Ex-Soviet space gunboats to be FOUND ON MOON

Re: @Greg J Preece: Reliability: Soviet-era space vehicles?

">>Errrr, the Soviets hid their failures.

"Yes, they DID, but we know about them now, and the ratio of casualties is about 3:1 (one Russian died for every three Americans), which considering that USSR/Russia actually had more manned launches, did more things first and spent longer in space is actually a pretty good record."

Total casualties is not a good metric. Using this metric, seven Soviet flights each manned by one cosmonaut who was killed during reentry or landing for a total of seven fatalities, would be equivalent to seven Space Shuttle launches having six uneventful flights plus one fatal incident with seven dead. And that is not a good way of looking at it. One would want the rate of launches with fatalities (irrespective of the number of fatalities in any given launch), although there are other ways of looking at the matter, depending on what one was interested in. Then of course the matter could be examined as fatal incidents per launch for specific classes of vehicles, too. Or changes in the incident rate per class of vehicle over time - well there are many conceivable ways of working with the numbers to develop a metric. But at any rate, simply comparing total fatalities is not an overly meaningful metric.

Also, it is important to know what accidents you are including. Obviously the Challenger and Columbia Disasters would be included in your number, but what about Bondarenko? That did not occur during actual space flight. The same would be true of the Apollo 1 fire. Or the Nedelin Catastrophe, with at least 125 people dead?

For actual space flight, I see either

1) 14 dead on two space shuttles and 4 dead on two Soviet craft, OR

2) two American incidents with fatalities as opposed to 2 Soviet incidents with fatalities - and the American fatalities were in a class of vehicles for which the Soviets never had an operational equivalent.

">>the Apollo 1 fire had an exact counterpart in a Soviet space program accident<<

"Errrrrmm... exact? one was a hyperbaric chamber/living quarters (Rus) and one was on the launchpad of an actual spacecraft (USA), one was attributed to poor organisation when the incident occurred (Rus) and the other was attributed to a large number of design and construction flaws (USA), one was in a variety of pressure and O2 mix levels (Rus), not less than 50% during the incident, the other was a high pressure pure oxygen environment (USA)."

Well, if you want to quibble with the word "exact" you can do so, but in both incidents a necessary condition for the fatalities was a mixture unnecessarily rich in oxygen, the result of which in both cases that the amount of oxygen was lowered to less potentially catastrophic levels. *I* consider the incidents to be be exact counterparts for that reason. If you want to use a different adjective to replace "exact", you may do so.

">>the Soviet accident would have served as a lesson to the NASA and a less oxygen-rich mixture would have been used<<

"Is this a back-handed way of both criticising the Soviets for their accident and blaming them for Apollo 1? Seriously? do you think that the Apollo1 scientists, after the accident suddenly went "I've just realised, things burn really well in 100% O2 atmospheres, well that was a bit of a surprise."

Yes, I am criticizing the Soviets for the Bondarenko accident because engineers are supposed to foresee these kinds of possibilities, and these engineers were good ones. And that's what engineers do.

However, I also criticize the American engineers for the Apollo 1 fire, because they too were engineers, and very good ones too, and they too are supposed to foresee potentially lethal situations. It's their job to foresee and provide against accidents. Because that is what engineers do, irrespective of being Soviet, or American.

Why you seem to need to ridicule the American engineers for not realizing that "things burn really well in an 100% oxygen atmosphere" but not the Soviet engineers for not realizing that "things burn really well in an [50%] oxygen atmosphere" is not clear. *I* don't consider the difference to be terribly meaningful, although you, for whatever reasons, do.

And yes, I *do* give the Soviets partial responsibility for the Apollo 1 fire. Both the Soviets and Americans engineers made what seems, after the fact, to be a fairly elementary error. And after each accident, each respective group of engineers - after official investigations, no doubt - changed their practices. That's what engineers also do, right? Do you think that it is in somewhat far-fetched to think that, if the American engineers had known that accident that lead to Bondarenko's death was predicated on a too oxygen rich mixture, that the American would not have taken a lesson from it? That, having learned that Bondarenko died in a fire in a 50% oxygen atmosphere, that maybe, just maybe, a 100% oxygen atmosphere was even *more* dangerous?

That researchers, engineers, doctors, etc etc are capable of learning from the experience of others is the very reason why there are professional conventions and conferences, scholarly journals, investigative committees, and so forth: people can learn from other people's experience.

If you don't think that the American engineers would have learned something from the Bondarenko accident, had they known about it, I would like to know why.