It’s only supposed to blow the bloody Soyuz off - July 11, 2008
An explosive bolt was yesterday safely removed from the Soyuz capsule attached to the International Space Station.
Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko’s space walk to remove the bolt took over six hours, but it is now hoped that engineers will find out why Soyuz capsules keep coming down too fast and off target (NASA press release, video on Reuters).
The bolts are designed to fire before re-entry, separating the module that brings cosmonauts home from an at-that-point redundant storage module. It is suspected that misfiring bolts delayed the separation, causing the re-entry mishaps.
AP says that disabling bolts in a ‘suspect location’ should ensure there will be no repeat of the problem. So why were the bolts needed in the first place if everything works without them?
Astronaut Greg Chamitoff spent the six hours inside the Soyuz, so if anything went wrong he wouldn’t be cut off from the escape pod.
Image: NASA TV
Comments
"So why were the bolts needed in the first place if everything works without them?" - The question is flawed. Everything does not work without them. The bolts are supposed to fire before re-entry to separate the capsule from the storage module. This separation has been delayed in the last two re-entries leading to the so called "ballistic re-entries" and the explosive bolts being suspected as the culprits. Apparently the bolt is to be examined on Earth to try and fix the problem.
This is a case of slip-shod and faulty reporting by AP, which gives the impression that the bolts are redundant, which you have accepted without question.
Posted by: Richard | July 11, 2008 10:48 PM