Talk:Soyuz MS-10

"effectively trapping humans on Earth"

I guess it won't stick long in the article, but kudos to Andrew came up with that one :) -- TomK32 (talk) 10:36, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

"effectively trapping humans on Earth, for now", maybe? Erick Soares3 (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Someone forgot about China. --mfb (talk) 04:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Gallery

@O'Dea: I simply don't see how the gallery can't simply be illustrated with text in the pose of the article with citations alone – especially when five of the seven images featured are poor quality screenshots form a YouTube stream with watermarks. What value do images of mission center in Johnson and Korolyov, where you can barely see anything happening from the thumbnail, add to the article? Why does there need to be multiple images of the same rocket launch when one in the lead image can suffice, especially when none of the images depict anything unique from eachother, such as the anomaly itself? Both File:Soyuz MS-10 launch on NASA TV-07, showing crew.jpg and File:RKA Mission Control Centre during aborted launch of Soyuz MS-10.jpg need to be checked for possible copyright violations, since they were obviously not shot with NASA cameras and were Roscosmos feeds. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 18:20, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

You were right about image overlap and I have removed some repetitive launch images. The remaining ones show different launch phases. Certainly, things could be described in text but that would require digging up citations and, in any event, photographs are worth "a thousand words" and convey insight at a glance. There is no deprecation of pictures in Wikipedia: the policy is to just not assemble an out-of-control, bloated image farm in a random fashion without the images making sense and without contributing meaning to an article. The number of pictures is not actually large at all. The images of the two mission controls illustrate the tense waiting in two professional "nerve centres" in Russia and the United States. As to thumbnail sizes, the small pictures lead to full-sized ones upon clicking, as with all thumbnails. The US and Russians are twin operators during these space station missions, and the U.S. pay the Russians for access to space, including in-flight imagery and many other flight communications; the screenshots were taken from NASA broadcasts, which are copyright-free. I have not seen visual coverage of the anomaly, but it may emerge in due course. There is one image of white fragments in the sky after first stage separation, added by another editor claiming it was a picture of the anomaly, but I have not seen an authoritative description of the meaning of those fragments, so I moderated the caption to describe the picture as merely "first stage separation" without any excitable inference of its unverified meaning, until clarification emerges from Roscosmos or NASA. — O'Dea (talk) 21:58, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

@O'Dea: Photographs may be worth a thousand words, but they certainly take up more space than an equivalent few words that would equally summarise their content. Users shouldn't have to click into an image just to discern what's happening in it, and just because copyrighted images were rebroadcast by NASA doesn't mean their copyright suddenly disappears. Roscosmos made the two images aforementioned, and unless one can prove that they signed the copyrights away to the public domain, rather than simply giving NASA permission to rebroadcast the images, their copyright needs to be questioned. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 00:57, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Spaceflight - or not?

Was this really a sub-orbital spaceflight? That is to say, did it reach the Kármán line altitude of 100 kilometres (328,000 ft) that is necessary for it to be considered a spaceflight? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:08, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I've added a source that reports an altitude of 90 miles (140 km). Better sources may be available. NASA also describes the 1983 incident: "That incident was – until now – the only time in spaceflight history that a launch abort system had been used with a crew onboard the spacecraft.": [1]. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:22, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I believe this 90 mile figure is incorrect. The source is a bit confusing, but that number is referring to the Soyuz-18A incident, rather than the MS-10 incident. Since the abort happened at the end of Stage 1, I would expect an altitude of about 50 km.71.198.145.89 (talk) 03:16, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

That quote comes from NASASpaceFlight.com, a space news website, not from the government agency itself. 2601:644:1:B7CB:A5CC:B7E2:2499:B26E (talk) 21:44, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Do you have a better, or any other, source? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:45, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Apogee was above the abort height. --mfb (talk) 04:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I did a little bit of OR, we can't put that in the article but it gives an idea what to look for. This video has the expected flight profile about 10 seconds after booster separation (2:44 -> 2:55). The entries are velocity, height, downrange distance. The rocket was supposed to rise by about 4 km in 5 seconds, with an initial height of about 50 km at separation. A vertical velocity of 800 m/s in vacuum would give an apogee 32 km above the initial height, or 82 km above sea level. Drag will reduce that value. Lift would increase it but it was called ballistic profile. To reach space it would need a vertical velocity of 1000 m/s, certainly higher than what is shown in the video. Unless I am missing something it didn't reach space. --mfb (talk) 04:48, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

The blog source currently given in the article here suggests about 70 km. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Launch escape system

Was the rocket's launch escape system actually activated? NASA's press release[2] only says that "Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft." I added a citation needed tag for now. 2601:644:1:B7CB:A5CC:B7E2:2499:B26E (talk) 21:41, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

If the Soyuz LES is anything like those of the Mercury and Apollo spacecraft, it's jettisonned fairly early; in the case of Apollo, this was just after first-stage separation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:45, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I've yet to see any reports outside of Wikipedia that says anything about the LES. Based on my understanding, it would have been unnecessary at that stage of flight, and may have added more danger to the crew with 5 seconds of 14 Gs acceleration. Regardless, the LES tower is nominally discarded just after the strap-on boosters are discarded, so it is already past any point where flight controllers would see any usefulness. I'm going to remove the reference to the LES and use the term that I've been seeing on news pages most often, "emergency separation." 12.10.222.67 (talk) 22:32, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

According to the live feed [3] the escape tower was jettisonned along with the strap-ons, before any accident happened. The accident happened while the payload fairing was still attached, so separation of the capsule from the rocket, modules and fairing had to occur for emergency escape. -- 65.94.42.168 (talk) 10:59, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Spacecraft separation and escape details

Precise details of spacecraft separation and escape are hard to come by. During launch, the NASA commentator announced jettison of the escape tower before the anomaly occurred. I am not sure she was abreast of actual events because the escape system would be required to remove the spacecraft from the failed booster. Perhaps she was reading from a flight plan, and assumed it had happened when it had not. If the escape tower was jettisoned, how did the spacecraft separate from the booster? If anyone finds reliable coverage of these details, please post a link here, or add the details to the article. Here is a NASA recording of the launch, with American and Russian women describing the action in English, in their respective countries. (Ignore the pre-programmed flight graphics, as they did not portray events as they happened after first stage separation.) — O'Dea (talk) 22:09, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

She was definitely reading from a script, and they were showing canned telemetry. However, the launch escape system is not required to separate the Soyuz orbital modules from the rest of the rocket. If the rocket was not under thrust, which the transcript says the crew were experiencing weightlessness, then there are systems designed to allow any section to separate arbitrarily. The LES tower would have added a dangerous 14 Gs of acceleration, which is definitely preferable to being on top of an exploding rocket, but should be avoided in any other circumstances. Most likely (my speculation here), they separated the Service Module from the Third Stage, fired the SM's engines momentarily to get more clearance from the rocket, then detached both the SM and Orbital Module from the Descent Module. Air resistance and differences in density of the various modules would have furthered the separation from there. Then they'd just wait for the Descent Module's automated systems to deploy the chutes and perform the final 0.5 second, 3 G landing burn. 12.10.222.67 (talk) 22:50, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Interview with Johann-Dietrich Wörner in german Television: clearly stated that the LES was jettisoned before the abort. He suggested that after engine sutdown you only have to separate modules for an abort. Don't take the statement too serious but it is in line with what was said before --88.130.63.88 (talk) 11:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Image details

When I click on the image there is a text that says "Hague and Ovchinin will spend the next six months living and working aboard the International Space Station." I don't know how to edit this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.11.7.2 (talk) 09:03, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Which image? --mfb (talk) 10:17, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Ballistic Trajectory

Could someone write an explanation of what "ballistic trajectory" means in this case? There's a link to "ballistics", which doesn't really help. A lot of the news reports are also using this phrase without explaining it, and I don't think the reporters know what it means either.

Does Projectile motion help (which ballistic trajectory redirects to)? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:59, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

escape landing

How did the they land? Was it on earth or water? If on earth why did it not explode on contact? or did it have a landing system? Dstokar (talk) 15:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)david stokar