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Antares Rocket Explodes On Launch
sneakyimp writes: The Antares rocket operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation exploded on launch due to a "catastrophic anomaly" after a flawless countdown. No injuries are reported and all personnel are accounted for. According to the audio stream hosted by local news affiliate WTVR's website, the Cygnus spacecraft contained classified crypto technology and efforts are being made to cordon off the wreckage area. Additionally, interviews of personnel and witness reports are to be limited to appropriate government agencies so that an accident report can be generated. This accident is likely to have a detrimental effect on the stock price of Orbital Sciences Corp, traded on the NYSE. The Antares rocket's engines are based on old soviet designs from the '60s. While this is sure to be a blow to NASA due to the cost, it may well boost the fortunes of SpaceX, a chief competitor of Orbital Sciences. Both companies were recently awarded resupply contracts by NASA.
Hey, at least they got the hard part right.
HA HA
Elon Musk was right, this is the first strike.
I have friends that worked on this rocket. Some were there for the launch. Orbital is going to have serious problems because of this.
I'm on a chair.
The ISS crew will get their pizza for free now.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Proven performance is so valued in this industry. Saving some money here and there is meaningless when your total ROI is $0
Ooops
The whole thing, intact, fell burning to the ground before exploding.
no indications of terrorism linked to the destruction of the rocket.
Is it just me or is Orbital Sciences' track record extremely poor? Something like half their rockets fail and they give nothing but excuses. Their Taurus rocket had a 33% failure rate http://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-...
It may be time to look into how they manage their company.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
I mean it's not like it's rocket science...
May be Orbital Sciences should consider sending their people to China or India for advanced training.
This is hard stuff and there will be set backs. I want as many competitors to succeed as possible. I hope they keep trying and have more success.
As much as I think Elon Musk is cool guy right now, I don't want his companies to have a monopoly on commercial space flight, solar power and electric cars 20 years from now.
Soviet designs from the 60s, but Russian rockets are our only ride now. Aren't those also based on Soviet designs, possibly also from the 60s? If it's not a design flaw, maybe there's something about the Soviet/Russian construction process that's missing. It's probably like having somebody's cookie recipe. You swear you followed it; but your kitchen is different. There are timings and processes that the person who gave you the recipe isn't even aware of; because they're subconscious. If they find a cause, I bet it boils down to something like, "well of course we case harden those gears after we fit them, it was just the way things were done and nobody ever thought about it".
Orbital Science has a strong rocket program going, and has been able to deliver in the past. At best, this simply shows how even the best can get caught off guard with some stupid little thing that you didn't nail down prior to the launch. It is also why this is called "rocket science", where literally every rocket launch is an experiment to see if the current configuration is going to work or not.
In this case it didn't. The after-action engineering review is going to be brutal for the Orbital engineers, but they are going to learn a whole lot in the end.
The economic lessons to learn are also likely to be brutal, as Orbital has been really relying upon the commercial contracts for their business. Based upon the experience of other major launchers, a failure like this really hits both insurance premiums really hard as well as discourages others from using their rockets for quite some time. It will be interesting to see what happens once the merger with ATK is complete and how that will also impact the company.
What I want to know is if there's any truth to the rumors that Musk was seen leaving the area with an empty Stinger launch on one shoulder and a shit-eating grin on his face...
If the countdown hadn't been flawless they would have actually aborted before launch instead of flushing a billion dollars down the toilet. This is the sort of thing that makes me REALLY nervous about the prospect of private manned space flight. They'll probably find the cause was some $20 part that a bean counter replaced with an $18 one because, hey, the knock off is just as good right? Either that or the original manufacturer decided to "brick" the counterfeit part with a driver update :-))
Dear Slashdot,
I fail to see how the 13-year-old story about game design, "A 'Vow of Chastity' For Game Designers", is a related story, as indicated in the panel below the story between the "previous story" and "next story" links. Seriously, WTF? Less than worthless.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
and launched it from a giant bottle, they wouldn't have this problem.
If you post it, they will read.
...that if we can't ask the Russians how to do these things reliably, "we can at least ask the Indians who went to Mars recently."
I wonder what classified crypto technology did it contain.
The explosion, though spectacular, is a little saddening - this sort of thing shouldn't happen to a sufficiently well funded space agency where such catastrophic failure can't be tolerated. To me this illustrates why letting the private sector do the important jobs in space travel is dangerous. NASA spent many years developing processes and vehicles that, initially, had a very high failure rate. Today we are conditioned to expect that these launches will go off safely, but do we need to give the private sector 20 years or so to sort itself out before we start allowing people to fly in their rockets?
No lives lost is good news, but no doubt a lifetime of some people's work has been destroyed today and that is still very sad indeed.
At least we know why that boat had to be out of the way...
10..9..
Bill! what's after 9?
10.
Thanks!
10..9..10..9.
Well, usually rockets bound for ISIS explode upon impact... Oh, wait, the rocket was bound to the ISS. Nevermind.
Video of the Orbital Sciences Explosion at Wallops from a Cessna flying at 3000ft. Note that the video is pretty noisy so you'll want to turn your sound down.
The loss includes the first satellite for Planetary Resources, the Arkyd, an orbiting telescope intended to hunt for asteroids.
because stocks and rockets have a lot in common
Steve Jobs: "You were launching it wrong."
Table-ized A.I.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The summery isn't quite correct. The engines aren't based on an engine from the 60s. These -are- the engines built by the soviets in the 1970s. These things are 40 years old.
The RD-180s used by the Atlas-V are built new, despite their relationship to the abandoned Energia/Buran. The NK-33s that are used by the Antares sat for decades in a Russian warehouse.
Go to 1:13 in the video and watch the blocky building on the right. You can see the smoke/vapor from the radiant heat cooking the surface of the building, much like those old nuke test films before the blast wave hits.
Tastes Like Chicken
hmmmm....
"based on 1960's Soviet's designs"
I wonder if that's the same engine that blew up Rocket City in Russia, it took out dozens of
people, including the director and a bunch of lead scientists.
See? See? I told you! See? Big government can't do anything right! If you want something done right, you get the private secto.... oh
Drill baby drill - on Mars
your going to need it!
At the news conference they were telling people to stay away from the exploded parts of the rocket.
makes me wonder how much radioactive stuff was in the equipment they were trying to send up there.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
http://slashdot.org/comments.p..."> Antares will launch less than 20 times in its lifetime. In fact, probably less than another 5. NASA is not likely going to use them to provide goods for the ISS since they are expensive for what they bring.
OSC is a company that really has NO control of its systems. Basically, it farms out most everything, so it must depend on all others. Even now, the Antares uses old Russian engines, and counted on Russia to do the quality control.
Until OSC controls all aspects of its systems, similar to how SpaceX works, they will NEVER be able to do a launch system reliably.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That was just spectacular to see!
SpaceX has zero losses on their F9. It is one of the best records that have been seen by a new system.
OSC lost this because they control NOTHING. All of the QA on this is from Russia, Ukraine, Europe, etc. OSC has no real QA on it.
And considering that NASA lost a shuttle just 10 years ago, I would have to say that it makes your diatribe total BS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
OSC does NOT have a strong program. The fact is, that Antonio has continued to give up all of the design and construction to others. OSC owns less of this rocket, than ULA owns of their atlas first stage.
Go look at Pegasus and the various Minotaurs/Taurus launch systems and you will see that they do NOT have a great track record.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If OS gets more per launch than SpaceX, then can OS hire SpaceX to carry their loads and still make easy money?
Another great victory for the private-sector space program. I mean, it's not like we've been launching rockets for the past half-century. They're still working out the kinks.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're going to love this:
https://twitter.com/hormiga/st...
Another great victory for the private sector. Rocket science is hard. It's not like we've been launching rockets for half a century or anything.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Elon Musk called it two years ago in this interview.
Musk: The results are pretty crazy. One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It will be 6-12 months before they launch Antares. BUT, they have 3 other launch systems, even though they also have issues. IOW, they will be launching soon enough.
However, with this many failures, esp. of late, I suspect that they will lose DOD AND NASA backing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The TRA will immediately start full pat down searches and anal fever probes of all terrorist rocket scientists entering and leaving the USA.
Hmm, now who would want to see Orbital fail? Would anyone stand to benefit from that? Any companies that they are competing with for contracts or investment? Hmm...
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
...for about six seconds.
When countries like India launched rockets successfully the Slashdot crowd was quick to point out that this was done and dusted by west a few decades back and how it was not much of an achievement now but this episode just goes to show that rocket science is still hard..
At least they successfully counted down to 0. Give them some applause!
I did some work at years ago at Wallops Flight Facility. Whenever a untested or otherwise dubious rocket was scheduled to launch there would be a "will it clear the sea wall" pool. I'm sure there was heavy action on this one.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5572007&cid=47735997
" If you want space done right go American. "
Just saying ...
Congratulation on the most expensive fireball in 2014.
I'm pretty sure once again, some engineer read data from a sensor which output was in "imperial", and used it as a metric.. It's getting old, seriously..
...for this terroristic act? There must be a county, which is responsible, has oil or other valuable resources and WMD... Never forget the WMD.
USABall cannot into space?
From the press : ...
The latest Cygnus launch strengthens America's public-private space partnership, lessens the country's reliance on Russian space technologies, and may just include the future of space Nutrition.
The just-launched Antares rocket was a team effort between Orbital and the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, which designed rockets for the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian rockets: You break it, you own it.
Don't forget that SpaceX had its own problems at inception.
In that case, the launch commander would be in the ER with burns on his face, rather than safe in the Launch Command Center.
This incident got me to thinking about manned flight and the designs for crew escape options. I wonder if the designs/specs for crew escape mechanisms would work for a failure of this type (catastrophic system failure in the first seconds of flight), or if it's game over if the launch fails early.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
According to Up Goer Five (http://xkcd.com/1133/), the end that should point to the ground if you want to go to space never pointed to space. How could we have a bad problem that keeps us from going to space?
The engines aren't just developed by the Soviets in the 1960s. These engines were *built* in the 1960s and 1970s. The engine in the first stage is literally 40 years old.
Kriston
Well, someone really did not like that payload... did you says our alien friends?
We're just kicking around the same old ideas, trying to make them better. No real new direction. But my fridge can post to Twitter.
Futurist Traditionalism
Orbital Sciences: Innovation You Can Count On....TO EXPLODE!!!
According to this: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/Launch_vehicles/Ariane_5 , it looks quite reliable.
Watching breaking news story with youtube video of Antares rocket, and the ad on the screen from a Russian dating site. Is it the NK33 engines or Google must know something of me? I already meet several Russian ladies at ballroom dance studios in Silicon Valley.
mfwright@batnet.com
For the record, I was just stumbled across the best video of the launch I've seen thus far (from about 1.5 miles away). At 0:18 you can see fire pretty far up the rocket from the nozzles on the left side, which seems to be the direction of the explosion, too.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
In the later press conference last night, the question of insurance was asked. The answer was "yes", but the extent of coverage was not addressed.
To those of you making light of this mishap. IT IS NOT FUNNY. Thankfully no one was hurt. The space program takes enough crap already. Let them figure it out and move on.
"Send a rocket to explore the big bang"
Someone misunderstood the mission briefing.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
You just don't get it - major changes have consequences in multiple components and design becomes a multiple feedback process. It's not fucking source code and you should at least be able to grasp that much.
The analogies were of things you would have heard of instead of being an exact match, because, guess what, an analogy is an analogy and is never meant to be taken literally. Maybe I'll try a film one this time - "The Magnificent Seven" was very heavily based on "The Seven Sumuari" but many scenes, camera angles, costumes, dialogue etc was different and it still took a lot of work. The parameters were different enough with this rocket that it also took some work.
Changing the designs of complicated things with a lot of interdependencies is not trivial. Getting it yet?
By your definition, there's no such thing as a "non-new rocket", all designs are new. That's a strange definition to use, but whatever floats your boat. I just found it peculiar that someone takes existing Russian engines, a modified Ukrainian stage, puts a modified Peacemaker on top of that, and you call it "a new design of rocket" (whereas to me, "a new design" means things like R-7 or Falcon 9 which were actually designed from scratch.)
It's not fucking source code and you should at least be able to grasp that much.
What gives you the idea that I confuse rockets and software? I haven't even mention software.
Ezekiel 23:20
That creates a new element of risk hence my comment way above that you seemed to object to.
The way you are discussing design gives me that impression.