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Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

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Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#101

Post by ajsnigrutin »

bandyaboot wrote: post #89
bigdict wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, why blow up your own infrastructure when you can just cut the supply?

First, there’s no “if”, it’s a fact that can be easily verified. Second, I don’t pretend to know for a fact it was Russia. One of several reasons that I think it’s most likely is that Russia is the country involved here where one man’s irrational decisions would turn into action with virtually no checks.

Russia can close the valves on their end, and germany cannot do anything, since the EU their contractual obligations and literally promising to steal russian assets.

Destroying the pipelines doesn't benefit neither germany nor russia.

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#102

Post by Kukumber »

openplatypus wrote: post #3

Are we at the point we should start suspecting sabotage? Or is this just usual Russian incompetence? This maybe news cycle bias, but since the Ukraine war, and threat of Russian pulling out of ISS program, these malfunctions have been more visible. Is anyone tracking these and similar incidents publicly?

why would russia sabotage their own space station?

it would be a job for the US , just like with nordstream2, they were never able to make one and china recently made their own (smaller), so they are maybe jealous, or it does give the impression that Russia is a scientifically advanced country, that would go against the current dogma?

let's take a step back and appreciate how the west was never able to put something habitable into orbit for this long

impressive

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#103

Post by wcoenen »

fsh wrote: post #39
abracadaniel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t that long ago they drilled a hole in a Soyuz, then patched it with epoxy and sent it up anyway, only for the epoxy to come out and cause a leak.

Also not that long ago, they tried launching a Proton M which had the angular velocity sensors installed upside down: https://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culpri... Looks like decades of rampant corruption and political violence are not exactly good for high-tech industry. Who would have thought?

I don't think you can attribute this failure to a political system. Space is hard. NASA's Genesis sample return capsule also failed due to an upside-down sensor[1].

Fun fact about the Proton M failure: the sensor was designed so that it could only be mounted correctly, but apparently it had been forced in the wrong way somehow. Possibly with a hammer. From [2]:

By July 13, investigators simulated the improper installation of the DUS angular velocity sensors on the actual hardware. As it turned out, it would be very difficult to do but not impossible. To achieve that personnel would need to use procedures and instruments not certified either by the design documentation or the installation instructions. As a result, the plate holding the sensors sustained damage. Yet, when the hardware recovered from the accident was delivered to GKNPTs Khrunichev, it was discovered that the nature of the damage to the plate had almost exactly matched the simulated version.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9331-crashed-spacecra...

[2] https://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culpri...

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#104

Post by Udo »

colechristensen wrote: post #93
Udo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as a huge space flight enthusiast: I believe the ISS has only symbolic value and serves a secondary function as a subsidy program for component producers. The same was largely true of the Space Shuttle program. I also don't necessarily have any problems with that, unless it's siphoning away funds that could have been used to build up an actual orbital infrastructure or serves to further the impression that…

ISS is the reason SpaceX exists, for example. Without it, the government funded “commercial space” efforts and development help wouldn’t have happened and the other things spacex is doing and going to do wouldn’t have happened.

I have no idea whether the Crew Dragon contract rescued SpaceX financially or not, I'll take your word for it. However, I'm unsure why you're framing this as a counterpoint to my argument?

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#105

Post by wheelerof4te »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #98
philwelch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only beneficiary of the pipeline going bust are the USA. Ukraine and Norway are also beneficiaries. Ukraine because it reduces the risk of Germany getting squishy about supporting them and Norway because they’ve cornered the European natural gas market.

But ukraine is unable to do it by themselves, and norway probably to. On the other hand, USA (biden) literally said that they will stop the nord streams on tv.

[flagged]

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#106

Post by thriftwy »

dotnet00 wrote: post #57
samwillis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is this just usual Russian incompetence? I don't think there is an impression of that or really ever has been. Russia has successfully launched humans into space more regularly and at a lower cost than the US for the last 60 years. (Well until the last few years) I think it's more likely that this is just an occurrence of something akin to the birthday paradox and sometimes things just happen. It's the narrative du…

'last 60 years' doesn't really mean much when it's been obvious in the past 2 decades or so that their capabilities have been deteriorating rapidly compared to what they once were. They haven't sent an interplanetary science mission in decades, their next-generation vehicles are constantly delayed or unreliable, Nauka was an entire 12 years behind schedule and so on. Now on top of that, they're under heavy sanctions…

> which is also why Ukraine punched above its weight in the space sector

In 1991 it was expected that independent Ukraine, a 52 million strong country, will basically be the next Spain.

What did it punch in the space sector in the last 30 years? They did indeed inherit a huge chunk of USSR industry and science and nothing went out of it.

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#107

Post by bilqis »

bandyaboot wrote: post #42
latchkey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What possible reason would the Russians have to sabotage their own side of their won space craft? Some people believe the Nord pipeline blowup was self-sabotage. Update: I did not say I believe this myself. I'm just using this as a counter argument to say that the reasons might not be obvious at first glance and people tend to believe all sorts of things.

I don’t know if you guys are being deliberately obtuse with stuff or what, but the Nordstream pipeline can deliver gas to Germany—that’s it. If circumstances change such that Russia no longer wants to deliver gas to Germany, the pipeline has no value to them. It doesn’t matter that it’s theirs. It’s not like they can use it for something else.

Both countries also heavily invested in Nordstream-2, and there were good economical reasons for that. Current sanctions are temporary, as well as this war, and if it haven’t been blown up, it would start working again in no time.

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#108

Post by junofan »

samwillis wrote: post #10
openplatypus wrote: post #3

Are we at the point we should start suspecting sabotage? Or is this just usual Russian incompetence? This maybe news cycle bias, but since the Ukraine war, and threat of Russian pulling out of ISS program, these malfunctions have been more visible. Is anyone tracking these and similar incidents publicly?

> is this just usual Russian incompetence? I don't think there is an impression of that or really ever has been. Russia has successfully launched humans into space more regularly and at a lower cost than the US for the last 60 years. (Well until the last few years) I think it's more likely that this is just an occurrence of something akin to the birthday paradox and sometimes things just happen. It's the narrative du…

They’ve had a bunch of incidents on the ISS over the past couple of years.

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#109

Post by bryananderson »

upsidesinclude wrote: post #22

This comment section looks ridiculous. If the purpose of propoganda stories is to paint the Russians as untrustworthy to the Western world (hint: that is the purpose!) then it is surely effective.

If Russia does not wish to look untrustworthy to its ISS partners, it should probably look into increasing its quality control: two coolant leaks, a launch failure with crew aboard, a hull leak, a brand-new module that sent the station spinning out of control… it has not been a trust-building past few years for the Russian space program. All of these are concrete incidents, not propaganda, and not things that can be expected to “just happen” in such numbers.

Re: Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

#110

Post by Swenrekcah »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #90
bandyaboot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if you guys are being deliberately obtuse with stuff or what, but the Nordstream pipeline can deliver gas to Germany—that’s it. If circumstances change such that Russia no longer wants to deliver gas to Germany, the pipeline has no value to them. It doesn’t matter that it’s theirs. It’s not like they can use it for something else.

Russia controls the valves and germany controls the sanctions... anti-gas sanctions come from germany, russia closes the valve, no gas for germany. Then a cold winter comes, gas prices get very high (especially since the americans are inflating the price), german industry is fucked, people are paying a lot for heat (or being cold), and there's putin with "just lessen the sanctions, stop sending stuff to ukraine, and…

This analysis is not complete.

By the time the pipeline was bombed, it was clear that the EU wasn’t going to cave into Russian demands to stop supporting Ukraine.

So the pipeline sitting there usable but with no gas flowing would both create legal problems for Russia and also be a symbol of European unity.

Regarding the US being able to sell LNG, the capabilities to transport and offload it in the quantities needed don’t exist yet.

I don’t know who blew it up, the most logical would be the Ukrainians but they probably couldn’t have. The next logical are Russia and the certainly have the capability. The USA may be the third logical option and they do have the capability but I’m not so sure they could have done it in this part of the world undetected by Russia.

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