What developers
can learn from
Russian space failures
Andrey Sitnik, Evil Martians

@sitnikcode
The company behind PostCSS and Autoprefixer


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Space industry sometimes looks like IT


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Every country makes mistakes
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Story 1


1968
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New Soviet spaceship, Soyuz
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Like
DHTML
jQuery
React
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Soyuz 2 & Soyuz 3 docking test
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Pilots

Soviet Robot (Soyuz 2)

Georgy Beregovoy (Soyuz 3)
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Docking

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Error

ERROR
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Next try

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Error again

ERROR
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Landing without success

Why?
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The spaceship was upside down

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What did they do with him?

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Changed docking instructions
- Dock only on the solar side of the orbit
- Give time for acclimatization
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Lesson 1
There is no such thing as stupid users.
There is only bad UI.
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Story 2

1969

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Start in Soyuz 4, land in Soyuz 5

Boris Volynov
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Boris Volynov should land alone

Boris Volynov
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Soyuz spaceship

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Separation before landing

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Soyuz 5 separation

Thermal shield
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Hatch was in the front during re-entry

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What will you do?
Blame USSR
Blame engineers
Pray to God
He recorded every detail of separation

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Luckily, second connection was melted

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He landed successfully


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Lesson 2
Always report about issues.
Even if it was a documentation issue.
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Story 3

1997

Mir space station
Mir was the first modular space station
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Every module is an independent spaceship




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Like multicellular organism

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Modules and ships dock automatically
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Mir crew

Vasili Tsibliyev
Aleksandr Lazutkin
Michael Foale
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Automatic docking system was made in Ukraine


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Remote control to replace Ukranian system

Commands
Video


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The result
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The result



Decompression


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Not the best day
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Like

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Module was decompressed until Mir deorbit

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Lesson 3
Let the Robots do the work.
Robots must suffer.
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Contacts
What developers can learn from Russian space program failures
By Andrey Sitnik
What developers can learn from Russian space program failures
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