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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.
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
The whole thing, intact, fell burning to the ground before exploding.
no indications of terrorism linked to the destruction of the rocket.
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.
Yep. There's no such thing as a free launch.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
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...
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.
...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."
No, it went boom, THEN fell down.
Payload.. the rockets was not the only thing to go boom.
Although i think the parent may have been dabbling in fish stories (exageration) a bit. It doesn't detract from his point though.
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...
This is the sort of thing that makes me REALLY nervous about the prospect of private manned space flight.
Because government spacecraft don't occasionally explode?
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This was a fixed-performance contract. The only thing lost, from NASA's viewpoint, was some cargo - not a big deal. It's not like ISS is running on fumes, they can plan around a lost delivery. Orbital still has to uphold their end of the deal. The only people getting a short end of the stick are the investors.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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
The NASA communications equipment probably includes crypto technology so they can send encrypted communications if necessary. I would swag that it's compatible with the DOD hardware. So, if they were carrying spares for the comm system...
and launched it from a giant bottle, they wouldn't have this problem.
Ironically, if you look at the initial explosion and then follow on explosions, you can see quite clearly that the cargo being delivered was in fact fireworks!
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
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
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.
That's a silly distinction to make, because neither NASA nor the government is in the business of building anything. It's all done by subcontractors, and most of the time the design and development is done by those subcontractors, too. NASA is in the program management and science business, not in building or launching anything much. There are and were some NASA payloads, IIRC, but that's about it. The whole "commercial" launch thing is a misnomer. It's business as usual, except that this time NASA does less micromanagement, and there are some new faces at the table. That's all.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Whoops, this wasn't an ISS cargo mission. Sorry :/
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
The whole "commercial" launch thing is a misnomer. It's business as usual, except that this time NASA does less micromanagement, and there are some new faces at the table. That's all.
And the contracts won't be cost-plus, meaning the contractors don't have a blank check and projects will actually have to stay on budget. There may be legitimate arguments why this is a bad idea for a national space program (personally, I disagree), but it does represent a rather large change from the way launches were done in the past.
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.
Actually, it went boom, fell down, and we got a second boom for no added charge.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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.
I believe it was. I was watching NASA TV this morning and they were talking about how Orbital's craft would be arriving on Tuesday and there were some "consumables" for various experiments on board. I found an article here that mentions it as well.
I don't believe there was anything in there that was critical for space station operations--the astronauts won't starve or anything. There's also a Progress launch planned in the next few 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.
And I think the launch pad area might need a fresh coat of paint or something...
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
And amazingly, no one at NASA will be sacked as a result of this.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
Looks like they're headed toward being the same thing again, no?
Fucking terrorists blowing up our shit for no good reason.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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?
[Citation Needed]
Sacked for what? Not being funded enough to run their own rocket development
At least we have SpaceX and ULA waiting in the wings.
My first thought when it was hanging in the air was that they wanted to try a controlled landing like SpaceX pulled off
...for about six seconds.
And the second was a big-bada-boom.
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
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.
It's actually the same design as the newly build RD-180 which has been used successfully so far by the Atlas rockets. Though, the antares rockets just use repurposed and upgraded NK-33.
Actually, it went boom, fell down, and then sank into the swamp.
You know, it's that same old regurgitated bullshit. And it smells like it.
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
Let me underscore that part for you
_anything_ that West has to offer.
They have closed circuit rocket engine technology. By definition, that is going to be at least about 15% more efficient than any open circuit that is the only technology west has in orbital lifting rocket engines. Thanks for private corporation known as Lockheed Martin, that didn't believe that closed circuit was possible to do until Russians literally put a working engine in their lab and test fired it for them in 2000s. Because it was too inefficient to research the technology in more detail. Russians had to blow up something like 30 rockets to get it right. Tolerance limits on closed circuit are apparently far more tight, and that's not just the engine but all the relevant systems.
Private sector is really good at developing off existing base level development to practical development, but it's utterly terrible at actual base level development that is needed for practical development, but doesn't result in practical applications on its own. That's why much if not most if that kind of development is done in universities and government labs. And rocket engines are in desperate need of base research right now because of long term lack of funding. This has nothing to do with "inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors" or anything of a sorts. It has everything to do with the fact that they were given no funding to develop baseline research for better rocket engine technology.
Private corporations will have to blow up their share of rockets to get it right. They're banking on better simulation software in existence, but that can't simulate everything due to sheer amount of unknowns or uncertainties when it comes to rocket science. That's why rocket science is HARD, even by modern standards.
The design is great, no problem with using it today, why screw with what works.
OTOH, the engines themselves are 40 years old. That is a different story. They were made and have just been sitting in storage. 40 years is a long time for things to go wrong bad. Apparently they were not sufficiently re-conditioned before use.
Is the engine old or is the tech old?
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
It seems to me that in order to be better, they have to deliver their payload, and not explode. When they blow up, their effectiveness falls off to zero real quick.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apparently they were not sufficiently re-conditioned before use.
These engines have been sitting around packed in oil or whatever ;) What evidence is there that they were ever spaceworthy? Did they subject every critical part to X-Ray inspection, etc etc? Even that can't detect some kinds of defect.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Those are good questions. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough.
A good followup question is what reason did they have to believe what they did was enough. I am not aware of a significant body of knowledge as to what is necessary to successfully take a 40 year old single use engine out of mothballs.
Yeah, western engines don't blow up on launch half as well as these do!
Congratulation on the most expensive fireball in 2014.
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; }
Not quite single use. From what I remember even though the engines were originally meant for a non-reusable rocket, they were manufactured to withstand up to 15 firings. Kusnetsov overengineered them for prospective future use. Thus Aerojet would be able to test-fire each engine several times before passing them to Orbital Sciences.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You obviously know nothing about rocket science. There is nothing routine about rocketry so just shut up please. thanks.
I'm think these are based on a 40 plus year old design, not actually 40 years in age.
...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?
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
Define "better".
They have closed circuit rocket engine technology. By definition, that is going to be at least about 15% more efficient than any open circuit that is the only technology west has in orbital lifting rocket engines.
Bullshit. SSME uses the same cycle. With LH2/LOX, no less. But why do you care about the technology? I don't think it matters HOW the launch is accomplished as long as the costs are as low as possible. Whatever works and is cheap and sustainable is better than fancy stuff that's expensive. Whether fancy stuff is desirable is dependent on what it brings and what it costs. Unless you can make it work cheaply enough, it's not worth it.
Thanks for private corporation known as Lockheed Martin, that didn't believe that closed circuit was possible to do until Russians literally put a working engine in their lab and test fired it for them in 2000s.
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about! As I said, the Space Shuttle had been using this for two decades by then. And The Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator by Rocketdyne was even more advanced, and is basically what SpaceX is working on now.
Ezekiel 23:20
No, the physical units are mothballed engines from the 1960s. And there's a limited supply of them. It's even worse than the RD-180 situation - not only do the engines come from a questionable supplier, but the manufacturing line doesn't exist anymore (the Russians are apparently considering re-launching production, but so far I'm not aware of them doing anything along those lines; they still have dozens of the old engines to use). It's no better than the preserved F-1 engines in this respect. I have no idea what Orbital Sciences plan to do about that.
Ezekiel 23:20
There were 13 launches of Falcon 9, a total of 130 engines, and one of them failed, but that still seems like a pretty good success rate. The redundancy of the engines in the first stage definitely comes in handy.
Ezekiel 23:20
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 happened just half a year ago.
Ezekiel 23:20
Not quite. NK-33 uses an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, which indeed was considered impossible by Lockheed Martin. SSME used a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle, which is, apparently, less efficient. Technology matters because NK-33 has a very impressive thrust-to-weight ratio (almost twice of SSME while producing 80% of its thrust) and also a good specific impulse.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
We don't know that it was the engines that failed though. More likely it was the fuel supply system, either the plumbing or the pumps. In other words, the western built bit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's a rather minor change. In the end, it's you, the taxpayer, funding any failures, only that the failures are covered from your savings or retirement accounts, not from your taxes.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
More likely it was the fuel supply system, either the plumbing or the pumps. In other words, the western built bit.
Why is that more likely?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Hey, western engines don't blow up! They undergo rapid unscheduled disassembly.
I'm only repeating what a couple of different experts interviewed on the subject said. I did a little research, it seems that explosive failures are usually not connected to the engines but rather the fuel supply or storage system.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, when I had something like this happen in KSP, the whole launchpad exploded .... ...what?
.
.
Why should a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle with LH2/LOX mixture be less efficient when fuel-rich LH2 mixture significantly decreases the average molecular weight of the exhaust gases? I'm not aware of any single LH2/LOX engine in history that that would run oxygen-rich. That would be a waste of specific impulse which is the main objective of any LH2 engine.
And I get that the NK-33 is quite impressive considering the combination of both high thrust-per-weight and high Isp, but is it worth the money? A single RD-180 costs $10M-$15M or something like that, with ~4 MN of thrust. And that's the Russian price, the price for US-built units would be much higher, especially given that the Russian prices are allegedly almost at price dumping levels (nobody else is buying them anyway to drive the price higher). Compare this to the nine-engine cluster of Merlin 1D engines for Falcon 9 with ~6 MN of thrust. Now I'm not quite sure what a Merlin costs but I've seen estimates around $1M per engine. With the production ramp-up, it's probably not bound to go upwards anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
Unfortunately for you, the pumps are an integral part of these engines, and they happen to be Russian as well. It's not just the chamber and the nozzle that have been bought.
Ezekiel 23:20
The pumps are almost by definition a part of the engine. It's not like a fuel pump in a car, with its rather puny flow rate. Those engines are fed literally tons of fuel and oxidizer per second, and there's no stand-alone power source to deliver the megawatts needed for the pump. Both the turbine and the pump are an integral part of the engine design.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Again, for the last time, it's not NASA's business to build stuff, and it never was. NASA is there to fund contractors that build stuff, and to design, plan, oversee and execute various space missions and research. NASA's problem isn't bureaucracy, it's the lack of flexibility in spending the money the way it'd wish to spend it. NASA is highly limited in how it can spend the money, so much so that it isn't funny. The reason for this is known as pork. That's all there's to it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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
Aerojet has bought a bunch of NK-33 for $1.1M each, same price as a Merlin engine, but nearly twice the thrust.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer... Russians had to blow up something like 30 rockets to get it right.
Make that 31.
Yeah, before refurbishing. From old supplies. That's not a figure for sustainable cost of new engine production. And this is probably the second explosion of those engines in a single year.
Ezekiel 23:20
The crypto is for the spacecraft control and for the vehicle mission termination systems. All subject to export controls and possibly using classified protocols.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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
...sitting in storage. 40 years is a long time.... Apparently they were not sufficiently re-conditioned before use.
We don't know the cause of the failure yet. Aren't we being a bit premature?
So it's basically a failed rehearsal for the upcoming Vanguard TV3 60th anniversary celebration?
Ezekiel 23:20
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
Plus, the launch facilities were damaged, possibly pretty significantly.
No, it went boom, THEN fell down.
So, we built a second one. That one went boom, fell down, then sank into the swamp.
But the third stage stayed up. And that's what you'll have lad, the strongest launch platform in these isles.
Well, there's not much else to cause a loss of thrust at that point in the flight.
Fuel pump or turbine seems like a reasonable bet, based on how it looked.
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
It seems to me that in order to be better, they have to deliver their payload, and not explode. When they blow up, their effectiveness falls off to zero real quick.
From what I understand, the rocket was veering off course, so they activated a self-destruct mechanism.
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.
"There is nothing routine about rocketry so just shut up please. thanks."
Some would disagree.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I agree. With the current state of the technology, sending a rocket into space is still fraught with this kind of risk whether it's privately managed or managed by NASA. One shouldn't be any more or less "nervous" either way.
Private space companies do offer much cheaper launches due to their ability to realize cost efficiencies that we'd be fools to expect from government agencies, and we'll see how their safety and reliability track records compare in the long run.
Well, I don't see any veering off course. What I see is that the stage lost vertical thrust and then exploded from the bottom. I'm not really sure that looked like a controlled destruction. I thought this stuff was generally achieved by cutting through the tanks using explosive cords. Watch this video to see the tanks of a Titan IV on self-destruct blowing up. This looked...different.
Ezekiel 23:20
Heh. If the article implies what I think it implies, the engine that blew up on the stand was intended for this launch. So, possibly the replacement engine that was actually used in this launch (or the original one that passed) failed during the actual launch, if it was indeed an engine failure that destroyed this rocket.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"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
Better in terms of Isp for a non-cryogenic engine. The SSME's Isp (366) is better than the NK-33 (297), but the NK-33 is better than any non-cryogenic engine that is flying in the US, and there are a lot of big tradeoffs to cryogenic engines (Hydrogen takes up a lot more space).
For comparison, the NK-33 engines (first built in the 1960s) have a higher Isp than the SpaceX Merlin 1D (297s versus 282s at sealevel).
Both. The engines were literally built in the 1960s and 1970s for the Soviet moon program, and then 150 of them were stuck in a warehouse for decades. When the Russians realized many years later that the engines were worth a lot of money, they started selling them in the mid 90s.
No, they literally sat in a warehouse for 40 years. They were built for the Soviet moon program, discovered decades later, bought by the Americans, and then refurbished.
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.
Because it uses a different cycle which is more efficient by design. Anything with open circuit has to vent secondary circuit used to drive pumps and turbines of the engine out without gaining any thrust. This causes significant efficiency loss per fuel burned. Closed circuit vents those heated gasses into main combustion chamber in a controlled fashion, both gaining extra thrust and efficiency.
The problem comes from extreme difficulties in managing venting these heated gasses directly into combustion chamber that is under full load without causing catastrophic failures. That is why the process was considered theoretically sound but practically impossible by Lockheed Martin rocket engineers until Russians showed them the working engine.
Notably Soviet rocket scientists agreed. Korolev had to bring in a jet engine designer who "didn't know this cycle was impossible to implement in practice" to design the engine.
That would be because they do not. The first closed circuit engines designed in the West are still in development stage and design work only started appearing only after Russian engine was showed in action. To date, the only thing West has that is comparable is Aerojet Rockedyne Integrated powerhead demonstration project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Which is not a functional rocket engine but just a technology demonstrator hastily funded by US government to quell massive unrest among top rocket engineers who were severely shaken by the discovery of Russian engine after decades of culture that considered US rocket engine technology superior.