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Indian Launch Vehicle Explodes After Lift-Off
Indian communications satellite GSAT-5P was destroyed by the explosion of its launch vehicle, the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle. The GSLV malfunctioned while still in its first phase of its Christmas launch, after less than a minute of flight. YouTube has a video of the explosion, taken from TV9 Kannada.
Wikileaks has the one where you can see aliens shoot down the rocket.
Well, there have been dozens and dozens of successful Indian launches in the past, only this particular rocket series (GSLV) has a low success rate (2/5). The SLV, PSLV, and others have been remarkably successful.
And that aside, "learning from your mistakes" is only possible if you give them the tech and details of your launches, which is not happening at the moment.
So it looks like the GSLV yawed beyond limits, upper stages (I think stage 3 plus payload) broke off (0:34 on video), then stage 1+2 kept going, initially with decreased yaw (it got knocked back on course upon stage 3 separation), but then increasing yaw until 0:45 when stage 2 broke away from stage 1 and the strap-ons broke off too.
The orange cloud at 0:45 should be the hypergolics in the strap-on boosters, I believe that's what caused the orange cloud in the Challenger disaster.
According to the wiki article on the GSLV's predecessor the first stage injects chemicals (aqueous strontium perchlorate solution) into the nozzle to control yaw. I wonder if this has been problematic in the past?
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
Other than those two, and a few other mishaps,
So what you're saying is that if we exclude every event where things went wrong, the US has a perfect record?
Tell me something, do you work for the Federal Reserve?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, the unedited one shows the rocket continuing on into space properly. This video is just for the insurance company...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The Space Shuttle, on the other hand, is so much more complex. America is the only nation that has been able to pull it off so far.
Actually, we're one of two. The Soviet Buran did fly successfully, albeit unmanned. It probably would have worked at least as well as the shuttle -they avoided some of the mistakes on the shuttle, such as using solid rocket boosters and mounting the main engines on the shuttle itself, but the USSR ran out of cash in the late 80s.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Calm down, he's just frustrated that we don't like Cricket.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
To be fair, three out of seven GSLV launches have failed. No US space program has that failure rate, even if you don't exclude the mishaps.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Or on the other hand perhaps he is not generalising to the entire population of two continents and you have failed to comprehend what it written. I take it as generalising to the poorly educated, ignorant, jingoistic portion of the population that would write an ignorant pile of steaming manure such as the post he replied to. Instead it appears you see the word "American", ignore the context, then think it is aimed at yourself, George Washington and apple pie.
He's not yelling at you, simply at the smug "USA is greatest and the rest are all monkeys yawl" in the post prior to it.