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He may act like a president but Putin is currently the prime minister.
Also, the Blok DM 4th stage was a new variant with a larger propellant
vessel. There is speculation about an incorrect amount of fuel being
loaded for the mission.
-- Richard Langley

Sent from my iPod Touch


On 2010-12-07, at 11:16 PM, "Frank Reed"
 wrote:

> Oddly enough, it seems that most rocket mishaps are easier to figure
> out than major aircraft accidents since the latter are so
> exceedingly rare on a percentage basis. With rockets, the cause
> tends to be something big and obvious even if people close to the
> program can't bring themselves to believe it's that obvious for
> months. But it still takes some careful analysis, since rockets tend
> to be very far away when they explode, and over water, and they tend
> to leave little recognizable debris. With this Proton rocket launch,
> sure, it could be a software problem. Or it could be a hardware
> problem. And I'm gonna stick my neck out and say it was either a
> software problem OR a hardware problem. While it's possible that it
> was such a glaring software error that it became obvious the instant
> they reviewed their notes, it could be that this is no more than a
> speculative guess from an engineer who happened to be quoted by some
> journalist. There are no names attached to this theory, and it
> sounds like rumor right now.
>
> The Proton rockets have been around since the late 1960s. It was a
> Proton that sent the first living animals, two turtles and some
> other small organisms, out around the Moon and back to the Earth in
> September, 1968. The spacecraft's re-entry failed, and it came down
> with bone-crushing 20g deceleration in the atmosphere. The turtles
> reportedly were not injured, but the intended human crew would
> probably not have survived. Three months later Jim Lovell was trying
> out the Apollo sextant on a much more ambitious manned lunar orbit
> flight. The tremendous success of that flight and the international
> media coverage of it essentially finished off the Soviet manned
> lunar program. The Proton is a fine old design, upgraded
> significantly in the past fifteen years, but it is still a rather
> "unlucky" beast.
>
> As for the Glonass sat nav system, this is an embarrassing setback
> but I would imagine only a delay of a few months in full global
> deployment. I noticed one article that quotes Russian President
> Vladimir Putin saying that he will decree that all new cars sold in
> Russia must have Glonass navigation systems starting in
> 2012. ...It's good to be the king.
>
> -FER
>
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