Glory Satellite Lost To Taurus XL Failure

FullBandwidth writes "The protective nose cone of an Orbital Sciences Corporation Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory environmental research satellite apparently failed to separate after launch Friday, preventing the spacecraft from achieving orbit in a $424 million failure. It was the second nose cone failure in a row for a Taurus XL rocket following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite."

Comments

$4 for every US Household

[theaveng]

Damn.

Skip eating lunch today, and "make up" for the loss.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

Skip eating lunch today, and "make up" for the loss

I've got a better idea. Let's ask the top 1% not to open the second bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild at dinner for a week and pay for the space program for a year.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

You mean the same 1% of media elites and politicians that demand the rest of us do with less while at the same time living their hypocritical lifestyle? I agree.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

I prefer the bottom 99% show up at the 1%'s homes with torches and pichforks and solve the whole problem in a night.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[A beautiful mind]

I think a student phrased it perfectly.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[osgeek]

Don't be silly. Sacrifice is for OTHER people.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

I've got a better idea. Let's ask the top 1% not to open the second bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild at dinner for a week and pay for the space program for a year.

How about you put your money where your mouth rather than Other Peoples' Money? If you aren't willing to kick in, then I can't be bothered to get the 1% to kick in either.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[afidel]

Don't live in farm country eh? I'd just go across the street to the neighbors barn =)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[myth24601]

Of course this is a monetary loss, something worth half a billion dollars was destroyed. The half billion was spent to create something of value, had it been spent on something else that was not lost, we would have spent the money and had something of value to show for it.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[afidel]

As a percentage of wealth or income I already kick in a LOT more than anyone who could be described as wealthy. Remember Warren Buffet pays a much smaller percentage in taxes than his secretary does.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[hey!]

Actually, Mercycorps (http://www.mercycorps.org/gifts) provides affordable "kits" that allow you to do just that. You can do anything from buying a chicken for an impoverished family for $35 up to digging a well for a drought struck village for $3000. My favorite kit is the goat. For $70 a family gets a goat they can turn out on the scrub around their house and get valuable wool, milk and eventually meat from.

These kits make great gifts for that person who "has everything". Well, does he have a rural third world classroom built in his honor ($125)? Maybe instead of that iPad for that special someone, you could pay for the education of five girls at $100 apiece; provide a dozen vaccinations to children at $45; or teach ten women to read at $50 apiece. You can reintegrate eight child soldiers to their community through education and apprenticeship programs for only $58 each.

I am amazed at the cynicism of some people. You make it sound like philanthropy is something working class people would never do. Well, *I'm* working class and *I've* done it. The power of the almighty dollar isn't just for the rich. You can do amazing things for so little. You can change somebody's life for what amounts to pocket change you'd never miss.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Xoltri]

What if you're at the top of the bottom 99%? Might be awkward showing up at your neighbors house with a pitchfork!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.

The principle is that income is at least proportional to the benefit gained from government.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount? At best a percentage-based system is just a vague - a really vague - approximation of whatever kind of fairness principle you have going. You probably don't even have an identifiable principle on which you are basing it.

For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").

I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[orphiuchus]

Of course this is a monetary loss, something worth half a billion dollars was destroyed. The half billion was spent to create something of value, had it been spent on something else that was not lost, we would have spent the money and had something of value to show for it.

The thing of value was the knowledge we would have gained from the satellite. The post above you was dead on correct.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[LordNacho]

And the assumption behind is that every benefit is gained from government existing.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Anonymous Coward]

That 1% pays more taxes than the bottom 95%. Maybe you should go thank them for paying your way.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[inviolet]

Actually, Mercycorps (http://www.mercycorps.org/gifts) provides affordable "kits" that allow you to do just that. You can do anything from buying a chicken for an impoverished family for $35 up to digging a well for a drought struck village for $3000. My favorite kit is the goat. For $70 a family gets a goat they can turn out on the scrub around their house and get valuable wool, milk and eventually meat from.

These kits make great gifts for that person who "has everything". Well, does he have a rural third world classroom built in his honor ($125)? Maybe instead of that iPad for that special someone, you could pay for the education of five girls at $100 apiece; provide a dozen vaccinations to children at $45; or teach ten women to read at $50 apiece. You can reintegrate eight child soldiers to their community through education and apprenticeship programs for only $58 each.

I was excited about that website until I read the fine print:

These gifts are examples of what Mercy Corps does to save and improve lives in the world's toughest places. To help deliver the most effective solutions to the greatest number of people, your donation will be combined with other funds and used as it is most needed, not necessarily to purchase or distribute the actual item shown.

Meh. It's general-purpose charity with a fashionable front-end.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

So, unlike every other service, we pay for government based on benefit and not cost?

In short, yes.

This is one of the problems with government services and taxes. There is no market where people voluntarily choose to buy the service at the given price voluntarily offered.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

ebay duh!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

So raising their taxes by another 2% will solve all the problems.

Thanks for volunteering that.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[butalearner]

The thing of value was the knowledge we would have gained from the satellite. The post above you was dead on correct.

This should be pretty obvious. I mean, does anybody honestly think the components in the satellite are worth half a billion dollars? The vast majority of that money went to paying the people that developed it over the past several years.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PitaBred]

The middle class pays more by percentage of their income than the upper class (even if it's not more total). The middle class also lives much closer to the line of having to cut out various expenses if income changes, as compared to the rich. We already are putting our money where our mouths are.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[TooMuchToDo]

Oh man, I better go long in pitchfork and torch futures ;)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

You only need one or the other. It's hard to used both at the same time, although I have seen combination torch/pitchforks. The problem with those is, if you ever need to use the pitchfork function, one of your hands is grasping the business end of the torch mechanism.

But this is slashdot, we don't need to use 14th century weaponry. Grab your bat'leth and your 9 LED head lamp and let's go!

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

That 1% pays more taxes than the bottom 95%.

And they hold more of the country's wealth than the bottom 98%, which, in my book makes them undertaxed.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

We, as a society, should be careful about vilifying the rich through higher taxation. This leads to a transfer of wealth to more friendly nations (more so than now). There is (will be) a breaking point. It's already an issue in the US, but once we start vilifying them as a culture, that's when people will start physically uprooting their own lives and move to other nations too. Not just their wealth. Historically, this leads to the hollowing out of a nation and thus oppression, populism, and dictatorships start taking over. The likes of tyranny never thought possible could occur inside our own borders.

Wealth by itself isn't the problem. It only becomes a problem when the wealthy are allowed to corrupt the system. It's at that point we start to see class-warfare solidify and everything else along with it falls into place ~for the worst.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

Hey, Captain Working Class: instead of buying that second six pack of PBR, why not feed an impoverished family in Liberia for a week?

What makes you think we don't? I spend a lot of money things that the government should be doing, but doesn't because the right wing thinks poverty is a character flaw not a societal defect exacerbated by an economic policy that places the needs of the wealthy above all else.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

You are missing the point that Buffet does not pay payroll taxes on anything above the income cap, and doesn't pay any payroll taxes on capital gains. That's an addition 9% or so that his secretary pays that he does not.

Second, why in the world is paying the same percentage the "fair" thing? Why not the same dollar amount?

Wow, your education was severely lacking. The rich get the most benefits from a stable society. The poor get very little from it. And apparently you can't see that taxing the poor at an amount greater than their annual income would both be unfair, and would quickly lead to a very unstable society with very few live rich people.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

When it comes to federal expenditures, like this one, how are the rich getting more benefit from NASA, or the launching of an environmental satellite, than the rest of us?

They own the companies the build the satellites, launch vehicles, the parts that go into either, the ground station equipment, the dish antennas and provide the fuels for the launch vehicle. And on top of it, they own the large corporate farms and logging/paper companies that stand to benefit most from the information provided by these satellites. It would be hard to come up with any specific benefit the poor get apart from potentially more stable food prices.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[publiclurker]

Funny how you conveniently omit how much of the money they earn. Unfortunately for you the rest of us know it's way more than the percentage they pay in taxes. that's probably why you are an anon coward. You want to whore for you masters but not enough to expose yourself to ridicule.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

So raising their taxes by another 2% will solve all the problems.

Government would just spend more. If you fail to tackle the spending, then any increase in tax revenue will be met with an increase in spending.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[dryeo]

And how much of that money would make it to Liberia? Generally the way charities work is that 90% of the donations are used to pay for the charity and advertising.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[mbkennel]

"First, in effective tax rates Warren Buffet certainly does NOT pay a smaller percentage of Federal Income taxes than his secretary. "

Ah yes, the convenient self-serving restriction to "Federal Income taxes"; favorite of deceptive propagandists.

Buffet isn't dishonest.

Add in FICA + Medicare --- both parts, the part which you see deducted from your paycheck and the part which you don't see deducted, state and local taxes, and Buffet is right.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Lumpy]

He really does not know what he is talking about.... but I do.

I'll post the info for him...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

the inequality is so huge that it's utterly disgusting when I hear even 1 of them whine about taxes. we can DOUBLE their taxes and they will not notice.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

But this is slashdot, we don't need to use 14th century weaponry. Grab your bat'leth and your 9 LED head lamp and let's go!

My jian is normally used for practice, but it would hold a very very sharp edge.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[bjk002]

Statistics will tell you whatever you want them to. I should know, its what I do. How about considering within your statistics the average income of each group? That might paint things in a new light as to the reasons why such a situation might occur, if its even true as I do not recall seeing such studies and you've provided no substantive links.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[bjk002]

Thanks. I was going to argue this point until I saw your post.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[im_thatoneguy]

Yes. Great plan. So good even the Greeks thought it was unfair and immoral.

Because as we all know giving up one of your 10 houses is roughly equivalent to not eating anything for 5 days a month if you can't afford groceries on 90% of your income.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[SETIGuy]

Wrong. According to various studies over the years, Republican voters (aka conservatives) give 5 times more money per year to non-church charities then Democrat voters (aka liberals).

Citation needed. Every study I've seen doesn't compare to total income of the donors (one republican (i.e. Bill Gates) can throw off the statistic), nor do they break out religious vs non-religious charities, nor do they distinguish charities by purpose. Besides, if Republicans were really concerned about poverty they would realize that charity work has failed to eliminate poverty and would support government efforts paid for with tax money.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[im_thatoneguy]

Well not really. It was undoubtedly insured. So some money was lost but not half a billion in this incident since the successful launches helped cover this failure.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

According to various studies over the years, Republican voters (aka conservatives) give 5 times more money per year to non-church charities then Democrat voters (aka liberals).

Every single one of those studies used charitable deductions on income tax returns as their raw data. There's another one that has the same results that is often trumpted by right-wing trolls that uses self-reporting for data.

I don't know about you, but I believe if you try to recover your donation via deductions against taxable income, it's not really charitable.

Now, NORC here in my home town did a study breaking down donations by income ranges and political affiliation. That told a much different story. It seems that among people making less than $50k/yr, Democrats give much more than their counterparts in the Republican Brotherhood. From $50k to $150k they are about equal. You only start to see the GOP-affiliated giving more after $500k (and again, the data comes from charitable tax deductions.

My guess is that the "charities" that a lot of the >$500k Republicans are giving to are opera companies, museums, foundations, and other things where you get a great deal of public recognition. Maybe donations to fundraisers by other members of their country club set. Gotta keep up appearances after all. I bet Mrs David Koch likes to see her name on the big plaque that you see over the door at the museum. Maybe giving helps her sleep, knowing that her husband is fucking over all the little people who live outside her gated community.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

Rich people don't benefit more from police work just because they have more stuff to protect.

Sure they do. They use the courts more, they use infrastructure more, they benefit from increased access. They get more benefit from the Dept of Education because they hire people who have learned to read and write. They benefit from the Dept of Agriculture because thanks to the food stamp program there are not starving people overrunning their property and killing and eating their thoroughbred horses.

Remember, there isn't anyone in the United States who has gained wealth on the basis of their hard work and ingenuity alone. Not one. Their use of "the commons" and their benefit from "the commons" goes up along with their wealth.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PyroMosh]

Actually both statements are correct.

Putting windows in and smashing them *is* economically productive. It's a loss to you, but it stimulates the economy.

In the case of this launch, it's also both. It's a loss, because we won't have the primary benefit of the satellite, which is the data it would provide. But it's also stimulative, because much of the money that would have been spent on the project was already spent in building the thing and attempting to launch.

It's a loss but the bright side is that that loss had some economic benefit to the overall economy. Clearly it would have been better had it succeeded though.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Shotgun]

You obviously mean that his indoctrination is lacking.

The poor most definitely derive the most benefit from a stable society. The rich can still hole up in their castles. It is always the poor that are raped and pillaged by the rampaging barbarians.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

Well, that's a problem with minimum wage then, isn't it? (Which, taken literally, should mean "minimum wage required to live").

Not to mention I did point out that some deductions should be allowed - just only for the folks you describe (which wouldn't be a major hit to the budget anyway, since they're by definition the lowest taxed in raw dollars), not for the billionaires.

Aside: 10% of a month is 3 days, not 5.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[cowboy76Spain]

Truly

Plus I'll amaze the chicks with my spork.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[i_b_don]

The rich are richer now than ever before in our history since right before the great depression. The super rich have a jaw dropping staggering portion of our society's wealth. The rich have gotten where they are sometimes through hard work, sometimes through luck, sometimes through inheritance. If you look at the numbers the top 1% have barely been hurt by this recession while the rest of us have taken a cold shower, but now when it comes time to pay for the lost revenue they're coming after the middle class and poor. Fuck that.

To somehow claim that the super rich have been 100,000 more productive than some blue collar worker is stupid. They've gotten where they are by utilizing the United States and everything that brings with it. From roads to education to educated workers, etc. They didn't get there in a vacuum. Many of them have the right to make more than the rest of us because of chances they took, the ideas they had, or the luck they found themselves blessed with. I'm not saying they should make the same amount of money as a laborer, what I am saying is that the difference shouldn't be as high as it is. That much money should not be concentrated in the hands of so few. We are not a banana republic.

Wealth itself is not the problem, massive uneven distribution of wealth is. The class warfare has been going on a long time and the poor and middle class have been getting their asses kicked.

BTW, if you're threatening that the super-rich may up and leave us, then great, let them go. I don't think we'd miss them in any negative way. They are not that special and they can be easily replaced.

d

Re:$4 for every US Household

[cowboy76Spain]

Better yet, because it is a sales tax. So you last line should be something like that (I corrected the days in month too):

Because as we all know buying each year 9 cars instead of 10 is roughly equivalent to not eating anything for 3 days a month if you can't afford groceries on 90% of your income.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[DigiShaman]

Look, no system is ideal or perfect. But as long as everyone's lives are improving regardless of acceleration rate based on wealth, that should be the most important. Unfortunately, people being people like to constantly compare what they have with others. I can guarantee you that the poorest in Africa would be abso-fucking-lutely rich living among America's "poor". It's all relative in the eyes of each individual.

I don't know how to solve this problem of disproportional income and whatnot. Part of it is simply supply and demand while another is blind luck and gaming the system. But I do know that we should be careful about throwing out the baby with the bath water. If we as individuals are fueled with so much hate and rage, we could ALL lose everything. And by that time, it's too late to regret what we've already done. And that's my point.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Grishnakh]

I'm not saying they should make the same amount of money as a laborer, what I am saying is that the difference shouldn't be as high as it is. That much money should not be concentrated in the hands of so few. We are not a banana republic.

Wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=2&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

We have a more unequal distribution of wealth than any other banana republic before us, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. We are officially a Banana Republic. The only thing missing is the bananas.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Grishnakh]

Look, no system is ideal or perfect. But as long as everyone's lives are improving regardless of acceleration rate based on wealth, that should be the most important.

That sounds great, but the problem is that the living standards of average Americans are going down, not up. Real wages are way, way down since the 1950s, after you adjust for inflation, and as a consequence, people have to work much harder for less reward. Sure, some things seem better: we have nicer houses (except all the people who've lost theirs), fancy flat-screen TVs, computers, etc. But there's two things that caused those: 1) greatly improved technology, and 2) much more work. Back in the 1950s, a family of four could easily be supported by one man working if he had a decent job. Now, having two earners is basically a requirement, because real wages have fallen so much that a single salary or paycheck isn't enough to get a decent home outside the ghetto. On top of that, jobs are so unstable these days that a family can't count on the main earner's job being there, as workers are laid off left and right whenever the corporate executives decide they can outsource something to China and collect a $20 million bonus.

So no, everyone's lives are not improving at all, and "trickle down" economics are a sham.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Kagura]

How do you know your work is being followed through with? I'm just curious how it works.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[PopeRatzo]

So.... they get *more* benefit than the people who got educated?

Absolutely. The growing disparity in wealth is proof of that.

This is really quite simple stuff. Your argument that the wealthy don't get a disproportionate share of the benefit never really gets past the perseveration stage. And "user fees"? Tell me, which do you think costs more, your average corporate lawsuit or the average criminal case? Next you'll argue that the wealthy don't really have more money than the poor.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Obfiscator]

Well, I'd like to suggest another charity, then.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can tell you that the process is pretty upfront. A volunteer talks with community members to figure out how much money will be needed (and what the community will contribute...the community has to provide as least 25%, in order to give more incentive to maintenance after the volunteer has left). Once that much money is raised (usually from friends and family, although I still donate to random projects in the country I was posted in), the volunteer goes to the capital, collects the money, then heads back to the village to start construction. No money is used for salaries of the organization: the volunteers are already there and supported by taxpayer money. So, donations go straight to the project with no overhead. The only exception is if the volunteer leaves the country before the project is completed. If another volunteer doesn't take it over, the donated money goes into the general country fund.

No organization is perfect, but in my experience these projects are pretty good. I've seen wells dug, schools built, and even a bridge, on top of a lot of educational programs.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[khallow]

To somehow claim that the super rich have been 100,000 more productive than some blue collar worker is stupid.

I don't see the issue. There are two things to note here. First, the super-rich generally don't earn 100,000 times more than a full time blue collar worker. That would mean several billion dollars earned in a year. Usually that kind of windfall is due to many years of work falling into place, not a one year surge of work. I would consider 10,000 times a blue collar worker's salary to be more accurate.

Second, when you grow businesses worth tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in a few decades, you indeed can have 10,000 times or more the productivity of a blue collar worker for a few of those years.

BTW, if you're threatening that the super-rich may up and leave us, then great, let them go. I don't think we'd miss them in any negative way. They are not that special and they can be easily replaced.

Speaking of stupid, you might not miss anything, but the rest of us would miss the jobs and the great goods and services that businesses which would have been created by current and future super-rich would have provided.

And speaking of stupid again, but it's easy to become super-rich by catering to the idiocy of ideas like the ones you mention above. A government with the power to redistribute wealth fairly has the power to redistribute wealth to its cronies.

Re:$4 for every US Household

[toddestan]

A torch? What, you don't have a flashlight?

Re:$4 for every US Household

[Morty]

For the same reason a sales tax is percentage-based - it keeps the tax relative to the value. And it dates back to the classic church tithe (as in "give the church a tenth of what you make").

I would be thrilled to see a proper flat percentage, with the barest minimum of deductions for the poorest.

Tithing is older than the Church, which inherited it from Judaism. And funny thing -- the Jews had quite a few different required donations, not just the first tithe. Some of these include the first tithe, the second tithe, the tithe for the poor, the t'rumah, the t'rumah of the tithe, and the temple tax. The various tithes were indeed each a flat percentage. But the temple tax/census was a fixed *amount* (one half shekel, with a specific biblical requirement that the rich not pay more and the poor not pay less, since the tax was also used as a census). Meanwhile, the t'rumah does not have a biblical percentage but under rabbinical judaism, the rich paid a higher percentage than the poor. In other words, the Jews had three rates for religious taxes: flat rate, progressive, and fixed amount.

And another thing -- most of the above (except the temple tax/census) were only defined for *produce*. In other words, they were only paid by landowners. If you were a poor laborer who owned no land, or a middle-class blacksmith, the tithes were not applicable -- except the half-shekel temple tax. Only farmers had to give tithes. In the ancient world, as in America until not too long ago, wealth was associated with farm ownership. So tithing targeted the rich more than the poor or middle-class.

[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]

Re:$4 for every US Household

[anyGould]

[NB: what with the separation of church and state, I don't think the above should be relevant. But the parent poster seems to argue for flat-rate taxes based on religious arguments. I don't think religious arguments should be relevant, but as per the above, I think the religious argument actually supports progressive taxes.]

Didn't intend it to be "God says we should pay flat tax", although I can see it read that way. Was just grabbing the one historical example I could think of.

I have no objection to the theory of progressive taxes, but it seems in practice the progression goes the wrong way once all the loopholes are taken into consideration. A flat tax would be harder to duck, in my opinion. (Although I have faith that the rich will still find a way.)

Re:$4 for every US Household

[operagost]

And downmods are for me for chastising the leftist Slashdot elite.

Time for a launch loop

[Menkhaf]

Enough with malfunctioning rockets.

How many payloads have gone to waste because of rocket failures, and at what cost? Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Overunderrated]

Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

No.

Sincerely, Engineers.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[AikonMGB]

Nope.

Don't get me wrong, I would love easy access to space, but there are enormous up-front costs to constructing a mega launch service, like a launch loop or an elevator, not to mention significant technical risks, very few of which are in the process of being retired.

Rockets are a tried, tested, and true method of getting to space. They have put up many times the value of spacecraft as they have lost, not to mention a growing number of human payloads. They are also getting cheaper, with public ventures like SpaceX. I think it's going to be a good long while before you see someone investing heavily in alternative launch methods.

Aikon-

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Sockatume]

I think we're a long way from any 2000km-long megastructure being a viable solution to the problem. There's a lot of good ground between rockets and sci-fi megatech that should be explored first.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[strack]

you think the launch loop is a good idea because you have no idea just how chaotic a system a cable, being accelerated through a curve at some very high mach number, is. and the most minor of wobbles is enough to crash it into the sheathing and kaboom. not to mention sending something along it, that is magnetically suspended close to it. and the wear from flexing at those speeds, and the heating, and having a flexible tube in which it can be magnetically suspended in as it passes through it. a tube that must also maintain a vacuum. and a myriad of other near impossible obstacles.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[OzPeter]

Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop?

I'm curious to know where you are going to put this thing. Its not a case of NIMBY, but NIMC (Not in My Continent)

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Charliemopps]

only because of naysayers like yourself. We are very close to having the tech to build a space elevator. A big project like that is just want the USA needs, and having the only cheap way to and from space would secure our super power status for the next 100 years or more. Our ability to seed space with cheap orbital solar arrays and solve our energy problems would be reason enough to do it. That's not even considering all the easy material wealth that could be mined from asteroids. Flying around and working in space is easy, it's the getting out of earths gravity well part that's the problem.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Calindae]

Rockets are a tried, tested, and true method of getting to space.

Treating cancer is also a tried, tested and true method of saving *some* people. Why not develope a cure and save them all? Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Well you engineers can't seem to get the process of nose cone separation right, let alone the rest of the rocket. How about let's not lose any more missions because a nose cone didn't come off. Redundant systems hello???? When the thing failed to come off, there should have been two more systems behind that ready to crack that nose cone off the rocket.

Or maybe engineers are just a bunch of monkeys jacking off after all.

Sincerely, REPUBLICANS who fucking hate smart people.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[dave420]

Very close? The longest carbon nanotube ever observed was only 18.5 cm long. I think LEO is a bit higher than that.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

Really? If you are right, then so is he. At 18.5 cm, you can start meshing the things...

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Yvanhoe]

Not to mention that the USA is one of the few big enough countries to have such a structure.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[heathen_01]

Why not develope a cure and save them all? Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

enormous up-front costs ... significant technical risks

Re:Time for a launch loop

[0123456]

The real world can't do this, because some Republican who hates smart people moans about costs being too high.

When was the last time that anyone else lost a satellite due to failure to separate the fairing, let alone two in a row? I remember the Agena docking target on one of the Gemini missions in the 60s and one other failure in the last few years (which may have been the other Taurus launch mentiohed).

As rocket science goes it really seems to be a solved problem that's been done successfully thousands of times before.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Combatso]

$424 million wasn't lost. The only thing lost was a satelite. The money got spent building the rocket and satelite. People got paid, now they get paid again. Cry all you want about the tax payer, but the sad reality is, they would have taken your money anyways.

Atleast this way its slightly distributed, and the aerospace community learns something. Consider how much fuel is spent, per day, fighting two wars. How much it costs to build a fence acrosss the border (which is the same security they use to keep preteens from sneaking in to the county fair). How much it costs to keep travellers from taking a bottle of water on a plane.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[MurphyZero]

That fully redundant system you designed costs $1 billion to launch a 10lb payload. There are several groups that could all be at fault here. CEO (makes decisions involving costs), Management (Choosing to cut corners, bad decisions), Engineers (bad design and/or bad procedures), Technicians (not following procedures), Manufacturing (crappy products)

Re:Time for a launch loop

[damnfuct]

Good point. If you had the materials/controls to make such a structure, I'm sure a whole bunch of other "cheap to orbit" ideas also become possible.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[0123456]

No, the question is how one company manage to have something fail twice in a row when other launchers seem to have been able to do it thousands of times with no major problems.

Weren't there some other problems before the launch too? I remember skimming through an article about problems with this launcher last night and thinking 'well, I wouldn't want my satellite on that one'.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

Dude seriously, Carbon nanotube are very conductive and they also tend to spontaneous combustion when flashed with a light, now imagine one reaching from the Earth's equator to LEO during hurricane season; it's not rocket science here.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Show me a process that allows you to mass produce carbon nano-tubes at 18.5 cm long in quantities large enough to start meshing them together for a space elevator cable.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

spontaneous combustion aside, conductive is a feature, not a bug...

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

I don't know. I don't follow the field, but not long ago, 1 cm was science fiction. So progress is made at an amazing rate.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[anyGould]

Not to rain on the parade, but from where I'm sitting, I don't see the US building one of these this generation. One, you don't have remotely the political will to fund it. (I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either). Two, you don't have the money to do it anymore. Three, before you can start building that sort of stuff, you'd need to rebuild your manned launch capability, and you may have noticed that's not going particularly quickly.

My money's on China being the one to make the next big technical leap forward - they have the money, and can muster the will. The EU is another possibility - they still have some sense of adventure for space, but I don't know if they can hack the expense.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

spontaneous combustion aside, conductive is a feature, not a bug...

Not when it get hit with a bolt of lightening I'm sure the 30,000 C generated in a lightening strike is enough to fry you carbon nanotubes.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[v1]

iirc, the beagle explorer to mars failed to jetteson a heat shield. And that specific problem has happened at least once more at mars when a probe did a flyby but didn't get the shield ejected and just took pictures of the inside of the cover.

Surprisingly common problem. You'd think they would have gotten a bit more focused on it by now?

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

Because we never make ships, planes, buildings out of conductive metals... You know, there are solutions, and no-one says the cable will not be isolated.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[AikonMGB]

Treating cancer is also a tried, tested and true method of saving *some* people. Why not develope a cure and save them all?

If there was a potential avenue for a cure, but there were a lot of issues left with it that you didn't know how to solve, and the cost of researching it was prohibitively expensive, would you stop all current cancer treatment to pay for it and let all of those people die in the pursuit of this potential payout sometime in the future?

People are working on the technologies that will enable mega launch systems, like room-temperature superconductors and carbon nanotubes, but we're just not at the point where it's a cost-effective or even manageable project. Someday we'll get there and we'll build it, but in the meantime, we're going to continue to use and advance the methods available to us today.

Why not develop a more efficient gateway to space and save the $424 million next time?

This money is not lost; a significant portion of that cost is the NRE that went into designing the thing in the first place. Presumably they have enough spare components (as any good aerospace corporation should) to build a duplicate spacecraft for a mere fraction of that. The cost of materials and workmanship that goes into a spacecraft like that is a pretty tiny portion of the overall system cost.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Calindae]

would you stop all current cancer treatment to pay for it and let all of those people die in the pursuit of this potential payout sometime in the future?

The OP asked "Enough to explore the idea of a sort of launch loop [wikimedia.org]?"
The OR (original replier) said "Nope"
I, in turn, was saying that the exploration, whether or not it's currently happening, is worthwhile. Did I say stop anything that currently works? No.
I understand you need to direct your hate at someone, but try to RTFR and understand what others are saying next time.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Muad'Dave]

I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.

I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.

I believe that once we've diverted all our money into feel-good social initiatives and stop pushing forward the boundaries of science, we're doomed. We may already be doomed, in fact. We're pretty far along that road with all of the current 'entitlements' and 'Bread and Circuses' attitude of the average American Idol (idle, really) consumer.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Brett Buck]

No. And the problem here would still be present with any alternative technology. If you are launching from the ground you will definitely still need a payload fairing - and that's what failed to separate in this case (and quite a few other OSC launch attempts, as it turns out).

          A rocket, particularly a solid rocket, is a remarkably reliable and very inexpensive way to launch things.

         

Re:Time for a launch loop

[khallow]

$424 million wasn't lost. The only thing lost was a satelite.

The value of something is what you pay for it.

Atleast this way its slightly distributed, and the aerospace community learns something. Consider how much fuel is spent, per day, fighting two wars. How much it costs to build a fence acrosss the border (which is the same security they use to keep preteens from sneaking in to the county fair). How much it costs to keep travellers from taking a bottle of water on a plane.

So... we shouldn't fix problems because we can always find bigger problems to not fix.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[anyGould]

I would put a Republican joke here, but I don't see the Democrats doing it either.

I think you'd see a Republican support space initiatives because of the possible military spinoffs long before a "We've got to solve all our problems here on Earth first" Democrat.

Contrarywise, I'd expect Republicans to cut the funding to reduce taxes before Democrats.

The one think I think we can both agree on is that neither party is likely to have a "we will be on the moon in ten years" moment.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[PyroMosh]

Not that I think a space elevator is likely any time soon, but you're assuming a single "you guys".

There are currently several companies in the LEO business in this country. They don't all have the same nose cone issue, one single rocked design of one company does. It's like saying the Japanese can't design a car because of the accelerator peddle nonsense from the past year that plagued Toyota. Free countries are not uniform.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[budgenator]

I've seen a video where a bunch of carbon nanotube is illuminated by a camera's flash and the nanotube burst into flames, the lightening would ignite the cable even if it was not hit simply by being illuminated. If the cable is isolated, I assume you mean what we yanks call insulated electrically it still wouldn't help because the cable will pickup static electricity from the wind until it arcs over to ground/earth and still ignites.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[SomeKDEUser]

A single particle of aluminium will spontaneously ignite. However it is rare for a slab to do so. This is because the surface is very large compared to the volume (in the particle case), and therefore the interactions with it can be very energetic compared to the volume considered, and cause combustion.

I suspect it is the same thing with a nanotube. A single strand might ignite, but a cable not.

And yes, I meant insulated.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I think you misunderstand. I'm not a Republican. I'm just the messenger. I'm just relaying to you what Republicans think. If I were to tell rocket engineers how it's done, I'd tell them to be engineers and fix the problem using their brains.

But Republicans would take one good look at the engineering degree on the wall, declare that it's a bunch of shit and their high school dropout sister could do way better because she's got common sense, and she goes to church. Their sister could crack a nosecone off a trailer hitch. That's why the message was signed as coming from a Republican. They're fucking morons.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I didn't design it. Republicans did, using their common sense and a Glenn Beck instruction manual.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

You don't need nanotubes thousands of miles long to build a space elevator. You just need to make a composite ribbon, which is composed of nanotubes a few centimeters long at most, to get the required tensile strength. The challenge isn't in making super-long nanotubes, it's in making moderate-length nanotubes in giant quantities so you can manufacture ribbons thousands of miles long with it. We have the materials technology already to make space elevators; we just don't have the manufacturing technology to produce it in sufficient quantity and at an economical cost.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

Exactly right. I just wish the other countries would work more seriously on these problems. I read a while back that Japan was considering building a space elevator; they should really work harder on that.

As for the USA, we can talk about doing these super-hard projects, like we did with the Moon landing 50 years ago. However, unlike back then, these days it's all talk, and no action. We no longer have the ability to carry out large projects like that, because 1) we don't have the political will (we only barely managed to do it back then); as soon as the next election comes along and someone new is elected, the project will be sacked. 2) We don't have the technical talent; Americans don't go to school for engineering any more in sufficient quantities to do these things. And 90% of the Americans who do, are in computer-related fields, not aerospace. Computer engineers aren't all that useful for giant projects involving materials, metallurgy, mechanical processes, manufacturing, etc.

Any giant new advances that come out are probably going to come from Japan or China, as those are the countries where they have cultures that value long-term thinking over short-term profits.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

Republicans aren't going to cut taxes, at least not overall. They'll happily cut taxes for super-rich people, but that's it. Democrats, of course, want to raise taxes, but again for everyone, not just the rich.

Neither party would want to fund anything like this anyway. The Republicans want a bigger budget so they can have more wars, and larger corporate handouts to oil companies. The Democrats want a bigger budget so they can continue funding everything the Republicans put into place before them (you don't see them cutting the wars, do you?), but also add lots of social programs that are easily cheated, so tons of people can get Disability checks for having "a bad back" even though they have a side job (off the books) of moving heavy furniture.

Re:Time for a launch loop

[Grishnakh]

I propose Central Asia. It's huge, there's not that much population there, and it's mostly a big ugly desert.

Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[lxs]

I bet Big Oil is behind this.

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[G-Man]

Get with the times - everything these days is the fault of the Koch brothers. The KOOooOOooOOCH Brothers!

Re:Two environmental satellites lost in a row?

[gatkinso]

Charlie Sheen's global warming aliens are behind it... or maybe it is just Charlie Sheen....

Fix to overcome problem next time...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANARS

Just make the fairing lighter and stick a bit more fuel in the rocket, problem getting to orbit solved! As for getting the satellite out, perhaps they could stick a baby chick in who can peck their way through the shell?

(Absolutely no idea why NASA didn't hire me, what with all my lack of qualifications and everything. I have loads of useful ideas ;)

Re:Fix to overcome problem next time...

[ciderbrew]

(Absolutely no idea why NASA didn't hire me, what with all my lack of qualifications and everything. I have loads of useful ideas ;)

Don't put yourself down Senator.

seriously wtf?

[strack]

second nosecone failure in a row... man. im no rocket scientist, but im pretty sure thats like, what, a few explosive bolts, something that detects main engine cutoff, with a timer backup? its not like its the fucking guidance system.

Re:seriously wtf?

[EraserMouseMan]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

Re:seriously wtf?

[tangelogee]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

Quark!

Re:seriously wtf?

[nido]

Yea, the whole batch of self-sealing stem bolts is probably bad.

but honestly where do the explosive bolts or the explosive inside the bolts come from?

"self-sealing stem bolts" is a Star Trek reference, I think. http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Self-sealing_stem_bolt

So who is Liable?

[.tekrox]

T-Minus 10 Seconds until OSC bankruptcy

Re:better get walmart to make you a new one

[ciderbrew]

Best thing is they'll make your design and around the back they'll knock about 10 more rip off versions for a tenth of the price for the home market.

Re:Womp Womp

[orphiuchus]

And they're about to lay of a lot of other peoples dads. Bad news here.

Re:Not a complete loss

[natehoy]

I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."

Third time's the charm?

Seriously, though, the term "this isn't rocket science" exists for a reason. Because this stuff IS rocket science. Monumentally complicated machines trying to perform monumentally complex tasks, built to a budget by several of the lowest bidders all trying to work together.

What's worse? Wasting money failing to try to do something good, or succeeding at doing something bad?

Some Glory details

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a huge loss. The satellite contained two instruments.
The first measured solar irradiation. If you expect to understand global warming, then you have to know exactly what came in. Glory had approximately triple the accuracy and triple the precision of prior instruments. There are about 30 years of data here which was to be extended. The problem is that the changes being measured are small, and that the instruments are without calibration for years on end. So the issues being measured are the difference of very small numbers. Without glory, we will continue not to have data as credible as we need.
The other instrument measured aerosols - small particles which remain in the air because they are too light to fall. Water vapor condenses on them, and plays a big role in heat retention. But there are many non-constant natural sources of such particles, as well as artificial ones. Glory measured two things: size (it could tell the difference between a 1 micron and 1.2 micron particle), and reflectivity. The latter used optical mechanisms with more than 200 components. The two measurements meant that it would be possible to distinguish better what the aerosols are, and what proportion are man-made.
Now, alas, we are back to argument without essential data we need to decide on the basis of science rather than ideology.

Re:Not a complete loss

[Sockatume]

That's an interesting thought, actually. I found this blog post on the impact of Shuttle launches, at least. Turns out that you wouldn't want to be in the wake of one for reasons other than the obvious uncomfortable warmth and gustiness. In the grand scheme it's not a whole lot of pollution of course.

Like what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, I'm seriously curious.

What is the middle ground between rockets and sci-fi megatech?

1. Rockets
2. ...?
3. Launch-loops / space elevators / etc.

Re:Like what?

[rossdee]

You left out the 'profit' step. Without that, nothing will get done.

Re:Like what?

[Sockatume]

I was thinking something along the lines of launching to LEO from the back of hypervelocity suborbital cargo aircraft, like that X-Prize competitor but on a bigger scale. We're still talking old-fashioned chemical propulsion, of course, and there will have to be a chemical->physical switchover in launch systems eventually.

Re:Like what?

[Thud457]

'bout time for mr "space nutters" to pop up in this thread and berate us for wanting to better our opportunities.

Re:Like what?

[khallow]

While rossdee has the right one word answer "profit", let's consider how the technology could play out.

1) Expendable vehicles. Use once and throw away. Best choice when you only launch a few times a year. Minimal infrastructure.

2) Reusuable vehicles. These range from simple reuse of parts of an expendable rocket (for example, SpaceX wants to recover the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket) to wholly reusable designs like air-breathing space planes with scramjets. Due to their design, they tend to be a lot more reliable than expendable vehicles.

The big problem is that reusable vehicles require a lot more infrastructure as well as vehicles that can be reflown. Hence, they need a higher launch rate than expendable vehicles in order to be competitive. I've heard claims that 50 flights a year is the minimum for a good reusable vehicle.

If you can get really high launch rates (like thousands per year or higher), then you can drive down the cost of reusable vehicles to where fuel is the key lower bound. For example, in the airline industry, the fuel cost of a flight tends to be about a third the ticket price of a cheap ticket. In a similar RLV situation, that would correspond to a cost of $100 per kg (for kerosene/LOX) to $300 per kg (for liquid H2/LOX).

3) Assisted launch. when one is dealing with low ISP vehicles, you can boost the vehicle at the start. Even a little extra velocity can significantly improve the amount of cargo your vehicle carries. And if you fire a rocket above most of the atmosphere you get four advantages: rocket nozzle optimized for vacuum, low air resistance, above all air traffic hence less red tape, and slightly higher up the gravity well.

There are many approaches, For example, launch your vehicle from an airplane or balloon, fire it out of a cannon, and accelerate it with a railgun or linear motor.

There might even be payloads which you can fire straight off the planet, though something needs to change their trajectory to a useful one (either on board propulsion or caught by something such as a skyhook).

4) mega-scale structures. This is the sexy stuff like space tethers, launch-loops, skyhooks, etc. A key thing to note about them is that while Earth is an extreme hard place to implement one, there are many bodies throughout the Solar System where the task would be easy enough that it could be done with modern materials and sometimes with a far smaller scale. For example, the Moon and any asteroid.

So possible launch structures could be evaluated somewhere else before tried on the Earth. This provides a good incremental development path for megascale structures.

Second, there is an important cost boundary, the cost of the energy required to put something in orbit. For current megastructure designs, the intent is to put matter into orbit and beyond. So mass flow is mostly outwards. At an electricity price of $0.10 per kWh, that is roughly $10 per kg.

That means that no matter how efficient you make the process, your floor is the energy cost of putting something in orbit. In practice, you'll also need to factor in the cost of propellant required for station keeping of your structure.

If you simultaneous bring matter down so that you remain mass neutral, then you need almost no station keeping and it is theoretically possible to drive cost per kg well below the energy cost of putting something in orbit.

At this point, you'd be capable of moving the entirety of human civilization into space.

Re:Like what?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well to start, we could start developing not-so-mega structures. For instance, if America could get the national momentum to develop a truly high speed rail system, not that wannabe crap that got passed in California a year or two ago, that would show that we could overcome the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges that high-power, high-cost, high-risk projects tend to run into. But if you look at how much kick back we get from simply trying to develop various not-so-mega infrastructure projects (repair the national highway system, deploy truly high speed internet everywhere in the country, develop a sustainable, redundant power system, etc.) then you can start to get a very basic idea of what kind of crap we would have to deal with trying to develop the most expensive and riskiest project ever attempted.

Right now the biggest obstacle to sci-fi style mega engineering projects is public willingness. We are, collectively, a country that doesn't want anything to change. Progress is seen as a dangerous, value-less game.

Re:Like what?

[khallow]

For instance, if America could get the national momentum to develop a truly high speed rail system, not that wannabe crap that got passed in California a year or two ago, that would show that we could overcome the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges that high-power, high-cost, high-risk projects tend to run into.

I ran across a phrase recently that describes my opinion about large projects like this. You can't steal a million from a million. In other words, you need a big public works project, if you want to steal a lot of money from it. I think a publicly funded space tether would be just as much a boondoggle for the US as a nation-wide high speed rail system today.

If one looks at the high speed rail, it doesn't fill an impressive role. Timewise, it covers distances too long for car and too short for plane. Merely improving those means of transportation (for example, a much faster airport check in and security screening procedure or tolls on congested artery roads) would close up that gap.

Nor is it going to be cheap. Glancing around it looks like the average cost per mile of track will be at least $50 million (and IMHO closer to $100 million per mile). In comparison, a 4 lane freeway in rural areas seems to cost up to $20 million per mile. I think there's far more mileage to be gained from merely improving existing transportation infrastructure.

There's no indication of demand for high speed rail. Amtrak would place somewhere in the bottom ten airlines by revenue passenger mile, if it were an airline.

It doesn't add anything to existing transportation networks. Amtrak had this cool idea of moving cars by rail. That seems pretty popular. But it doesn't require high speed trains in order to work.

While I've beat up on high speed trains, I imagine the same absence of practicality, high cost, and very similar problems would infect any public space tether project.

Finally, the US has a long history of underperforming public transportation projects. Sure, I bet it's the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges. But most of all, I think it's the reality challenge. Sure, we could waste a few tens of billions of dollars to find out that not only couldn't we pass those hurdles you mention (since that would never be the intention of the thieves who sponsor high speed rail, a space tether, whatever), but that the resulting product would never be worth what we put in, even if everything had gone along smoothly.

Re:Like what?

[Grishnakh]

That's why we need SkyTran. The cost-per-mile to deploy it is much, much cheaper, and it's far more flexible than high-speed rail as the cars are autonomous and can go to any destination on the network automatically. Rail is too big and too expensive, and only good for moving lots of people (or cargo) at one time between a small number of fixed points. That's fine for cargo, but for people, it just doesn't work; people need more flexibility with their transportation; they need to be able to go to many different destinations at any arbitrary time, not the same destination as everyone else at the same time as them. SkyTran can do that; traditional rail cannot.

Re:Like what?

[Grishnakh]

Incorrect. The biggest obstacle is the Universe itself. For one thing, it is mind-bogglingly huge. For another, it doesn't seem to contain any different materials than what we have here on Earth. If you believe there are other chemical elements out there, some that are missing from our table of elements, there's a Nobel Prize for you.

What are you talking about? New and exotic materials are being discovered all the time. Carbon nanotubes and buckyballs have only been known about for a decade or two, and still haven't been completely exploited. Other metamaterials have been discovered that have strange properties, and could be key to, for instance, an invisibility cloak. You don't need new elements on the Periodic Table for this; these materials are all made of long-known elements (carbon's been known about since antiquity), they're just new and different combinations of elements. The latest superconductors and high-strength magnets are made of various exotic compounds of things like Ytterbium, but again, no new elements.

Rockets.

[dicobalt]

They suck.

Re:Rockets.

[Q-Hack!]

I think technically they blow.

Re:Rockets.

[maxwell demon]

And sometimes they blow up.

Tachyon Pulse

[MuChild]

This disappoints me greatly. Why didn't they just reconfigure the deflector dish when they realized there was a problem and reduce the mass of the rocket with a tachyon pulse?

Seriously, though, we need a better system. Modern rocketry is almost 100 years old and we haven't come up with anything better?

Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Greyfox]

Everyone seems surprised about this, but getting stuff out of the gravity well is complicated and doesn't always work. I've heard stories about satellite companies with early histories that read like a Monty Python skit "Well yeah, the first rocket burned down on the launch pad. The second rocket burned down on the launch pad. The third rocket fell over, burned down and sank into the swamp." You don't launch a satellite without insurance against that sort of thing. At least then you're not out all of the several hundred million it costs to build something and shooting it into space if something goes wrong in the short time it takes to actually do that.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[0123456]

You don't launch a satellite without insurance against that sort of thing.

The US government does. I'm pretty sure they don't insure any of their satellites, they just ask Congress to fund them to build another one.

And Delta and Atlas have a 95+% success rate.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Sockatume]

And let's not forget pre-launch failures like this one.

(NOAA. Environmental craft seem to have the same sort of elevated failure rate as Mars missions. What is it that the martians do not want us to know about the environment?)

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[Combatso]

what company wouldn't want to insure a giant metal can full of rocket fuel with a multi-million dollar, fragile device on the end. I bet that little Gecko would all over it..

So easy, a rocket scientist can do it..... sometimes....

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[0123456]

what company wouldn't want to insure a giant metal can full of rocket fuel with a multi-million dollar, fragile device on the end. I bet that little Gecko would all over it..

If I remember correctly, Lloyds do or did launch insurance, even if no-one else does; I'm sure I read a story about them celebrating when the space shuttle recovered a couple of satellites which failed to reach their intended orbit in the 90s.

Ultimately it shouldn't be much harder than any other field of insurance, except that launch rates are so low that you need to err on the side of caution when estimating the chance of a failure.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[budgenator]

I suppose it's a matter of the cost to build Vs. the cost to insure and how big your cahonies are. I expect the insurance rate for Taurus launches are going up past break-even for a while.

Re:Satellite Launch Failures Happen All The Time

[WindBourne]

while OSC has a 100% failure rate on launching Climate sats. All 3 of them. And every loss was due to OSC who builds so very little of their launch vehicle.

Re:Womp Womp

[PopeRatzo]

And they're about to lay of a lot of other peoples dads. Bad news here.

I don't know, Orbital's board of directors looks like a who's who of republican lobbyists and military contractor sweethearts.

A few lunch checks get picked up, a few golfing trips to Manele Bay and everybody's good. Oh, there will still be layoffs, but as Speaker John Boehner put it, "So be it."

Re:Womp Womp

[Whalou]

I don't know, Orbital's board of directors looks like a who's who of republican lobbyists and military contractor sweethearts.

Conspiracy alert: They caused the nose cone problems to prevent those environmental satellites from confirming global warning!

:-P

Re:NASA COTS contract

[Annorax]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

Strange that no one else has picked-up on the fact that there is more than one player in this game.

Outsource?

[sirdude]

Anybody care to venture a guess as to how much this mission would have cost if outsourced to India's Antrix/ISRO or Russia? I realise that they also had a failure a few months ago. But their success rate has generally been pretty good when it comes to launches. Are there other space agencies which are offering cheaper alternatives? China? Japan? How about American privateers (sic)?

Re:Outsource?

[oneiros27]

Even if the launch itself were cheaper, you then have to look into getting the payload over to the launch location ... and that might not be a risk they're willing to take.

When there were massive flight delays for some of the groups that I've worked with, they've talked about trying to get into the queue at Vandenberg, rather than Canaveral, but that'd require either trucking it across country, or a flight. Even with launch delays at Canaveral, it was costing them more to hold it on the ground at Canaveral than it would've cost to hold it at Goddard ... but bringing it back to Maryland and then to Florida again was decided to be an unacceptable risk.

I know what you're thinking -- they test these things for vibration on launch, and such, but I don't think that's the same forces as a hard landing from an airplan or hitting a pothole; also, they'd get a cargo plane large enough to ship it ... you can't just send it fedex when it's an oversized load. And for cross country, they have to map out the route so they don't run into any overpasses they can't fit under, etc.

Taurus?

[Chris Mattern]

Shoulda gotten a Saturn!

Glory Satellite Lost

[todrules]

Glory Satellite Lost... Now, it's just a Glory Hole.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[0123456]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

Re:Womp Womp

[gatkinso]

Unfortunately after this they will be laying off more dads.

Re:Public vs Private

[maxwell demon]

Another wild guess: Insufficient statistics.

This just in

[geekzealot1982]

Rocket science is still a challenging science. Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?

Re:This just in

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I'm pretty sure Werner von Braun never designed a payload fairing separation system. He was more into the actual rocket design itself, as in, the engine and nozzle systems and such.

Re:This just in

[atcroft]

Rocket science is still a challenging science. Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?

Wernher von Braum currently resides at 2823 King St., Alexandria, Virginia, USA; however, he apparently has not been responding to correspondence or inquiries since at least Jun. 16, 1977.

Re:This just in

[WindBourne]

Where is Werner von Braun when we need him?
dead.

Re:Womp Womp

[DragonTHC]

that's oddly believable.

Re:Not a complete loss

[butalearner]

I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."

Third time's the charm?

Funny you should mention that: NASA is already paying Orbital to build and launch OCO-2 in February 2013.

On a Taurus XL rocket.

Big Oil, China and the Republican Party

[sinequonon]

Oh come on, we can make the conspiracy bigger than that. China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and the Republican Party wants to kill NASA's Earth monitoring program. Their motto: "What we don't know, can't hurt them."

Re:NASA COTS contract

[budgenator]

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of any launch vehicle, a Falcon with so few successful launches so far or the Taurus with two failures in a row.
There fixed it for you.

Re:Not a complete loss

[natehoy]

They should have learned the lesson from Ford. Anything named "Taurus" should be avoided.

Re:NASA COTS contract

[butalearner]

They could also just ditch Orbital and go with SpaceX for all of COTS.

To be fair, you'd have to be quite brave to put an expensive satellite on top of a Falcon with so few launches so far.

It's also important to note that Taurus is the rocket with two failures in a row (three of the last four failed, even). Taurus II, a new medium-lift rocket that Orbital has developed with a liquid fuel first stage, is going to be used for COTS. If they were smart they'd rename Taurus II right about now and move away from that name. Their other products are far more successful.

Look ma, no hands!

[StikyPad]

When a Glory satellite crashes, does it make a Glory hole?

It would not surprise me

[ThatsNotPudding]

if the US House of Representatives sabotaged it, given it's mission - and theirs.

Re:It would not surprise me

[drooling-dog]

I'm not ready to go that far, but I'm sure the Republicans are cheering about it, since this is an area (climate research) they are actively defunding...

Re:Not a complete loss

[bware]

Because otherwise they'd have to completely redesign OCO-2 to fit in another fairing, and it wouldn't launch in 2013 and it wouldn't be cheap. OCO-2 is basically OCO with minor changes, to keep the cost down and the launch in the near future. There's no way it would be launching in two years if it was a complete redesign for another launch vehicle.

FWIW, I've heard that Orbital did a redesign of the fairing after the last failure. They thought they had found the fault and fixed it, and had apparently gone through the reviews and convinced all their customers that they had fixed it. Guess not.

Conspiracy theories abound. I've heard Republicans and aliens. Neither want any independent observations of their terraforming of the planet.

Environmental satellites

[fox171171]

Is it my imagination, or do launch failure rates for "environmental" satellites seem higher than others? Someone still trying to cover up global warming?

Three Amateur Radio sats also lost

[Muad'Dave]

Also lost in this launch were three Amateur Radio Satellites.

Oh well.

[cyn1c77]

This will be the first of many failures due to the privatization of the space sector.

Re:Oh well.

[orphiuchus]

Uhh... Did you read the article? At the very least its the second.

Re:Oh well.

[WindBourne]

really? Please tell me of successful launches that did not involve private space in the USA.

fix or repair daily

[cellocgw]

Well, duh, it WAS a Taurus...

Necessary evil?

[Clsid]

There will be a painful transition in the space industry from being public to going private. They have to endure the same thing the US and the Soviet Union had to face during the early stages of the Space Race. A lot of people and animals died from both sides during the Space Race because politics mandated that a lot of things needed to be done before the other team got there. These companies face a similar pressure in terms of money and competition among enterprises. In the long run it might be a good thing but I believe if the US wants to develop the private sector, sharing some of the old rocket designs with startups could make things easier for everybody and still conform with the objectives.

Re:Womp Womp

[PopeRatzo]

They caused the nose cone problems to prevent those environmental satellites from confirming global warning!

The nosecone failures were probably due to something besides Orbital Science's malevolence. And due to Congress' never meeting a military contract it didn't love, my guess is that Orbital's going to have a very good year, despite nosecone failures. The workers it lays off? Their year won't be as great.

Re:Public vs Private

[SETIGuy]

This was a private launch. There is only one public launch vehicle in the US fleet: the space shuttle. Or are you talking about whether the payload was public or private? Hard to compare there because the mix of launch vehicles and payload sizes is very different.

it must be said

[chaosmind]

The Glory Satellite is gone... leaving a great, big Glory Hole in the sky.

OSC is proving that private space may have issues

[WindBourne]

OSC has had 3 failures with this rocket. All 3 were climate satellites. NONE of the others failed. But to make matters interesting, OSC builds LITTLE of their launch vehicles. They just assemble them. They really do so little. Yet, the ONE item that they build is the fairing. And yet, on all 3 launches, it was the fairing that failed.

To make matters a bit more interesting, they won the launch for OCO2, which is the follow on of one of the sats that they lost. They just won in jun 2010. At this point, NASA needs to consider one of 2 actions:
1) fire OSC as well as the NASA idiot that awarded them the contract for OCO2. And then allow other American LVs to bid on it.
2) build a 3rd OCO along with #2. If they do this, it will cost them only about 10-20 million. Sounds like a lot, but it is not. With this approach, when OSC fails (and they will if this is not built), then we can launch with SpaceX or ULA within 6 months or less.

Finally, OSC should not even be considered for human launch awards.

Actually

[WindBourne]

ALL 3 loses of the taurus WERE climate sats. The amazing thing is that NASA awarded them the contract for sending up OCO2. That needs to be looked at.

Do not be so sure

[WindBourne]

OSC builds little of this rocket. The one thing that they build is the fairing. ALL 3 of their failures were climate sats. ALL 3 were the fairings. Sadly, OSC is suppose to launch the replacement for OCO (OCO2). I would like to see us build a third one along with the second. It will be cheap insurance. Either that, or fire OSC from doing climate sats (along with firing whoever selected OSC for the latest climate sats).

Re: We had a better system.

[lent]

We had a better system. Launched all its satellite payloads pretty well. Only one Tracking and Data Relay Satellite was lost. Human cost was 14 of our best and brightest people over the launch system's lifetime. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-L and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-107 .

NASA, and now picking up the ball DOD, decided to try and eliminate the human cost. The result, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37, just had a successful launch. Originally, it was to be launched from the shuttle (a shuttle within a shuttle), but the Columbia disaster changed that.

Other ideas still proceed, but slowly...

more on falling to earth...

[ejreed]

NASA's Glory Mission Meets Inglorious End NASA's Glory mission, a rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite, is in the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt, officials said Friday. http://www.newslook.com/videos/295155-nasa-s-glory-mission-meets-inglorious-end?autoplay=true