91–100 of 264 posts
Will the logs suffice to determine the cause of the explosion or will they have to reassemble the wreckage and look for anomalies?
Probably way too early to tell even that. There will be hundreds of possible causes that will have to be narrowed down; no one will know anything concrete for a good while most likely, even inside Orbital Sciences.
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Probably way too early to tell even that. There will be hundreds of possible causes that will have to be narrowed down; no one will know anything concrete for a good while most likely, even inside Orbital Sciences.
You most probably meant inside Orbital Sciences Corporation. Antares is just the rocket.
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the technical term seems to be 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'
actually the correct technical term to use here would be CATO - Catastrophe At Take Off
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>> "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage" This wasn't launched in a desert/uninhabited area? Edit: Thanks for clarifying below.
And to be clear, the debris field is over the Atlantic Ocean. The launch was scheduled for last night but had to be scrubbed because a boater had entered the restricted area.
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That 1/50 failure rate is debatable, and depends on your definition. For example, Soviet/Russian manned flight, "Soyuz", had 131 flights (123 Soyuz + 2 Voskhod + 6 Vostok) [1][2] and 2 accidents, resulted in death of 4 astronauts (1 + 3).[3] However, both of these accidents occurred before 1972, and both were highly experimental flights. Komarov's was the VERY FIRST flight of Soyuz, and before Soyuz 11 accident, they…
> "there was NO accidents during manned-space take-off in Russian/Soviet flights." Soyuz T-10-1 burned on the launch pad, although the launch escape system saved the lives of the cosmonauts on board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L
Still, it wouldn't be a "failure" under GP's original definition: "failure" as in "it explodes and everybody dies" :)
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I expected it to self desturct. Why would it not do that? Was it to close to the ground?
I don't think Antares can command itself to destruct. The destruct has to be commanded by the range. There isn't any point to issuing the destruct command unless the impact point is dangerously far from the flight path, and that wasn't the case here.
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> To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated to the difficulty of what you're trying to do. If you're failing, you're doing something right. This tech-scene cliché annoys me to no end. Challenger and Columbia were both spectacular failures, and both were the result of dysfunctional corporate culture at NASA. Asiana 214, the MV Sewol, and the Costa Concordia can all be chalked up b…
This tech-scene cliché annoys me to no end. Challenger and Columbia were both spectacular failures, and both were the result of dysfunctional corporate culture at NASA. Asiana 214, the MV Sewol, and the Costa Concordia can all be chalked up basically to incompetence. If you are failing you are doing something wrong, that is the definition of failure. There are place and time for failure. Failure on a launch operation…
Feynman's Appendix F should be required reading for every sort of engineer: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger...
It's a little bit long, and gets a bit technical at some points, but everyone should read it anyway.
The first stage engines that exploded were AJ-26 engines. These are remanufactured NK-33 or NK-43 engines built in the Soviet Union in the late-60s or early-70s for the N-1 moon rocket, but never used. In May, an AJ-26 exploded on the test stand at Stennis space center in Mississippi, severely damaging the test stand.
As for these engines, they're currently retrofitted with new kind of fuel, new electronics and some modifications, after 30 years, by a totally different team.
I really don't think this kind of thing would work.
Video of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMmMgdcOSU ...and I believe this is the water-tower you can see in the video: https://www.google.se/maps/place/NASA+Wallops+Flight+Facilit...
This video seems a little better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo
They are securing the vehicle because it has sensitive crypto equipment on board.
I also heard that comment. Does anyone have insight into what 'crypto equipment' might entail?