"No Serious Problems"

NASA apparently released a statement today claiming that the ballistic re-entry of the Soyuz presented no serious problems and didn't put the life of the crew at risk. Their source? The Russian space agency, which NASA cited as being "not very concerned".

This is the wrong way to do a safety analysis, people. You're driving down the road and some yokel in a huge SUV (I like picking on huge SUVs) runs a red light and barely misses you. The incident is dismissed as irrelevant because Robbie Knievel, standing on the streetcorner, wasn't excited by the near miss.

Great.

I grant the validity of the proposition that one shouldn't over-react in the face of this incident. But to say that there was never any real risk because the Russians are not sweating is clearly ridiculous. The allegations are that the service block hung on to the DM until it separated from aerodynamic forces! I don't know about NASA, or the Russians, but that's pretty serious in my book, and I'd prefer for the agencies involved to speak to this specific alleged failure and not fob me off with BS like "Oh, well, they aren't concerned, so we aren't concerned."

These are, after all, the same institutions that had no problem with turning off the ranging radar during the Progress docking disaster...