US Space Flights 'Could Be Grounded For Years' (Russia)

Ananova ^ | 2-1-2003

[blam]

US space flights 'could be grounded for years'

Russian space officials claim US-manned space flights could be grounded indefinitely following the loss of the shuttle Columbia.

Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, told the ITAR-Tass news agency it could be years before flights resume.

He said Russian Soyuz rockets should be used to ferry crews back and forth to the International Space Station instead.

Mr Gorbunov said: "It's absolutely obvious that shuttle flights will be stopped, possibly for some years, until the final determination of the cause of the Columbia accident."

If US shuttles are grounded, only Russian Soyuz rockets would be capable of taking space crews to and from the space station, the news agency quoted him as saying.

Soyuz rockets are currently used to send Russian crews to the space station for short visits, and for emergency escape capsules. US space shuttles have been used to ferry permanent crews back and forth.

The Russian Space Agency says its planned launch of a cargo ship to the International Space Station will go forward ahead as planned on Sunday, despite the events in the US.

Story filed: 19:40 Saturday 1st February 2003

[patriciaruth]

Well, we have to send at least one more back up to retrieve the people on the space station.

Betting here that the program will forge ahead despite lawsuits from debris victims in Texas and lots of indignant speeches from left-wing Democrats, who have been against the space program from its inception because "the money could be better spent on the poor here on Earth."

[patriot5186]

How long were the shuttles grounded after the earlier incident in the 80's? 1 and 1/2 years, I think. I'm definitely not an expert, but now NASA should be able to collect the debris much easier and hopefully make a determination of cause much quicker.

[SamAdams76]

I think this is sort of "wishful" thinking on the part of the Russians who see an opportunity to fill the void with their Soyuz rockets. I don't think they will be grounded for that long. President Bush made it clear in his speech today that space travel shall continue. Consider that there has only been 2 disasters in 113 flights for a success rate of 98.2%. Obviously that is two disasters too many but overall, the Space Shuttle program has long proven its reliability. Space travel is a dangerous business after all and I think NASA can be proud of its record.

[Alberta's Child]

I have to give credit to the old Soviets where credit is due. They were far more clinical about their space program than we were about ours -- they approached each flight with the understanding that something disastrous could occur, and in my opinion they were far more professional about it.

If I recall, most of the Soviet space missions were lauched from a place called Red Star City on the edge of Siberia. There was no great media coverage of these events, no hoopla, no focus on the first woman in space, the first African-American in space, the first Israeli in space, the first left-handed, homosexual, brown-eyed man in space, etc. To the Soviets, those were not much different than military missions in which there were a lot of risks expected.

[Paleo Conservative]

There was no great media coverage of these events, no hoopla, no focus on the first woman in space, There was no great media coverage of these events, no hoopla, no focus on the first woman in space,

What a load of Barbara Steisand? The Soviets pulled lots of stunts in their space program, especially in the early years. They did make a big deal out of sending a woman (who was not a pilot) into orbit alone in 1963. They also were able to claim the first three man crew launched into orbit by eliminating the pressurized suits worn by their cosmonauts and using the space saved to put in an extra couch. Several years later this recklessness cost the live of three cosmonauts when their capsule depressurized during descent.

[technomage]

Actually the 3 astronauts currently on the space station (2 Americans, 1 Russian), can come down in the Soyuz craft docked at the station. It is docked there for emergencies.

I do hope and pray that the current administration does something BOLD in the wake of this disaster.

Screw the predictable incomprehensible outbursts that we all know are coming from the dumbocrats, enviromentalists and others.

God Bless these heroes!!

[jlogajan]

Two engineering phases and one political phase.

The first engineering phase is to determine what happened.

The second engineering phase is to fix it.

The political phase is to assign blame.

They have some good telemetry clues for the first phase.

[Alberta's Child]

Sorry about that -- I wasn't all that clear about what I meant. Most of the "hoopla" surrounding the Soviet space missions was for propaganda purposes during the height of the Cold War. In fact, I'll bet most Russians weren't even aware of a lot of these things.

This is going to sound insensitive, but I think it's appropriate. Look at the photos of the Columbia crew, and then go back and look at the photos of the Challenger crew in 1986. Notice the nice, multi-cultural aspect of these crews.

Now go back and look at the crew photos for the first half-dozen shuttle flights after they re-started the program a couple of years after the Challenger disaster, when the shuttle scheduled was arranged so as to give top priority to military payloads. Nothing multicultural or multi-ethnic about those crews -- THAT was a time when NASA was very serious about what it was doing.

[Alberta's Child]

There is no reason to use the Soyuz to bring those people down off the space station. There is no emergency here -- there is nothing happening up there that requires anything other than a standard procedure.
<p.
I only say this because I strongly suspect that a Soyuz re-entry could be far more hazardous than a shuttle re-entry.