ISS Supply Rocket Explodes at Liftoff

Expensive firework

Thats privatisation for you 😉

[Edit] ??? Mwahahaahaaha!

What happens when you privatise space travel 😛

[Edit] beaten to it 🙁

Blimey I didn’t know ISIS had rockets like that. Good thing it blew up !

That’s quite a bang. Fuel leak?

looks like one of the ancient 2nd hand soviet NK-33 engine fails then after a couple a second the first stage tanks explode. The rest falls to the ground and the 2nd stage solid fuel goes off like a fire work.

So, it is rocket science then.

Is it guy Fawkes night already?

I hope the clietnts with expensive satellites aboard remembered to tick the box for optional insurance.

‘kin hell now that’s what I call an explosion

ka-blammo…..

DrP

Ah yes I see the problem. Clearly the left Falange has come loose prior to lift off. It’s a common problem with the Antares series.

Apparently it really upset Richard Dawkins’s dogs.

Stay at your consoles

Launch Team: Erm….I am currently underneath my console.

I hope the guy who lights the blue touch paper had retreated the recommended 100 feet.

More video and good info here:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/10/28/breaking_antares_rocket_explodes_on_takeoff.html

Watch the press camp vid in particular, you’ll want sound…

So after NASA has spent all that money they are now relying on old USSR technology and Ukrainian sub contractors to get stuff into space.

Funny how things work out.

I think NASA still do some of their own launches. But the actual lifting stage is probably the least interesting part of the projects so it makes a lot of sense for them to farm it out. Especially if you can punt it down to companies using moon-race era rockets they found in a skip to do the lifting…

Watch the press camp vid in particular, you’ll want sound…

Why the hell are they crying? Wimps.

I suppose stuff like that’s gonna happen now and again when you try launching rockets that were built in the 1960’s 😯

Well, the rockets weren’t built in the 60s; rather, the engines were designed back then.

Woh…

Cougar – Moderator

Well, the rockets weren’t built in the 60s; rather, the engines were designed back then.

It seems that these ones genuinely are barn-find soviet moon rockets, refurbished and with different control systems but otherwise yes, built in the 60s and 70s. Kind of a cool story tbh! Orbital don’t seem to have a long term plan for when they run out though

Really? Good grief.

Well, the rockets weren’t built in the 60s; rather, the engines were designed back then.

According to this article, they were built in the 60’s and have been refurbished!

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/28/antares-rocket-explodes-nasa-launch-pad-orbital-science

It’s the barn-find bit I like… Supposedly were all supposed to be destroyed but someone decided to warehouse them instead, where they sat for about 30 years, til someone from Aerojet decided to follow up a longstanding industry legend and found 150 of the most powerful rocket engines ever built just waiting. You can imagine them throwing off the dustsheet…

It’s probably a much drier story in reality but frankly if it is, I don’t care to hear it 😉 It’s like buried spitfires.

But then, the reason the russians cancelled their moon program was partly because they had a high fail rate- supposedly it’s a great way to make a very light, very powerful, fairly unreliable rocket motor.

So after NASA has spent all that money they are now relying on old USSR technology and Ukrainian sub contractors to get stuff into space.

One thing the former USSR/Russians have a heck of a lot of experience in is getting stuff in to space.
The last time I saw numbers, it was something like 1700 Soyuz launches, and that was well over a decade ago.

Indeed, that is exactly why the Europeans took the decision to build a Soyuz launch capability in French Guiana.

And as for privatisation? well pretty much the entire space industry in the western world has been created by public limited companies for a very long time, with only money coming from governmental sources for certain programmes (which may well be a significant financial portion).

“Main engines at 108%”.

So that’s what happens if you red-line it.

“Main engines at 108%”.

So that’s what happens if you red-line it.

Yep, and someone appears to have taken the rev limter off that one 😐

“Main engines at 108%”.

Exactly what I was thinking….. Doesn’t sound good does it?

100% is the nominal max thrust in the original design. If the engines later on get rated to run at a higher power that original reference still gets used to avoid any confusion in test data and specs etc.

ie. these ones actually *do* go to eleven. Well… they’re supposed to anyway 😕

That’s not uncommon- the 100% can be the original design limit but further testing and upgrades can allow them to exceed it.

So – this is pure wiki btw, for the example- the space shuttle main engine’s power range was 65% to 109%- it took off at 100% then went up to 104.5% for the first 40 seconds after launch, then ran at 70% for most of the rest of the burn, after some revisions and upgrades. It was rated for 111% for emergencies, and 106% for short term burn but that damaged the engines and so wasn’t used in normal use.

<edit- crossposted!>

someone should show NASA and Orbital Sciences Corporation this, rocket science looks fairly simple tbh! 😆

Spaceflight has a history of failures think Challenger or Ariane 5.

So if you want balls watch the first Shuttle launch. It had never been flown before unmanned, and John Young & Robert Crippen just buckled in and went for it.

Shuttle STS-1 launch

Thing fall down, go boom!
Sharkbait had exactly the same thought I did when I saw it in the paper. 😆

The second bang was the on site safety guy detonating it so it didn’t fly off out of control somewhere

That’s what I thought too. The Range Safety Officer has the unenviable job of killing everyone on board on manned missions if the alternative is having a vehicle crash onto a populated area.