[FPSPACE] Russian Air Force Pilots as Cosmonauts vs Energia engineers

[David Anderman]

Bert:

What I was wondering is if there were any available metrics to 
determine whether Energia engineers are any better or worse than Air 
Force officers in piloting Soyuz. For example, during the fly-around 
yesterday, the amount of propellant remaining in the Soyuz tanks was 
mentioned, and it occurred to me that prop usage may be one available 
metric - one would imagine that a trained pilot would be more 
efficient than an engineer with much more limited flight experience; 
but maybe not.

DWA


At 04:41 AM 3/30/2007, Bert Vis wrote:
>It's also the other way around. The Air Force people can also adequately
>fill the engineer seat, so what's the purpose to fly people from Energiya?
>Every crewmember gets instructions on the inner works of Soyuz and the
>station. Actually, I don't think that there's any real need for any specific
>background. Energiya engineers have proven that they can pilot the craft,
>pilots and military engineers have proven they can perform the duties of the
>(Energiya) flight engineer. Just have a look at
>
>Soyuz-14 Popovich-Artyukhin
>Soyuz-15 Sarafanov-Demin
>Soyuz 21 Volynov-Zholobov
>Soyuz-23 Zudov-Rozhdezstvenskiy
>Soyuz-24 Gorbatko-Glazkov
>Soyuz TM-19 Malenchenko-Musabayev
>
>As far as the last one goes: unlike the other missions, where an AF pilot
>was joined by an AF engineer, on TM-19 there were two AF pilots who, IMHO,
>managed quite nicely.
>
>For a number of years, the Russians even had a Soyuz planned to evacuate
>cosmonauts from Salyut or Mir in case of an emergency. That craft would have
>been flown by just a pilot. So again, the presence of a flight engineer was
>apparently not considered of vital importance.
>
>What I want to say with this is that I think there's no valid reason
>whatsoever to prefer pilots over engineers, or to prefer engineers over
>pilots. Missions can be performed without one or the other in the crew,
>without any problem. It all comes down to training the crewmembers before
>the flight. Flying pilots in the commander's seat is simply rooted in
>history, as is flying engineers. Before ISS, on two occasions did Energiya
>engineers command Soyuz missions, apparently because of a lack of
>experienced pilots: Soyuz-33 (Rukavishnikov) and Soyuz-36 (Kubasov). That
>also never resulted in changing the system.
>
>Bert
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "David Anderman" <davida at cwo.com>
>To: <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
>Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 2:06 AM
>Subject: [FPSPACE] Russian Air Force Pilots as Cosmonauts vs Energia
>engineers
>
>
> > There are two major detachments of cosmonauts in Russia, the Air
> > Force pilots, and the engineers from Energia. At one point, most
> > Soyuz crews had at least one of each, but with only one slot for half
> > the ISS missions, in some cases, Energia engineers serve as Soyuz
> > pilots, too. I am surprised that this issue has not come up before,
> > as one would imagine that if the Energia engineers can adequately
> > pilot a Soyuz AND also perform the engineer function on the space
> > station, what is the purpose of flying Air Force pilots, who
> > presumably do not know the innards of the space station as the engineers
> > do?
> >
> > So, the question is there some metric of skill that would indicate
> > that the Air Force pilots are "better" than the Energia engineers in
> > "driving" Soyuz (propellant consumption comes to mind) that would
> > support the continued flight of the military pilots, or is the system
> > so engrained that it really doesn't matter if the military pilots are
> > better (or worse) they will continue to fly no matter what?  For
> > example, can Soyuz be loaded with more cargo for missions flown by a
> > pilot than if flown by an engineer, as the propellant consumption
> > will be lower?
> >
> > DWA
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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