It'll be interesting for how long this will ground the Soyuz fleet.
The next scheduled Soyuz launch is Progress 71P on October 31st. I'm curious if that's going to happen, considering crewed and cargo use the same launch vehicle.
There's also 3 more (unmanned) flights scheduled for Soyuz in November (MetOp C, Glonass M and EgyptSat-A) - so there might be pressure to find/"solve" the problem as quickly as possible.
The next human flight is scheduled for December 20th (ISS 57S).
Seems like madness to me. The Soyuz is very well proven at this point. I'd happily hop straight on board the next one even after this incident, which is more than I can say for SpaceX - don't get me wrong, I have every faith in them and am personally a big fan, but the numbers are heavily in Soyuz' favour.
Even if the design is well-tested, there may be a new process issue in the rocket's construction that is undiagnosed.
Maybe there is a new person on the assembly line that doesn't know not to pinch o-rings when assembling fuel tubing? Maybe a swaging tool has worn out to the point that it is causing leaks? Maybe the vendor who supplies body panel rivets got a bad batch of aluminum? There are so may possible situations that it is not worth risking launches or lives over until a root cause has been found.
First let me agree that spaceflight is hard, even the billions that NASA spends has led to so many disasters.
The problem there is with manufacturing and quality control. They've had endless problems with other recent rockets and it's natural to think their qualty problems hit this time. Spaceflight is one of the few area where the us and Russia are cooperating and I hope this isn't the end. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/10/200775748...
I would agree for the most part. I also would want to see a successful DM1 flight before hopping aboard a crewed SpaceX flight.
But with recent events around Soyuz I'd be slightly hesitant there as well. A year ago I would have fully agreed with you, but the infamous drilled hole, now this - I'd at least wait for the investigation to return a reason of failure to be able to determine whether I'd feel safe. If it's again human error during construction, I probably wouldn't get on board.
You have to realize that USSR and early Russia launches and now are two different animals. Soviet era specialists either died or retired or are old and about to retire the new gen. are not even remotely comparable plus all corroding corruption is running rampant.
Progress and Soyuz don't use the same launch vehicle. Progress currently uses Soyuz-2 booster (Soyuz-2.1a specifically) while Soyuz uses Soyuz-FG.
Soyuz 2 is a new generation booster that has a pretty bad track record due to the quality control issues. Soyuz-FG is old generation booster that had a perfect track record until now.
NASA doesn't normally push timelines up like that.
They aren't "holding back" SpaceX, the validation, testing, and scheduling mostly has little to do with others, and more to do with validating SpaceX alone.
The latest messaging was actually exactly this - that they had a milestone of readiness for DM-1 set for December, but that launch couldn't happen until January because of ISS docking schedule availability. It's not a big difference, but it could shave off a few weeks on the margins.
Thats fair! I just keep seeing a lot of comments whenever something happens about how "SpaceX might get to launch sooner", and it kinda annoys me because there's a pretty well set schedule and they aren't going to cut corners just because an opportunity arose.
You are right though that scheduling might let this move up a bit.
The Chinese are excluded from the ISS. Their Tianzhou spacecraft is a direct Soyuz descendant, so it might be possible to dock it to the ISS, but this was not a part of the plan so it hasn't been designed for it, much less tested.
Plus I also don't see the Trump administration asking China for help anytime soon...
The US would collaborate with China on this if it would make financial sense. It could even be an opportunity to straight things out a bit.
That being said, I agree that it's not going to happen. First, Tianzhou is currently cargo-only, for which there are enough alternatives. Second, the US is close to getting back their own human access to space (through Boeing and SpaceX), and that would probably be ready before sufficient restructuring & testing on Tianzhou is completed.
Edit: Shenzhou is the human rated version of Tianzhou, so the main question would be whether it can dock with the ISS. (There's not just the dock itself that has to fit, but there's additional limitation on what kind of maneuverability system can be used close to the ISS). Also, the next Shenzhou flight was originally scheduled for 2018 and got delayed to 2020 - so this is highly unlikely going to be an option (No Mark-Watney-style rescue is required unless the docked Soyuz modules are 'grounded' as well)
The next scheduled Soyuz launch is Progress 71P on October 31st. I'm curious if that's going to happen, considering crewed and cargo use the same launch vehicle.
There's also 3 more (unmanned) flights scheduled for Soyuz in November (MetOp C, Glonass M and EgyptSat-A) - so there might be pressure to find/"solve" the problem as quickly as possible.
The next human flight is scheduled for December 20th (ISS 57S).