we are under attack

Fermi acted suspiciously to delay the discovery of nuclear fission:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.2817
    When Fermi published the results of his uranium experiments in 1934, his transuranic interpretation was almost universally accepted. However, almost immediately a German chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that he had not eliminated the possibility that the bombarded uranium was breaking up into two or more comparably sized nuclei.15 Fermi was aware of her suggestion, and though he never published a refutation, he certainly declined to act on it.

    Postwar reminiscences of Segrè and Amaldi confirm that there was some discussion of Noddack’s paper within Fermi’s group, but there is no clear recollection of why Fermi decided to ignore it.2 In a 1967 interview for the American Institute of Physics, Segrè suggests a personal motive: Although Noddack and her husband, Walter Noddack, enjoyed a solid reputation as the codiscoverers of rhenium, the couple’s incorrect claim to have discovered element 43, technetium, raised suspicion that they were prone to making premature claims in the hope of eventually establishing priority.

    Even more remarkable in Fermi’s indifference to the Noddack proposal was his apparent failure to consider the energetics of a possible uranium fission reaction. Those energetics had already been well established by the time Fermi began bombarding uranium.8 Had he considered them, he would have seen that a fissioning nucleus should release not only an enormous amount of energy but also some free neutrons. The prospect of a fission chain reaction sustained by neutrons would surely have motivated Fermi to pay a little more attention to the Noddack paper.


Fermi was also fingered as helping the Soviets get the atom bomb, setting up the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cold War:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/world/pavel-sudoplatov-89-dies-top-soviet-spy-who-accused-oppenheimer.html
    Published by Little, Brown & Company in 1994, ''Special Tasks'' caused a sensation because of the general's detailed assertions that the Soviet Union had obtained atomic secrets with the aid of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., and Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, three other physicists with central roles in the development of the atomic bomb.


Fermi helped convinced Truman to sign off on the much more destructive H-Bomb as well. The main objection to the H-Bomb was that it was pointless--any use would all but necessarily result in the end of the world. Oppenheimer, the most famous nuclear scientist, backed the "majority report", which laid out a case against the H-Bomb with logic and restrained language. For some reason Fermi decided to create a separate report, the "minority report," which was excessive in its moralizing language to the point of being nonsensical--sure to annoy Truman, who had called Oppenheimer's earlier opposition to employing the atomic bomb "hand-wringing" from a "cry-baby scientist." Truman ended up signing off on the H-Bomb.

https://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Vol%20IIb%20Oppenheimer.pdf
    The real reason, the weight, behind the report is, in my opinion, a failing of the existence of these weapons would be a disadvantageous thing. It says this over and over again. I may read, which I am sure has no security value, from the so-called Minority Report, Fermi and Rabi.

    "The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world that we think it wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon."

    In the report which got to be known as the Majority Report, which Conant wrote, DuBridge, Buckley and I signed, things are not quite so ethical and fundamental, but it says in the final paragraph:

    "In determining not to proceed to develop the Super bomb, we see a unique opportunity of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war and thus of eliminating the fear and arousing the hope of mankind." I think it is very clear that the objection was that we did not like the weapon, not that it couldn't be made.


If Fermi hadn't delayed the discovery of fission, World War II and the Cold War would have happened very differently, if at all. If the bomb had developed earlier, MAD would have dissuaded Germany from invading the rest of Europe. Without German expansion, the Soviets would not have been able to "liberate" half of Europe and become as powerful as they did, splitting the world between two warring nuclear superpowers. That fission and the bomb were discovered during the war is significant too--all the more likely that one country would have the bomb before the others, removing the threat of atomic retaliation and making World War II a nuclear war, which is essentially what happened with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The bombings were the centerpiece of Soviet propaganda painting Americans as lunatics who would launch a nuclear first strike at a moments notice. Unlike Americans, Soviets were taught the bombings were completely unnecessary; basically, they thought the Americans would nuke you for no reason.

All this came to play in the mind of Soviet ballistics officer Stanislav Petrov the night of September 26 1983, when a false alarm told him five nuclear missiles were headed for the Soviet Union. He distrusted the alarm not because an American first strike was implausible, but because he thought they would have started with more. If a different man were on duty and more missiles were on the screen, things might have gone very differently for the world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/stanislav-petrov-true-story-grumpy-russian-singlehandedly-stopped/
    A military man to the end, Petrov is perhaps the first visitor to actively admire the preserved missile – “beautiful, like a woman with a tight waist”. But he brands the museum’s tour guide a “brainless goat” when he suggests that only the Soviets would have launched a pre-emptive first strike.

    “Where did you get the idea that we wanted to attack? We too only had weapons for defence,” Petrov tells him. “Damn the politicians – we all want to live without fear that this world can be destroyed. Galina, translate that please.”


Fermi is also famous for the "Fermi Paradox," which is the question why, if interstellar travel is possible, haven't we been visited by intelligent life?

https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/la-10311-ms.pdf
    Fermi became engrossed in a calculation and suddenly asked "Well, if you are right, then where is everybody?" The modern implication is that if interstellar travel is feasible then the Solar System ought to have been visited and settled many times in the past, something we see no convincing evidence of.


One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life usually destroys itself before becoming capable of interstellar travel.


...


Leo Szliard also suspiciously delayed the discovery of Nuclear Fission:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.2817
Actually, preoccupied with the potentialities of the neutron, Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard had been searching, unsuccessfully, for just such a chain reaction. When he heard about the experiment of Hahn and Strassmann in 1939, he understood at once the implications, and he and Fermi went on to lead the development of the first nuclear reactor. Had Szilard heard of the Noddack paper in 1934, he would surely have pursued it. That he was unaware of the paper is hardly surprising, given the unfamiliarity of most physicists with the journal in which it was published.


Szilard is the guy who convinced Einstein to sign the letter asking the U.S. government to create the atomic bomb:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter
    ...On July 12, 1939, Szilárd and Wigner drove in Wigner's car to Cutchogue on New York's Long Island, where Einstein was staying.[9] When they explained about the possibility of atomic bombs, Einstein replied: Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht (I did not even think about that).[10] Szilárd dictated a letter in German to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Wigner wrote it down, and Einstein signed it. At Wigner's suggestion, they also prepared a letter for the State Department explaining what they were doing and why, giving it two weeks to respond if it had any objections.[9]


Szilard did a lot of sketchy things, like write letters that sort-of “blackmailed” the U.S. government: https://www.space.com/25692-manhattan-project-einstein-szilard-blackmail.html

He was also accused of being a spy for the Soviets:

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/world/pavel-sudoplatov-89-dies-top-soviet-spy-who-accused-oppenheimer.html
    Lieut. Gen. Pavel A. Sudoplatov, a legendary Soviet spymaster who plotted and carried out assassinations with cold-blooded efficiency and claimed to have engineered the theft of atomic secrets from the United States with the aid of four eminent scientists, died Tuesday at his home in Moscow. He was 89.

    ...Published by Little, Brown & Company in 1994, ''Special Tasks'' caused a sensation because of the general's detailed assertions that the Soviet Union had obtained atomic secrets with the aid of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., and Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, three other physicists with central roles in the development of the atomic bomb.


According to this weird Scientific American journalist named Ashutosh Jogalekar, Szliard also got the idea for nuclear fission from a “genie”:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/why-the-world-needs-more-leo-szilards/
    Why the world needs more Leo Szilards

    By Ashutosh Jogalekar

    ...The project may have been the product of this sprawling hive mind, but one man saw both the essence and the implications of the bomb, in both science and politics, long before anyone else. Stepping off the curb at a traffic light across from the British Museum in London in 1933, Leo Szilard saw the true nature and the consequences of the chain reaction six years before reality breathed heft and energy into its abstract soul.

    ...After playing a key role in the founding of the Salk Institute in California, Szilard died peacefully in his sleep in 1964, hoping that the genie whose face he had seen at the traffic light in 1933 would treat human beings with kindness.


…


John Dee, the man who came up with the idea of the British empire, also had his own run-in with "genies", which he called "spirits":

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Archive/Dee.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
    John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English/Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and occult philosopher,[5] and an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He spent much time studying alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. He also advocated turning England's imperial expansion into a "British Empire", a term he is generally credited with coining.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/John_Dee
    In this role, he provided both technical assistance in navigation and ideological backing in the creation of a "British Empire" (a term that he coined).[14] Pursuant to this experience, in 1577 Dee published General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, a visionary work that set out his vision of a British maritime empire and asserted England's territorial claims on the New World.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/the-man-who-spoke-to-angels/
    Born to a merchant family in London and educated at Cambridge, he rose to eminence during the rule of Elizabeth I, when he became one of the few commoners to be honoured with personal visits from the queen. He was also intimate with the major figures of her court, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and the spymasters Walsingham and Cecil.

    ...Although Elizabeth was fascinated by his astrological methods, he also corresponded with her intelligencers on cryptography, advised her explorers on navigation and travelled throughout Europe to meet the greatest scholars of his era.


https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/tech-journals/john-dee.pdf
I suppose you're wondering what Dee was in fact doing, as a government consultant all this time. But you must remember we're talking about the government service. Whatever he did that was significant has no doubt gone into the classified files of Elizabeth's ministers, and from there to complete oblivion.


https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/john-dee-thought-he-could-talk-to-angels-using-medieval-computer-technology/
    John Dee thought he could talk to angels using medieval computer technology

But as this new exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians shows, he was much more than just a loony witch

    ...He explained his intentions in a little speech to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II on a visit to Prague in 1584, saying that he had spent 40 years in study ‘to come by the best knowledge that man might attain unto in the world’, but had found that no book could teach him the truths he longed for, and so he had prayed to God, whose ‘holy Angels for these two years and a half, have used to inform me’.

    ...These angelic conversations went on for more than two decades, at first when Dee was trying to interest the Emperor and the King of Poland in the transmutation of base metals into gold. It might be expected that Kelley was a con man taking advantage of Dee. But it was Kelly who was frightened to go on. The fear was that the messages came not from benign angels but from wicked spirits intent on the damnation of these arrogant magi. What really rattled Kelley was an instruction that he and Dee should have their wives in common. Dee accommodated even this, while expostulating indignantly in his diary when Kelley was refused absolution from a Catholic priest who insisted that the spirits were evil.


…


In the mid 16th century, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro lead a small band of mercenaries to what is now known as Peru. Pizarror’s arrival preceded the end of the Incan empire and the mass death of its citizens:

http://users.pop.umn.edu/~rmccaa/aha2004/whypox.htm
    Why Blame Smallpox?
    The Death of the Inca Huayna Capac and the Demographic Destruction of Tawantinsuyu (Ancient Peru)

    Robert McCaa, Aleta Nimlos, and Teodoro Hampe Martínez

    ...Smallpox is widely blamed for the death of the Inca Huayna Capac and blamed as well for the enormous demographic catastrophe which enveloped Ancient Peru (Tawantinsuyu).  The historical canon now teaches that smallpox ravaged this virgin soil population before 1530, that is, before Francisco Pizarro and his band of adventurers established a base on the South American continent.[2]  Nevertheless the documentary evidence for the existence of a smallpox epidemic in this region before 1558 is both thin and contradictory.  In contrast to Mexico, where there is a broad range of sources documenting the first outbreak and the death of the Aztec ruler Cuitlahuatzin from smallpox in 1520, for Peru, the evidence rests almost entirely on rather brief references in chronicles, few of which state unequivocally that Huayna Capac died of the disease.

    ...From our re-examination of early chronicles (see table 1), linguistic evidence in three early dictionaries (table 3), physical descriptions of pock marked native peoples (or the lack thereof before 1558), we conclude that, as in the Caribbean also in the Andean region, the preponderance of the evidence points to a late introduction of smallpox—a quarter center after initial contact (in 1518 and 1558, respectively), after an enormous demographic devastation had already occurred.


https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054032365;view=1up;seq=9
    The conquest of Peru as recorded by a member of the Pizarro expedition.

    Sinclair, Joseph H


    ...The New York Public Library possesses in the anonymous "La Conquista del Peru" an exceedingly rare and valuable printed book -- one of the two known copies.

    ..."La Conquista del Peru" was printed in Seville in the month of April, 1534, by the printer Bartolome Perez, and the author is unknown. He states that he embarked with Francisco Pizarro in Panama, February, 1531, and accompanied him during the stirring events which termined in the execution of the last Incao ruler, Atahuallpa, and was one of the twenty-five permitted to return to Spain shortly after that event.

    ...Hernando Pizarro and Hermando de Soto asked permission of the Governor to let them go with five or six horsemen and with an interpreter to speak with the Cacique Atabalip and to see how he had arranged his camp. The Governor allowed them to go but much against his will. They went to the camp which was a league distant. The entire plain where the Cacique was camped was closed from one side to the other by squadrons of pikemen and halberdiers and bowmen, and there was another squadron of Indians with arrows and slings, and others with clubs and sticks shod with metal. The Christians passed in the midst of those who stood as statues. And they arrived in the presence of the Cacique and they found that he was seated at the door of his house with many women around him for no man dared to be near. And Hernando de Soto rode to him horseback and he [the Cacique] was like a statue and he rode so near that the royal headdress which the Cacique wore on his forehead touched the horse's nose. And even then the Cacique did not move. Then Captain Hernando do Soto took from his finger a ring and gave it to him as a token of peace and love from the Christians. He acceted this with little sign of appreciation. Then Hernando Pizarro who had remained in the background to place three or four horsemen at a gate where there was a bad passage arrived and brought at the haunches of him [the cacique] and all his army came close to the Cacique and told him to raise his head which he kept bowed low and to speak to him for he was his friend and he had come to see him and begged him to come tommorrow to see the Governor who was very anxious to see him. The Cacique replied with his head [still] bowed that he would go to see him to-morrow.

    ...Hernando de Soto ran his horse many times full speed toward a squadron of pikemen and these stepped back a step. After the Chrsitians had departed, these [pikemen] paid dearly for the movement, for the Cacique ordered them and all their wives and children to be beheaded, saying that they should move forward and not back and that the same punishment would be handed out to all who retreated. The Captains returned to the Governor and they told him all that had taken place with the Cacique and that it seemed to them that there were 40,000 fighting men and they told this to encourage their forces for in reality there were more than 80,000 and they related what the Cacique had told them.

    ...The next morning there was nothing but the coming and going of messengers to the camp of Atabalipa. And one time it was said he was to come armed, another time they said he was to come unarmed. The Governor sent word that he should come as he wished, that his men looked well with their arms.

    At noon Atabalipa began to leave his camp accompanied by so many people that the whole plain was filled with them and all those Indians wore a kind of crown of gold and silver on their heads. It seemed that all were coming in their gala clothes. At the moment of Vespers they began their entry into the village and there the Cacique waited a little while for his people so that all should come together. When all had arrived and his commands were obeyed, he moved at the head and he arrived [seated] on his palanquin in the center of the square although with considerable misgivings. The governor then sent a man to him asking him to come to where he was, assuring him that he would suffer no harm of any kind nor insult, that he should come without fear although the Cacique did not seem afraid.

    The Cacique had in front of him dressed in livery 400 Indians removing from his path all the stones and sticks which they found in the road along which they were carrying the Cacique in his palanquin and these 400 men carried secretly under their livery clubs with a thick knob at the end, and even doublets [jubones] of strong arms and slings with selected stones to be used in these. The Governor had his men stationed in three large houses each one of which had more than 200 windows and 20 doors. In one of these houses was stationed Hernando Pizarro with 14 or 15 horsement; in another Captain Hernando do Soto with another 15 or 16 horsemen and in another house Benalcazar with as many more or less. In another house was the Governor with two or three horsemen and 20 or 25 footsoldiers. All the other men were on guard at the doors so that no one could enter a very strong fort in the middle of the square in which was stationed Pedro de Candia, captain of His Majesty, with 8 or 9 musketeers and 4 small cannon because he was guarding the fort at the command of the GOvernor. The Governor commanded that if as many as ten Indians should ascend to it to permit them but no more.

    When the Cacique arrived in that place he asked where the Christians were for all were concealed and not a man was in sight. At this moment 7 or 8 Indians ascended to the fort. And a captain with a very long spear on which was a flag made a sign to bring the arms because the pikeman who was coming behind was carrying the spears of those who were ahead. In this way they seemed to be without arms and yet had them. And a priest of the order of Santo Domingo with a crucifix in his hands desiring to speak to him of the things of God went to speak to him and told him that the Christians were his friends and that the Governor loved him very much and that he should enter his house to see him. The Cacique replied that he would advance no further until the Christians had returned all they had taken in his country and after that he would do waht he wished. The priest, not paying any attention to this remark, with a book which he held in his hands began to say the things of God which seemed fitting to him; but he did not care to listen and asking for the book the priest gave it to him thinking he would like to kiss it. And he took it and threw it over his retinue and the boy who acted as interpreter and was there translating these remarks ran after it and took it and gave it to the priest; and the priest turned then, calling and crying out "Come out, come out, Christians, and attend to these unfriendly dogs who do not care for the things of God. That Cacique has thrown on the ground the book of our sacred law." And in this moment a signal was given to the artillerymen to fire into the midst of them and they let go two salvos all they could do and the Indians who had climbed to the fort did not descend in the way they had ascended but rather jumped down. The cavalrymen who were in the three houses seeing this came out as if at a given signal and so also the Governor with the infantrymen who were with him and he went straight to the palanquin on which the Cacique was seated. And many of the infantry men who were with him withdrew a little from him, seeing that the Indians against him were very numerous. And in order to avenge himself more on them with the few men at his disposal, the Governor came to the palanquin although they did not let him reach it [without opposition] and many Indians had their hands cut off and with their shoulders were supporting the palanquin of their master. His body guard did not profit him because soon all were dead and their master a prisoner of the Governor.

    With the few infantrymen that he had and with the cavalry, he sallied out into the plain and many of them fell upon the Indians who were in flight and who were so numerous that in their flight they knocked down a wall 6 feet wide and more than 15 feet long and of the height of a man. Here many horsemen fell and in a space of two hours (during which night had fallen) all of the mass of Indians were routed. And in truth it was not by means of our forces for we were few in number but by the grace of God which is great.

    That day the dead in the plain amounted to six or seven thousand Indians not counting the many others who had their arms cut off and other wounds and that night the cavalry and infantry marched through the village because we saw five or six thousand Indians on a mountain which rose above the village and we kept on guard against them. In order that the Christians should collect in the camp, the Governor ordered the artillery to give a salvo and soon there collected the cavalry which was moving about on the plain thinking the Indians were attacking the camp and the infantry likewise, more than four or five hours of the night having passed by.

    The Governor was very pleased over the victory which God our Lord had given us and he asked the Cacique why he was sad and told him not to be sorrowful because we Christians had not been born in his country but far from it and that in all the lands through which we had come there were very great men and all these had been made friends and subjects of the Emperor for war and peace and that he should not be frightened at having been taken prisoner by us. He answered half-smiling that he was not sad about that, but because he had expected to make the Governor a prisoner and that the reverse had come true and for this reason he was sad. But as a favor of the Governor asked that if there was nearby one of his Indians to order him to come as he would like to speak to him. The Governor soon ordered two Indians to be brought, the leading ones of those captured in the battle. The Cacique asked them if there were many dead. They replied that the plain was covered with the dead. Then he sent word to his people not to flee but to come and serve him because he was not dead but was in the power of the Christians and it seemed to him that the Christians were good people and therefore he commanded that they should come to serve them. The Governor asked the interpreter what he had said. The interpreter told him all he had said. The Governor said he had more to say to them, and making a Cross he gave it to the Cacique saying that all his people both those here and far distant should take each one in his hands a cross like that and that the Christian cavalry and infantry to-morrow would march out into the plain and would kill all they found without the sign of the cross. And the next morning all marched out into the plain in great good order and found many squadrons of Indians. The nearest of these in very great fear carried crosses in their hands.


…



https://spacepolicyonline.com/pages/images/stories/List%20of%20Russian%20Space%20Launch%20Failures%20Since%20Dec%202010%20as%20of%20May%2016%202015.pdf
    Russia’s once reliable fleet of space launch vehicles began a string of failures beginning in December 2010 that has created significant consternation in Russia’s space program and brought about firings and reorganizations, but the failures continue.


https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/russia-suffers-another-soyuz-rocket-failure/
    Russia’s military Molniya satellites are being replaced by a new version, Meridian, and that was the payload today.   According to RussianSpaceWeb.com, the third stage of the Soyuz shut down 421 seconds into the flight and the latest reports indicate “a possible bulging of the combustion chamber No. 1, leading to its burn through and a catastrophic fuel leak.”  That website cites Russian news service Interfax as estimating the “financial loss from the accident could reach two billion rubles.”

    This is Russia’s fifth launch failure in 2011, a surprising number given the usual reliability of Russian rockets.   The other four were GEO-IK2, a Rokot launch vehicle with a Briz upper stage that left the spacecraft stranded in transfer orbit; Express AM-4, a Proton-Briz combination that left the spacecraft in transfer orbit; Progress M-12M, a Soyuz U-Fregat combination that did not attain orbit; and Phobos-Grunt, a Zenit-Fregat combination that left the spacecraft stranded in Earth orbit instead of on a Mars trajectory.


https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/253933/&usg=ALkJrhis20WgLO1dCpIrn9DQDJPWb_1hdQ
     There were shots of an amateur recording of the appearance of fragments of the "Meridian" in the sky. The fall of space debris scared the inhabitants of the Novosibirsk region.

    24.12.2011, 14:35

    ...The head of the federal space agency Vladimir Popovkin said that the loss of "Meridian" is evidence that the Russian space industry is in crisis. The situation itself requires, in his opinion, a radical modernization and strict organizational measures.

    Vladimir Popovkin : "I think we will have an opportunity to objectively assess what happened. Proceeding from this, take some measures. I think that they will be, including organizational ones, and tough enough, including me, maybe. "

    Recall: an accident with the "Union" has become the fifth industry in the industry for the year and the sixth since December last year. At the end of 2010, due to improper refueling of the accelerating block, the Proton-M rocket carrier was unable to bring into space 3 satellites of the GLONASS system. In February, after the launch of the rocket carrier Rokot from Plesetsk, a geodetic geo-geo satellite, Geo IK-2, entered the non-computational orbit. After that, Anatoly Perminov left the post of the head of Roskosmos.


 


http://www.businessinsider.com/back-to-back-rocket-launch-failures-just-dealt-russia-a-heavy-blow-2015-5
    ...A government panel has traced the latest Soyuz failure to a leak from propellant tanks in its third stage, but it has yet to determine the reason for that. It's not clear yet what happened to the Proton.

    The Proton's latest failure was its seventh launch accident in 4 1/2 years. While the cause of Saturday's setback hasn't been determined, the previous accidents have been triggered by manufacturing flaws and human error.


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://iz.ru/news/511258
    [Izvestia:] **This year, Russia had four accidents at launches, according to which a lot was said about insufficient control of the quality of products. What did Roskosmos do to reverse the trend towards a decrease in the reliability of missile technology?**

    [Vladimir Popovkin, head of Federal Space Agency:] Firstly, we have at times increased the list of operations subject to triple control, including objective, through photography and video recording. Secondly, created operational groups, which now before each launch look at the documentation for the manufacture, literally looking for deviations from the technological processes. And sometimes interesting things are found out: there they retreated a little, here they did not even twist it. There are significant deviations, which the designer did not evaluate in the complex.


https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/roscosmos-official-confirms-proton-sensors-upside-down-flights-may-resume-in-september/
    Despite skepticism from a Russian Deputy Prime Minister, an official with Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, confirms that the recent Proton-M launch failure was caused by sensors that were installed upside down.

    Alexander Lopatin, a deputy director of Roscosmos, is quoted today by Russia’s official news agency, Itar-Tass, as confirming earlier reports that angular rate sensors were installed “head over heels.”  Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin disputed the earlier reports saying that installation of the sensors was virtually foolproof.

    Nonetheless, that is what happened according to Lopatin.  “The cause was an industrial process violation, the human factor,” he said.  The six angular rate sensors themselves were fine and passed all tests, but three of them were installed “head over heels” by workers at Khrunichev, the rocket’s manufacturer.


 


http://www.businessinsider.com/back-to-back-rocket-launch-failures-just-dealt-russia-a-heavy-blow-2015-5
    The series of failed launches has prompted the Kremlin to continuously reshuffle the industry's top brass. The Roscosmos space agency has seen four directors in as many years, but the failures continue.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Popovkin
    [Popovkin] was admitted to Burdenko Military Hospital in Moscow on 7 March 2012 because of "physical and emotional exhaustion."  Kommersant claimed that he fainted on the stairs outside the agency  and Russian tabloid Life News claimed he was hospitalised with head injuries. Other media claims that he was hospitalised after being struck on the head with a bottle during a fight, and that the fight was over his press secretary and former model Anna Vedicheva.

    When Popovkin returned to work on 19 March 2012 he gave an interview with Izvestia in which he vehemently denied some of the stories about the reasons for his hospitalisation, which he blamed on sections of the Russian space industry who are threatened by his attempts to counter corruption.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34984.0
    Vladimir Popovkin has died

    ...

    Izvestiya quotes a Roskosmos official (Denis Lyskov) as saying that Popovkin’s disease (cancer) was most likely brought on by his exposure to toxic fumes after the Proton crash last July.

    http://izvestia.ru/news/572644

    “At the moment of the launch we were in a bunker several hundred kilometers from the launch pad. After the explosion of the rocket we remained in the bunker for a while until we received information that the air outside was safe to breathe. Vladimir Aleksandrovich [Popovkin] was the first to leave the bunker, he ordered his driver out of the car,  jumped in the car himself and drove to the crash site without taking any protective measures. He felt personally responsible for what had happened and simply didn’t think of protecting himself.
    …
    When Vladimir Aleksandrovich got ill, doctors concluded that the disease had been triggered by the hydrazine cloud. ...”



https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=499&tid=89
    The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) currently lists hydrazine and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine as suspected human carcinogens, but has recently recommended that the listing of hydrazine be changed to that of animal carcinogen, not likely to cause cancer to people under normal exposure conditions.


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138884
    Occupational Exposure to Hydrazine and Subsequent Risk of Lung Cancer: 50-Year Follow-Up

    ...Hydrazine is carcinogenic in animals, but there is inadequate evidence to determine if it is carcinogenic in humans. This study aimed to evaluate the association between hydrazine exposure and the risk of lung cancer.

    ...Conclusions

    After 50 years of follow up, the results provide no evidence of an increased risk of death from lung cancer or death from any other cause.


http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Hydrazine
    Case Study of Hydrazine Poisoning

    In a 1965 correspondence from F. James Reid to the British Medical Journal, the effects of accidental hydrazine ingestion can be seen.

    A young English sailor had been drinking beer during the afternoon before being placed on duty in the evening. He was considered to be fit for duty and competent until the accident. While working in his ship's engine room, the young sailor ingestion between a mouthful and a cupful of concentrated Hydrazine believing it was water.

    ...Immediately upon drinking the chemical, the sailor vomited and returned to the deck to report to his superior officer at 11:30pm. After having been given a raw egg and milk, he vomited once more and collapsed, unconscious onto the floor.

    Upon admission in a West African Hospital at midnight he was flushed, afebrile, unconscious, continent, and vomiting. His pupils were dilated, central and reacted to light; however, there were no chemical burns on his lips or mouth and he was able to swallow. At this time the respiratory and central nervous systems were normal upon clinical examination.

    ...The patient improved hour by hour, though the main concern was for his neurological state. His psyche, memory, voluntary motor skills, and higher functions were normal. However, he had ataxia even with his eyes open, a lateral nystagmus to the right, and a loss of vibration sense. ...Fortunately, the ataxia was improving to the point that the sailor would able to travel unescorted by air to England, only two weeks after leaving Africa.

    The final condition of the young man is not known.


http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34984.0
    Several Russian media have picked up the story about Popovkin's disease being related to last year's Proton crash, but they all of them refer to last Wednesday's Izvestiya article quoting Roskosmos official Denis Lyskov.  Lyskov can be seen relating the story here :

    http://lifenews.ru/news/135261

    He describes Popovkin as "a workaholic in the positive sense of the word", suggesting that the high workload and stress may have contributed to his condition.

    The article in Kommersant earlier referred to here by JimO says Popovkin's deteriorating health was the main reason for his replacement by Ostapenko last October (and not the numerous failures in the Russian space program and the resulting re-organisation of the Russian space industry) . In fact, this had already been suggested by some media reports at the time.

    The same day Popovkin died, a 53-year old Khrunichev quality control manager (Gennadiy Lashkov) apparently committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the mechanical shop where he worked.  Inevitably, at least one Russian media outlet has linked both events :

    http://www.kp.ru/daily/26245.4/3126245/

    However, it would appear the suicide took place several hours before news of Popovkin's death broke.   Other reports link the suicide to wage cuts at Khrunichev in the wake of recent Proton failures.


 


http://www.businessinsider.com/back-to-back-rocket-launch-failures-just-dealt-russia-a-heavy-blow-2015-5
    Amid tensions with the West over Ukraine, some even suggested that the failures could have been caused by sabotage.


https://www.rt.com/news/162228-proton-rocket-failure-sabotage/
    Sabotage considered in Proton rocket crash – investigator

    The botched launch of the Proton-M rocket this month may have been caused by sabotage, the chair of the investigating commission said. This conspiratorial version is being considered as part of the probe, although it’s not a likely scenario.

    ...The sabotage version voiced on Thursday caused some hype in Russian media and drew a rebuke from Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises the Russian space industry.

    “The Roscosmos disaster commission should first finish its work and present the results to the Russian government, and only then torment society with new versions of what happened,” he tweeted.


https://www.rt.com/news/165024-proton-booster-sabotage-investigation/
    Intentional damage to a Proton rocket booster was reportedly established by a polygraph and a criminal case has been initiated, Izvestia daily quotes the Ministry of Interior. Previously sabotage was considered an unlikely option.

    ...when the FSB was informed about the incident, it launched a lie detector probe of about 15 assemblers who could have been in physical contact with the duct during the assembly, a source at the Khrunichev Center told Izvestia.

    The results of the FSB investigation were delivered to the Ministry of Interior and became the basis for the criminal case. The names of the established suspects have not been made public for legal reasons, a source in the ministry informed Izvestia.


https://web.archive.org/web/20170302062327/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/WALLENBERG,%20RAOUL%20%20%20VOL.%203_0101.pdf
    HEADQUARTERS COMMENT ON OR FOLLOWUP QUESTIONS FOR WALK-IN DMITRIY ALEKSANDROVICH ((DRUZHININ)) (SUBJECT).

    ...SUBJECT HAS NO INFORMATION ON SABOTAGE OF U.S. SPACE PROGRAMS OR VEHICLES


http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-06/opinion/op-23298_1_u-s-air-force
    In a departure from its public position, the French government has concluded that the explosion of its Ariane rocket at the Kourou launch site in French Guinea on May 30 may have been due to sabotage. According to French intelligence officials, the investigation into the Ariane accident has been secretly reopened because, "Initially we had no reason to raise the question of sabotage, but now we have reason to ask that question."

    France has shared its concerns and suspicions about Ariane with the highest levels of U.S. intelligence--French Defense Minister Andre Giraud is believed to have touched on this topic when he visited Washington last Tuesday and Wednesday--because of the series of catastrophes involving American space launches this year. The French and American accidents are adding up to a bizarre pattern, surrounded by strange coincidences and unexplained events, deeply preoccupying Western intelligence. These include the apparent defection to the Soviet Union in 1983 of the U.S. Air Force's leading expert on rocket self-destruct procedures.

    ...French intelligence officials say that while the report is technically correct (the 1985 Ariane accident had the same cause), "it is very easy to perform sabotage in this context by one very well-placed person."


https://www.quora.com/Did-the-USSR-ever-try-to-sabotage-the-Apollo-program
    " 'Doc' Tripp, who was then working on America's first space telescope, recalls, 'Those batteries were shepherded around, I swear, just as though it was a Brink's truck full of gold.  I was aware that we were competing very strongly with the Russians, and one way to beat us, of course, was to sabotage our effort here.  I don't know how many saboteurs there were on the program.  I never met one, as far as I know, but apparently there were.  And one of the places I remember where we got really involved with protection and security was with the batteries.'"


https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2007-07-27-voa2-66781427/565173.html
    NASA Finds Evidence of Sabotaged Computer Bound for Space Station

    Two weeks before the US space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to lift-off, the US space agency NASA says a piece of equipment that was to fly on the mission was deliberately sabotaged.

    During a briefing on launch preparations for space shuttle Endeavour, NASA officials revealed that a space program worker deliberately damaged a piece of equipment that is scheduled to fly aboard the space craft.

    The tampered device was due to be delivered to the International Space Station by Endeavour. It measures strain on a space station beam and relays the information to controllers on the ground.

    NASA's chief of space operations, Bill Gersteinmaier, says the space agency was notified of the sabotage by the company servicing the mission.

    "We then inspected the flight unit and determined that some wires were cut on the inside of that unit. It's a subcontractor on the space station side," he said. "We'll fix the hardware. We'll get [it] ready to go fly. I can't really discuss that and won't discuss that much more at this point."

    Gerstenmaier says the sabotage is under investigation and officials declined to speculate on a motive.


 



https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/21/european-schiaparelli-mars-lander-exploded-on-impact-nasa-images-suggest
    Prof David Southwood, a space scientist at Imperial College London, noted that Mars missions seem particularly prone to mishap. “If one were superstitious, one would say it is a return of the Mars gremlin.”


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/20/total-recall-of-unsuccessful-mars-lander-schiaparelli-exomars
    Many spacecraft built by the US or the Soviet Union failed to even reach orbit around Mars. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter became the Mars Collider and a case study for students of planetary exploration. The spacecraft was meant to be the first to observe the weather on another planet, but instead slammed into the atmosphere and tore apart. An investigation panel found the glitch in the spacecraft’s software. The force delivered by onboard thrusters was coded in imperial pounds instead of metric Newtons.


http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/mco-oberg.htm
    Why The Mars Probe Went Off Course

    By James Oberg

    SPECTRUM Magazine

    December 1999

    ...Preliminary public statements faulted a slip-up between the probe's builders and its operators, a failure to convert the English units of measurement used in construction into the metric units used for operation.

    After six weeks, on 10 November, NASA officials released their preliminary findings. However, an IEEE Spectrum investigation had been going on separately, using unofficial sources associated with the program and independen t experts. Spectrum quickly learned that far more had gone wrong than just a units conversion error. A critical flaw was a program management grown too confident and too careless, even to the point of missing opportunities to avoid the disaster.


http://pages.suddenlink.net/anomalousimages/images/news/news580.html
    NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed

    United Press International - March 21, 2000 15:01

    By James Oberg, UPI Space Writer

    HOUSTON, March 21 (UPI) -- The disappearance of NASA's Mars Polar Lander last December was no surprise to space officials, UPI has learned.

    Prior to its arrival at Mars, a review board had already identified a fatal design flaw with the braking thrusters that doomed the mission, but NASA withheld this conclusion from the public.

    ...A source close to the panel probing the second accident has told UPI that its conclusions are "devastating" to NASA's reputation.


https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/text/mpl_pr_20000322.txt
    March 22, 2000

    James Oberg of UPI claims that NASA knew there was a problem  with the Mars Polar Lander propulsion system prior to the Dec. 3 landing attempt and "withheld this conclusion from the public." NASA categorically denies this charge.


    ...*   Had UPI researched the public documents released on Nov. 10, which have been available online at the NASA Home Page, the reporter would have been able to conclude that NASA did indeed publicly address propulsion issues, and specifically, the propulsion system's "catalyst bed" temperature concern.

    *   Based on this review, NASA knew about the concerns with the propulsion system, NASA took corrective action, and NASA hid nothing from the public.  We made our concerns known in early November.

    ...Both the Stephenson and Casani (John Casani, retired JPL flight programs head and also director of mission assurance) teams have conducted intensive reviews relating to Mars Polar Lander, and their teams have surfaced no evidence relating to thruster acceptance testing irregularities as alleged by UPI.  In fact, members of the review teams are using words like "bunk," "complete nonsense," and "wacko," to describe their reactions to [Oberg]'s charge.


https://www.rt.com/news/nasa-astronauts-accused-of-alcohol-abuse/
    A panel set up to investigate NASA is reporting that astronauts from the American Aeronautical Agency were cleared to fly while drunk on at least two occasions.

    ...Also in an exclusive interview with Russia Today, NASA expert James Oberg said the mass media are misinterpreting the story.

    “I know people are still very interested in the particular drinking cases. In my view, they keep missing the point of the scandal, of the problem itself. In terms of the people involved, if they have broken regulations, this goes beyond individual medical privacy. It goes to the point of flight safety...


https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-01-14-oberg_x.htm
    Think outside moon-Mars box: Maybe visit asteroid?
    By James Oberg

    The moon race of the 1960s was fueled by national anxiety about what the world would become if the Soviet Union grabbed a permanent lead in space exploration. So President Kennedy set a vision for the USA to reach the moon first.

    ...Instead of sending astronauts back to the moon or off to Mars, the United States needs a space strategy that addresses today's national anxieties — without breaking the bank.


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-space-moon/russias-deputy-pm-says-country-must-shoot-for-moon-base-idUSBRE88A0KH20120911
    “There is a lot of competition among countries in the space sector and so we must have a big super goal that could pull forward science and industry; that would enable the country to escape from the morass of problems, which have kept us captive for the past 20 years,” Rogozin told the Vesti FM radio station.

    “Why not try to build a big station on the Moon that would be a base for future ‘leaps’ of science?”.

    Russia’s renewed focus on the Moon may reflect a scaling back of ambition following a string of space failures and comes as other countries - notably China - are eyeing the Moon with greater ambition. Beijing plans to land its first probe there next year even though it still has a long way to go to catch up with space superpowers Russia and the United States.

    ...Last year, a Russian mission failed to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos, and last month the failure of a Proton rocket caused the multi million-dollar loss of Indonesia’s Telkom-3 and Russia’s Express-MD2 satellites.

    “We are losing our authority and billions of roubles,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told officials at a government meeting last month.

    ...“It’s too far and too expensive to Mars,” space industry expert Igor Lissov told the state RIA news agency. “We must start with the moon. We must give ourselves realistic goals.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/politics/dana-rohrabacher-putin-trump-kremlin-under-fire.html
    ...For two decades, Representative Dana Rohrabacher has been of value to the Kremlin, so valuable in recent years that the F.B.I. warned him in 2012 that Russia regarded him as an intelligence source worthy of a Kremlin code name.


https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg81194/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg81194.pdf
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Holy cow. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair-man.

    I have been—I would just like to ask a fundamental question here because we have been talking about mission to Mars, okay, mission to Mars and different approaches to mission to Mars and what—I would like to ask the panel whether or not they think a mission to Mars is worth the cost or not. I mean if we do a mission to Mars—and correct me if I am wrong—we will have to defund most of the—I mean if we are going to do it now, start now and go directly into a mission to Mars, we are going to have to defund, you know, asteroid detection and then deflection. I mean we might as well forget that. I mean that is expensive. Debris cleanup which unless we don’t—unless we clean up the debris, of course, we may end up having our own use of near space being cut off from the fu-ture satellites because debris is knocking our satellites out of the air, no more GPS communication satellites, et cetera. Or how about space astronomy, which we know there is some very important projects moving forward with various telescopes that could give us a really in-depth view of the universe.

    You know, reading the—I mean unless we think that the tooth fairy is going to leave all the money under the pillow in order to accomplish a mission to Mars, is it really worthwhile, the vast ex-pense and the canceling of programs like this in order for us to take off and start heading on a Mars mission now? I will just go right down the line. That is fine.



 


http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-15631472
    Phobos-Grunt Mars probe loses its way just after launch

    The Phobos-Grunt probe launched successfully but then failed to fire the engine to put it on the correct path to the Red Planet.

    Russian space agency officials say the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.

    ...[Popovkin] added: "I would not say it's a failure; it's a non-standard situation, but it is a working situation."

    If the problem is simply a software issue and engineers can upload new commands, they have a chance of rescuing the mission. If the fault lies in a hardware malfunction, Phobos-Grunt may well be doomed.

    ...Russia had been hoping that Phobos-Grunt would finally bury its Martian curse.

    Moscow has despatched a total of 16 missions to the Red Planet since the 1960s. None has successfully completed its goals, with the most recent endeavour - the sophisticated Mars-96 spacecraft - being destroyed in a failed launch.


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45943952/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/russian-space-chief-claims-space-failures-may-be-sabotage/
    Russian space chief claims space failures may be sabotage

    1/10/2012

    ...MOSCOW — Some recent Russian satellite failures may have been the result of sabotage by foreign forces, Russia's space chief said Tuesday, in comments apparently aimed at the United States.

    Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin stopped short of accusing any specific country of disabling Russian satellites, but in an interview in the daily Izvestia he noted that some Russian craft had suffered "unexplained" malfunctions while flying over another side of the globe beyond the reach of his nation's tracking facilities.

    Popovkin spoke when asked about the failure of the $170 million unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe, which was to explore one of Mars' two moons, Phobos, but became stranded while orbiting Earth after its Nov. 9 launch. Engineers in Russia and the European Space Agency have failed to propel the spacecraft toward Mars, and it is expected to fall back to Earth around Jan. 15.

    Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov refused to elaborate on Popovkin's comments, which marked the first time a senior Russian government official has claimed that foreign sabotage has been used to disable one of the country's satellites.


http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27593.msg848714#msg848714
    [James Oberg]

    01/10/2012

    More links on the 'blame foreigners' meme:

    Shady side of Earth: Western trace in space probe’s failure?
    Russia Today // Published: 10 January, 2012, 14:49
     http://rt.com/news/phobos-grunt-probe-failure-versions-445/

    Russia Blames Outside Meddling for Space Failures, Izvestia Says
    By Henry Meyer - Jan 10, 2012 5:42 AM CT
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/russia-blames-outside-meddling-for-space-failures-izvestia-says.html

    The headlines are overtly sensationalized, as Popovkin worded his thoughts very carefully, yet the headlines represent him as making the accusation.


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45943952/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/russian-space-chief-claims-space-failures-may-be-sabotage/
    Russian space chief claims space failures may be sabotage

    01/10/2012

    ...James Oberg, a NASA veteran and NBC News space analyst who has written books on the Russian space program, said Popovkin's comments were a sad example of the Russian cultural instinct to "blame foreigners."

    "It's a feature of space launch trajectories that orbital adjustments must be made halfway around the first orbit to circularize and stabilize subsequent orbits," Oberg said in emailed comments. "The Russians must know that simple geography — not evildoers lurking in shadows — dictate where their communications 'blind spots' are. But the urge to shift blame seems strong."


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://iz.ru/news/511258
    [Izvestia:] **That is, the degree of risk to the mission of "Phobos" was clear, but there was nowhere to go?**

    [Popovkin:] There was simply no other way. Today, it is not clear why the Phobos-Grunt propulsion system was not started. There are also incomprehensible frequent failures with our devices during the period when they are flying over the shady side of the Earth for Russia - where we do not see the apparatus and do not receive telemetry from it.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/esa-mars-lander-schiaparelli-failed-soft-landing-data-sent-back/
    By William Harwood CBS News October 20, 2016, 7:58 AM
    Did Europe's Mars lander crash and burn on the Red Planet?

    The European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli Mars lander plunged into the planet’s atmosphere Wednesday, survived the hellish heat of entry and successfully deployed a huge parachute to slow down before falling free and firing up its braking rockets to land on the martian surface, engineers said Thursday.

    But then suddenly, its signal vanished.

    Fifty seconds before the expected touchdown, the experimental lander abruptly stopped transmitting telemetry. At that point, it was expected to be less than a mile above the surface and descending at about 150 mph.

    ...Throughout the six-minute descent, the lander transmitted a steady stream of telemetry to the TGO mothership, which recorded the data and relayed it back to Earth overnight Wednesday.

    ...But the telemetry suddenly stopped right around the moment the parachute was released. The recorded data show at least some of the thrusters fired for a few seconds at least, but engineers have not yet had time to tease out altitude, velocity and other details that might shed light on what happened in the 50 or so seconds between the loss of signal and the lander’s impact on the surface.


https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/text/marsob.txt
    The final report by the independent investigation board on the failure of the Mars Observer spacecraft was delivered today to NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin by Dr. Timothy Coffey, Chairman of the board.  Dr. Coffey is Director of Research at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.

    The Mars Observer spacecraft was to be the first U.S. spacecraft to study Mars since the Viking missions 18 years ago.  The Mars Observer spacecraft fell silent just 3 days prior to entering orbit around Mars, following the pressurization of the rocket thruster fuel tanks.

    Because the telemetry transmitted from the Observer had been commanded off and subsequent efforts to locate or communicate with the spacecraft failed, the board was unable to find conclusive evidence pointing to a particular event that caused the loss of the Observer.


https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1999-001A
    ...The two missions were designed to study the Martian weather, climate, and water and carbon dioxide budget, in order to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-term and episodic climate changes. The last telemetry from Mars Polar Lander was sent just prior to atmospheric entry on 3 December 1999. No further signals have been received from the lander, the cause of this loss of communication is not known.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11349163/Beagle-2-found-on-surface-of-Mars-after-vanishing-for-12-years.html
    History books will need to be rewritten after scientists announced today that Beagle 2 has been finally been found on Mars, 12 years after it vanished without trace.

    The beleaguered spacecraft, which has become a byword for mission failure, was spotted by scientists operating the HiRise camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was discovered just 5km from its original touchdown site in the Isidis Planitia basin.

    And it appears that just one faulty motor was behind the unsuccessful landing. The images show that solar panels which should have folded out to reveal a radio antenna, failed to open. An unlucky bounce on its side may also have misshapen the probe preventing it from opening up properly.

     ...Previously it was thought that the lander had been destroyed on impact after crashing to the ground when its parachute and airbags failed to deploy.

    But now it seems Beagle 2 made it safely to the surface but was crippled when it could not link up to Earth.

    ...“What seems to be the case is that it got to the ground. But a motor which opened the solar panels didn’t work.”


https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/text/mars96_timeline.txt
    A review board could not determine whether the Mars 96 crash was due to failure of the Proton rocket Block D-2 upper stage or a malfunction of the Mars 96 spacecraft itself. The failure investigation board concluded that lack of telemetry data during critical parts of the mission prevented identification of the cause of the failure. The failure occurred at the second ignition of the Proton Block D-2 upper stage, while the spacecraft was out of range of Russian ground stations.


http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/ESA_station_unable_to_establish_new_link_with_Phobos-Grunt
    ESA STATION UNABLE TO ESTABLISH NEW LINK WITH PHOBOS-GRUNT

    After establishing contact with Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars mission earlier this week, ESA's tracking station in Australia received no signal from the spacecraft last night. ESA engineers are investigating the cause in close collaboration with Russian mission controllers.

    Despite listening intently during four scheduled communication passes during the night of 24–25 November, ESA's 15 m-diameter dish antenna at Perth, Australia, did not receive any signals .

    The slots for communication, timed to coincide when Phobos–Grunt was passing over in direct line-of-sight with the station, began at 20:12 GMT and ran until 04:04 GMT. Each lasted just 6–8 minutes, providing very limited windows for sending commands and receiving a response.

    "Our Russian colleagues provided a full set of telecommands for us to send up," said Wolfgang Hell, ESA's Phobos–Grunt Service Manager, "and Perth station was set to use the same techniques and configurations that worked earlier. But we observed no downlink radio signal from the spacecraft."


 



https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://iz.ru/news/511258
    [Popovkin:] ...I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are very powerful means of impact on space vehicles, the possibilities of using which can not be ruled out.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (Russian: Фобос-Грунт, literally "Phobos-Ground") was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment funded by the Planetary Society.[3]

    It was launched on 9 November 2011 at 02:16 local time (8 November 2011, 20:16 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but subsequent rocket burns intended to set the craft on a course for Mars failed, leaving it stranded in low Earth orbit.

    ...Post-launch

    It was expected that after 2.5 hours and 1.7 revolutions in the initial orbit, the autonomous main propulsion unit (MDU), derived from the Fregat upper stage, would conduct its firing to insert the spacecraft into the elliptical orbit (250 km x 4,150–4,170 km) with a period of about 2.2 hours. After the completion of the first burn, the external fuel tank of the propulsion unit was expected to be jettisoned, with ignition for a second burn to depart Earth orbit scheduled for one orbit, or 2.1 hours, after the end of the first burn.[42][44][45] The propulsion module constitutes the cruise-stage bus of Fobos-Grunt. According to original plans, Mars orbit arrival had been expected during September 2012 and the return vehicle was scheduled to reach Earth in August 2014.[22][46]

    Following what would have been the planned end of the first burn, the spacecraft could not be located in the target orbit. The spacecraft was subsequently discovered to still be in its initial parking orbit and it was determined that the burn had not taken place.[4] Initially, engineers had about three days from launch to rescue the spacecraft before its batteries ran out.[20] It was then established that the craft's solar panels had deployed, giving engineers more time to restore control.




https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://rg.ru/2011/11/09/kosmos-site.html
    11/10/2011

    "We had a hard night ," Roskosmos head Vladimir Popovkin admitted honestly: "We could not find the spacecraft for a long time, but now we found its coordinates." It turned out that the propulsion system did not work. "

    Experts say: the situation is repeated, close to what happened to Mars-96. When in November 1996, due to a crash of the accelerating block, the Martian probe did not enter the target orbit and fell into the ocean.

    However, to say that the mission of "Phobos-Grunt" failed, it is too early. According to experts, Russian specialists have three more days to repeat the attempt to send the device to Mars. As Popovkin said, although what happened is a freelance situation, but it's a work situation. It was foreseen in the development of the project, and the procedure for dealing with such a situation was stipulated.

    "We will re-program the spacecraft program.The orbit on which the device is located is a supporting one, no tanks were dropped, fuel was not spent," said the head of Roskosmos.

    In his opinion, the reason for the supernumerary situation is that apparently the control system did not switch from the Sun to star sensors. "" We will watch telemetry, "Popovkin said.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140824062611/http://freze.it/SitpPS
    Dear Colleagues !

    We need your support in the project "Phobos-Soil", because:
    Two ignitions of Phobos-Grunt engine unit are planned to put spacecraft onto interplanetary mission to Mars. But unfortunately in both cases the operation of spacecraft engine is invisible from Russian ground stations. It is planned to record data about system work during engine operation on-board and when reaching the visibility area of ground stations in Russia to transmit these data to ground. But it is not so comfortable approach especially in case of some deviation from nominal scenario including failure. So there is the idea to observe the engine operation by optical instruments, i.e. telescopes, taking into account the position of spacecraft in eclipse part of the orbit during engine burn and brightness of engine plume ( engine propellant is nonsymmetrical Hydrazine and Nitrogen tetroxide, consumed with the rate of 6 kilos per second). Such approach with fast enough delivery of the results of observations may allow to confirm the very fact of the engine operation and to reach more reliable forecast of spacecraft position when the visibility area from Russian ground stations will be reached.


https://www.universetoday.com/90808/russians-race-against-time-to-save-ambitious-phobos-grunt-mars-probe-from-earthly-demise/
    Russians Race against Time to Save Ambitious Phobos-Grunt Mars Probe from Earthly Demise

    10 Nov , 2011

    ...“I give them a good chance — better than even — of recovering the mission and making the Mars insertion burn in a day or two, said James Oberg, a renowned expert on Russian and US spaceflight in commentary to Universe Today.

    But Oberg also told me that having such problems so early in the mission was not a good sign. It all depends on whether the root cause is related to a simple software patch or serious hardware difficulties.

    ...“But it’s an old old superstition that when leaving your house for a long voyage, if you trip on the door step, you better just lay down your suitcases and go back inside,” Oberg said.

    “Seriously, on a mission so complex and innovative as this one is, with so much stuff that has to be done RIGHT the first time they’ve ever tried it, having this kind of error — even if it’s only a coding mishap — right at the start, is NOT a good omen about the quality of work on preparing the later steps,” Oberg warned.


http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/10/world/la-fg-russia-mars-probe-20111110
    Fear raised that Russia's Phobos-Ground spacecraft will crash

    November 10, 2011

    ...If they fail, experts worry that tons of toxic fuel carried by Phobos-Ground could turn it into one of the most dangerous spacecraft to fall from orbit.

    "About 7 tons of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever," James Oberg, a NASA veteran who now works as a space consultant, said in an email to the Associated Press. "What was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space derelicts to ever fall back to Earth out of control."

    But Oberg told the AP that it was still possible to regain control of the probe, saying, "Nothing irreversibly bad has happened."


http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/80653445/#q80660444
    No surveillance technology is particularly sophisticated. Have you ever spoken something that meant one thing to a broader group, but another to a particular peer because of an inside communication history?

    Highly intelligent individuals are highly adept at this, so we can speak volumes without you even knowing the conversation exists.


 


https://www.universetoday.com/author/david-warmflash/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    It was soon discovered the spacecraft was adjusting its orbit, changing its expected re-entry from late November or December to as late as early 2012.[47] Even though it had not been contacted, the spacecraft seemed to be actively adjusting its perigee (the point it is closest to Earth in its orbit).[47][48]


https://www.universetoday.com/91037/phobos-grunts-mysterious-thruster-activation-a-function-of-safe-mode-or-just-good-luck/
    Phobos-Grunt’s Mysterious Thruster Activation: A Function of Safe Mode or Just Good Luck?

    Article written: 16 Nov , 2011

    by David Warmflash

    Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update for Universe Today on the likelihood of saving the mission.

    The Phobos-Grunt probe is still stuck in orbit around Earth. However, periodically the spacecraft experiences a mysterious slight boost in its orbit.  Following the first episode where this occurred, commentators speculated as to the cause.  The activation of the spacecraft’s thrusters – the small engines that are designed to steer the craft and make small adjustments  — was an obvious answer.

    Is spacecraft trying to save itself?

    The spacecraft is not responding to any communications, and engineers at the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos have decided that the craft had reverted to a safe mode after the engine of the Fregat rocket stage that was to propel her from a low to a higher orbit around Earth failed to ignite. While in safe mode, the craft had oriented herself to the Sun, using the thrusters to adjust her roll, pitch, and yaw. But to change the parameters of the orbit, she’d need to accelerate, so there was speculation that the needed thrust had come from leaks and venting of gases in a direction favorable to increased orbital stability.

    After a second episode during which the altitude increased again, according to Ria Novosti editor-columnist of the journal “News of Cosmonautics” Igor Lisov has reported that a source in the space industry had explained that the probe “Corrects her orbit” every now and then.

    *Corrects* her orbit? Does this mean that the probe knows where she is?

    Probably not.

    With information coming from Roscosmos being so scarce, reporting on the mission that began was launched on November 9, 2011 has depended on a few official statements from the agency, augmented by speculation from various space experts. Being in safe mode, Grunt simply is waiting for instructions –instructions that controllers are having difficulty delivering, because initial communication was not supposed to take place with the probe at such a low orbit.

    If Grunt’s safe mode includes a program that fires thrusters every so often to keep the craft from entering the atmosphere in the event of a malfunction just after reaching low Earth orbit, no statements from Roscosmos have mentioned it, thus far. Whatever the reason, if it continues to occur, we can expect that the predicted date of atmospheric entry will be moved back again, just as it was moved from late December/early November to mid-January after the first orbital correction episode.

    What might this mean for the mission? First of all, perhaps it could buy more time for controllers to establish communication –although Roscosmos has stated that December is the limit for correcting the problem, despite the fact that the probe will be in space at least until mid January.

    ...As for the question of why a craft that merely is supposed to find the Sun while in safe mode fires thrusters in a direction that improves the orbit, perhaps it is just good luck, or perhaps it really is part of the safe mode. Until Roscosmos provides more information of what may have caused this, the reason for the orbital correction remains a mystery.


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://nauka21vek.ru/archives/22036
    November 13th, 2011

    ...Popovkin also said that for all the work on reprogramming the device from experts Roskosmos has three days while battery batteries are working. He also noted that the tanks of the vehicle have not been dropped and there is fuel for further maneuvers. Later on the website of Roskosmos appeared a message, in which this period, after analyzing the current orbital parameters, was extended to two weeks. It was said that, given the low orbit of the apparatus, it will enter the zone of visibility of our ground stations not earlier than 11 pm on November 9, Moscow time. Only after this it will be possible to talk about a possible reboot of the system and the creation of a new flight program.

    The first comments of specialists, however, differed from Popovkin's calmly optimistic tone.


https://www.universetoday.com/91127/consolation-prize-for-phobos-grunt-experts-consider-possibilities-for-sending-spacecraft-to-moon-or-asteroid/
    Consolation Prize for Phobos-Grunt? Experts Consider Possibilities for Sending Spacecraft to Moon or Asteroid

    18 Nov, 2011

    by David Warmflash

    If communication with Russia’s troubled Phobos-Grunt is not established by November 21, the window for a trajectory to the Martian moon Phobos, will close, experts say. But this would not mean that the spacecraft could not travel to a different destination. In a statement published earlier today by the news and information agency Ria Novosti, Russian space expert Igor Lisov suggested that Phobos-Grunt could be sent to orbit the Moon – Earth’s Moon, that is – or may be even an asteroid, if communication is restored at any point before the 13-ton probe re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

    ...But while the apogee has been decreasing (down to 326 km today), the perigee actually has been increasing by about 0.5 kilometers per day (up to 210.2 km today), due to periodic maneuvering by way of the probe’s small thrusters. After it was realized that the first maneuvering episode had improved the orbit, the predicted reentry date was adjusted to mid January, and if the thrusting episodes continue we can expect the date of the probe’s demise to be moved back still more.

    Time for Trajectory to Phobos is Running Out

    The improved orbit gives controllers at the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, several weeks –even more, if the perigee continues to get higher– to restore communication with Phobos-Grunt, allowing for the uploading of new commands. But, even if control is restored, a flight to Mars and Phobos will not be possible after Monday, November 21st, Lisov explained. Although the Fregat stage is loaded with fuel, to reach Mars, given Grunt’s orbit around Earth and the alignment between Earth and Mars after Monday, would require a higher change in velocity –what propulsion specialists call delta v – than the Fregat is capable of producing.

    A Consolation Prize

    While cautioning that the idea of sending Phobos-Grunt somewhere other than Phobos falls into the realm of wishful thinking, Lisov urged that efforts to reconnect with the spacecraft continue in full force as long as the craft is in space. Despite several failures of lunar missions, the former Soviet space program did succeed in returning samples from the lunar surface to Earth in the 1970s. Thus, re-purposing the current mission as “Luna-Grunt” or something of that nature is not likely to have the same appeal as Phobos-Grunt has among Russians. Nor could the Grunt landing craft, designed to scoop a surface sample into a capsule that would return to Earth, even set down on the lunar surface. But other components of the science payload might be useful. Though built to observe Mars,China’s Yinghuo-1 orbiter might be able to do something interesting from lunar orbit. Instruments that were to remain on the Phobosian surface might be useful as well.


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/09/08/where-build-off-world-colonies/
    Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies
    By David Warmflash

    The collective space vision of all the world’s countries at the moment seems to be Mars, Mars, Mars.

    ...But is the Red Planet really the best target for a human colony, or should we look somewhere else? Should we pick a world closer to Earth, namely the moon? Or a world with a surface gravity close to Earth’s, namely Venus?


http://www.visionlearning.com/blog/2017/03/14/colonization-venusian-clouds-surfacism-clouding-judgement/
    March 14, 2017
    Colonization of the Venusian Clouds: Is ‘Surfacism’ Clouding Our Judgement?

    by David Warmflash

    ...Mars has other problems. The regolith –the dirt that covers the Martian surface– contains high concentrations of perchlorate salts, which will be toxic to humans and plants if we don’t filter them out. The low gravity and the thin atmosphere advantageous as they make it easy to get spaceships up and down between the surface and space. But while the atmosphere is too thin to provide any useful air pressure on the human body, it is just thick enough to lift dust to mess up equipment and there are even dust storms.


http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2011/3261.html
    Phobos-Grunt status, launch plus six days

    ..."We have time till January inclusive, the spacecraft will stay in orbit, but the Mars departure window closes in early December," said the Head of Roskosmos Vladimir Popovkin today.

    ..."There is still a chance, but we were not able to receive any telemetry yet to understand what happened. The problem is that tracking stations are slow [that is, they cannot turn fast enough to track a fast-moving spacecraft on a low-Earth orbit] and Phobos-Grunt is on an unplanned trajectory, hence the communication session lasts for only 7 minutes."

    "All systems of the spacecraft work nominally, it maintains its orientation toward the Sun, so it's not over yet. At the moment engineers conduct attempts to upload software."

    Answering journalists' questions regarding when it would be possible with a high degree of certainty to talk about the "spacecraft death", he said that "it would be possible to talk about this in early December when the window for departure to Mars is closed."


https://www.universetoday.com/91207/can-phobos-grunt-still-be-saved-scientists-hold-out-hope-as-deadlines-loom/
    Can Phobos-Grunt Still be Saved? Scientists Hold Out Hope as Deadlines Loom

    22 Nov 2011
    by David Warmflash

    ...Although the launch window for a round-trip to Mars closed yesterday (November 21, 2011) with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt probe still circling in low Earth orbit, a one-way flight to the Red Planet will be possible for another few weeks. As Russian engineers frantically try to contact the silent probe, scientists from the Yinghuo-1 and LIFE experiments are holding out hope that they could still complete their missions, or a perhaps even a modified version of their experiments.

    ...Thought to have reverted to safe mode, Phobos-Grunt has been flying straight and periodically adjusting her orbit using small thruster engines. While this maneuvering has extended the amount of time that the probe can remain in space before reentering Earth’s atmosphere, ground controllers have been struggling to establish a communication link.

    ...Had the malfunction occurred just one step further into the flight –after a first burn of the Fregat was to raise the apogee (the highest point) of the spacecraft’s orbit to an altitude of about 4,170 kilometers– the timing and geometry between Earth-bound transmitters and the spacecrafts antennae would have made signaling the craft a straight forward task. But with Grunt orbiting much lower (thus moving much faster with respect to the ground), and with an antenna that could receive the signal obstructed partially by a fuel tank that was to be jettisoned after the first Fregat burn, controllers have only a couple of minutes at a time to attempt communication. Since the spacecraft was not designed for this scenario, getting her attention may be depend on prospect of getting the signals toward her at some unlikely angle. In other words, restoring control over Phobos-Grunt may be a matter of luck.

    ...If this should happen, however, where should the probe travel? As of yesterday, it no longer will be able to go Mars, land on the surface of Phobos, scoop a 200 gram sample into the specially-designed return capsule, and still have a window for the capsule to be launched on a trajectory back to Earth. Last week, a lunar mission was discussed as a possibility.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    Contact

    On 22 November 2011, a signal from the probe was picked up by the European Space Agency's tracking station in Perth, Australia, after it had sent the probe the command to turn on one of its transmitters. The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt reported that the contact was made at 20:25 UTC on 22 November 2011 after some modifications had been made to the 15 m dish facility in Perth to improve its chances of getting a signal.[49] No telemetry was received in this communication.[50] It remained unclear whether the communications link would have been sufficient to command the spacecraft to switch on its engines to take it on its intended trajectory toward Mars.[51] Roscosmos officials said that the window of opportunity to salvage Fobos-Grunt would close in early December.[51]

    The next day, on 23 November, the Perth station again made contact with the spacecraft and during 6 minutes, about 400 telemetry "frames" and Doppler information were received.[50][52][53] The amount of information received during this communication was not sufficient, and therefore it was not possible to identify the problem with the probe.[53][54] Further communication attempts made by ESA were unsuccessful and contact was not reestablished.[55] The space vehicle did not respond to the commands sent by the European Space Agency to raise its orbit. Roscosmos provided these commands to ESA.[50]

    From Baikonour, Kazakhstan, Roscosmos was able to receive telemetry from Fobos-Grunt on 24 November[56] but attempts to contact it failed. This telemetry demonstrated that the probe's radio equipment was working and that it was communicating with the spacecraft's flight control systems.[56] Moreover, Roscosmos's top officials believed Fobos-Grunt to be functional, stably oriented and charging batteries through its solar panels.[50]


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://www.gazeta.ru/social/2011/11/24/3846434.shtml
    "Phobos-soil" spoke with Roskosmos

    24 November 2011

    "Phobos-soil", finally, "spoke" not only with Europeans, but also with the Russian antenna at Baikonur. According to the first telemetry package, the on-board computer at the station is working. And this means that the experts once again have a chance to launch "Phobos-soil" anywhere.

    The Russian tracking station at Baikonur (Kazakhstan) has established a connection with the interplanetary science station "Phobos-primant", a source at the cosmodrome told Interfax-AVN. "Our station managed to contact the device and receive telemetric information from it. The decoding of telemetry began. While everything is going well, "- said the source of the agency.

    ...The on-board computer complex "Phobos-soil" functions and receives sufficient food for work. This means that specialists will be able to receive full telemetry from the station, understand the reasons for the abnormal situation that has arisen on board after the launch, and decide what to do with the device further.


https://www.universetoday.com/91239/contact-established-with-phobos-grunt-spacecraft-can-the-mission-go-on/
    Contact Established with Phobos-Grunt Spacecraft — Can the Mission Go On?

    23 Nov , 2011
    by David Warmflash

    In an exciting development in the ongoing story of the Phobos-Grunt mission, a tracking station at Perth, Australia established contact with the Russian spacecraft on November 22 at 20:25 UT. This was the first signal received on Earth since the mission to Mars’ moon was launched on November 8, 2011.

    Teams from ESA, who made the initial contact, are now working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communications with the spacecraft. As controllers begin the task of figuring out how to use this achievement to enable sending the spacecraft new commands, discussion is ongoing on whether the launch window will still be open for the craft to complete the mission.

    The hopes are now is that at the very least engineers can prevent the spacecraft from plummeting back to Earth – and with guarded optimism that the mission could proceed in some manner.

    Before contact was made, some reports said that if contact was made by November 24, the mission could proceed as planned, while other experts were saying that the launch window to complete the sample return mission closed on November 21.

    ...If Grunt were to make a one-way trip to Phobos, all of these studies could be performed...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    In a late November 2011 interview, the service manager of the European Space Agency for Fobos-Grunt, Wolfgang Hell, stated that Roscosmos had a better understanding of the problem with the spacecraft, saying they reached the conclusion that they have some kind of power problem on board.[57]


https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20130329022128%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.roscosmos.ru%2Fmain.php%2F%3Fid%3D2%26nid%3D18647&edit-text=&act=url
    I. The general conclusions of the analysis of the flight of the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was conducted on the evaluation of telemetric information (TMI) obtained in the direct transmission and playback modes of the memory device in the zones of visibility of ground stations from the NRB "Fregat", and TMI, received on November 22-24, 2011 by X-band ground stations, are:

    1. On the analysis of spacecraft flight before the occurrence of an abnormal situation on the 1st and 2nd flights of flight (23:28:41 DMV November 8 - 01:10:28 DMV November 9, 2011)

    - On-board systems functioned on a regular basis.

    - There are no deviations from the implementation of the cyclogram.

    - The solar panels (SB) were opened, however, the panels were not monitored.

    2. On the analysis of spacecraft flight after the occurrence of an abnormal situation.

    - After the occurrence of an abnormal situation, the spacecraft switched to the "permanent solar orientation" mode (PSO) in accordance with the logic of the device.

    - During the period from 9 to 24 November on the SC supported energy balance.

    - Since November 24, the power balance violation began because the transmitter was not disconnected in the communication session.

    ...2.1. The following systems and aggregates of spacecraft were considered, the failure of which could cause the development of an abnormal situation (NSW):

    - marching propulsion system (MDU-F),

    - launch support system (POP),

    - The system of deployment of solar batteries (SB),

    - Stellar sensors (BOKZ-F),

    - free-of-charge inertial block (BIB),

    - Chinese microsatellite (CCM),

    - power supply system (SES),

    - on-board cable network (BCS),

    - on-board computer system (BVK),

    - on-board radio complex of the flight module (BRK PM).

    The analysis of possible failures of these systems and aggregates, carried out by the experts of the commission, showed (taking into account their condition and TMI) that by the time of the formation of the [abnormal situation], they could not have become its primary cause.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    ESA failed to communicate with the space probe in all of the five opportunities the agency had between 28 and 29 November. During those occasions the spacecraft did not comply with orders to fire the engines and raise its orbit. The Russian space agency then requested that ESA repeat the orders.[58]


https://www.universetoday.com/91386/canary-islands-antenna-being-modified-to-boost-signal-to-struggling-russian-mars-probe/
    Canary Islands Antenna Being Modified to Boost Signal to Struggling Russian Mars Probe

    30 Nov, 2011
    by David Warmflash

    ...Last week, ESA succeeded in communicating with Phobos-Grunt on two successive days after a feedhorn antenna was added to an antenna near Perth, Australia similar to the facility in Maspalomas. Although this enabled the downloading of spacecraft telemetry, attempts later in the week to make renewed contact failed. After no attempts were made over the weekend, commands aimed at getting the spacecraft to boost its orbit were sent yesterday, also from Perth, but tracking this morning revealed that the commands had not been executed.

    ...Although Phobos-Grunt was delivered into space nearly three weeks ago by a Zenit 2 rocket launch that appeared flawless, an upper stage rocket known as Fregat failed to ignite. This left the spacecraft in a low Earth orbit that improved as a result of the automated maneuvering, but that will decay by mid-January if the altitude is not boosted more significantly.

    ...Should this result in the spacecraft executing commands to climb to a higher orbit, further communication and diagnosis of spacecraft systems then would become much easier.


https://web.archive.org/web/20130329022128/https://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php/?id=2&nid=18647
    - By November 29, the reserves of AB and HIT PM were exhausted, the mode of "minimum voltage" in the SES - "Umin2" (presumably on November 27) had been carried on board earlier, the HIT PM depressurization took place, the consequences in the form of two fragments separated from the space vehicle, STRATCH (USA).


http://www.ibtimes.com.au/esa-ends-mission-support-russias-phobos-grunt-two-pg-related-objects-identified-1290412
    The U.S. Space Surveillance/US STRATCOM has identified two objects associated to the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, and both objects are rapidly decaying.

    The US STRATCOM said Object G and H are related to the spacecraft and not to its launch vehicle, according to Spaceflight101.com.

    According to tracking data, Object G appears to have re-entered the atmosphere, with its final orbital data indicating that it was in a 271 by 239 km orbit.

    Object H, on the other hand, is still in orbit but it is facing a rapid orbital decay and is currently in a 224 by 179 km orbit. However, space officials said it is headed for a re-entry into the atmosphere.


https://web.archive.org/web/20130329022128/https://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php/?id=2&nid=18647
    ...2.2. The reason for the occurrence of [abnormal situation] is the restart of two half-sets of the DVM22 BVK device (double "restart"), which were controlling the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft in this flight area, after which, according to the logic of the BKU operation, the scheduled flight schedule of the Fobos- and he switched to the mode of maintaining a constant solar orientation and waiting for commands from the Earth in the X-band communication, which was provided by the design solutions for the flight path. This scenario is confirmed by the orbit control data after the development of the [abnormal situation], as well as the conducted communications sessions with the help of domestic and foreign means of the ground control complex in the X-band.

    2.3. The most likely factor that could become the root cause of a double "restart" is the local impact of heavy charged particles (TLC) of outer space, which led to a malfunction in the RAM of the computational modules of the TsVM22 kits during the flight on the second turn of the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft.

    The RAM failure could be caused by the short-term failure of the ERI due to the effect of LFOs on the computational modules of the digital computer22, which contain two chips of the same type WS512K32V20G24M (the cells of the computational modules are located in a single housing parallel to each other). The impact led to a distortion of the program code and the activation of the "watchdog" timer, which caused the "restart" of both half-sets of the digital computer22. The model of such interaction of LUC with ECB is not regulated by normative and technical documents. The Commission considers it necessary to develop and implement in the RCP organizations normative and technical documents containing modern models of ionizing radiation from outer space and guidelines for their use.

    MVK considered other factors that could lead to a double "restart" of the digital computer22:

    - Electromagnetic interference in the IOO contours, which could lead to a short-term hardware failure and, as a result, malfunctions and non-execution of the cyclogram of the device's removal to the departure trajectory;

    - Failure in program execution of tasks: exceeding the allowable time interval for individual tasks, repeated at least twice in a row (tasks of logic, interprocessor exchange, traffic management (orientation and stabilization), march engine management);

    - software incorrectness of interaction of parallel computers (error in software).

    During the research in FSUE "NPO im. SA Lavochkin "at the complex stand in January 2012 in the task of controlling the orientation and stabilization, the possibility of a double" restart "of the set of digital computers22 was tested due to the effects of electromagnetic interference and changes in the conditions for program execution. These versions have not received experimental confirmation.

    Analysis of these factors, taking into account the results of NEO and additional studies, has shown that the occurrence of NSW on their basis is unlikely.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/controversy-surrounds-rus/
    Controversy Surrounds Russia's Claim that Cosmic Rays Caused Mars Mission Failure

    A report from Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, dismisses assertions that mismanagement plagued the Phobos-Grunt mission, but observers remain skeptical of that position

    By James Oberg

    ...ground tracking revealed a bizarre behavior pattern. The low elliptical orbit actually began rising, mainly at its perigee (low point). The rise was steady until, after 10 days, it abruptly stopped and began a natural decay. These unexpected changes made precise predictions of its future flight path more complicated, perhaps contributing to the inability of ground sites to point their signals with sufficient accuracy.

    The Russian report attributes this "perigee creep" to the propulsive effects of the orientation thrusters as they fired to keep the solar panels pointed at the sun. Western observers had suggested exactly this effect when the unexpected orbit changes were first recognized. They also attribute the end of the creep to have been caused by the exhaustion of attitude-control propellant, which the Russian report did not address.

    A few days after the end of the creep, ground sites finally established contact, but readable telemetry was never received. At that point, for reasons not described, the probe turned its main radio system on but somehow failed to turn it off at the end of one communication session. This power drain quickly depleted the batteries, according to the the reconstruction given in the report.

    Within a few days, some kind of explosive event shattered the pressurized avionics bay containing the computer, radio and batteries—ejecting small bits of debris observed on radar. The craft then lost attitude control and began tumbling and was irrevocably dead. Its orbit decayed more rapidly and hit the atmosphere eight weeks later.

    Yet this entire dramatic scenario seems based on a series of suppositions rather than actual telemetry.


https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20130329022128%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.roscosmos.ru%2Fmain.php%2F%3Fid%3D2%26nid%3D18647&edit-text=&act=url
    ...The general conclusions of the analysis of the flight of the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was conducted on the evaluation of telemetric information (TMI) obtained in the direct transmission and playback modes of the memory device in the zones of visibility of ground stations from the NRB "Fregat", and TMI, received on November 22-24, 2011 by X-band ground stations, are...


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/controversy-surrounds-rus/
    ...Rather than admitting to any management shortcomings, the report relies on an external reason for the failure—a cause that foreign space experts have grave reservations about.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
    The European Space Agency decided to end the efforts to contact the probe on 2 December 2011, with one analyst saying Fobos-Grunt appeared "dead in the water".[59] However, ESA made teams available to assist the Fobos-Grunt mission if there was a change in situation.[54] In spite of that Roscosmos stated their intention to continue to try to contact the space vehicle until it entered the atmosphere.[60]


https://www.universetoday.com/91646/not-giving-up-yet-esa-resumes-effort-to-communicate-with-phobos-grunt/
    Not Giving Up Yet: ESA Resumes Effort to Communicate with Phobos-Grunt

    7 Dec, 2011
    by David Warmflash

    Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is in no better position than it was a month ago, when it reached low Earth orbit on November 9 yet failed to ignite the upper stage engine that was to propel it to Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two small moons. Indeed, with an orbit measuring 204.823 kilometers at perigee (the low point) and 294.567 kilometers at apogee as of today, the spacecraft is well on its well to a fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere in early January if it cannot be rescued in the intervening time.

    ...Despite success in contacting Grunt and getting it to send telemetry two weeks ago using a modified antenna in Perth Australia, subsequent attempts to command the spacecraft to boost her orbit failed.

    Then last week, after modifying another antenna, this one in Maspalomas on the Canary Islands, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that efforts to track and communicate with the spacecraft would end. As a result, any remaining hope that the craft might at least be boosted to a more stable orbit to allow for diagnoses and eventual repair faded away.

    But, in response to requests from the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), ESA now has decided to renew tracking and communications efforts from the Maspalomas station. Located off of the northwest coast of Africa, Maspalomas is well-situated with respect to Phobos-Grunt’s course around Earth. Since fewer communication attempts have been made from Maspalomas as compared with Perth, ESA and Roscosmos may be thinking that not all potential tricks to get the geometry right have been exhausted. Thus, new attempts to hail the unpiloted science probe began on Monday and will continue through Friday, December 9th. Presumably, ESA would continue to support the mission beyond Friday, if anything happens suggesting that Phobos-Grunt has received the instructions and is capable of responding, even in part.

    ...Designed to land on the surface of Phobos, the Grunt spacecraft carries about 50 kilograms of scientific equipment built to make celestial and geophysical measurements, and to conduct mineralogical and chemical analysis of the regolith (crushed rock and dust) of the tiny moon. The chemical analysis that is to be conducted includes a search for organic matter, the building material for life. Studies to be conducted on the Phobosian surface potentially could elucidate the origins of Phobos and the other Martian moon, Deimos. Additionally, the presence of organic matter on Phobos would suggest that the surface of Mars itself contains organics.

    ...Although the window for a trip to Mars is about to close, should control over Phobos-Grunt be restored, it might be kept in a higher orbit for two years, or sent to an alternate destination, such as Earth’s own Moon, or an asteroid.


https://www.universetoday.com/91741/a-day-in-the-sun-will-it-make-a-difference-for-russias-phobos-grunt/
    A Day in the Sun: Will It Make a Difference for Russia’s Phobos-Grunt?

    13 Dec , 2011
    By David Warmflash

    It has been trapped in low Earth orbit for more than a month. So low is the orbit that it moves too fast to be contacted – unless controllers on the ground just happen to beam a signal at some unlikely angle. So short does its battery power last that it must be in sunlight while also in position to receive signals. Then, it must still have power to send telemetry back to the ground.

    Even with these obstacles, Russia’s Phobos- Grunt probe did manage to communicate with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) antenna in Perth, Australia twice a couple of weeks ago, indicating that some of its systems were functioning. But subsequent attempts at communication have failed, despite the addition of ESA’s Canary Islands antenna at Maspalomas to the worldwide effort to reestablish control over the spacecraft.

    Tracking of Grunt’s orbit has shown that its high point (apogee) and low point (perigee) continue to decrease, measuring about 289 kilometers and 203 kilometers in altitude, respectively, the last time I checked. Stories out of Russia in recent days describe how electrical cables found to be malfunctioning weeks before the launch were cut and connections re-soldered in a hurry to have the craft ready. Add to this the fact that the major sources on developments with the Grunt mission since its November 9 launch – Ria Novosti, the Russian Space Web, and ESA operations – all expect the craft to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in early January.

    Taking all of this into account, it seems unlikely that Phobos-Grunt will ever respond to a signal again and say, “privyet’, much less turn on its engines and warp out of orbit. But there is an opportunity coming, a period when the odds that are stacked against the spacecraft may improve just a little.

    Beginning Tuesday, December 13 at 17:00 universal time (UT) to Wednesday December 14, 23:00, Phobos-Grunt will be in sunlight throughout its entire orbit. It is not completely clear whether or not ESA will attempt to contact the probe during this period from Perth, or Maspalomas. Although attempts from Maspalomas were made throughout last week, the same attempts were scheduled to end on Friday, December 9. On the other hand, in a letter informing scientists participating in the mission that failure was the outcome, Phobos-Grunt science director, Lev Zelenyi, wrote: “Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence.” Thus, despite the fact that the Russian Grunt team now is focused on the issue of reentry, we should not be surprised if they ask ESA to make one more attempt on Tuesday.

    Will the greater than usual amount of sunlight allow the spacecraft’s communication system to work better than it usually does when it travels over tracking stations? Maybe yes, and maybe no. We should not get our hopes up that the craft will actually do anything but fall to Earth, and we’ve already discussed the possibility of the craft’s return capsule coming back in one piece.

    But let us allow Phobos-Grunt its day in the Sun.



https://www.universetoday.com/91766/russian-space-program-prepares-for-phobos-grunt-re-entry/
    Russian Space Program Prepares for Phobos-Grunt Re-Entry

    13 Dec , 2013
    by David Warmflash

    As last-ditch efforts to recover control of the unpiloted Phobos-Grunt spacecraft continue, officials, engineers, and scientists at the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) have shifted their focus to the issue of reentry.

    ...While efforts to hail Phobos-Grunt will continue until the craft actually begins a fiery descent in January, Roscosmos is moving forward on several unpiloted missions to explore Earth’s own Moon, beginning within the next 2-3 years.


https://www.universetoday.com/91832/russian-lunar-exploration-program-at-full-speed-despite-failure-of-mars-moon-probe/
    Russian Lunar Exploration Program at Full Speed, Despite Failure of Mars Moon Probe

    15 Dec , 2011
    by David Warmflash

    While the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) prepares for the pending destruction of its Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, an ambitious program focusing on lunar exploration is moving to center stage. Although the Soviet Union launched three successful lunar sample return missions, the last such probe was Luna-24, in 1976.

    ...Previously, I’ve used the term Luna-Grunt in reference to a re-purposed Phobos-Grunt, sent to orbit Earth’s own Moon, if control is restored but too late to send it to the Martian moon Phobos. But Grunt is the Russian word for “ground,” or “soil.” Just as Phobos-Grunt was designed to analyze and return Phobosian regolith (not actually soil, but crushed rock and dust on the surface of a celestial body), Russia’s Luna-Grunt program will study lunar regolith. Currently, two Luna-Grunt spacecraft are planned, each featuring an orbiter and a lander.

    ...While the lunar missions to be launched during the next half decade will be unpiloted, statements by various Russian scientists and cosmonauts in recent months suggest that Roscosmos is interested in Earth’s companion as a location for a lunar base, or even a colony .


https://www.universetoday.com/92147/phobo-grunt-predicted-to-fall-in-afghanistan-on-january-14/
    Phobos-Grunt Predicted to Fall in Afghanistan on January 14

    24 Dec , 2016
    by David Warmflash


    ...For a while, space commentators considered the possibility that Grunt might be sent on an alternate mission to Earth’s Moon or an asteroid, if control could be restored after the window for a launch to Mars and Phobos was lost. During the past few weeks, the European Space Agency (ESA) started and ended efforts to communicate with the spacecraft on several occasions, but succeeded only twice. Various scenarios were imagined in which aspects of the probe’s mission could be salvaged, despite the serious malfunction that prevented the craft from leaving Earth orbit. But at this point, the only direction for the spacecraft to go is down.



https://www.universetoday.com/94972/sam-nasas-attempt-to-repeat-vikings-search-for-martian-organics/
    SAM: NASA’s Attempt to Repeat Viking’s Search for Martian Organics

    3 May , 2012
    by David Warmflash

    After 36 years of debate, confusion, and failed attempts by other space agencies to answer a basic question, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is on its way to repeat the search for organic matter that eluded the two Viking probes.

    With 96 days left until landing, MSL will touch down at the Gale Crater this August. The rover, called Curiosity, will be the largest vehicle delivered to our neighboring planet thus far. Weighing in at 900 kg, Curiosity is nearly five times as large as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed eight years ago, and more than 1.5 times as large as each Viking lander that arrived on planet in 1976.

    Like the Vikings and Mars Exploration Rovers, Curiosity was conceived and launched, largely to gather information that may tell us whether the Red Planet harbors microbial life. Instrumentation launched for in situ analysis has been advancing steadily since the Viking era, yet each chapter in the story of the search for Martian life builds upon the previous ones.

    Though usually mentioned only briefly in the days when Spirit and Opportunity were making headlines, the twin Viking landers were amazing craft, not only for their time, but even for today. The instrument suite of each Viking lander included a suite of three biology experiments, instruments designed for the direct detection of microbes, should the regolith at either of the two Viking landing sites contain any. While subsequent landing craft have carried instruments designed to assess Mars’ potential for life, none since the Project Viking has been built to look for Martian life forms directly.

    According to Viking investigator Gilbert Levin, the Viking landers already discovered Martian life. Back in 1976-1977, Levin’s instrument, known as the Labeled Release (LR) experiment, yielded positive results at Chryse Planitia and Utopia Planitia, the two Viking landing sites. When treated with a solution containing small, organic chemicals labeled with radioactive carbon, regolith samples taken at the landing sites released a gas, indicated by an increase in radioactivity in the space above the sample.

    While Levin believes the gas is carbon dioxide resulting from the oxidation of the organic chemicals, it’s also conceivable that the chemicals were reduced to another gas, methane. Either way, since heating the samples to a temperature high enough to kill most of the microbes that we know on Earth prevented the gas release, the Viking science team concluded initially that the LR had detected life.

    Most of the science team, but not Levin, decided that the gas release in the LR must have resulted from a non-biological chemical reaction. This rethinking was due to variety of factors, but the most important of which was that the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) of each lander failed to detect organic matter in the samples. As the late Carl Sagan explained it on his television series, Cosmos, “If there is life on Mars, where are the dead bodies?”

    While most astrobiologists and planetary scientists do not agree with Levin that the results of his 36 year-old experiment constitute conclusive evidence for Martian life, there is a growing number of Mars scientists who are equivocal on the issue. According to Levin, Sagan moved into the equivocal category in 1996, after astrobiologist David McKay and colleagues published a paper in the journal Science describing fossilized life in meteorite ALH84001, one of a handful of meteorites known to be from Mars.

    Traveling within Curiosity’s enormous instrument package is a suite of machines called SAM, which stands for “Sample Analysis at Mars”. After all of these years, SAM represents NASA’s first attempt to repeat Viking’s search for Martian organics, but with more advanced technology.

    This is not to say that other attempts were not made during the intervening years. In 1996, the Russian Federal Space Agency launched a Mars-bound probe carrying not only organic chemistry equipment but an upgraded version of Levin’s experiment. Rather than treating regolith samples with a mixture of “right-handed” and “left-handed” forms of organic substrates (known in chemistry as racemic mixtures), the new LR would have treated some samples with a left-handed substrate (L-cysteine) and others with the substrate’s mirror image (D-cysteine).

    Had results been the same for L- and D-cysteine, a non-biological mechanism would have seemed all the more likely. However, if the active agent in the Martian regolith favored one compound at the expense of the other, this would indicate life. Even more intriguing: if the active agent favored D-cysteine, it would have suggested an origin of life on Mars separate from the origin of life on Earth, since terrestrial life forms use mostly left-handed amino acids. Such a result would suggest that life originates fairly easily, implying a cosmos teaming with living forms.

    But Russia’s Mars ’96 probe crashed in the Pacific Ocean shortly after liftoff. A few years later, the European Space Agency sent Beagle 2 to Mars, carrying an advanced organic detection package, but this probe too was lost.


 


https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/04/28/alone-not-hasnt-anyone-dropped-earth-visit/
    Are we alone? If not, why hasn’t anyone dropped by Earth for a visit?
    David Warmflash

    In the media, questions about astrobiology always devolve into a single issue: Are we alone? Are humans the only technological civilization that exists currently in the cosmos, or are we one of many? Are other worlds home to civilizations of intelligent life forms, or intelligent machines with biological ancestors?

    The discovery of thousands of planets around nearby stars in recent years has led astronomers to calculate a presence of 15 billion to 30 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, yet we haven't encountered any extraterrestrials (ETs).

    Those hard realities shine a spotlight on an old problem known as the Fermi Paradox, for Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who came up with it back in the 1950s.

    ...Being a nuclear physicist focused on technological applications of the science, Fermi must have realized the potential of nuclear energy to propel a spaceship over enormous distances. And so, in 1950, after hearing a lot of speculation on the likelihood of sentient life forms existing on other worlds, he calculated that they ought to have arrived long ago. Numerous ET species from various worlds should have arrived on Earth. But they weren't here and that was the paradox.

    ...The huge amount of potential homeworlds for ET civilizations brings the Fermi Paradox to center stage. University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank is now unpacking the question of "why aren't the ETs here yet?"

    ...Back in the 1960s, astronomer Frank Drake wrote up what came to be known as the Drake Equation.

    N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

    It's a series of variables that get multiplied by one another, starting with the rate of star formation in the galaxy (R*), which represents the number of stars. That's multiplied by the fraction of stars that have planets (fp) and by a factor representing the number of planets with environments that could support life per star that has planets (ne). This produces a number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy. That was hypothetical when Drake came up with the equation, because the only fractions that could be plugged in for fp and ne were mere guesses.

    Today, though, because of new planet discoveries, the first three variables of the Drake Equation are hard numbers. They'll probably be tweaked in the years to come with new planet search instruments in space, but that census result of 15 billion to 30 billion Earth-like planets makes the whole thing a lot less hypothetical than it used to be. The rest of variables represent the fraction of Earthlike worlds that actually develop life, the fraction of those worlds that develop intelligent, sentient life forms, the fraction of worlds with intelligent life whose intelligent beings develop technology and finally the longevity factor "L", how long that technology-bearing species endures.

    ...Surviving 'technological adolescence'

    That's where the longevity factor, L, comes in. If we use 30,000 as the number of worlds that harbored a civilization at any point over the last 10 billion years, and if we guess that a typical civilization lasts 10 million years before it collapses into a dark age or its species goes extinct, that would mean that we Earthlings are 1 of about 30 civilizations in our galaxy. We'd be the most primitive one, of course, since we literally just acquired the earliest technology for communicating over space.

    There's no good reason for making L 10 million years, except that it makes the math really easy, but you can raise the number from 10 million or drop it and see what it does to the odds of finding some other civilization. If we stay with the 10 million year value, it means that the home planet of the closest ET civilization is really far away, but over millions of years a species could colonize star system after star system in short hops. That should have brought somebody here by now, just as Fermi guessed, and a continuous colonization wave would very likely raise the life expectancy of the species far beyond 10 million years to the lifetime of the galaxy, or beyond.

    This consideration revives Frank’s suggestion that civilizations might not last long enough to colonize star system after star system, meaning that L is a very small number. But it doesn’t make sense that every civilization would not last. A certain number–a fraction that we have no way of knowing right now — must make it through the critical period that we’re living in right now. The late astronomer Carl Sagan called it “technological adolescence”. Either we’ll go extinct — by succumbing to a natural disaster that our technology is not advanced enough to stop (like an immense volcanic eruption), or by destroying ourselves with technology that we’re using irresponsibly (like making nuclear weapons) because our social development is too far behind our technology– or we’ll survive into an age of more advanced technology and greater wisdom.




https://web.archive.org/web/20151221133614/https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/07/22/a-rabbi-and-an-alien-walk-into-a-bar-what-happens-when-religious-leaders-meet-extraterrestrials/
    A rabbi and an alien walk into a bar: What happens when religious leaders meet extraterrestrials?

    David Warmflash

    *A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence…It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.*

    That famous quote comes from Carl Sagan in his article “The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, published in Smithsonian magazine, May, 1978. It caused quite a kerfuffle. In the 1997 film Contact, based on Sagan’s 1985 novel about humanity getting its first proof of an extraterrestrial civilization in the form of an interstellar radio transmission, one of the characters says this:

        *My coalition’s phone lines have been flooded with calls from concerned families, wondering if this message signifies the end of the world or the advent of the rapture. We feel that U.S. policy in this matter wants to be extremely conservative – if there’s any chance of danger or threat to our way of life perhaps the message and its contents should simply be disregarded.*

    Portrayed by actor Rob Lowe, the character is a social conservative political leader. The contrast with the enthusiastic scientist protagonist, Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, could be a good model for what might really happen if we do discover real evidence of an ET civilization during an era when our own civilization still looks something like it does today. Looking as it does today means having political and social groups that might welcome the news alongside other political and social groups that might rather not have confirmation that this little rock on which we live is not the only place in our galaxy that gave rise to sentient, technologically savvy beings — a galaxy containing billions of Earth-like planets, within a universe containing hundreds of billions of galaxies.

    Just considering the numbers should make anyone think that only extreme human arrogance, bordering on psychosis, could lead anyone to think seriously that we are the only creatures in the universe that got to this point, and that nobody else is ahead of us. But we’re isolated on our world, involved in our local problems, and, so far, nobody is talking to us.

    That perspective almost automatically brings up the topic of religion, and organized religion in particular, since the latter has set stories and explanations regarding how we got here and our place in the cosmos. Needless to say, Carl Sagan realized that the moment of first contact would put many aspects of society on a collision course with the future, but the religious component of society in particular will probably struggle with it, perhaps even put up resistance.

    ...Given the gravity of the likely religious reaction to a successful SETI, astronomy professor David Weintraub of Vanderbilt University has investigated organized religions for writings and other communications that might be clues of how they would react to a first contact. He consulted and otherwise checked with leaders of more than two dozen major religions and came up with some interesting trends that could serve as a clue. For instance, on simply believing in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials, the percentage of atheists saying yes is 55 percent.

    That seems low and suggests that even among atheists, 45 percent would be shocked to learn that we’re not alone.

    ...at least some elements of the world’s religions are ready, in their own minds at least, for the discovery of extraterrestrial beings. But that begs another question: Will the extraterrestrials be equally ready to deal with Earth’s religious leaders?


https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/04/28/alone-not-hasnt-anyone-dropped-earth-visit/
    Are we alone? If not, why hasn’t anyone dropped by Earth for a visit?
    David Warmflash

    ...If only a fraction of civilizations survive technological adolescence, the Fermi Paradox still holds. This, in turn, raises another possibility, one that is just as simple as the “we are alone” solution, but it’s a lot more appealing. ETs could be aware of us and avoiding us on purpose. Perhaps, they are waiting to initiate a first contact until they think we are ready.

    If ETs exist, why have they not made contact with us?

    Surely, you can think of many possible reasons why we are not ready, but if our behavior is shameful perhaps the ETs recall a time in their own history when they were just as bad and their existence hung in the balance. They could be waiting for us to end war and religion and create a planetary government, or they might prefer to avoid interacting with us until that they have to, because we’re about to discover something that will lead us to them.