Disaster! Russia is in BIG TROUBLE, NO launchpad for Soyuz Launch to ISS...

Disaster! Russia is in BIG TROUBLE, NO launchpad for Soyuz Launch to ISS...
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#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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0:00 intro
0:21 Cracks in Roscosmos
5:02 The Collapse Cascade
9:21 China’s Rocket Leap
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Disaster! Russia is in BIG TROUBLE, NO launchpad for Soyuz Launch to ISS...
Russia’s Soyuz launch pad collapsed just seconds after the rocket cleared the tower. And Roscosmos really dodged a bullet here, if that launch had been delayed even a bit, this could’ve turned into one of the darkest days in their spaceflight history. So what exactly happened? And what caused the whole structure to fail?
Let’s break it down in today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
Disaster! Russia is in BIG TROUBLE, NO launchpad for Soyuz Launch to ISS...
There was a time when Nasa could sprint full speed and still never catch up to Roscosmos. The Soviets were stacking up world-firsts like it was nothing, 1957, the first artificial satellite; 1961, the first human in space; 1965, Alexei Leonov becoming the first person to ever step outside a spacecraft.
But today? Those once-legendary milestones are starting to fade, and Roscosmos looks like it’s sliding downhill fast.
And a recent event really drove that point home. On November 27th, 2025, right on Thanksgiving, Russia pulled off a clean launch of the Soyuz MS-28 mission, sending three crew members to the ISS: two Roscosmos cosmonauts and Nasa astronaut Chris Williams. And once they docked, the whole ISS crew sat down for a surprisingly lavish holiday dinner, turkey, lobster, even a Russian-style cranberry sauce. Definitely a better spread than the microwave-reheated meals over on China’s Tiangong station.
The mission used the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, launched on a Soyuz-2.1a rocket from Site 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff was around 9:30 AM. After just two orbits around Earth, the spacecraft automatically docked with the ISS’s Rassvet module in a little over three hours.
Disaster! Russia is in BIG TROUBLE, NO launchpad for Soyuz Launch to ISS...
What impressed people wasn’t just the smooth docking, it was the fact that they did it using hardware built on technology nearly six decades old, and still managed to dock about half an hour faster than China’s rescue flight on November 25th using their brand-new Shenzhou-22 spacecraft.
But even with that impressive docking time, there’s one thing we can’t ignore: Russia is still relying on technology that’s almost six decades old. That includes the launch pad itself. Site 31 has been standing for about 64 years, a tough Soviet relic that’s handled more than 500 successful launches, but at this point, it’s undeniably ancient.
Russia has tried to move on. They’ve been building new pads at Vostochny since 2016 and developing the Angara rocket family to eventually break free from Baikonur. But so far, none of that has fully replaced this aging launch site.
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