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Amateur Rocket Launch a Failure; NASA Debuts Shuttle-cam

Posted by michael on from the jennicam-gets-upstaged dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "CNN has posted the story of the failure of the amateur rocket launch that was reported in a previous Slashdot story. 'The launch was spectacular and the rocket was performing as planned. However, the rocket experienced motor failure during the flight and the flight was terminated," said Eric Knight, co-leader of the CSXT mission.' NASA is planning to mount a camera on the external fuel tank and broadcast an October 2nd shuttle launch.

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Self-Destruct? by foolish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, it probably was.

    AFAIK, for flights such as these, even when the flight path has a low population index, you STILL need to have a "remote detonation" capability to keep it for veering off course and crashing into important things/people.

    With rockets, since the fuel is itself reactive/explosive, they can usually keep the explosives package fairly small and secure against false authorizations (your "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango).

    I'm more bummed that all the instrumentation was destroyed, so it's going to be *very* difficult for them to figure out why the motor barfed. I wonder what they were collecting from ground sensors... It would definitely be neat to see how their avionics package compares to say Carmack's http://www.armadilloaerospace.com lander...

  2. Re:nasa tv only by Niles_Stonne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I submitted the article (yeah, little bit of bitterness), I added the following link:

    Web Sources for NASA TV, or http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ntvweb.html for the link-fearing.

    --
    Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
  3. So you're saying... by Fortyseven · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...nobody can be as good as NASA therefore nobody but NASA should be allowed to launch. But someone can't get as good as NASA because they can't launch...because they aren't as good as NASA...

    Great plan, Mr. Heller, but even NASA had to start fresh at one point, and even today they fuck up now and then.

    A far better plan would be to assign a voluntary 'chaperone' in the form of an experienced NASA representive work with these people and look things over until he's certain they'd be fine on their own.

    --
    BytesTemplar.com
  4. PR for NASA... by singularity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Strapping a camera for a shuttle launch is not going to cost NASA too much in the grand scheme of things.

    For an agency that is in desperate need of government funding, however, I think it is a wonderful idea.

    Little things like the camera will only get people interested in space and science and bring public support for NASA.

    I cannot wait to see the video. The animation was great as it was.

    Now I just need to find a friend with a true satellite dish. A web-cast days later will not be the same.

    --
    - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman