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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.
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.
You mean, it wasn't a good idea to reuse those 40-year-old Russian engines even when two of them have been shown as defective before this launch?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lots of amateur videos linked here: http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2...
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Pretty sure NASA has blown more on Constellation, Orion and SLS, launchers to no where that never launch, than SpaceX has spent on successful development of 2 new rockets and Dragon1, and will probably spend on Falcon Heavy, Dragon 2 and their reusable program.
NASA's problem is not insufficient funding. Its inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors, and the inability to build or do much of anything in the vacinity of its manned space program. JPL and a few others places are doing fine but they are an exception to the rule.
Some people at Orbital probably do need to be sacked for trying to use 40+ year old Russian engines, the engines are actually that old not just the design. Some people at NASA probably should be sacked for buying in to a contractor proposing such a flawed concept.
@de_machina
You forgot to mention that the engines have been re-purposed and upgraded by Aeojet in between. It's not as it they were put on the rocket straight from the Russian warehouse.
It is not the same. Glushko - stubborn as a mule and a squealer - never believed that it was possible to make a so high performant LOX/kerosene engine and so Korolev went to the Kusnetsov design bureau which previously built airplane engines (like the one for Tu-95 or Tu-154). Kusnetsov proved Glushko wrong with NK-33, so Glushko tried to one-up this with Energia's RD-170. So, not the same design, only similar.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
NASA's problem is not insufficient funding. Its inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors, and the inability to build or do much of anything in the vacinity of its manned space program.
And the Congress/Senate. They've both been requiring them to do stuff that protects existing pork projects AND constantly cutting their funding.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }