I recall a line something like this from an old movie:

"The two big guys throw the little guy out the airlock." ;)

Alan WA4SCA

-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alexander Sack Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 1:37 PM To: amsat-bb Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: ISS Re-supply Spacecraft Fails

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 2:16 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Here in London, we have free access to the Russia Today TV station.  The

launch failure is the major news item. They report it was due to a third stage failure. Even had an interview with an eye witness who said the area where it crashed was an area popular with people picking nuts in the summer.

The next lauch was due on October 28th and they are speculating this will

be brought forward.

The report is probably available on the web site www.rt.com

They  also said that a satellite launched on August 18th (The EDUSAT

launch?) suddenly veered off course. - Not sure if this was a single satellite or the whole launch vehicle

I guess the ISS Crew is going to have to brush up on their "rock, paper, scissors" skills to see who gets dessert until another supply rocket is shot up!

[I am only kidding, I read already they have enough supplies to last them till the next supply ship is launched]

With that said, I am very curious on what is NASA's contingency plan if our Russian friends for whatever reason can't or won't deliver fulfill their promise?

-aps (KC2ZSX)

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Trevor with all due respect...no

The Progress failure is a reminder that everything to do with space is hazardous. Launch success is never guaranteed.

73 Trevor M5AKA

The Progress failure is a reminder that anything that has to do with technology is hazardous and if you do not deal with it by appropriate methods or get sloppy then failure will occur. I know that its a big deal to say "space is hard" and that excuses all sorts of things including mediocrity or failure to follow established technical procedures and guidelines.

I've been reading (because I am interested in it) some of the "lessons learned" documents on the early Ranger probes...Ranger was the first three axis stable platform and was a very very sophisticated vehicle. The early probes (3-5) failed in no small measure because in that era they had no idea how a particular form of diode platting worked in the conditions of spaceflight. Today well we are technically more mature.

Space is no "harder" then operating submarines in ocean depths were one leak the size of a hair stand is fatal in a very short period of time. And we let 20 somethings run most of the systems there. Including the nuclear reactor.

Robert G. Oler WB5MZO Life member ARRL AMSAT and NARS