Russian Hand-Wave Takes Place of Traditional Anomaly Resolution?

The Russian launch queue must be deep because they’ve cleared the Breeze-M upper stage to return to flight in record time.  Money talks and Russian space needs the dues.

From Space News:

In a remarkably quick end to a launch failure investigation even by Russian standards, a Russian state board of inquiry on Aug. 30 announced it had determined the cause of an Aug. 18 failure of a Proton rocket upper stage, ordered corrective actions and cleared the vehicle to resume operations, according to the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

“Remarkably quick” is an apt (and perhaps generous) description; the return to flight timeline is reminiscent of the developmental ICBM failures during the early space-stage of the Cold War when national survival was thought to be in play.

In its Aug. 30 announcement, Roscosmos said the interagency board of inquiry determined that the Breeze-M failure was due to a badly programmed sequence for its guidance system.

“This resulted in an off-nominal orientation of the Breeze-M and, as a consequence, in injecting the [Express-AM4] into an off-design orbit,” Roscosmos said in its statement.

In this case, off-nominal is code for catastrophic failure.  Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Think NASA will buy off on this sort of anomaly resolution for the Soyuz failure?

Another Russian Fail

Earlier this month, a mission failure was attributed to the Breeze M upper stage.  This time the mission failure for an ISS resupply is (at this point) being attributed to the Soyuz upper stage.

Breeze has storable fuels; the Soyuz uses RP-1 and LOX.

Probably just ineptitude, bad workmanship, or another form of human error, right?  Or is something more sinister at work?

Space: It Don’t Come Easy

When you think space comes easy, especially for the well-established space-faring nations (the U.S., Russia, and China), life steps up and slaps you in the face.

The failures anomalies issues? Fairly recent examples include AEHF-1; Eutelsat W3B; the Glonass launch failure; SkyTerra 1 (resolved); and others.  More recent examples include ViaSat-1 delays and Telstar 14R.  Very recent examples include Russia’s apparent Breeze M (upper stage) failure and a Chinese Long March 2C failure (of an “experimental” payload).  These non-successes are representative and not inclusive.

The lesson is if you can get an equivalent (or near equivalent) service from something that doesn’t have to go to space, you’d be foolish to not consider its use.  While space is important, it isn’t like love, breathing air, drinkable water, or Cheetos.

In the meantime, enjoy the stars Starr in a music video from era when dinosaurs roamed the earth.