At least according to this article. I wonder what it would take to modify the Soyuz for a water landing? At least it would be warm water. I think that a trajectory to 52 degrees from there, unlike one from the Cape, would avoid the north Atlantic.
This is also an indicator that it’s not very important to launch crew from there, or they’d take the risk.
Some sort of flotation collar, obviously. The Soyuz capsule always had a nasty habit of tipping over after landing. You’d want to fix that, too, so the capsule doesn’t end up floating hatch down.
The biggest problem I see is who’s going to recover it? One reason the Soviets went with land touchdown was their lack of a large deep-water Navy like the USN. The Russian Navy today is quite a bit smaller than the Soviet Navy during the Cold War. The landing accuracy of Soyuz is frequently poor, so they would need a lot of ships.
Another question is money. Right now, they’re having trouble maintaining their existing launch programs. Launching from Kourou might (or might not) allow them to sell a few extra Soyuz seats, but would the number be enough to justify the investment? Especially with competition from SpaceX and perhaps Boeing and others?
Edward,
You forget that the lunar version of the Soyuz, the Zond was designed for ocean landings and Zond 8 did splash down unmanned in the India Ocean (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1970-088A) It was recovered intact by a Soviet ship with no problem. Given the common technical heritage I expect the modifications needed, if any, for a Soyuz to land on water would be minimum.
The idea that you need a navy to recovery a capsule which splashes down is one of the myths that folks like you seem to love to spread. The purpose of fleet, either on the U.S. or Soviet side, was to prevent the other side gaining intelligence on each other ‘s spacecraft by from recovering them first. Not only do you gain score propaganda points by “rescuing” the astronauts/cosmonauts, you also get to take a very good look at their technology.
BTW last I looked Elon didn’t own a navy and he recovered the Dragon just fine without it. But then the Cold War is over.
BTW last I looked Elon didn’t own a navy and he recovered the Dragon just fine without it.
Elon is working to evolve Falcon to a reusable design that would eliminate water landing.
He passed his statistics course and knows better than to infer 100% reliability from a single data point. He also knows that he failed to recover several Falcon stages.
I can think of someone else who can deliver manned capsules with water landing capability…
What are the challenges of landing in the North Atlantic? Just cold water and icebergs, right? Is that challenging enough to be a hard mission driver?
Last I checked 747’s weren’t water certified either yet they fly over oceans all the time. Life vests for the crew and maybe an EPIRB should be sufficient. No balls no blue chips…
David, the problem in the North Atlantic is the weather can be so horrendous recovery would be problematic. Super-high winds and super-high swell not to mention driving gale and nasty temps.
I think I would rather just die than bob like a cork in a storm in the North Atlantic waiting days for rescue. Not unless they could give me a helluva knock-out in case of seasickness hypo.
The plan for Apollo in case of an abort for a Skylab mission that took them over the north Atlantic IIRC was to burn the SM and either drop them short of it or carry them over to the coast of Ireland or Scotland.