Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
Quite seriously though, I am curious what NASA or the Russians would do
if there was a decision to ground the Soyuz.

Interesting question. My first instinct was to bring the ISS crew home on
the last shuttle flight before the next Soyuz rotation would have taken
place. Bring the Soyuz back unmanned, with low-value cargo in the seats
approximating the mass of the crew, as a test. Continue shuttle assembly
flights and operate the station in a man-tended mode until Soyuz
return-to-flight.

Then I realized that if you don't trust the current Soyuz at the end of
its scheduled rotation, you don't trust it now, either. Therefore there is
little marginal risk in continuing to keep the crew up there without the
Soyuz, and it would greatly improve the probability of the station
surviving.

The *psychological* difference between having a CRV (albeit of
questionable reliability), and having no CRV at all, is considerable.

(Though quite honestly, in today's Russia, I seriously doubt they will do
so until a fatal accident occurs.

Agreed. Hopefully we will not learn the hard way what the Russian
equivalent of "foam logic" is.

(And no I'm not trying to sound like Bob
Haller).

Don't worry; no one will confuse you with bBo ahllerb.

Details details!

Quite seriously though, I am curious what NASA or the Russians would do if
there was a decision to ground the Soyuz.

(Though quite honestly, in today's Russia, I seriously doubt they will do so
until a fatal accident occurs. (And no I'm not trying to sound like Bob
Haller).

Interesting question. My first instinct was to bring the ISS crew home
on the last shuttle flight before the next Soyuz rotation would have
taken place. Bring the Soyuz back unmanned, with low-value cargo in
the seats approximating the mass of the crew, as a test. Continue
shuttle assembly flights and operate the station in a man-tended mode
until Soyuz return-to-flight.

Then I realized that if you don't trust the current Soyuz at the end
of its scheduled rotation, you don't trust it now, either. Therefore
there is little marginal risk in continuing to keep the crew up there
without the Soyuz, and it would greatly improve the probability of the
station surviving.

"Jorge R. Frank" <jrfrank@ibm-pc.borg> wrote in message
news:3KCdnTnwmYdJpYzVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com...
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
Quite seriously though, I am curious what NASA or the Russians would do
if there was a decision to ground the Soyuz.
Interesting question. My first instinct was to bring the ISS crew home on
the last shuttle flight before the next Soyuz rotation would have taken
place. Bring the Soyuz back unmanned, with low-value cargo in the seats
approximating the mass of the crew, as a test. Continue shuttle assembly
flights and operate the station in a man-tended mode until Soyuz
return-to-flight.

Then I realized that if you don't trust the current Soyuz at the end of
its scheduled rotation, you don't trust it now, either. Therefore there is
little marginal risk in continuing to keep the crew up there without the
Soyuz, and it would greatly improve the probability of the station
surviving.

The *psychological* difference between having a CRV (albeit of
questionable reliability), and having no CRV at all, is considerable.

Hmm, if I'm following you, you're suggesting ditch the Soyuz now, rather
than later?

I think I'd suggest the following, wait until the next scheduled rotation
and try to coordinate with a shuttle flight.

At that point, ditch TMA-11. If it survives, great, if not, no loss, in
either case you swap the crew using the Shuttle.

But, you keep it in the meantime since a 2% failure rate (based on
historical odds, etc) is still far better than a 100% failure rate if you
ditch it now. i.e. if you absolutely need it, you're better off having it,
even with a higher than normal risk of failure, than not having the option
at all.

The real question becomes what do you do about TMA-12? Do you fly it before
or after TMA-11 comes home? And if so, do you fly it with a crew or not?

But, you keep it in the meantime since a 2% failure rate (based on
historical odds, etc) is still far better than a 100% failure rate if you
ditch it now. i.e. if you absolutely need it, you're better off having it,
even with a higher than normal risk of failure, than not having the option
at all.

The real question becomes what do you do about TMA-12? Do you fly it before
or after TMA-11 comes home? And if so, do you fly it with a crew or not?

I do think at this point the risk to the station if left without a crew is
higher than I'd like to see.

Given what appears to be their history of "trust us, don't worry" in the
past decade coupled with a desire to trade seats for money or other items, I
suspect they're suffering their own version of "Go" fever.

The *psychological* difference between having a CRV (albeit of
questionable reliability), and having no CRV at all, is considerable.

"Jorge R. Frank" <jrfrank@ibm-pc.borg> wrote in message
news:3KCdnTnwmYdJpYzVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com...
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

(Though quite honestly, in today's Russia, I seriously doubt they will do
so until a fatal accident occurs.

Agreed. Hopefully we will not learn the hard way what the Russian
equivalent of "foam logic" is.

Given what appears to be their history of "trust us, don't worry" in the
past decade coupled with a desire to trade seats for money or other items, I
suspect they're suffering their own version of "Go" fever.

I don't know if it's on-schedule, but Soyuz TMA-13 is supposed to
incorporate significant improvements (including the new, far lighter,
flight computer) and may not be prone to the present separation problem.

Well...I didn't get up on the web till 1998, so don't judge me by my
late start in hating the Freedom/ISS concept.
I instinctively hated it years before that...

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

I've been on the Internet since about 89 or so I think. (There my be
postings from me on Usenet before then, but that was through a feed to
*FORUM on our MTS mainframe.

But I recall asking friends at other colleges for their email addresses and
getting either blank faces or "email? Only professers have that!"

I got my first client on the Internet in about 93 and haven't looked back
since then.

Right now, Jamestown is having a major discussion as to whether the
"Alfred Dicky Public Library" :http://www.adpl.org/
should be moved to a new location, so that its present building can be
converted to the "Louis L'Amour Museum".
The building, one of the oldest and most beautiful in our town, is
considered "too small" for our city library; despite the fact that all
of its shelves are around only 75% full of books, and most of those
books average around 25 years old.
The main reason that anyone goes to it anymore is to read any of this
month's magazines, check out today's newspapers, or use its computers
to tie into the internet.
Since the library allows its subscribers to tie into a statewide
subscription service to read all the newspapers and magazines it
subscribes to on-line at home...as well as hundreds of others that
aren't in the library proper, the entire library is both redundant and
obsolete in our present world.
If anything is to be done, then the books and bookshelves can be
eliminated, and replaced with more computer consoles with the use of
only a fraction of the present space.
But that would be far too radical of a concept for Jamestown to embrace,
so I expect several millions of dollars to be spent on something that is
pointless from the very hour that the first brick is laid in its
construction.

You know, like the ISS in a vastly scaled-down form.

Well...I didn't get up on the web till 1998, so don't judge me by my
late start in hating the Freedom/ISS concept.
I instinctively hated it years before that...


I didn't "hate" it in 1984. But I'd already been struck since 1981 by
how hard everyone was pretending the Shuttle was a solution instead of
a first step. So the Freedom announcement just seemed like a
double-dip of delusion. I claim no prescience in thinking at the time
that if it happened at all it would be much smaller, more costly, and
slower to build than projected.

Of course, the Soviet Mir gave the Reagan administration to perfect
opportunity to shovel yet more money at the aerospace industry...so that
Socialism's Shining Star wouldn't scare our children as they looked up
at the night sky and realized Commies were up their giving them the
finger and just waiting to bury them.

As someone way back then pointed out, once the commercial and DOD
flights for the Shuttle were dropped, a space station of some sort
became almost inevitable so the Shuttle would have something to do.
Q: What's the Shuttle used for?
A: To build the Space Station.
Q: Whats the Space Station used for?
A: It gives the Shuttle somewhere to go.

Which, in my book, makes the person who thinks that's a condemnation
of the Shuttle... an idiot. Because that was the goal of the Shuttle
from Day One, to work with a space station.

Oh, I remember those days.