Echoes of Columbia this morning - Soyuz TMA11 landing

God that was a bit scary this morning! No comms from the Soyuz after drogue deploy through the post landing phase (Landing +40min), plus no visual confirmation of the Soyuz DM at the landing site - you could hear the foreboding in the voice of the NASA PAO that something had gone horribly wrong.

Thankfully though, the crew have been found safe and sound - 475 km west of the planned landing site. Seems they underwent an unplanned ballistic re-entry, the second consecutive Soyuz landing anomaly.

Yikes, that doesn't sound good. Glad all were well but still, not looking too positive for Soyuz.

Bart.

Wow! I haven't seen or heard this on the news yet. Just read it now seeing your post Brian. cnn.com news article on the event.

Head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, blames the presence of more women than men on board Soyuz as root cause of the re-entry anomaly:

Later, Perminov was asked about the presence of two women on the Soyuz, and referred to a naval superstition that having women aboard a ship was bad luck.

"You know in Russia, there are certain bad omens about this sort of thing, but thank God that everything worked out successfully," he said. "Of course in the future, we will work somehow to ensure that the number of women will not surpass" the number of men.

Challenged by a reporter, Perminov responded: "This isn't discrimination. I'm just saying that when a majority (of the crew) is female, sometimes certain kinds of unsanctioned behaviour or something else occurs, that's what I'm talking about."

He did not elaborate.

:shock:

Bloody hell - imagine if Mike Griffin made those sort of comments, he'd be out the door first thing Monday morning. Guess you can see why Russian female cosmonauts have less than a snowball's chance in hell of flying a Soyuz mission.

The Russians don't mince their words. :lol:

Did we just go back in time a few centuries? I thought the space faring nations had moved on from such stupid superstitions

Bart.