Slashdot Mirror
Uprated "10-ton" Ariane 5 Fails
Soft writes "The latest version of the European Ariane 5 booster ("ESC-A") has failed on its first launch. Liftoff was good up to booster separation but the core stage shut down one minute afterwards or so. The rocket was supposed to lift ten metric tons (22,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit, versus 6.7 for the previous Ariane 5G (and 5 and 5.3 for the latest Atlas 5 and Delta 4). Arianespace planned to retire its other launchers (Ariane 4, Ariane 5G) in favor of Ariane 5 ESC-A. Next launch, of space probe Rosetta, was due in mid-January."
Not like the good old capitalist USA!
Oh wait, all our space stuff is run by the government? Uh, nevermind.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Aliens. TOo many rocket launch failures. They probably watched Taken and decided that we are all too stupid to go into space.
The stars are not for man.
Just be thankful it's not a NASA failure.
"I swear sir, it was a calculation error."
I consider this good news--a nation with billions of dollars invested in a project get the same results as some amatuer projects : kerplop. Gives me hope that non institutionalized entities can make it to space despite the negative publicity they get because of the trial and error process.
Can't say that they shouldn't be in space when some one this big fouls up too.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Shouldn't they say megagrams?
I have been pwned because my
Hey, why can't they get this right? It isn't rocket sci- ...oh, never mind.
When the very first Ariane 5 rocket launched, it blew up on the pad, taking with it, the (uninsured) Cluster probe. The new and improved Ariane really isn't....
...or did anyone else think, based on the title of this story, that this was another cancelled North American release of an Anime title?
It doesn't seem to be so super to me.
Should be upDated.
If blowing up is good for upping a reliabilty rating, they need to reconsider their metrics.
I think it's good that they're actually testing these things out. People make mistakes, they learn from them, and then progress in made.
"He speculated the mission might have to risk a flight rather than see years of research and millions of euros go to waste."
Kudos to them for keeping at it, at least. Too many space missions/projects are canned after a few failures. If we're going to get ANYWHERE in space in the next 100 years, we need more of this persistance. Take some risks, see what happens.
(Admittedly, I don't know how wise it would be to scrap it now and tell the gov't you just wasted a zillion bucks, but still.)
The Russian's didn't get Astra 1K into proper orbit and it's now fish food in the south Pacific, not to be left behind Eutelsat have now got Hotbird 7 fish food in the Atlantic, less than 24 hours later! However, the rest of the latter fleet are only 5-6 years old whilst Astra are still running satellites dating from the late 80's!
umm, the Challenger disaster or the Apollo crisis anyone?
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
When the recent Rusian launch failed it was a 'Huge Faliure', 'A Terrible Blow'. etc.. Admitedly it was a big sattelite, but the Russian's success rate in space is better than anyones. This makes the ESA look pretty stupid.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
to see rockets fail :(
There were two satellites on board, a Hotbird TM7 spacecraft, which would have served TV and music. It was supposed to replace Hotbird 3 at 13.0EL, though now that obviouosly wont happen.
Also the Stentor spacecraft was on board, this satellite was equiped with six Ku transponders, and was destined for 11.0WL.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
space junk no longer refers to articles that make it into space - it now includes failed rockets that are junk
Of course they will, those socialists over at Eutelsat went and sucessfully launched two other satellites on the maiden voyage of Lockheed's Atlas V and another on the maiden voyage of Boeing's Delta IV, and now another bird on the maiden voyage of Ariane 5+... fuck, do you see a trend emerging? That's right, go with a contractor that has 70% of its business with the US Govt, they generally don't appreciate their critical spy satellites exploding.
So the Europeans need more government backed spy satellites! And when companies are majorly backed by government coffers, it's called? See, you're being too harsh.
That's the fifth failure in 14 launches for them and it comes at the same time Russia is stating it can't fulfill all of it's missions to the ISS. Or is it that the Russian missions won't fulfill the ISS?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
He was a great speaker, his lecture was actually really funny in places. He joked about how rockets, by nature, tend to explode (just look at the early Chinese rockets centuries ago), so this one was really just fulfilling its mission prematurely. My favorite line was something like:
The first Ariane 5 was apparently just a quick job mostly made of stripped Ariane 4 parts and poorly designed software. It was used a lot in an old Computers, Ethics, and Social Values text as well as a Software Engineering one, each time as an example of what not to do. The way the texts described its failures and the failure of the process behind its design, Im suprised ANY of the later revisions worked at all.
Am I missing something here? I mean, we managed to send a bunch of guys over to the moon over 30 years ago with the combined processing power of today's toasters, yet now we have a 33% failure rate on the latest technology, computer designed craft and all that experience?! What are they using cheap taiwanese chipsets and Fujitsu hard drives in these things or something?
/. just hard an article about modern consumer goods being unreliable when compared to items from 5 years ago. Looks like the space agencies are following the same path...
Ironic that
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
From:i ndex.ht ml ......"
- 02s.html ......"
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/ariane/v157/
".... Arianespace has scheduled a news conference for 1300 GMT (8 a.m. EST) Thursday to provide information on the mishap.
So we get more details tomorrow.
From:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers
".... Wednesday's flop could jeopardize Arianespace's dominant position on the commercial satellites market. The Ariane 5-ESCA is the European consortium's latest weapon in its battle with Boeing and Lockheed Martin of the United States for domination of the world satellite launch market.
It appears the Ariane 5 has proven to be one troubled rocket. It appears the US companies (Lockheed-Martin and Boeing) have gotten on track again with their new redesigned Atlas and Delta launchers. Actually, I think it is fun to some kind of space race again, even if it is just to orbit.
Sounds like they're using Emacs (ESC-A in Emacs does the same thing as the HOME key does: beginning of line).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
No, not all our "space stuff" is government, such as Pegasus, and most of the projects are run by contractors. NASA just picks the worng, er, right programs to fund. Someone quipped that while most agencies have a public relations dept., NASA is a public relations dept. that happens to have an agency. In other words, politics.
It should be noted that our arms race gave a huge boost (ha-ha) to the space program that came as a very heavy price. Yes, I'm glad we got some peaceful dividends from ICBM work, but this could have been achieved more cheaply, as with the Ariane.
I wouldn't be too quick to pick a winner by political system or nationality. The Ariane is quite the success story, and now the Russians are picking up some significant American contracts with their wonderfully reliable booster, and it looks like the Chinese will in time get it together. The overall payload delivery system will ultimately be quite international -- as any non-jingoistic capitalist would want it to be, competition will spur innovation and lower price. Also, as a peacenik I would be delighted to see everyone preoccupied with getting stuff into orbit and leaving it there, not dropping it on someone else.
That said -- I will admit feeling a little twinge each time the American space program shrinks one little bit more. Living here, we all have it as just a bit of our pride, silly or not. Same for passenger jets.
I'm sure she just has a Gland problem. It's not Ariane's fault she's that heavy.
;)
hrm.. maybe I should read the post.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
The only time the French makes something that doesn't suck is when they make vacuum cleaners.
nah, it just doesn't sound right.
Repeal the DMCA!
lynx test
... was due to re-used software code from the Ariane 4 program, except that some values that the soft was supposed to handle were WAY bigger than during the (near perfect, by the way) Ariane 4 program. It was a plain overflow issue... The worst comes: the issue was known and documented, but somehow forgot during the upgrade from V4 to V5...
;))
Anyway, it's pretty sad (AND NOT DUE TO THE USE OF THE METRIC SYSTEM, for you US fellows
System.out.println("coucou");
Alright, name a european country (other than Russia) that even had the balls to try to put a man in space.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Hey... this thing exploded after 3 minutes, if we had metric time then we wouldn't have these fscking problems! It would have exploded after 1.8 metric minutes instead!
Okay, so the 10 ton aryan guy was the one who was, like, secretly having an affair with his father's gay lover right?
I mean I didn't look at the article or anything but I assume we're talking about the same thing right?
I think it's nice to see the French actually persuing this even after repeated failures. Most people would just surrender like a scared frenchman... oh wait...
In europe, most of the major aerospace companies are actually government owned, and there arent very many of them as a result.
-
France.
Should that not be Ariane Ctrl-Alt-Del?
There have been a number of people from European countries that have been on board of MIR or manned other space missions.
From the ESA (European Space Agency) web site:
The European Space Agency began its manned flight programme with Spacelab, providing the opportunity for the selection of the first ESA Astronauts in 1978. The three first astronauts selected were the German Ulf Merbold, the Dutch Wubbo Ockels and the Swiss Claude Nicollier. (Original)
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Humm... do you really know what you are talking about? I think you are just expressing what people whose interest is money thinks. Quiet franckly not everyone is money driven. Life show me that there is no such things as one size fits all. I think your comments do have so truth in it but are not relevant to the current failure of Ariane. If you are a little bit involved in any space related programs (I am am involved with several NASA projects) you will learn that even though we have done a lot of progress in this area since the program started, we are still like infants experimenting. It is true for both the US and Europe and any failure should remind us how much will still have accomplish and how much we already did accomplish.
What is the difference between the European space program and an old man?
The old man can maintain an erection with the aid of prescription drugs!
- A.P. (SLASHFUNNY post of the day)
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Related to this story.
Actually, all of our (American) unmanned rockets are launched on Lockheed and Boeing vehicles. The government owns the launch sites but I seem to recall recently that even that has changed with one of the pads at KSC being purchased by someone. The space shuttle is maintained by a Boeing/Lockheed conglomerate under contract with NASA. And many of our space probes are built at least jointly in cooperation with industry. NASA is the beurocracy (don't mean that negatively) who pays for and manages these programs.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
You can tell it's a European rocket. Just look at the thing - it's so suave and italian-looking. The Europeans may not know how to build a working rocket, but they sure are purty...
The Canadian Space Agency is just as bad, if not worse.
I was really excited when I got employed by them a few years back, and I have some great memories, but I just cannot work for a organization whose largest department is "communications" or more correctly "stickers, posters, and advertising."
The most aggravating thing about the space agency I found while I was working for them was the fact that they heralded every little success they've had and didn't pay attention to the people who were actually accomplishing work and doing stuff of use.
The public doesn't like experiments as much as giant big useless toys that the engineers send to space. It was quite sad really. That's why I left after a short while.
I may one day go back (or go work for the Canadian Arrow, if they get anywhere), but I just remember how disappointed I was when my illusion of the space agency was shattered by the realization of how much of that space agency goes towards advertising and promotion of itself.
~ kjrose
Maybe they should get together with the russians, after all, the russians appear to have some assets coming available soon.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think you are a fool, but what's my opinion compared to that of thousands of others.
Its like the old joke...
In heaven....
The French are the chefs....
The Germans are the engineers...
The British are the policemen...
The Italians are the lovers...
And the Swiss organize everything.
In hell...
The British are the chefs...
The French are the engineers...
The Germans are the policemen...
The Swiss are the lovers...
And the Italians organize everything.
(BTW, this was a french made rocket)
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
for the plan I was hatching on how to finally dispose of my junker 1972 Winnebago...
They probably knew about the bug, but by that time their 35 hour work week was up, so they clocked out and went home.
I guess its like a well run race, to where you really don't have enough energy left to sprint... oh sure you try but the amount of effort you think you are putting forth doesn't exactly give the results it would if, say... you were starting off anew in the race.
Because the French are useless at most things. You want examples? Minitel, LeCar, colonialism, resistance and socialism. What are they good at? Racism and fascism. Spineless frogs. And to those Francophones who disagree with me.... nique te mar.
Kourou is to Kennedy as Toulouse is to Houston
Everyone writing software for a living should read the Ariane 5 Failure Report: Ariane5.html
and the description of the Mars Pathfinder "reset" problem: pathfinder.html
Another good study to read covers the loss of the Mars Polar Lander: marsreports.html
10,000 lbs of pelvis thrust
As you said, NASA pays and manages the programs. That's socialism in its truest sense. Of course, there's an "idealist" form of socialism, where the government takes from the rich and gives to the poor. And there's the "American" sort of socialism, where the government takes from the taxpayers and gives to the corporations...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Rockets Blow up You!!!
Why is everything on Slashdot old news? Real cutting edge guys...everyone here is about 2 days behind the power curve.
You forgot to mention Orbital Science's Pegasus.
I mean... all of us here at /. could probably do a better could, er, code, review than whoever did that one.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
And in hell, the Soviet Russians would be comedians.
Actually, in rel life Russians have a better sense of human than any of the above-mentioned countries.
that's because they don't base their technology on the Open Source model.
;)
Otherwise, they would have taken benefit of the past experiences
Can't stand, but Ariane-5 just reminds me the Russian Energia rocket. Same silhouette... and Both have LH2 core stage :) ...
fscking brainfarts.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star...
...not get hit with an Ariane, tonite.
How a wonder what you are...
Wish I may...
Wish I might...
History says that you should never put your satellite on the first launch of a new launch vehicle, or the first launch of a substantially modified launch vehicle. The odds are that your satellite will need an underwater tracking beacon.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
my state's (Oklahoma) spaceport project.
Let this serve as a lesson to you; three or four of us rednecks are work more successfully than the entire Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications engineering team. Heck, we've been throwing tons of crap up into space for years, albeit not 10 tons at once.
As far as space programs go, Oklahoma says:
Hey france, come get some!
(I, of course, know I am wrong.)
No offense, but I would have been disillusioned the moment I found out Canada had a space agency.
What exactly is thier mission, aside from the aforementioned "stickers - posters - advertising". The only things I can recall Canada being involved in spacewise is the shuttle arm and being a great impact zone for errant soviet satellites.
I watch in amusement as yet another euro-firework goes pop. Yet another demonstration of the uselessness of the United Socialist Bureaucratic States of Europe. Yet another demonstration of the shoddiness of that oxymoron "nationalized industry".
My prediction: in less than a decade from now, only businessmen will own space vehicles, and space will be settled by commerce, not governments. And at long last, with honest capitalism at the wheel, space tourism will become as normal, safe, available, and comparatively inexpensive as a luxury sea cruise.
...more like STOP A
(bad Sun humor)
The original Ariane V was one of the great failures in software engineering, much like the Kansas City hotel and Tacoma Narrows Bridge were some of the great failures in civil engineering. All entry level engineering/cs textbooks have these so that they will never happen again.
I wonder what went wrong this time and whether or not it will make the sophomore engineering textbook hall of shame.
it doesn't take a mycroft holmes to do it any more (ref "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" R.A.Heinlein)
Thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint - Henry IV, Act I scene II
Those numbers of successes could not be achieved even if they had ALL of the world's best scientists to run their space program at the time.
I respect the USSR space program. They had guts and gusto. Sputnik alone was a miraculous achievement. But please. This just looks ridiculous.
I would consider their numbers to be extremely, extremely suspect.
... Ariane 5 is a big steaming pile of crap!
What were they thinking ? "ESC-A" ?! Why not name the next one "Ctrl-Alt-Del" ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Our shares are going up!
Our shares are going up!
Normally the transfer from leo to geostationary orbit is handled by rocket motors on the satellite itself. The russian rocket did not appear at this time to have caused the recent Astra failure instead the rocket motor on the satellite itself failed catastrophically (ie blew up).
Otherwise it's painful.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Houston, we fart in your general direction!
We're launching all our satellites on Yemeni SCUDs.
You people still don't believe they successfully sent 1000's of tons of toggle switches to the moon do you?? I worked in an DoD research agency for 6 years and saw first hand how bumbling inefficient and error prone govt. technology projects are.. I don't believe for a second they made it there...
...the current state of the space business. In the last 4 months, there have been no less than five (5) disatrous blows.
s -even-though-we-realize-that-no-space-program-will -have-100%-success' attitude. And we end up forgetting all the good which we get out of it: the amazing data we're getting from Galileo (still!) and Mars Odyssey; all the good stuff left to come, like Deep Impact and the two new Mars Rovers (which will hopefully take off as scheduled, but I have my doubts. Weekly checks of the status reports on the Athena Instruments site are not too promising).
- Loss of CONTOUR
- Russia's pullback from ISS
- TWO new Ariane5 failures only weeks apart
- Loss of Astra-1K
And it's not that it makes me think the technology isn't there - it is. I know it is; I've seen it firsthand. But the PR mess that it creates is the worst part, especially since we are in the midst of the 'give-no-money-to-space-since-they-lose-satellite
But I suppose that I am rambling. It makes me angry and sad at the same time, since I have a sinking feeling that the reasons behind the current Ariane failure will be all too similar to the reasons for the failure of the initial Ariane 5. I just hope that in the near, the VERY near future we can have a string of spectacularly successful missions so that people (i.e. congress and the dudes withh $$$) realize that these are dollars well spent.
thats the first funny and logical one of those ive read on slashdot. Most of them are just stupid. You guys ain't got nothing on fark...
-
When the N-1 cratered the pad it took out the whole damned area. There's no way in hell they cleared a fantastic amount of debris, and erected a dummy pad in time to fool the next satellite pass. I've seen pictures of the pad after the failure. It was an incredible mess.
:)
(Unless, of course, it was cloudy over Kazakhstan for months after that!
The N-1 was as big as a Saturn V. It's too bad it failed every time they lit it off.
I'm sure they do have a good amount of telemetry, and will be able to release more details about the failure.
:)
But why did they blow it up? As soon as some system on board or on the ground detected whatever major problem it was, it triggered a self-destruct, according to the article.
Given nearly half a billion euros' worth of payload, wouldn't some sort of safe abort procedure make sense? Jettison the payload along with a big parachute?
Seems almost silly just to intentionally blow it all up -- unless they know that it's much safer to do that than risk it falling to earth intact. One of those rocket-science decisions...
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
of the first radioactive crater.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I hate to break it to you, man, but spaceflight is hard. You lose missions sometimes.
You made a tally of some recent failed launches. Have you also made a tally of recent successful launches? Rockets are successfully launched extremely frequently. You don't here about it without going to the right sites, because failure is usually more spectacular.
(Btw., Slashdot is not one of the "right sites." As an astrophysicist, and I cringe when I see stories about spaceflight or astronomy on Slashdot. A huge fraction of the posts which get rated as "Informative" or "Insightful" are frighteningly false or misleading. DO NOT trust Slashdot posts on the state of space exploration!!!)
The French have never launched a human on a rocket. (They've hitched lifts on American and Russian rockets.)
I almost wish I could agree, but, for example:
e lta2_delay_ 021030.html
0 2b/120602okeefe.htm
In October, a Boeing Delta 2 was severely damaged on the pad after a crane operator accidentally ripped the satellite and third stage off the top of the second stage after they were bolted together:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/d
LockMart seems to be doing okay lately with the Atlas launches, but can we forget Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander, lost to failure to convert units and and inablility of software to properly detect the ground, respectively?
And don't get me started on ISS. Too late---ISS is a massive, catastrophic failure in agonizing slow motion. Everybody at NASA is patting themselves on the back because they think they can put more than three crew members on the piece of junk after all---in 2006!: http://www.floridatoday.com/news/space/stories/20
If you want to see how much the US space program values intelligence and ingenuity, ISS is your answer. A few unmanned rockets blowing up on the pad or on ascent is almost refreshing by comparison.
You could think about whose interests it is to NOT have a strong competitor become stronger in the launch market...
Who do you think built the US rocket program? It was all scientists from Nazi Germany, who used to build V-rockets to blow up shit.
The Canadian robot arms (on the Shuttles and on the Station) are pretty damned sweet pieces of engineering. They are very useful and significant contributions to human spaceflight.
They have been involved with many American unmanned missions, and the Canadians fund quite a bit of straight astronomy and astrophysics, too.
Since you don't seem to know jack about spaceflight, what the hell have you contributed?
(To any Canadians reading this, thanks for all of the help, from an American.)
Who was one of the people who inspired the Germans, to start research into rocketry?
Robert Goddard, an American. People in Germany saw his early rocketry work, and decided to do more themselves.
But how'd they get there? Not on any vehicle France had any part of designing.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
What's this? Tell me again ... the French were trying to do WHAT ??
Gah... gnhhh... The french .... Rocket failure ... can't resist obvious joke .... gnnnhhh ... Did any of them surrender when it blew up? ;)
In Socialist Europe, government owns companies. In Capitalist America, COMPANIES own GOVERNMENT! ... building supermarkets.
Despite how it may look across the pond, the situation in Europe comes closer to the situation in the USA every day.
From January we will have our own DCMA, and some time in te next year or so we will also make ideas patentable.
Already our governments are colonised with company stooges, who give impartial advice on their areas of expertise.
Lord Sainsbury for example, who's family owned one of Britain's largest supermarket chains years ago put all his stockholdings into a blind trust and has heroicaly advised the government on
During his tenure as advisor, planning permission laws have changed to favour companies wishing to build, they exclude a public right of appeal whilst guaranteeing one for corporations, and councilors are personaly liable for costs if appeals are successful.
The net result is a huge number of large edge of town supermarkets across the whole UK, draining away well paying town centre retail jobs and resulting in a serious decline in the number of independant local stores.
I wouldn't dare to suggest that M'lord is soley or even partialy responsible for such marvelous occurances, but he is a high profile example of a huge sea change in the way the UK is run.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
...'which would have served TV and music',
Well I'm glad that one didn't make it up there, sweet justice.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Apparently canadian cuisine is called "Kraft Dinner".
SPARK Ada this would never have happend.
Go static analysis!
Paul Leader
Let me get something straight. There are no more socialist countries in Europe. Those countries involved in the ESA, who designed and are running the Ariane rockets (e.g. France, Switzerland, Italy...) have never been socialist countries anyway. They all have free-market capitalist economies similar to america. They may have a "social" system sponsored by the government, but this doesn't make them socialist where the economy is run by the state.
As to flaming European tech:
when has the US last developed a new launch vehicle? All they have is the Atlas(~40yrs old) and the Delta (>30yrs old) and the Space Shuttle (>20yrs old), which is a commercial failure. I'm not saying US space technology is bad, but it is old (which on the other hand makes it very reliable), thus making similar to russian Space tech, which is hardly bleeding-edge either. Maybe the Americans should try developing a booster that can get >10 Tons into geostationary orbit.
New technologies are prone to failures. But maybe the Europeans could stop being so stupid as to torching 500 Million Euros worth of sattelites on every first launch of a new rocket. Guys, there's a thing called "testing", which is quite usefull in finding potentially catastrophic errors!
You should mean that negatively. Back in the 50's and 60's, NASA used to be a mean, lean launching machine. Now it's a bureaucracy that sometimes launches a shuttle.
Huh. If the core was going to shut down like that, it should have been named the L1-A.
There has only been one Ariane 5 failure recently - this one. You must be thinking of something else.
Think about it: any major failure will ground the launch vehicle, thus two failures are never just a few weeks apart.
Ah yes, when you realize you can't throw shit at other countries without doing so at your own, go find something else to throw :-)
I understand why you value intelligence.
I guess it's the same reason why I, as a not so wealthy student, know how to value money.
A nice drop from 6.75 down to 6.58. Do you call that "going up"? I call this "going down the toilet"!
Wow what a firework. Can they launch one of those on :-)
- Sylvester
- Independence Day
- "The Last 100 day's of the Bush Administration"
- my birthday
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
You're right, europeans contries are not able to land any human on the moon. USA made it many years ago but they're not able to do it anymore today as they don't have the vehicles either.
... projects are commercials projects. We cannot compare them.
And while the landing on the moon was a military/political project, the Ariane, Atlas, Delta,
Also, A good portion the space stations experiment racks and devices are built by the Canadian Space Agency, or at very least controlled by them.
I think this is what he was getting at about them promoting stuff that isn't really useful, but gets the publics attention.
"whomever values money over intelligence, deserves neither" (apologies to that Pitsburgh guy!)
Yeah, Astra shares are not worth the TP they're printed on!
One of the main customers for satellite launchs is the military. Something as simple as google search should be able to pick this up (e.g., search for "ariane military")...
Military percentages of various orbit profiles
Low-earth-orbit ~15% (rest is mostly comm stuff)
Medium-earth-orbit ~65% (bulk of military stuff)
Geosync-orbit ~10% (rest is tv/telephone/dbs)
Things might be skew a bit when the ESA starts launching Galileo (the GPS competitor), but the direction depends on your view of dual-use technology. However, they don't call it the military-industrial complex for nuthin' (military contracting is just as popular in europe as it is in the US)...
You forgot the two most important parts:
1) It was a software reuse problem:
The original requirement acccounting for the continued operation of the alignment software after lift-off was brought forward more than 10 years ago for the earlier models of Ariane, in order to cope with the rather unlikely event of a hold in the count-down e.g. between - 9 seconds, when flight mode starts in the SRI of Ariane 4, and - 5 seconds when certain events are initiated in the launcher [...]
The same requirement does not apply to Ariane 5, which has a different preparation sequence and it was maintained for commonality reasons, presumably based on the view that, unless proven necessary, it was not wise to make changes in software which worked well on Ariane 4.
2) It wouldn't have been a problem at all (since the code - as stated - wasn't required anymore) if it hadn't been assumed that the software was error free and therefore the only errors possible were hardware failures which had to be diagnosed in flight to prevent repetition. Not so good when done on both primary and backup unit:
Part of these data at that time did not contain proper flight data, but showed a diagnostic bit pattern of the computer of the SRI 2, which was interpreted as flight data. [...]
Although the source of the Operand Error has been identified, this in itself did not cause the mission to fail. [...] It was the decision to cease the processor operation which finally proved fatal. [...] The reason behind this drastic action lies in the culture within the Ariane programme of only addressing random hardware failures. From this point of view exception - or error - handling mechanisms are designed for a random hardware failure which can quite rationally be handled by a backup system.
(The whole thing caused extensive discussion on comp.object on defensive programming and the advantages of Eiffel.)
Since they again used a rocket with new specs: Maybe they f***ed up the software again.No, the Pittsburgh guy was Andrew Carnegie, who valued and had plenty of both. You're thinking of the Philadelphia guy who invented the lightbulb.
You were severly misled, chill.
I saw that 1-man capsule with my own eyes in Russian Space Museum. You will not be able 'to stuff' a single obese hamburger-lover there, leave alone 3 people. It's not just small, it's freakishly small - it's designed to hold 150 lbs person at max.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
The russians however... they used a pencil.
Not this again! NASA used pencils in the early days same as the Russians, they never payed to have a space pen developed...
5 seconds worth of reasearch and you could have found the real story.
Hey, "The First One Always Blows Up" isn't really that bad of a record to have, comparitively speaking. I mean, look at microsoft: the first *two* versions of each of their products always waste millions of dollars and explode messily when you try to use them, and most people's reactions is to just kind of excuse them for it and wait for version 3..!
^_^
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
He's probably thinking of the Vostok, which was only designed for one cosmonaut. The Soyuz was built for two, and then was re-designed to hold three without increasing the volume of the capsule. I think they just removed or re-engineered equipment for a more efficient use of space, if I remember the chapter about this in James Oberg's "Red Star In Orbit," a history of the Soviet space program published back in the 90s after a lot of the info was declassified. Again, by this time, the Soyuz was intended as a space taxi for getting cosmonauts into orbit for docking with larger space stations like Salyut or Mir, and returning them safely back home. It was never intended for long duration flights, so comfort and space were sacrificed for efficiency.
Yes, the Proton puts 20 tons into LEO but the Ariane 5 puts 10 tons into GTO (Proton : 2.4 metric tons) which is the geostationary transfer orbit, a high elliptic orbit with an apogee near the geostationary orbit.
You can of course construct satellites with enough fuel and strong enough engines to lift itself from LEO to GEO, but the common approach is to let the launcher "shoot" its payload into GTO so the sattelite only needs a small kick engine and few fuel to accelerate to geostationary orbit.
And the Proton launch you mentioned was a failure of the launcher - instead of putting the satellite into GTO it released it in a low "parking orbit" (LEO) since the upper stage ("block DM") failed to ignite for a second burn. The satellite did not blew up or anything like that. See here for more details.
Do these Europeans actually thought they can get away with launching a vehicle with Nazi German namesake without receiving the wraths of millions of surviving Jews??? It was lucky that the rocket didn't blow up the whole launching site! What's the next name from these European morons? Hittlus?
speculative analysis of failure:
fact 1: Cooling pressure in the first (cryogenic) stage was nominal until T+00:01:36 (96 sec) as per BBC report
fact 2: Overall thrust by stage 1 and control of trajectory is dominated by the strap-on solid boosters until solids separate. This happens at about T+00:02:00
fact 3: further stage 1 (cryogenic) core engine problems developed at T+00:03:16. The bird was no longer in a nominal trajectory. per Arianespace This is well after solids separation. The nature of the engine problems were not specified right away. "flight control difficulties" were cited later by Arianespace. (No Kidding!)
My conclusion:
The cryogenic coolant circuit in the Vulcan-2 nozzle seems to have developed a leak, dropping the cooling system pressure.
The uncooled nozzle section in the immediate vicinity of the leak was immediately subjected to excess thermal shock. The coolant is rocket fuel (LH2 or LO2). If injected into the nozzle (as opposed to dumping outside the nozzle) then nozzle pressures and temperatures spike locally. In addition, the exhaust turbulence increases, along with acoustic loads. These factors could easily lead to burn-through of the nozzle wall near the coolant leak location. Burn-through leads to increasingly asymmetric thrust, which the control software does not figure in with its control laws. Unpredictable results (ie trajectory) follow.
Note that the US Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) have a similar cooling design, which had frequent cracking problems. The problems were sometimes discovered after flight, since the engines were thoroughly inspected post-flight. Static ground tests did not seem to uncover all failure modes. The Vulcan-2 is well tested, but no engines can be inspected post-flight since the booster burns up in re-entry.
The problems of extreme thermal shock, extreme thermal gradients, and enormous loads and vibrations make for a brutally unforgiving environment. Good Luck, folks!
In 2001 dollars, that would be around $7.20 per day. Now it doesn't seem like Coke or chip money any more, that's almost half a tank of gas, or a sit-down lunch at a halfway decent restaurant. Every day.
Put it in perspective. In 1965, gas went for $0.20 / gallon. McDonalds' burgers were $0.19, and so were the fries.
Keep in mind that was $0.40 for EACH person. In 1965, there was only one "average wage earner" per family, but they were supporting an average of four people. Think $1.60 per day, out of your $12.75.
And these were taxes. You don't get to say, "Hey, Uncle Sam, the kid got sick and I came up a bit short so I'm not paying for your moon shot this week." Taxes weren't optional back in 1965, either.
It was a DAMN EXPENSIVE program.
John
The fact that the rocket was found orbiting in separately but in essentially the same orbit as the satellite points to more than a failure to ignite something blew up in a limited fashion.
:-)
Also the decision to de-orbit astra 1k rather than try to move it to a geostationary orbit under it's own power points to damage to the craft.
You're right in that in this launch there was an additional booster to move the satellite to GTO - however I'm not sure whether this was provided by the russian launch service or as part of the satellite package. The russian mission controllers made a big deal out of saying the failure wasn't theirs.
I admit much of my information on how satellites reach geostationary orbit was based on earlier launches where the rocket did no more than deliver the satellite into a low orbit.
Also don't believe everything you read on a page with a starchaser banner ad on it
They say it was the motor, but what do you bet they dumped in Ariane 4's avionics software into their new rocket again...just like the time their rocket took a nose dive and turned into an expensive fireworks display.
Block DM-3 is a standard part of the proton launcher in the used configuration. You can all it the last "stage" if you want, it's comparable to the H-10+ of the Ariane 4, the L-5 of the Ariane 5, the Centaur used on Atlas launchers and so on.
BTW: The same thing happened with Asiasat 3 five years ago.
I gave a link to that site because it was the best/first hit I found with google. You can give a link to website which tells me a different story.
And: The russians ALWAYS say, it's not their fault in the first. They also said, a submarine from another nation did collide with the Kursk.
(They have set up a commision on Dec 10 to investigate the reason for the Block DM-3 failure...)
My info on that (3-man/1-man capsule) came from a Discovery/History Channel show, I forget which. It was very inline with the excerpt below, but went more into detail about the U.S. Administration's beliefs about and reactions to the Soviet space program.
"Korolev hurriedly designed a manned 'stopgap' program called Voskhod ('Sunrise') to satisfy Khrushchev's apetite for new space spectaculars. First proposed in February 1964 (Hedrickx, 1997), Voskhod was basically a Vostok capable of carrying 2-3 cosmonauts into low Earth orbit to practise long duration spaceflight or (using additional equipment) spacewalks and dockings in space before Soyuz became available in 1966. But in order to accomodate more cosmonauts, Vostok's single ejection seat had to be removed, leaving the crew with no chance of survival if the R7 carrier rocket malfunctioned during the first 27 seconds of launch until the upper stage could fire (Harvey, 1996). Despite the huge risks, Voskhod 1 took off on 12 October 1964 with three cosmonauts on board - then a new record."
The Voskhod was touted to the world as a "new design", and was feared by the U.S. Gov't as proof that Soviet space program under Kruschev's regime . Reality was it was a gutted version of the Vostok. A political note -- Kruschev was removed as leader by the Politboro the very next day and Leonid Breshnev was his replacement. Breshnev was MUCH less interested in the "We're #1!" attitude towards space firsts than Kruschev.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Well, redesigned or not :), but I'm telling you that the capsule was no more than 7-8 ft in diameter. I really doubt that one can simply remove ejection seat and put 3 people there instead.... unless I saw a scaled down replica, which is possible, but very unlikely.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer
technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation.
The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in
computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of Long
Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis-
trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth. At Harvard
one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the
"granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going badly;
there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed
computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using
ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when
anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Hopper
said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred
them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons
Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in
question."
[actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in
regard to problems with radio hardware. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...