back to article US-Russia Soyuz 'nauts STUCK IN SPACE after ISS dock fail

The three cosmonauts on board the Soyuz spacecraft are stuck in the space slow lane after a delay to their planned six-hour trip to the International Space Station. They will now arrive at the ISS almost two days later than expected after a critical 24-second engine thruster burn that would have kept the team on course failed …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No surprise

    The U.S. were idiots to trust the Russians on anything, especially space exploration.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: No surprise

      American space ship, Russian space ship... is all same... is all made in China.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: No surprise

        Have a thumbs up for a nice turn of a paraphrase. <--- yeah... intentional.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No surprise

      The reason this is news is that the Soyuz is generally so reliable.

      Still, i seem to have missed the bit which said everyone died a horrible fiery death, which i assume from your comment actually happened. You would think from the article that they had a minor failure with the maneuvering computer...

      Oh wait a sec, that's actually all that happened!

    3. Old Handle
      Mushroom

      Re: No surprise

      Yes, good old American space craft never fail!

      1. Eddy Ito

        Re: No surprise

        Huh, what? We Americans have space craft? Well I suppose there is that Musk guy with his startup and that Virgin thing but neither has been making regular manned flights. Hardly a comparison.

        1. Jugernautilus

          Re: No surprise

          Musk is a rebranded South African

          ;)

    4. cortland

      Re: No surprise

      Subtle reminder of dependency, eh?

  2. Ben Burch

    All systems have failures.

    What matters is whether there is a viable recovery from the failure. And there is.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Visa issues

    Putin is thinking of telling Steve Swanson, like some Russian, his visa has been revoked and he has 24 hours to leave.

  4. smudge
    Coat

    Delay to your journey today

    Roscosmos wishes to apologise for the delay to your journey today between Earth and the International Space Station.

    This has been caused by an unexpected power supply issue - due to the wrong type of vacuum outside - meaning that we were unable to transfer from the slow orbit to a faster trajectory.

    Your service is now running approximately two days late, and we hope that this does not cause you any inconvenience.

    We realise that you had no choice of carrier today, but we still thank you for travelling with us, and hope to see you on the return flight in approximately six months time. That's if Putin hasn't sparked off nuclear Armageddon by then.

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Delay to your journey today

      We will be operating a temporary shuttle-bus service between stations...

  5. Matthew 17

    They need a fire extinguisher to fly them there

    I saw it in that documentary 'Gravity', maybe they've just not seen it yet

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: They need a fire extinguisher to fly them there

      I think that was Wall-E...

  6. thomas newton

    I wonder if the russian contingent are regretting their traditional 'no space nappies' approach to launches?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/books/22masl.html?_r=0

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Coat

      It won't be a problem until a containment failure affects the air recirculation system. That's when the shit will hit the fan.

      1. Tom 13

        @Martin Budden

        "Issac, take a look at this. ... I think it looks like it's supposed to hit the fan."

        -Robert

  7. Elmer Phud

    Otis Moment

    "Sittin' at the bay of the dock . . ."

  8. David Pollard

    Just in case it wasn't already clear ...

    This might help to illustrate how inconvenient it can be when the gas is turned off.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: Just in case it wasn't already clear ...

      Shit. Ivan... Did I turn the gas off before ve left Moscow?

  9. saif

    Crimea river...

    Wonder if the Russian thought of counter-sanctions against the ISS. Without Soyuz that $150 billion dollar space station is toast

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Coat

    "They have supplies to keep them in orbit for many, many days,"

    Yeah but,

    1) aren't those supplies for the ISS ?

    2) do they have enough toilet space ?

    3) btw, does anyone include human dejections in the list of things whizzing around our planet and posing a grave risk to satellites et al ? I'd hate to read that a comms sat got hit by a curry turd and didn't survive.

    Okay, okay, I'm going already.

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Re: "They have supplies to keep them in orbit for many, many days,"

      Th Soyuz carries crew. IISS supplies are taken up in separate, dedicated craft.

    2. Anonymous John

      Re: "They have supplies to keep them in orbit for many, many days,"

      Most manned Soyuz flights to the ISS have taken a couple of days. This would only have been the fifth fast track docking..

    3. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: "They have supplies to keep them in orbit for many, many days,"

      They'll carry about a week's worth of provisions with them in case of emergency, specifically if something goes wrong at any point in the trip.

      As for waste, it is either recycled back into fresh water or stowed in sealed bags and placed in the same compartments the food was carried up in. What better ballast material than something that has the same weight and consistency of what was there before; a balanced spacecraft is a happy spacecraft.

  11. Mark 85

    Huh?

    The crew are inside a capsule on top of the Soyuz rocket, which blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

    I think I found the problem... I thought Soyuz was the capsule, not the launch stack.

    1. David Given

      Re: Huh?

      Both. The capsule/on-orbit section is the Soyuz-TMA. The launch vehicle is a Soyuz-FG. Yes, confusing name overloading FTW.

      The unmanned Progress supply drones usually launch on top of a Soyuz-U launch vehicle, just to make life even more interesting (although I see that they've launched at least some on a Soyuz-FG).

      If you care, there's tonnes of borderline-obsessive information on Wikipedia.

  12. Herby
    Joke

    Where is Howard Wolowitz....

    Working on the space toilet when you need him? Maybe his mother was yelling at him?

  13. Dr Scrum Master
    Mushroom

    Conversation

    It looks like they'll have plenty of time to discuss events in Crimea...

    1. kwg06516

      Fawlty Spaceships

      Don't mention the War!

  14. attoman

    Let them vote!

    When docked at the ISS there will be a majority of Russians who will vote to make the ISS the RSS and boot the non-ruskies out.

    Putin will write a thank you note to the ISS contributors and begin using it to threaten key satellites and black mail the west.

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