On December 1, 2016 at 17:52 Moscow time, the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress MS-04 cargo vehicle was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
It was planned that on December 3, a cargo ship would dock at the Zvezda module of the International Space Station. The truck was supposed to deliver more than two tons of cargo into orbit, including the means to ensure the life of the crew members of the 50th long-term expedition to the ISS, equipment for maintaining the station in operating mode.
The cargo also included the first copy of the new-generation Orlan-ISS spacesuit for Russian cosmonauts and the Lada-2 greenhouse, designed for experiments in growing a number of grain and vegetables in zero gravity.
After the 382nd second of the flight, the reception of telemetric information stopped. The standard means of control did not record the functioning of the spacecraft in the calculated orbit. After 2 hours, Roskosmos was forced to admit the loss of the launch vehicle and the cargo ship.
The accident occurred over the territory of the Republic of Tuva at an altitude of 190 kilometers. Most of the ship burned up in the atmosphere, and several debris fell west of the city of Kyzyl.
The question arose about how much spacecraft were insured for? Did the insurance cover cover accident damage? As it turned out, it was not covered initially. The insurance coverage of the unsuccessful launch was 2.5 billion rubles, but the damage from the loss of the cargo ship will clearly exceed 4 billion rubles. That is, at least 1.5 billion budgetary billions go down the drain. Is it too wasteful against the backdrop of economic problems? This is the first thing. And, secondly, aren’t such feints with insurance that do not cover losses deliberate, and not accidental? does this "accident" have a specific name and surname?
The media put forward many versions of the reasons for the crash of the space cargo ship, but on January 11, 2017, Roscosmos Corporation issued an official report on the reasons for the accident of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle and the Progress MS-04 space truck. The members of the emergency commission believe that the reason was the opening of the tank "O" of the third stage of the launch vehicle as a result of exposure to elements that arose during the destruction of the engine, which, most likely, collapsed due to ignition and further destruction of the oxidizer pump. The combustion of the oxidizer pump could occur when foreign particles entered the pump cavity, or there was a violation of the engine assembly technology.
The RD-0110 engine was developed by the Voronezh Design Bureau "Khimavtomatika" (KBKhA), and is assembled at the Voronezh Mechanical Plant.
General Director of FSUE Voronezh Mechanical Plant Ivan Koptev wrote a statement of his own free will and resigned on January 20, 2017. The reason for the dismissal is called "unsatisfactory work and product quality."
The black streak in the history of Voronezh engines began on August 24, 2011 with the launch of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress M-12M cargo ship on board, which at the 325th second of the flight had a problem in the third stage fuel system, which and led to a malfunction of the engine, followed by its complete shutdown. Information immediately appeared that the cause of the accident could have been poor-quality welding during the production of the RD-0110 engine at KBKhA, but then the accident was recognized as an accident.
On December 23, 2011, the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle fell, which was supposed to launch the Meridian satellite into orbit, and then the reason for the fall was an engine failure.
On May 16, 2015, the Proton launch vehicle was unable to launch the Mexican satellite MexSat-1 into orbit. As a result of an emergency situation, the rocket and the apparatus itself burned down in the dense layers of the atmosphere. A month later, the head of Roscosmos, Igor Komarov, said that the cause of the incident was a structural defect in the engine.
After such a series of failures, the leadership of Roscosmos did not renew the contract with the Voronezh KBKhA, and Vladimir Rachuk, who had been managing the enterprise since 1993, was dismissed from the post of general director of the KBKhA.
The December accident jeopardized not only the reputation of Voronezh designers and production workers, but also several projects at once. The fact is that the RD-0110 engine is standard for several products of the Soyuz family at once, and the above-mentioned designers can be counted on one hand …
On January 13, 2017, it became known about the replacement of the Voronezh engine in the new Soyuz-U rocket assembled in Samara, which is to be put into orbit the next Progress to replace the lost one.
If we talk about statistics, for the period from 2006 to 2016, in the Russian Federation, every 17th launch of a Russian rocket with one or another spacecraft on board ends in an accident. If we look for the pluses, then Russia has carried out more launches in recent years. But the disadvantage is that the percentage of launches and losses is not in our favor - against the background of the indicators of the entire so-called "big space troika". It would seem that if we look at the statistics of the last decade of space programs of the USSR, then we can see a much more blissful picture there. However, the "goodness" is a little more - successful starts, according to some data, only 2 percent, according to others, 5 percent higher. These are estimates, by the way, of domestic experts - so there is no, as they say, conspiracy theories.
We often talk a lot about the causes of disruptions and accidents in the space industry. And it seems that a whole tangle of reasons is emerging, among which there is a corruption component, and the lack of a proper number of qualified personnel - professional (including workers) composition of production enterprises, obvious problems with the presence of a "young shift", which in turn rests on problems the adequacy of the educational services provided to the real state interests. In general, the tangle is large, plus its threads are pretty tangled. Unwind or just chop like that Gordian knot?..
