A Long Sad History: Automatic Docking on Orbit Stephen Granade
Dec 13, 2015
Wikipedia’s Definition
In the Pokémon franchise, Bulbasaur are small, squat, vaguely reptilian Pokémon that move on all four legs, and have light blue-green bodies with darker blue-green spots. As a Bulbasaur undergoes evolution into Ivysaur and then later into Venusaur, the bulb on its back blossoms into a flower.
Soyuzes That Tried to Dock Thru 1977Soyuz 3/2 Oct 1968 Tried 3 times but failed.
Soyuz 6/7/8 Oct 1969 3 way failed b/c of electronics failure.
Soyuz 10 Apr 1971 Tried to dock w/Salyut 1. Hard dock failed.
Soyuz 11 June 1971 Successful dock w/Salyut 1. Crew died from depressurization during undock.
Soyuz 14 July 1974 Docked w/Salyut 3.
Soyuz 15 Aug 1974 Auto docking system failed.
Soyuz 17 Jan 1975 Docked w/Salyut 4.
Soyuz 18 May 1975 Docked w/Salyut 4.
Soyuz 19 July 1975 Docked w/US Apollo spacecraft.
Soyuz 20 Nov 1975 Unmanned; docked w/Salyut 4.
Soyuz 21 July 1976 Igla failed. Docking mechanism jammed on undock.
Soyuz 23 Oct 1976 Igla failed. Ran out of fuel before docking.
Soyuz 24 Feb 1977 Docked w/Salyut 5.
Soyuz 25 Oct 1977 Soft dock w/Salyut 6, but hard dock failed.
Soyuz 26 Dec 1977 Docked w/Salyut 6.
What Gives?
• You don’t get to prepare like you want– No zero-g room on Earth
• Our intuition doesn’t help– Orbital mechanics is screwy
• Doing stuff on orbit is hard– If you mess up badly enough, whoops!
death.
• Practice helps– Look at Soyuz and at Shuttle dockings
versus the satellites
Docking is hard!