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Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

nasa.gov

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Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#111

Post by rdtsc »

shepard wrote: post #81
gus_massa wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failure rate in manned space missions is approximately 1/50 ("failure" as in "it explodes and everybody dies"). (For example, the Space Shuttle had 2/135 failures.) The unmanned missions have a higher failure rate, IIRC ~10%, but that number probably includes prototype and old models. So a 2/80 failures is not so bad. It sucks when it explodes, but going to space is difficult.

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…

Also here is a nice video that shows: "How Soyuz Works".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVvgpKt5uCA

Basically how cosomaunts train in Star City to how the rocket is built, take off and all the way till it is about to dock with the ISS, including how launch escape works etc.

The reliability and resilience of the system is just a marvel of engineering.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#112

Post by [deleted] »

GrinningFool wrote: post #86
blhack wrote: post #9

I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated…

"If you're failing, you're doing something right." I didn't think people said this and meant it. If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings. Yeah, you can learn from it and do better, and that's great - but that doesn't mean it's a success. It's a failure and - in some cases - a chance to do better the next time…

[deleted]

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#113

Post by InclinedPlane »

KhalilK wrote: post #11

Will the logs suffice to determine the cause of the explosion or will they have to reassemble the wreckage and look for anomalies?

In crashes like this there often isn't enough wreckage to reassemble to tell one thing or another. But there will be lots of data to comb through which will probably lead to the cause.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#114

Post by blhack »

differentView wrote: post #104
dsjoerg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "failure" is used to mean two distinct things: 1) bad outcome, 2) made the wrong choices given the available information at the time. They are not the same. Furthermore if you have no bad outcomes, you may be taking a suboptimal amount of risk, which would then be a failure in the second sense of the term.

>if you have no bad outcomes, you may be taking a suboptimal amount of risk That is not the same as what blhack wrote, "If you're failing, you're doing something right." you: zero failures = doing something wrong blhack: any failure = doing something right blhack's statement is clearly ridiculous.

Your understanding of what I said is also clearly ridiculous.

In context, what I am saying is pretty obviously meant to be taken as:

Failure is part of taking risk. Risk is part of doing things that are difficult. Doing things that are difficult is part of progress. Progress is something that I consider "right".

And then put further into context, with regards to spectacular failures like the one today: Don't beat yourself up [engineers who worked on orbital] because the very difficult thing that you were doing failed. That is what makes that very difficult thing noteworthy.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#115

Post by blhack »

GrinningFool wrote: post #86
blhack wrote: post #9

I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated…

"If you're failing, you're doing something right." I didn't think people said this and meant it. If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings. Yeah, you can learn from it and do better, and that's great - but that doesn't mean it's a success. It's a failure and - in some cases - a chance to do better the next time…

I'm going to get up from my chair and go to the water cooler to fill up my water bottle. I bet I will succeed at it.

How is this different to you than launching rockets?

It's different to me because launching rockets is much more difficult. There are many more things that can cause you to fail catastrophically.

To me, failure is to be expected when you're doing something that is difficult. That is the definition of doing something difficult.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#116

Post by lutorm »

golgappi wrote: post #103
blhack wrote: post #9

I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated…

| If you're failing, you're doing something right. Wrong. This only goes on to emphasize the stigma associated with failures. This sentence is a cover up for the fact that someone did something wrong, or at the very least, things did not go as planned. Failures are bad and heartbreaking, and we should accept it in its entirety. | Don't fret the failures. Right. Instead of focusing on getting stressed and fretting, th…

A failure means you took risk, which is something you should do if you want to push the boundaries. So you did do something right. No one would suggest you did everything right.

Conversely, absence of failure may mean you took a calculated amount of risk and it paid off. But it could also mean you were overly conservative, didn't push the boundaries, and took a minimum of risk. There's no way to tell the difference purely from the absence of failure.

The worst outcome is when a failure happens and you though you were very conservative but actually had no idea what the real risks were. That's the Challenger situation.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#117

Post by lutorm »

GrinningFool wrote: post #86
blhack wrote: post #9

I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated…

"If you're failing, you're doing something right." I didn't think people said this and meant it. If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings. Yeah, you can learn from it and do better, and that's great - but that doesn't mean it's a success. It's a failure and - in some cases - a chance to do better the next time…

If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings.

I disagree. The only practical difference could be that you got unlucky. People seem to forget that taking risks actually means things can fail, even if you do nothing wrong. That's what a risk means.

If you say a failure means you did something wrong, then you have an acceptable risk of zero. This means you can do very few things. Every time you get into your car, you are taking a calculated risk of severe injury or death. And that happens to many people who never do anyhing wrong.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#118

Post by dang »

differentView wrote: post #104
dsjoerg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "failure" is used to mean two distinct things: 1) bad outcome, 2) made the wrong choices given the available information at the time. They are not the same. Furthermore if you have no bad outcomes, you may be taking a suboptimal amount of risk, which would then be a failure in the second sense of the term.

>if you have no bad outcomes, you may be taking a suboptimal amount of risk That is not the same as what blhack wrote, "If you're failing, you're doing something right." you: zero failures = doing something wrong blhack: any failure = doing something right blhack's statement is clearly ridiculous.

This is an example of how the signal/noise ratio on HN can be improved by the Principle of Charity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity.

blhack's comment was ambiguous. Under some interpretations it is ridiculous, but under others it is sensible. By interpreting charitably, we can avoid a fair bit of two of the worst things on HN: abrasiveness and nitpicking.

(Edit: and protracted disputes. So, three of the worst things on HN.)

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#119

Post by eitally »

blhack wrote: post #115
GrinningFool wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're failing, you're doing something right." I didn't think people said this and meant it. If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings. Yeah, you can learn from it and do better, and that's great - but that doesn't mean it's a success. It's a failure and - in some cases - a chance to do better the next time…

I'm going to get up from my chair and go to the water cooler to fill up my water bottle. I bet I will succeed at it. How is this different to you than launching rockets? It's different to me because launching rockets is much more difficult. There are many more things that can cause you to fail catastrophically. To me , failure is to be expected when you're doing something that is difficult. That is the definition of…

But in this case, as well as several others (like surgery, for example), that's not at all true. We make jokes about how nearly nothing is "rocket science" or "brain surgery" for a reason: those are fields in which mistakes are not acceptable and the cost of producing as well as the cost of insuring are incredible. There is really nothing comparable between a code jockey who weaves js frameworks and SaaS services together to build apps and the engineers who wrote the assembly 30, 40, 50 years ago to power and control our space craft... or the ones who do the same thing now using more modern hardware & tools at companies like Orbital Sciences or SpaceX.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#120

Post by lutorm »

trothamel wrote: post #31

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.

Was there any conclusion what the problem was in that incident?
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