Slashdot Mirror
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."
"5...4...3...2...0" BOOM!
Make sure to stay tuned at least through 2:00, there's a nice fireworks display.
And at 6:21 there is a second explosion. It's like 4th of July when the fuel and oxidizer tank reach their flash point!
An unsuccessful test isn't "failure", it's "data".
sic transit gloria mundi
Three words.
Mars Semi Direct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WppRQQld10&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP48ECECA63832ACC7
This is the first step to creating a return vehicle that can fuel itself from some stored Hydrogen and the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.
Also, the ISS " produces – and dumps – enough methane waste gas each year to fill the Morpheus fuel tanks." http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/morpheus_test_stennis.html
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
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...
Rule one of firefighting: don't put anyone needlessly in harm's way. This was an unmanned test flight, with nobody in any imminent danger.
After the initial crash, the craft still had fuel and oxidant tanks on board that hadn't yet blown up. You don't move the fire crews in until the hazardous materials are accounted for. The crews were quite obviously sitting in their fire rig at a safe distance, waiting for the signal from the range safety officer to tell them that the rest of the fuel was gone. That explosion at the 6:20 mark was the signal they were waiting for. At 8:00 the camera zooms in as they examine the wreckage for any potential surprises. At about 8:17 you could hear the diesel motor of one of the trucks as it approached the pad. At 8:40 you can hear the report from "10-1" (I assume that was the range safety officer) at gate 7 that he had advised the fire crew that there were four pressurized tanks, they believed two were gone, but there were potentially still two tanks with pressure, and that the fire crews had proceeded downrange anyway.
The crews handled the situation exactly as they should have. They expected this sort of thing.
John
It wouldn't have taken quite so long if they had arrived from UP-WIND and knew how to AIM those foam-cannons they have strapped to their trucks. Seriously, it was like watching a 3 year old trying to hit the toilet bowl from the hallway!
Rocket fuel generally sits very close to it's oxidizer on the craft, no point in trying to put it out early. There were probably fifty people on the island where that happened, all of whom were wearing safety goggles and behind a barrier of some sort at a safe distance. It's not like dousing the fire ten minutes earlier would have somehow avoided the forest fires in Colorado.
moox. for a new generation.