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India's Workhorse Rocket Fails For the First Time In Decades (theverge.com)
India's premier rocket, known as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, failed to put a navigation satellite into orbit earlier this morning, after some unknown malfunction prevented the satellite from leaving the vehicle. The Verge reports: The rocket successfully took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in southeastern India at 9:30AM ET. About a little over 10 minutes into the flight, however, the rocket seemed to be in a lower altitude than it need to be. A host during the live broadcast of the launch noted that there was a "variation" in the rocket's performance. Later, an official with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) confirmed that the payload fairing -- the cone-like structure that surrounds the satellite on the top of the rocket -- failed to separate and expose the satellite to space. So the satellite was effectively trapped inside the fairing and could not be deployed into orbit. It seems possible that the rocket's low trajectory had to do with the fact that the fairing didn't separate, making the vehicle heavier than it was supposed to be.
It's an unexpected failure for a fairly reliable rocket. Over the last 24 years, the PSLV has flown 41 times and has only suffered two failures in its launch history -- the most recent mishap occurring during a mission in 1997. However, that mission was not a total loss as the satellite it carried was still able to make it to orbit. This was the first total failure of the rocket to happen since the PSLV's very first failure in 1993.
It's an unexpected failure for a fairly reliable rocket. Over the last 24 years, the PSLV has flown 41 times and has only suffered two failures in its launch history -- the most recent mishap occurring during a mission in 1997. However, that mission was not a total loss as the satellite it carried was still able to make it to orbit. This was the first total failure of the rocket to happen since the PSLV's very first failure in 1993.
There were a lot of failures that went unreported
it was IRNSS-1H that was lost and so Space based Navigation System and Disaster Management Support will be reduced
anyone know of a good IRNSS receiver ?
regards
John Jones
Trump fails every day and hates Indians. Ironic. Moronic.
*nm*
another failing satellite. Evidently some of the atomic clocks on the Indian equivalent to the U.S.'s GPS system are failing thus preventing their system from becoming functional. This will probably seriously further delay their system.
I believe that the system was limited (not for global use) to begin with, it was only meant to provide coverage for their part of the world (South Asia). Unfortunately this does not look good in comparison to the U.S., Russian, European and of course Chinese global systems. I have heard that the European system has also had problems, do they share the same vendor for their clocks? (I'm not sure but I heard the Indians outsourced their atomic clocks to a Swiss company?)
...but couldn't go very far because the fairings did not separate earlier. So it is now a floating piece of junk inside the fairings that are still attached to the upper stage.
The whole thing was also in a much lower than intended orbit due to the extra weight of the fairings that should've been tossed off way earlier in the flight.
They are in sub Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (sub GTO)
https://i.stack.imgur.com/k7RDk.jpg
Mediocrity reaching new heights all the time.
Now it is 3 failures in 42 flights = 7% failure rate, or 1 in 14. Even the disastrous US Space Shuttles only had a 1.5% flight failure rate.
So these rockets are maybe not quite man rated, unless of course you have a large and redundant population to draw on...
2/41 = 4.89% failure rate.
What is consider reliable the world of rocketry, or is the story incorrectly conflating reliability with time (one failure every 12 years)?
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This is why I only use Rockomax Brand(TM) Decouplers! At twice the size of the next leading brand, they offer plenty of bang for your buck! And they come with handy arrows to indicate which side it will detach from.
Why do I have to use full size TM instead of the superscript in this day and age, oh Slashdot?
....stackoverflow down?
This is what happens when you start using American components. Indian rockets were pretty reliable when India did most of its business with Russia who build rugged stuff. Now India is buying a lot of shit made by Boeing and it shows. Probably the Quality guy had Monday night football to watch and just signed off instead of doing his work
**Life is too short to be serious**
I remember a story here on Slashdot when the first rocket was launched, where it was claiming that it was all due to women working on it.
Funny how this article mentions nothing about women. It must be man's fault that it went down, right?
It will make no difference though to the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack such basic facilities as running water, electricity and water - the Indian government, time and again, far more keen on engaging in international me-too, pissing contests than in tackling such mundane issues.
No one mentioned heat sheild failure or that it was first private company built the satelite. "The IRNSS-1H, was built by a consortium led by Alpha Design Technologies, a defence equipment supplier from Bengaluru, over eight months. Led by Colonel HS Shankar, a team of 70 scientists from ISRO supervised the operations". Here is the link http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2017/aug/31/pslv-fails-to-deploy-indias-first-privately-built-satellite-isro-looking-for-answers-1650751.html
I'm not really impressed by "India's Workhorse Rocket'.
It would be nice if India had a civilized rail system that didn't slaughter its passengers.
This is about the same failure rate the Feynman estimated for the space shuttle—and that one had human cargo.
____
Algorithms to Live By (2016) is far from a perfect book, but it's about 20 dB less dunderheaded that the paragraph quoted from OP. When the book is not busy hitting soft pitches of its own manufacture, it offers up a unique (or less commonly seen) distillation of some important topics.
I got the most value from the chapter on Bayes rule.
* multiplicative rule: use for power-law prior
* average rule: use for normal prior
* additive rule: use for Erlang prior
In the power-law prior, your expectation is to continue waiting roughly (to a constant factor) as long as you've already been waiting.
Read that as "maximally surprising every damn time".
Lower layer of neural network: "My God, it's full of stars!"
Just a few layers up: "Well, an infinite dimensional object of impossible precision blacker than black wasn't going to divulge a small surprise in chapter N-1, was it now?"
For the normal distribution, you expect the average, until the event is already overdue (past average) and then you predict RSN (real soon now).
For the Erlang distribution, you just keep predicting "just five more minutes, I'm sure my quick fix will work this time!"
Raging against this kind of OP idiocy: definitely a power-law, on a data set so vast, even the stars feel lonely.
Kerbal Space Program. Everyone knows you shoud always watch the launch, and manually deploy the fairing if it doesn't deploy by itself.