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by huhtenberg 2807 days ago
This needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Bashing Russian space program is one of the Ars' favorite pastimes.

Just look at their front page now -

        A Soyuz crew makes an emergency landing after rocket fails.
    *** It is not clear how long the Soyuz vehicle will be grounded. ***
It's been less than an hour since the incident, but let's focus on Soyuzes being grounded rather than on if the crew is OK.
2 comments
rory096 2807 days ago
Suppose you'll have to say the same about the Russian space official who said as much to the AP.

>11:02Z: BREAKING: Senior official says Russia suspending manned space launches pending investigation into rocket failure.

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1050341565388996609?s=...

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zaarn 2806 days ago
I don't think that's particularly much news. I would expect any space agency to ground every single part of a rocket until they are 100% ruled out as source of a failure.
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eps 2806 days ago
It would've been the same if it were Roscosmos' only comment on the accident.
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vatueil 2806 days ago
> A Soyuz crew makes an emergency landing after rocket fails.

> It is not clear how long the Soyuz vehicle will be grounded.

How is that "bashing"? The article reports the crew escaped without harm, a fact that was quickly established: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/a-soyuz-crew-makes-a...

That Soyuz rockets have been grounded pending investigation is also a fact, and a natural course of action for any responsible space agency. Other rockets have also been grounded after accidents. The implications for the ISS crew if future Soyuz flights do not resume on schedule are a question that many are asking, so it's hardly unusual to address it.

Given that everyone knew the astronauts were safe and nobody died, the idea that people shouldn't discuss the causes and consequences of an incident when it's still fresh in people's minds makes even less sense than usual.

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huhtenberg 2806 days ago
The article went up in less than an hour after the accident. At that time it was only known that the crew landed and not much else. They updated the story later on with details on the crew condition, but the title you see is the original one.
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vatueil 2802 days ago
The article was published 1 hour 46 minutes after the failed launch, not "less than an hour", and as reported the crew's survival was confirmed 20 minutes after the incident:

> After about 20 minutes of uncertainty, Russian officials confirmed the crew were OK, and had landed about 20km east of Dzhezkazgan, a city in central Kazakhstan. As rescue crews arrived, Hague and Ovchinin were reported in "good condition" and found out of the capsule.

This information was included in the first draft of the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20181011104529/https://arstechni...

The launch took place at 8:40 UTC. The article's timestamp indicates it was published at 10:26 UTC (3:26 AM PDT). That lines up with the cached copy above from 10:45 UTC, and a snapshot of Ars Technica's homepage at 10:05 UTC in which the Soyuz story had not yet appeared (with the next snapshot at 11:02 UTC showing the article, as expected): https://web.archive.org/web/20181011100529/https://arstechni...

The fact that the headline says the crew made an "emergency landing" and not a "crash" should have been a tip-off.

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