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Cosmonauts recover explosive bolt
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Urwumpe
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What a pointless spacewalk. Pandering to the public (or possibly to some of the more gullible members of management) fear over the safety of Soyuz.
It is a bit hard to recover one after reentry. And launch and orbit can have an effect on the properties of the bolt, especially the trigger.
This is true, but I don't think the recovery of the explosive bolt is worth an expensive and dangerous spacewalk. These things have worked well in the past, and even the management is saying that if the bolts are at fault then it's a QC failure..which you deal with on the ground, not in space.
PR, pure and simple.
Maybe the one they keep the gun in. Wonder what good ol' Jimmie Oberg would make of that one, seeing as how he'd been banging on about this spacewalk and also banging on about how unsafe guns are.
Or possibly it's just an experiment box, they do a few experiments with gases/combustion up there so there's got to be one or two blast-proof boxes around.
PR, pure and simple.
Maybe the one they keep the gun in. Wonder what good ol' Jimmie Oberg would make of that one, seeing as how he'd been banging on about this spacewalk and also banging on about how unsafe guns are.
Or possibly it's just an experiment box, they do a few experiments with gases/combustion up there so there's got to be one or two blast-proof boxes around.
mrspacely
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the soyuz program sure did suck for a while, i wouldnt trust myself in one.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Soyuz.html
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Soyuz.html
Ghostrider
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Maybe the one they keep the gun in. Wonder what good ol' Jimmie Oberg would make of that one, seeing as how he'd been banging on about this spacewalk and also banging on about how unsafe guns are.
My thoughts exactly. A pity they won't land the capsule at the Cape and flick the bolt at Oberg. "Yo, Jimmy, catch!"
Thunder Chicken
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If they removed the explosive bolt, what did they replace it with? Or is that another spacewalk?
Nothing. The working theory is that by removing and unlatching this particular separation location, it won't hang-up and cause a separation failure.
Yes.
SiberianTiger
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What a pointless spacewalk. Pandering to the public (or possibly to some of the more gullible members of management) fear over the safety of Soyuz.
Maybe you are right. I'd, for instance, put most suspiction in the wiring of the spacecraft rather than this bolt. However, people who take decisions in Energia have a direct access to all evidence, so they probably know something all others don't.
SiberianTiger
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They have unlatched une separation lock, four more remained latched. This should be enough to keep the craft's parts together.
Thunder Chicken
Resident Lua Script Rabble-Rouser
What a pointless spacewalk. Pandering to the public (or possibly to some of the more gullible members of management) fear over the safety of Soyuz.
Given the possibility of off-nominal behavior, I think it better to take concrete steps to nip the problem in the bud before something *really* bad happens. Maybe everything is fine, but then again, maybe everything isn't fine. Better to address the problem and put it to bed than to be left wondering (especially if you are the one strapping in to the thing for your ride home).
The alternative is to sweep the issue under the rug. O-rings burned through many a time on the shuttle SRBs prior to Challenger, and foam damage was observed repeatedly on several STS flights before Columbia. Remedial action was required, but it took 14 deaths and the loss of 2 vehicles to spur these actions. Thankfully the anomaly with the Soyuz bolt hasn't killed anyone (yet). Somebody made the (wise, I think) decision to take action to control the situation.
Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Soyuz is mature program, although much less comfortable than STS, I would feel safer in Soyuz than any other spacecraft, past or present, except maybe Gemini, but Gemini, Apollo, and Shenzou don't have the long flight history of Soyuz or STS, and that counts for a lot when making a judgment.
Thunder Chicken
Resident Lua Script Rabble-Rouser
Even normal aircraft, no matter how venerable and reliable, can (and should) undergo modifications if something can be done to improve safety, reliability, ease of maintenance, etc.
A good bit of the work I did in the air force was to perform modifications and upgrades, as well as normal maintenance, to the ejection seat systems (mostly for the ACES II, which has been around for a while). Some of the modifications were to eliminate potential flaws that might endanger the crew member under certain ejection conditions. The odds of those conditions occurring may have been small, but maybe a recent ejection exposed the flaw, and it was prudent to take action to correct it.
Spacecraft are no different, really. They come off the manufacturing floor as the best design that can be envisioned at that time. With a few launches and experience, you start to see things that you *wish* you thought about before. And so you make a modification to remedy the problem in existing ships, and you work it into the design of new ships. These modifications are the cost of doing business in a good organization. It can be expensive, but it's always cheaper than killing crew and losing ships, *then* making the modifications anyway.
A good bit of the work I did in the air force was to perform modifications and upgrades, as well as normal maintenance, to the ejection seat systems (mostly for the ACES II, which has been around for a while). Some of the modifications were to eliminate potential flaws that might endanger the crew member under certain ejection conditions. The odds of those conditions occurring may have been small, but maybe a recent ejection exposed the flaw, and it was prudent to take action to correct it.
Spacecraft are no different, really. They come off the manufacturing floor as the best design that can be envisioned at that time. With a few launches and experience, you start to see things that you *wish* you thought about before. And so you make a modification to remedy the problem in existing ships, and you work it into the design of new ships. These modifications are the cost of doing business in a good organization. It can be expensive, but it's always cheaper than killing crew and losing ships, *then* making the modifications anyway.
Of course it's a good idea to explore failure modes before they result in the loss of a vehicle or crew. I just don't see how this spacewalk helped that.
No-one (not even Jim Oberg) thinks that the bolt itself is the cause of the separation issues; and this very issue is designed as a built in redundancy at which the vehicle is perfectly capable of handling. Because of these two points I think it's a reckless waste of time to endanger the lives of the three crew performing this spacewalk.
But that's all moot now though, as the spacewalk didn't contain any accidents.
The ONLY valid reason I've come up with whilst chatting to my colleagues is that removing the bolt will provide reassurance to the crew when it comes time to use the Soyuz to return to Earth.
tblaxland
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