Slashdot Mirror
Amateur Rocket Launch a Failure; NASA Debuts Shuttle-cam
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.
"It won't be for at least another year. We're going to regroup and take a break, but people haven't heard the last from us," CSXT founder Ky Michaelson said.
:)
I feel bad for them, but he sounds like he should be sitting in a large black leather chair penting his fingers or petting a persian cat while saying this
why run from Vincenzo?
I suppose, then, that it will be a while before they can beat the Russians by offering space rides for the low, low price of $19,999,999.95.
(yeah yeah karma-- but I just couldn't resist)
I place the blame squarely upon tight pants.
Allow me to be the first to say:
SONOFABITCH!!
GODDAMMIT!!
fuck
crap
*sigh*
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
Is that what they call 'just letting the fucking thing crash into the ground' nowadays?
motor failure during the flight and the flight was terminated,
:)
I think it's pretty cool if this was some sort of self-destruct mechanism. The article doesn't really say if it self-destructed by itself, or if it was triggered from the ground.
I just wonder if they had to recite "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango" to activate it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
All I have to say is that I cannot wait for the NASA Shuttle Video on the 2nd. I think its the little things like this that will help to revive popular interest in the space program.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Just look at the original proposal and plans, and look what they've cut it back to. All it is a big jobs project. And the Space Shuttle technology is so old they are having to scrounge eBay for old computer parts.
I'm sorry, but it just makes me sick. And we actually think NASA some day will send someone to Mars. Yeah right. We need someone to come along and either replace NASA entirely, or at the very least scare them into cutting back the beaurocracy and actually performing again.
I love how they say the rocket test was terminated, sort of implying that the rocket packed its bags and went home to collect unemployment when in reality it was a burning metal tube of death, screaming through the atmosphere at the speed of sound looking for some poor schmuck to land on.
Can we set up a fund to buy one-way tickets
to the Moon for the Cheney-Rumsfeld dictatorship
currently residing in the:
The White House?
How "secret" can this location be if there's a picture of the place right at the beggining of the article?
John! When is Armadillo Aerospace going to show these n00bs how it's done? Screw Doom 3, get your ass to Mars!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That's why you launch these things from remote locations! As for NASA, you do remember the Metric-English Standard conversion debacle that resulted in the crashing of a orbital mars probe, don't you?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Don't feed the trolls. :)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I myself am wondering how these people are funded. I imaging that building a 511lb space-capable (supposedly, not today though) rocket probably takes quite a fair bit of money
Would also be interesting to know how they got rocket fuel. I'd assume that NASA or somebody is contributing (is it still amature if they do), as this stuff isn't really available at your nearest Esso station, although at one time Jet fuel was more publicly available.
Preparing funds for next year: "Sir, have you got any bottles for recycling?" - phorm
I mean, it's not rocket science...oh, wait...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Don't believe that hoax excuse. Martians shot down Mars Climate Orbiter. It's on a news website. They couldn't print it if it wasn't true!
How ya like dat?
From the picture it appears that they launched not far from where Black Rock City was a few short weeks ago.
sulli
RTFJ.
While I realize that rocket science is ... rocket science, I still wonder if anyone else finds the raft of unsuccessful launches by the non-majors to be suspicious. That perhaps one or more of the successful launchers, wanting to protect their market, defend the upper atmosphere, hide something or all of the above, would take some direct action to ensure failure.
Pretty much the same thing that would happen if an aged driver had a heart attack and crashed his car into a Department of Motor Vehicles service facility.
Or if a restaurant exploded because of a faulty natural gas valve.
Or if an airliner had a mechanical problem that caused it to crash into a suburban neighborhood.
Or if a cosmetic medical device caused unforseen side effects later on.
Liability insurance, my man. Liability insurance.
Guess who doesn't have to have it: NASA
Guess who doesn't have to pay if they fuck up: NASA
Guess who picks up the tab if they do: you and me
Edith Keeler Must Die
The Darwin Awards Club is calling it a "promising success".
:-)
Motto: "To boldly die like no man has died before"
Table-ized A.I.
That's exactly why they do this in the black rock desert. The playa is the main part, and is 27 miles long, and 12 miles wide of flat dry lake bed that's completely baren. It's nearly surrounded by mountains. There's no buildings to hit for quite a distance. The area surrounding it is very sparsely populated. I guess there's a small chance a rocket would hit a building on re-entry. I wouldn't know how to calculate it, but given the large baren area it has to be almost nill.
AccountKiller
From the article, it looks like this is going to be nasa tv only. Does anyone want to record/webcast this for those of us w/o all the extra channels?
...open source software is bound to fail and we should all use Microsoft software since they employ some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world and I would not trust anyone else to be writing operating systems to control my servers.
You do understand that there are strict limitations to where/when/how these tests are performed? That you need literally TONS of FAA waivers, claims, insurance, etc. and sometimes years of buck-passing before the larger rockets can even get an attempt at a launch date?
Do you think that being at NASA is the only way people can learn about modern aerospace engineering, that somehow they are magically endowed with special knowledge that hasn't been in the public domain for at least 50 years?
And the ESA, RSA, the Australians, the Indian space ministry and the Chinese seem to all be doing pretty good jobs as well... not to mention the countless other enthusiasts and engineers who've been studying rockets for a few decades.
"Our experiment to study the smoke and debri dissapation patterns of atmospheric explosions has been a complete success!"
Table-ized A.I.
Nasa employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world and I would not trust anyone else to be launching rockets in to the sky. I believe NASA should have a monopoly on space travel as they are the only ones who seem to get it right.
Oh? Feet != Meters
Argh!
And I say 2400 mph is the average speed, 3205 the claimed max speed.
Argh! You're right. Keyboard in fast forward, brain in reverse. I forgot the rather major fact that, at maximum altitude, the speed is zero. (otherwise, it wouldn't be maximum altitude!). Sorry; didn't mean it as a troll. And, yes, I was literally a rocket scientist (scary!)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
To accomplish something major like this setbacks (sometimes expensive) are inevitable.
I won't even mention the Polar Lander. A fucking faliure to convert to metric is not excusable!
NASA deserves what it gets. Give me amateur rocketry, because NASA couldn't do it to save their asses.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
...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
Neat trick, considering he died in 1963.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Several things:
In short, there's not enough information here to do the proper math. Your "simple" math is just that -- "simple", and not applicable.
They havnt made it to space yet, but at least their rockets dont explode. Check out this amatuer rocket effort. They have some great videos from outside of their LV1 rocket. PSAS
Quitters never win, Winners never quit, But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
I'm impressed, since JFK was killed Nov 22, 1963! I remember that day well - I was in high school at the time.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I sure hope you mean 1960, and not 1964. Wasn't Kennedy assassinated in 1963?
CyberDave
Nasa employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world ...
That's the same bunch who screwed up metric --> english conversion and crashed a martian lander, right?
Boeing employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world....
Thats the same bunch who had a hydraulic system fail and a plane crashed right?
NASA has launched more missions than anybody else, and they have had more successful missions that any body else. They have also had more failures than anyone else, but thats thanks to a little thing called the law of averages.
Face it, NASA has been sending things in the sky for 40 straight years now. In all that time, they landed on the moon, helped fly four craft to the farthest reaches of the solar system, landed 3 successful missions on Mars, and have helped run two successful space stations.
All this, with only 7 astronauts lost. How many people do you spposed died in the first 40 years of aviation? How about the first 40 years of automobiles?
So don't give me any of this "NASA can't even even get metric conversion right" crap. For the last four decades, NASA has regularly pulled off shit that other countries only dream of.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
I wonder if this has any affect on Rocket Guy's, AKA Brian Walker, thinking... Bad things can happen.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
When people as get as old as you, it's common for them to forget dates. Don't worry too much about it. Have your grandchildren put you in a home where you can longer interject your log^H^H^H misconceptions into intelligent conversation.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I remember seeing a videoclip from an external camera launch of a rocket into space. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen on TV. Anyone else remeber this? Maybe someone could point to a link containing the video.
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Ah, yes, it performed according to plan just like my motherboard's IDE controller when it died on me and I had to get a new motherboard, and turn this one into a network computer. Yup, all according to plan...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
If you know all variables and I'm sure NASA does than it's fairly simply Physics. Since the speed of the rocket goes no where towards c, you can keep using Newtonian Mechanics. I remember an exercise in my Physics book where we had to calculate where stages 1,2,3 of a rocket would fall.
Hey aardvark...
It appears that young people like you don't read too well. Us old folks screwed up the school systems, ya know.
I had the date right: Nov 22, 1963. The original poster was wrong.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Still, a remarkably good safety record.
You know, the one smoking a cigarette. Is he even supposed to be here?
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Um... That's why they launched, or attempted to launch it in the middle of a dry lake bed in the desert.
The rocket is designed to travel 50 or 60 miles straight up (more or less). Even if it went haywire and flew 60 mile horizontally, it would probably just smash into a cactus. I mean, how many people live within 60 miles of a dry lake bed?
-dc
but three died in Apollo 1 [nasa.gov]
Doh - forgot about that one. Thanks.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
I helped out at this launch attempt as part of the recovery team and I can tell you the following:
Amateur rocketry, like all rocketry, is used to failure
If you've met or heard of Ky, you'd realize that he has had plenty of successes and failures to deal with. And Ky is just the CEO of sorts to what amounts to a massively talented technical team. Having gotten the rocket off the ground was an accomplishment itself; the FAA puts enormous safety restrictions on the launch, of which very few are satisfied at any given moment.
The failure itself wasn't that dangerous either. The rocket did not explode like a fireball. It just made a sort of "pop" sound and broke into pieces. The selection of the launch site has a lot to do with ensuring that such pieces don't come down and harm anyone.
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
Think of the extend of the powers an agency had to have to erase so many History records in order to have him officially delivering them those same powers an year after he was killed.
But in general, I know(*) the hardships Ky had to go thru to get all the numerous permits he needed to get to launch, and it's a crying shame that this kind of thing is so hard to do. And in America of all places. It's just weird that an amateur rocketeer, doing cool, new things, need to demonstrate having taken so many safety measures, when any shmoe can drive a car or fly an aircraft which is way more (potentially) destructive with impunity.
Now, I can certainly see that the FAA (or whomever) may want to limit "any yahoo" do to this, but that's just not the case here. Ky and many other serious amateurs have been doing this for a long time, and they've done a pretty good job. The bar is just at the wrong level.
Damn shame it failed, good luck next time, Ky!
(*) Not really, but I've heard him talk about it over a couple of beers, and it sounded pretty bad.
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
> NASA has launched more missions than anybody else
NASA has launched more manned missions than anybody else, but the Russians have launched nearly TEN TIMES as many space mission.
This is when someone adds "Yeah they had to, because their electronics suck, so they need to replace their sats more often", but that doesn't change the point about launches.
John Carmack
Darn, happened to moderate this "troll" by mistake. So I post to erase it.
But thank goodness they rescued the pussy
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Well obviously we need to outlaw cars, restaurants, airliners, and medical devices.
not collecting stamps is a hobby
Yes! I finnaly completed my collection! I don't have ANY of them!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Feet != Meters
Well duhhh! Everyone knows a meter equals a yard, not a foot!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Allow me to be the first to say:
SONOFABITCH!!
GODDAMMIT!!
fuck
crap
*sigh*
I believe those terms were also used by American engineers working on the post-Sputnik failures.
And I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Wright brothers made the same comments pre-Kitty Hawk.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The number I saw quoted was $150k, not $250k.
John Carmack
That's why they do this a gazillion miles out in the salt flats. The rocket was expected to fly to a height of 60 miles. If it was aimed incorrectly the rocket would spend much more time in lower (denser) air and would presumably have a reduced lateral range.
Nasa employs some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world and I would not trust anyone else to be launching rockets in to the sky.
NASA didn't start out with experience-- they gained it along the way. Most of NASA's early "rocket scientists" were Avro Aerospace employees who fled Canada in disgust after we canned the Arrow program. These guys brought lots of experience, but practically none of it directly applicable to the task of putting a man on the moon.
I believe NASA should have a monopoly on space travel as they are the only ones who seem to get it right.
Puh-lease. NASA's record is hardly stellar. They have had more success than others only because they've had more attempts. If you lift up the corner of the carpet you'll see lots of dirt under there...
Do you even know what the "unexcusable" mistake was?
The problem with Mars Polar Lander occured because Lockheed Martin send a file containing a table of information to NASA in which, basically, the units weren't labeled. (This is unfortunately actually not a rare practice among programmers, because handling units in computer codes is usually a pain in the ass.) Lockheed used imperial units, and someone at NASA assumed they were in metric.
The problem wasn't that someone at NASA was too dumb to convert between pounds and newtons. The problem was that someone at Lockheed didn't appropriately label units, and someone else made an incorrect assumption about what the units were.
The same thing could have happened if Lockheed had listed the forces in the file in milli-newtons, and the guy at NASA assumed in was in newtons. The use of Imperial unots was not the problem.
The miscalculation was by a very small amount. It couldn't be detected until the spacecraft was deep within Mar's gravity well. It was too late to correect for.
The deep reason for the problem, though, was severe underfunding. The project did not have enough people to do proper testing, and corners got cut. The level of testing is much better for the rovers flying to Mars next year.
I've always wondered this:
Why drop the tank? I know it's empty but imagine leaving the external tank connected to the shuttle. Dock the shuttle to the ISS. Send the shuttle crew home on a fre Soiuze(sp?) return vehicles.
Using the next few shuttle missions and dedicated American and Russian supply rockets, re-fuel the external tank on the docked shuttle with hydrogen and oxygen.
During this refuel, resupply stage a dedicated, unstaffed rocket is launched with a lunar lander module. The module is sent in to lunar orbit. The module would be launched with minimal fuel to get it to the moon and in orbit.
Finally, with one last shuttle mission load the stored shuttle with the space hab unit (not used much recently). Install a crew and send the shuttle to the moon for an extended stay. They meet up with the lander module, dock and fuel the module from the external tank. Then send down 3-4 people. to rove the moon. On return, the lander is left in lunar orbit, again fuel-less. The crew return to the ISS.
If they could get three people there for a two weeks or so with those small Apollo capsules, imagine what kind of crew we could send like this, and the science they could do. This mission idea also extends the ISS in to being the first interplanetary space dock (well, sort of).
We could then have two sets of on-going shuttle missions: One set from Earth to ISS. One set from ISS to the Moon.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Gives the expression "Actually, it IS rocket science" some added meaning. ...or not, depending on how sarcastic you are.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the
manager retained his job.
The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward."
The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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