He showed me a picture of what your ambulance is like if you need an emergency trip home and told me what the G forces are like, and to say that a rollercoaster ride is exhilarating would be really quite an understatement! Because you’ve got someone who’s unwell injured in some way and then and gets this 6 G, 7 G ride back home to Earth and then crash lands down with a bump. There have almost certainly been some broken limbs and damage done in the Soyuz coming back to Earth but almost everyone has walked away from the spacecraft.Ĭhris - I was in Perth in Western Australia, the week before last, with Steve Robinson who’s been an astronaut on a number of shuttle missions and done a number of spacewalks. Certainly people have become injured in the Soyuz. It’s been variously described as going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or going over Niagara Falls in a barrel on fire followed by a car crash, because it is pretty awful. Richard - It’s interesting with the Soyuz because I’ve interviewed a few astronauts about this. Kate - You mentioned the worst case scenario - people dying, but how about just getting injured? With the space shuttle Columbia, there was damage during launch to the spacecraft which meant it burnt up on the way down. There could be flaws in the spacecraft, something could go wrong like the parachute getting tangled, a faulty component or there could have been damage. It’s the same with previous American missions as well.īut you look at the return to Earth - well, there’s so much that could go wrong with the spacecraft. So if something goes wrong on the launchpad, the rocket blows up, the escape system will eject and it’s proved that works. So the first space shuttle that flew into space had ejector seats, but after that there was no provision to get the crew out if something went wrong, whereas the Soyuz has that. One of the big flaws of the space shuttle was it didn’t have an escape system. If you think about that, actually it makes a lot of sense because escape systems are normally built into spacecraft. So we’ve had 11 astronauts die re-entering the atmosphere. And then in 1971, three crew died on Soyuz 11. The Columbia disaster in 2003 where seven crew died on the way back to Earth. So you look at the first Soyuz capsule, the cosmonaut died because his parachute became tangled. If we look at landings, I think they’re more dangerous. So only seven people have died on launch but still, seven people too many. With the Soyuz, which is the Russian spacecraft, in 1983 two crew were ejected on the escape system. Richard - Actually, if you look at the statistics on this during launch only one crew has died - that was the Challenger disaster in 1986 where seven died. “In a space mission, which is actually more dangerous - taking off from Earth, or landing back on Earth safely?” Maezawa on Tuesday announced that he is inviting eight members of the public to join his dearMoon mission, which will be a six-day journey to the moon and back.Chris put this question to Space Boffin Richard Hollingham. Musk remains "highly confident" that Starship "will be safe enough for human transport by 2023" – an ambitious goal given the company began the rocket's development and testing in earnest in early 2019.īut Musk's timeline is key, as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has paid for a Starship flight around the moon by 2023. The company last month brought in $850 million in its latest capital fundraise at a $74 billion valuation. Musk has previously estimated that it will cost about $5 billion to fully develop Starship, although SpaceX has not disclosed how much it has spent on the program to date. Starship is one of two "Manhattan Projects" that SpaceX is simultaneously developing, with the other being its Starlink satellite internet program. Musk's company is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. "The Texas team has several more suborbital test vehicles in build, with number 11 ready to roll out to the pad in the very near future," Insprucker said. The Starship prototype stands at about 150 feet tall, or about the size of a 15-story building, and is powered by three Raptor rocket engines The rocket is built of stainless steel, representing the early versions of the rocket unveiled in 2019.
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