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NASA Morpheus Lander Test Ends In Explosion
First time accepted submitter DishpanMan writes "For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story, like today's Morpheus project test flight at Kennedy Space Center. The project is trying to build a low cost Moon and Asteroid lander using clean fuels on a shoestring budget. While tethered flight test were successful, today's actual flight test ended in a crash and a ball of fire followed by a spectacular explosion. Initial feedback points to hardware failure, but the investigation is still ongoing."
Waaaw, nice video of the crash! And immediately the action in the first 10 seconds of it. Well done!
Too bad for the money and work that went into it. But then again, this is what tests are for, this result helps progress forward as well.
Sometimes I hit the parking lot.
...Lander alive!
Hey, first post! What do you know?
or
Silence is a state of mime.
But then, they can name the next lander "Neo" and see if they get better results...
Morpheus: to build a low cost Moon and Asteroid lander using clean fuels on a shoestring budget.
Curiosity: Mars landing, high dollar, big budget, traditional components (similar to previous Mars Landers), unlimited time.
I guess one could conclude "faster, better, cheaper" doesn't work in NASA's case?
A "Failure" means loss of the mission. This is an unsuccessful test and is part of the process to ensure the hardware will work with a high degree of confidence so that the mission won't "fail" in its actual landing on the moon.
Something to learn from and move forwards on.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Damn that fire just refused to go out, didn't it? Also the second explosion at 6:22 was Michael Bay worthy...
"This is the Captain. There's a little problem with our entry sequence; we may experience slight turbulence and then explode."
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
"5...4...3...2...0" BOOM!
"For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story"
Yes, and if you never try you'll never fail. Bravo for you.
Those of us who explore and push the boundaries do have failures, learn (if we live) and try again. Failure is the norm. Success is the wonderful exception.
I didn't know something so small could be *that* on fire.
It looks as though the thrust was really unbalanced; it just sort of wobbled in the air before keeling over. I shouldn't have laughed... but I did.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Did I hear it correctly, around 0:23 in video someone says "Pam, call 911"?
well worth the fast-forward =D
There is another ( well actually there is a third one as well ) less publicized lander project at NASA, check out the flight videos at http://nasa.gov/roboticlander
Coincidentally, it just did a successful untethered test flight today, see http://twitter.com/nasamightyeagle
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
And yet it took more than 8 minutes for the Fire truck to arrive at the rocket test site.
I wonder how long it would take if they didn't expect this sort of thing...
That was kinda silly actually, and yes... a bad omen.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Congratulations everyone!
We have discovered a folding chair that will hold up while watching failed test flights.
Order a hundred and we can sell tickets for the next launch.
Next test: Goggles for the enjoying the view at the 2:00 and 6:20 mark.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
An unsuccessful test isn't "failure", it's "data".
sic transit gloria mundi
I love that they were ready (by the phone) for any emergency situation.
"Knock the stones together, guys!"
USA, we understand how you feel right now. You need to whip your workers a little harder, and remember food is a powerful motivator.
-Kim
King Arthur: One, two, five!
Sir Galahad: Three sir!
King Arthur: THREE!
If only we had some sort of design and technology that has been used sucessfully for a moon landing we could modernise...
On the moon. And on the asteroids. Safer for the chipmunks living there. Good thing they are using cleaner fuels.
Spirit and Opportunity were both "faster, better, cheaper" concept vehicles that did amazingly well, so your conclusion based on just one point of data would be wrong. At this point I don't think there's enough data to make any conclusions about the project's value.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I'm still waiting for the "failure" part.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The moment you start engineering in compromises -- e.g. Clean Fuels -- into the design you are setting yourself up for less than optimal results.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
As always, the only honest answer is "Pick two."
I imagine they'll figure out what went wrong. I bet this didn't cost $2+ billion. That's why you do tests like this. Better to make a $10 million fireball on Earth someplace, then spend a few years waiting for a $2 billion fireball on some other planet.
So basically if I'm not wrong it means that it didn't work properly, right? I'm gonna eat a pizza, I'm tired.
They were testing lithobraking as a possible landing technique.
Okay, so there was a crash and an explosion?
Initial feedback points to hardware failure
D'you think?
Such as, LOX/LH2?
It would be nice if the fuel and the reason why was specified in the summary. I can only image that it has something to do with expansion rations versus LH2, although I'm not sure how liquid methane (thankfully called-out in the linked Morpheus page) represents a vast improvement. If you can use kerosene, you can use alcohols, which are much much more biodegradable and don't have nearly the greenhouse gas power of methane.
with the big bang
...to endanger fire crews, the best way to put out a fire like that is to wait and then hose down the remains.
But I was surprised to hear the countdown skiping the ONE and going straight to (ie launch).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Subject says all
I'm still waiting for the "failure" part.
Some dickhead on slashdot decided to disparage the work of an entire team and decide the project was over and nothing could be done to fix the design. I'd call that a dismal failure of the education system.
Windows 7 strikes again!
The rocket itself didn't seem like it caused much hazard, but that explosion did set off a small grass fire. Watch it creep along. Next time they do this, I hope they have the good sense to hose down the grass around the test pad beforehand.
This is what you get when you can't afford real simulators. Kerbal Space Program is not the best place to design and test your space vehicles in.
Does anyone know why the fire crew approached from downwind?
People will wonder why a moon lander has extra code in the control software allowing it to compensate for wind gusts.
WHOOSh...
It looks to me like someone forgot to spin up the gyroscopic stabilizer.
Judging by the smoke flow, there was a pretty stiff breeze, and the lander crashed in the direction of the wind. Presumably the lander is not designed for these conditions, since there is no wind on the Moon or an asteroid. Could it be that they simply chose a bad day or location for the test?
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Why would they need to lift that much beer on the moon??
Drop a keg or two and it might fly.
This is how we get things done by learning.
Probably a quote from one of the software developers.
In this day and age when we have Segways, balancing robots, and quadrocoptors, this sort of thing should be a "solved" problem. I mean, check out what they were doing in the 1990s.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Crash, ball of fire, *spectacular* explosion ...I'm still waiting for the "failure" part.
The failure part was that it wasn't supposed to do any of those things.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Looking through a few other Youtube videos of Morpheus tests, I found this video entitled " This is why we test". It looks very similar, except the tether kept it from flipping completely over and crashing.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story, like today's Morpheus project test flight at Kennedy Space Center.
I take issue with this. If this statement were true, NASA would have at least as many failures as successes. Even if this were true, it would still be amazing to be... what is it, batting 500? They're doing things no one has ever done, they're on the cutting edge of about a hundred different technologies, have done things in real life most people couldn't have DREAMED of, and managed to do it with the amazing handicap of all being employees of the US Government, meaning having to follow the insanity that is federal regulations regarding procedures and practices in hiring and all other aspects of personnel policy, in addition to the fact that their bosses are politicians some of whom think the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and barely have a high-school education. They get told crazy things all the time, have to justify every penny they spend, and if things were any harder for them, they'd be the US Postal Service.
BUT THAT'S NOT THE CASE. They have been more successful than not, so thank you for that naked, inaccurate and thoroughly undeserved insult to one of the most amazing, successful divisions of ANY national government on the planet. Hey, quick pop quiz: WHO, of either A. NASA, or B. ANYONE OTHER THAN NASA, has flown people to the moon, and returned them safely to Earth, and did it with computers ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less powerful than a frickin' iPad?
The answer is A. NASA. So don't presume to shake your head and say "NASA failed yet again" like that, DishpanAss, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Instead of running your mouth, why don't YOU TRY DOING WHAT THEY'RE DOING, YOU PUNK-ASS-BITCH?!?
But that's one yummy helping of spectacular engineering fail. And this coming from a guy who saw his rocket execute an un-prescribed loop-da-loop right out of the launcher, so I know the bitter taste of test failure on tape first hand. Not the same amount of money was involved in my case, though. Looks like this control system was determined to diverge as soon the legs stopped making contact. Tether saved us from a few failures in my day, but based on the history looks like they had done enough tethered testing and were ready to go free. Feel sorry for the team who had to get data the hard way. Hope you had telemetry, because there's nothing left to diagnose or debug.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
if there gonna do what armadillo aerospace are doing, then they should use a tether.
Sucks that it went out like that, but you're going to have setbacks on the way to achieving great things. Does anyone know if NASA has other landers to test of was Morpheus the only one of that model.
...like a Guy Fawkes effigy on bonfire night.
They are using clean fuels on a Moon and Asteroid lander?
What ecology are they trying to protect? vacuum?
I believe the complaint here lies in the semantic ambiguity of "the test failed". Does that mean the test 1) was improperly designed such that it could not possibly prove that which it was commissioned to prove (test design was sound/flawed) or 2) was perfectly designed, the proof of which is that a failure mode of the device being tested was demonstrated (test device passed/failed)
As an engineer I take great pains to say what I mean as unambiguously as possible, because I know that failures happen quite often due to miscommunication. I read the summary above and am left in no doubt what happened, without even having seen the test results.
What I find truly interesting is how many people, upon seeing a test that passed all of the designed criteria say "the test passed" rather than either "the test was unnecessary" or "the test was insufficiently comprehensive". There are no flawless systems. If your test didn't result in some kind of failure you should immediately question whether you designed your tests correctly.
Even though Congress is in recess, there are committees still running, especially regarding the FY13 Budge and Sequestration.
While 'engineering failures' happen frequently, this month is NOT the time for one!
The images of the crash and explosion will now live in the minds of the Congressional Budget members. ;(
Firemen peeing on the wind and wind peeing back is what you are looking for. Comes near the end of the video.
If your test didn't result in some kind of failure you should immediately question whether you designed your tests correctly.
Oh come on! Tests can also determine if a problem has been eliminated. For example, you're installing a gas stove. Soap solution put on a gas pipe starts bubbling - you've got a gas leak. You shut off the gas, tighten the fittings, and try again. No bubbles this time. The fittings passed the test. Was it unnecessary? No, you don't want to have a leak. Was it sufficiently comprehensive? Well, yes, if it was done properly.
I found the problem. She skipped "one" during the countdown.
Does anybody remember this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYKlXsEoq2U ...seems like a pattern is emerging.
Whether a space mission is a (smashing) success (pun intended) or not, I could not care less!
Assume 'curiosity' was to discover something truly amazing, do you think they would
tell you? Are you expecting to see CNN suddenly interrupt their programming for
"BREAKING NEWS! CITY ON MARS DISCOVERED BY CURIOSITY!" and talk about
it for weeks?
If you are, keep watching television :-) For the rest of us, this is just not going to happen anytime
soon. The only thing the scum who lord of us fear is a loss of control. They like the completely
predictable and conversely they viciously hate the unknown and unpredictable. Something
as paradigm shattering as a city on Mars could very well upset the equilibrium they maintain.
Have you ever given thought to the white-black symbolisms found in many in Freemasonry?
If there were such a city, they would certainly want to know everything they can about it, there
would be even more secret follow-up missions, but YOU would never find out except maybe
from a few far- and in between whistleblowers that are easily silenced. Not with a gun, but simply
by standing these whistleblowers in a spotlight pointing a television camera at them and telling
a few jokes about them. You have been well trained.
Did you forget to take your medicine again?
Also: there is *no* way in hell something like "a city on mars" would not get leaked, seriously man, they could not even keep accidental kllings of civilians a secret.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
http://xkcd.com/984/
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=368
Warning: sarcasm ahead. Ahem....that's what you get when you do it on the cheap and use "clean" fuels. (I'll bet if they used dirty fuel, the assplosion would have been better)
but there I tagged the article "troll". There are only results in science no success or failures. And those results are used to understand and better explain what we observe.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Components Fail. Methods Fail. Programs Fail. Even Test Objectives Fail.
But the product of rocket testing is data. Only when you loose the data is the test a failure.
You might not like the answer or the cost of the test, or the inability to run more tests on the hardware, but if you have the data, you accomplished your mission.
Back in the day, I was the lead instrumentation engineer on one of NASA's test stands. Loosing the test article, and sometimes a portion of the test stand was just part of a day's work. But have a key instrument fail (and its back up) or have a recorder not work... well lets just say I don't remember those particular days fondly.
But one of my best memories was the day I was the first to hit the "pickle switch" as a rocket motor began to consume itself. I may have saved the facility. (Except several other people hit their's a fraction of a second later.) The owner of the rocket, on the other hand, wished for a few more seconds of data, rather than a more intact motor.
Mars has an atmosphere (mostly carbon dioxide) and wind speeds up to 250 mph.
Reason for crash obvious: lady doing the countdown skipped step one and went straight to zero. How did we ever reach the moon? Oh I know. They didn't have women working in NASA back in the 60's.