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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.
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.
I thought Orbital Science actually had a rather poor record in recent years, this may just be the final nail in their coffin.
They probably will but they shouldn't have serious problems just because of a failed launch. You can't progress in something difficult if every setback is seen as a showstopper, which I suppose is why governments have been prepared to pay the price of an occasional rocket failure while private enterprise has been steering clear of funding it up till now.
Nobody went broke over Apollo 1. This is nowhere near as serious.
And it's not the first time they've blown up rockets rather than shooting them into space.
Well, yes, but that happens to everyone in the launch business, including SpaceX. Doing it on production launch is not good for business though.
Nobody includes failures during component testing into the failure rate of a rocket. Doing so is completely meaningless and disingenuous.
Payload, plus collateral damage, plus market capitalization loss, plus reputation damage, plus value of future lost contracts, etc. $1B might actually be on the low side.
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)
Looks like they're headed toward being the same thing again, no?
No, it doesn't sound strange - it sounds like what it is, which is complete and utter bullshit. They have a few things ahead of everyone else, they have a few things on par with everyone else, and they have a lot of things that are in fact engineering time capsules from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's.