141–150 of 588 posts
The exploded one was about 15-story building.
It is not clear what "full duration static fire" means, but if the stage was fully fueled, the fuel tank would have contained 1000 tons of methane. The heat of combustion of methane is 55 MJ/kg. TNT equivalent is defined as 4.2 MJ/kg. In terms of heat output (not blast or other effects) this would have been equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT. The first atomic bomb had yield of 20 kt TNT, of which about half was in heat…
> not clear what "full duration static fire" means You fire the rocket as if it’s going to space, but you keep it on the pad. (From the engine’s perspective, it did a full launch.)
Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg
Honestly we’re really good at not prematurely combining tens to hundreds of tons of high-energy fuel and oxidizer put right next to each other and then combining them at several tons per second in a highly controlled way using a very complex system of plumbing and turbopumps powered by the same reagents.
Reminds me words, attributed to one of first soviets astronauts: "You're sitting on top of 9 story building, completely filled with fuel and they say to you: don't worry, we calculated everything". The exploded one was about 15-story building.
So uh those Artemis commitments huh.
This is a crushing setback for Blue Origin. I feel for the engineers. They have been the underdogs for so long, but with the recent successful recovery of the New Glenn booster, it finally seemed like they had some bragging rights. Now they're looking at a year minimum before they get back to a regular launch rhythm. The question now is: What went wrong? If they're lucky, it's just a stupid mistake. Maybe an incorrec…
Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg
I've talked about this a few times before but – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726133 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726078 - to repeat myself; It's because we're a very primitive species, and the forces involved here are genuinely new. It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer" due to the distances and energies involved. I will let John Young explain it his…
Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg
The engines are seeing significant development. These engines are the most complex of their kind, they inject the fuel and oxidizer as hot gases. Google full flow staged combustion cycle What you refer to as the rocket, meaning the tube itself isn't failing. It's just that a big explosion will treat it apart
On the upside (or maybe that's tightly bolted down side), at least the rocket stayed static, unlike this one in China: https://youtu.be/IlQkeKa4IKg?si=nu-0D73-7hNg6jW3
Or the Long March destroying an entire rural village which was covered up by the CCP.