Hackaday notes the failure of the latest Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) last night, and while the crew escaped unharmed on a bumpy re-entry, the ISS itself is now at risk:
The Soyuz MS-03 crew ship (foreground) and the Progress 66 cargo craft are pictured as the International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above Earth. Image Credit: NASA
ISS crews are rotated out on a six month schedule because that’s about how long a Soyuz capsule can remain viable in orbit. It has a design life of only 215 days, any longer than that and the vehicle’s corrosive propellants will degrade their tanks.
The currently docked Soyuz vehicle is the emergency escape vehicle for the ISS crew, so this is highly important for them. Meanwhile, the investigation into the failure could take months.
So ISS may be abandoned. This is a testament to the difficulties of getting into space.
For those readers who can’t understand why we “waste all that money” to go into space when there are so many problems down here on Earth, consider this: weather satellites have saved literally millions of lives by enabling accurate forecasting. Imagine recent hurricanes Florence and Michael hitting the American mainland with little warning and no real measurements of their strength.
And the spinoffs of the technological developments, which were amazing when I wrote a paper on this in high school, are jaw-dropping, from dental drills to smartphones. I’ve forgotten the estimated return on investment for the space program, but it’s well over 1.
So, yeah. I’m a fan. It’s an example of the American government doing its job. It could have quit after reaching the moon, but instead they saw we had more benefits by working in the hard environment of space.
This incident also illustrates how poorly managed the manned space vehicle program has been managed. Whether it’s Congress or NASA itself, someone needs to step up and fix things. Maybe private industry will work out, what with SpaceX’s FalconHeavy supposedly getting ready for manned flight, but it’s not there, yet.
