Russia blames scientists for rocket crashes
A Russian Progress-M-12M cargo ship carrying supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) blasts off from the launch pad at the Baikonour cosmodrome in August 2011. Russia's chief prosecutor on Tuesday blamed a recent spate of disasters threatening the future of the International Space Station (ISS) on negligence by the country's underpaid rocket scientists.
Russia's chief prosecutor on Tuesday blamed a recent spate of disasters threatening the future of the International Space Station (ISS) on negligence by the country's underpaid rocket scientists.
A probe into the August 24 crash of the unmanned Progress cargo ship and an August 18 error that put Russia's biggest satellite in the wrong orbit blamed both mishaps on the state-run Roskosmos space agency and its workers.
The decision said the Prosecutor General's office would be pressing for disciplinary measures and fines against "those who caused the accidents" and singled out the agency's executive for separate blame.
The prosecutor's statement pointed to "a lack of proper control on the part of Roskosmos officials over the adoption of corresponding decisions."
The once-vaunted Russian space agency was already rocked by a reshuffle in April when its chief Anatoly Perminov got the sack during celebrations for the 50th anniversary year of Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight.
Roskosmos has acknowledged the criticism but complains of being underfunded and unable to compete for top talent with Western firms that draw the young away from its Soviet-era institutions with spartan conditions.
Perminov's dismissal followed Russia's loss of three navigation satellites that the prime minister and likely future president Vladimir Putin has promoted as a rival to the US-made Global Positioning System (GPS).
Roskosmos has since been forced to temporarily ground its main rockets -- the longer-range Soyuz and the lucrative Proton-M -- and left question marks hanging over Russia's ability to safely deliver humans to space.
The US space agency NASA had been mulling the option of leaving the space station abandoned for the first time in 10 years should Roskosmos fail to solve problems with its Soyuz carrier rocket by mid-November.
The abandoned US space shuttle programme and and the failure of both private and Western state firms to step in thus far has left Russia as the only nation capable of ferrying ISS replacement crews.
Roskosmos on October 3 successfully test-launched a Soyuz model and has since scheduled the next crew to the ISS for November 14.
(c) 2011 AFP
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Oct 18, 2011
Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
Until then this critical point will be exploited politically, in effect only further dramatizing just about everything.
Oct 18, 2011
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Oct 18, 2011
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Oct 18, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
old farts dont wanna hire young ppls.
Oct 18, 2011
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Oct 18, 2011
Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
Certainly America has come to an end. But the Russian space program is doing quite well. China too.
Have you been a Tard all your life LVTard? Or did you just wake up one morning and decide to be a fool?
Oct 19, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
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Oct 22, 2011
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Baseless and unfounded. Both agencies continue to grow. NASA, which I'm more familiar with, has averaged a small but continuous budget increase year over year as a percentage of the federal budget and is projected to continue to do so on a perpetual basis in the near term.
I'm basically a cheerleader for the continued privatization of human spaceflight efforts. But NASA should and likely will focus on its core competency of research and development.
Oct 23, 2011
Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
The problem is that the people in charge simply have NO ability, or desire, to actually select based on criteria of excellence. They go by completely irrelevant measures like number of publications or awards.
An award may have a pompous name but be meaningless because it's at a crappy venue. While people who compete in top journals/conferences don't have as many of those to show, because the bar is immensely higher.
If you had half the scientists at twice the salary, you'd get much better quality at the same cost. The problem is, management is clueless and doesn't know which half to drop.
Oct 24, 2011
Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
Oct 24, 2011
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So true. Sort of like mass insanity. That said, it wasn't really NASA per se. It was the Administration. And the one before it, and the one before that. Add in the fools in the Congress. I've not taken a poll, but I suspect the sentiment at NASA would run about 95% in favor of the agency having some sort of actual human launch/rescue capacity.
Oct 24, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)