, it's broad in design and capabilities, and thus very complex and always on the edge of something not working right. It could have been simpler and safer, and it probably might have been cheaper that way too. But it did a lot of amazing things for a long time, and it IS an example of the amazing machines that mankind can build. So is Soyuz for that matter. Its just not as "cool"

[BlackBicycle]

Just throwing in another 2 m/s from my memory... note, the costs are from the end of the cold war era - just when the debate of rockets/return capsules versus a reusable spaceplane was at its hottest:

Cost of launching 1 kg into low Earth orbit:

Shuttle: $120

Soyuz: $40

[Tiberion]

Just throwing in another 2 m/s from my memory... note, the costs are from the end of the cold war era - just when the debate of rockets/return capsules versus a reusable spaceplane was at its hottest:

Cost of launching 1 kg into low Earth orbit:

Shuttle: $120

Soyuz: $40

Uh huh. Now you're mixing the rocket and the capsule up.

Also:

Amount of Cargo the shuttle can return from orbit: 14,400kg

Amount of Cargo the Soyuz can return from orbit: whatever the passengers can fit in their pockets.

Don't even try to make direct comparisons.

[ZetaX]

The ability of returning cargo seems to be mostly useless, though.

[Tiberion]

Well you very clearly haven't studied the shuttle very much then. Many of its missions carried science experiment racks into orbit in the bay, where the astronauts performed them and then packed them up to bring them home again.

This applies to the ISS too, and was acutely felt in the time after shuttles stopped launching (they brought home tons of old equipment to be refurbished, science experiments and personal affects of crew members.) They were not able to do it until SpaceX docked their Dragon. None of the other resupply ships can re-enter, and the Soyuz can't bring anything home. And now there is at least one space suit and probably a broken coolant pump waiting up there for the next dragon to arrive to ferry them back. And the dragon only brings 3,300kg, 5 times less than the shuttle could.

So I think the people who have sent up hundreds or thousands of experiments from schools, universities, and companies would argue that its far from 'useless'

Edited December 27, 2013 by Tiberion
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