The Rocketsandsuch blog has an interesting post about what might be causing re-entry problems with Soyuz spacecraft returning from the International Space Station. The last two missions to return from orbit experienced rough, ballistic re-entries because the pyrotechnic charges designed to separate the crew return module from the rest of the ship failed to fire properly.
“The space station has grown in size considerably since those first early long duration flights that the Soyuz so flawlessly serviced. It is a bit larger now with all the new modules the Emperor has sent aloft for our friends. As such it makes quite a target for training gangly military officers on ground-based radars around the world. It has also become quite a source of electromagnetic energy itself, with all the radios and such from all the international partners blasting their messages back to the homelands,” the blogger writes.
“Did you hear the recent news about cell phones in your pocket causing your little reproductive agents to slow down or become ineffective? The same thing may be at work when the cacophony of EMI on the space station envelops the Soyuz separation pyros and causes them to become inert.”
If this report is true, then the space station program is in serious trouble. The current crew could be at risk if their Soyuz is similarly affected; the last crew to return were lucky to escape with their lives, according to some reports. Their Soyuz vehicle began to re-enter the atmosphere backwards until it broke away from the orbital module and righted itself.
This problem also raises questions about NASA’s plan to rely on the Soyuz as the primary transportation vehicle after the agency retires the space shuttle in 2010. NASA’s successor vehicle, Orion, might not be ready to fly crews to the ISS until 2015.
“Soyuz is unsafe and we are subjecting our astronauts to an unnecessary risk by putting them in vehicles that have been on orbit for more than a couple of weeks,” Rocketsandsuch concludes.
We’ll see. If EMI is a serious problem, it’s possible that engineers can devise shielding mechanisms to protect the pyrotechnics from damage. If they can’t, then the $100 billion plus investment in the orbiting outpost will be at serious risk.
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