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I would not be surprised if the astronauts go into a launch fully expecting a malfunction, even though the soyuz hasn't had a failure since 1983 if wikipedia is to be believed.

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The reason astronauts are trained so much is so that they know what to do in case of equipment malfunction. So, yes, they all go into launches hoping that everything will work, but being ready when it doesn't.

All that training in fluent, technical Russian, as the manuals haven't been translated.

The spaceship wasn't on a launch which involved failure, since 1983. Soyuz rocket fails once every few years. Just the crewed launched were lucky (and also crewed rockets are checked better + in many cases, older, lower performance, but better tested AND downrated for increased reliability, mods were used).

For example, Progress ship (very close in design to Soyuz ship, unmanned ship to deliver supplies, not recoverable) failed less than 2 years ago due to launcher failure.

Crewed rockets are Soyuz-FG, other rockets used to be Soyuz-U, then Soyuz-2, variations Soyuz-2.1a and Soyuz-2.1b . Those are slightly different rockets - mainly engines of first stage (four booster parts) are different (if I'm not mistaken) and 3rd stage is different.

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