This quote was sobering. "The last time a brand-new American space ship was hauled to its launch pad for the first time was 1981."
We need to go back.

http://www.wesh.com/news/orion-to-be-moved-to-launch-pad-at-kennedy-space-center/29664982

The quote is wrong. X-37 comes to mind.

Yeah, but they're referring to manned space flight. Not since Young & Crippen (nasa) took the shuttle for a shake-out ride.

That's what happens when you ride the same truck every day for 30 years...you aren't building new ones.

Of course, that refers to designs, as the last new spacecraft was actually Endeavour in May 1992.




The Jedi Master

There's something to be said about reliability, dependability and practicality of space capsules and rocket designs...

Apollo did... maybe 20 flights? If we include earlier Saturn prototypes, the moon shots and skylab project?

Space Shuttle had 135 flights, two failures resulting in losss of crews and vehicles.

Soyuz has done more than 1700 launches. Four failures are listed on Wiki. I wonder if there were a few more. But other than the very early days of booster test flights, four failures to reach orbit, all of them unmanned no less, js impressive.

To put it in perspective, if we quadruple the number of Soyuz failures to 16 if we assume some accidents were covered up (which would not be possible in today's world, that would have to have been in Soviet days), the RATE of failures would still make the NASA shuttle look like a freaking deathtrap.

And thus, I have to question the Western impression of Russian rockets being dangerous deathtraps. If you look at the early days of American boosters there was a lot of failures too. Yes, the Soviet N1 moon boosters failed... horribly and costing many engineers their lives, halting that program in its tracks. But N1 was not Soyuz, which just kept on truckin' like a bus route to orbit.

If the Soyuz today is still viewed as dangerous... then why is it NASA went to great lengths to secure a steady supply chain of Russian rocket engines for American use? If they are so dangerous, why does the Pentagon place so much faith in Russian rocket engines to put America's most expensive and national-security critical spy satellites into space?

To me all these aerospace vehicles are impressive. And yes, there is no doubt in my mind that flying a Mig-21 is a dangerous way to spend time flying. But it seems to me that the Soyuz space program ought to be viewed as a bright success from Russia, with dependability more akin to the AK-47 rifle than a Russian tv or Concordski TU-144.

Now... all that said, I think it unforgivable that NASA is dependent on a country so different, unstable and politically hostile (at least sometimes) to get people and supplies to the ISS. Its also unforgivable for safety reasons: having all your safety eggs in the one basket gives you no alternative options if things go south. Soyuz may be reliable... but its govt country isn't. Plus, delivery schedules could prevent rescue options. Better to have manned rockets from Russia, America and European (none yet but maybe in future?) To bring supplies up, or bring crews back alive.

Additionally, I think America needs an equivalent to Soyuz anyway: cheap fast reliable (unpossible says NASA, while Russians doing Soyuz prove it IS being done) bus route to orbit. Its not just for putting men in space, or satellites to orbit, its also being used routinely as unmanned cargo resupply for the ISS. Yep...unmanned intercept and docking, bringing food water, medicine, and whatever else they need up there.

I suspect that SpaceX's Falcon and Dragon may well become America's answer to Soyuz. Aiming for low cost and high reliability. Maybe the other contractors will do it too. But reducing price to orbit is very important if humanity is to travel through our solar system.

With programs like CCDev I don't think we'll be relying on the Soyuz that long, we've been working on a shuttle replacement for some time and we're making progress. Using Russian equipment is just to hold us over, not that the technology is bad (as you've mentioned they have a good track record) but Russia itself is rightly generally perceived as hostile and shaky when it comes to diplomacy.

Rick, maybe we're not comparing the same things. I didn't put a lot of time in looking up info, but this page shows that for the Soyuz-U, there were 745 launches and 21 failures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-U

That's just for the Soyuz-U, so I'm sure there are more launches, but that's 21 failures, far more than 4. I'm not sure what they consider a failure, though. There were also two Soyuz re-entry failures, resulting in the loss of a total of 4 cosmonauts - one had a parachute failure and the other was a decompression problem.

That's not to say that the Soyuz has not been a tremendous success, or is unsafe, but the comparison might be a little off.

There have been a huge number of rocket launches by NASA and USAF, as well as the ESA that have went off without a hitch.

Compare apples to apples, please.

Sure... go ahead, let's find accurate numbers for all of it... clearly my numbers were off thanks to misleading info from a different wiki page on the subject. But I am curious to compare them all.