Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff • Hacker News Board

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#151

Post by navila17 » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:17 AM UTC

keehun wrote: post #139

It seemed like from the press conference that Orbital will be footing most of the bill. The best Frank from OS could say was that "some of the rocket" was insured. Someone below cited $110 million minimum insurance, but that's not even close to the number OS gave out in the conference at $200m for just the rocket (which I think included neither the manifest nor the damage to the pad/environment and any necessary repa…

Just wanted to confirm that Orbital's mention of insurance does not help the customers at all. It is up to the various companies to insure their own payload.

Also, it might be fun to note that no one on that launch gets a refund. Generally you pay for something like 90% before the launch (in different milestones leading up to the launch) and only 10% after safe delivery to orbit.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#152

Post by ajcarpy2005 » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:22 AM UTC

eitally wrote: post #119

blhack wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tog…

Exactly. The development of rocket software is a very precise business. Here's a Reddit AMA from the SpaceX software development team.http://www.reddit.com/comments/1853ap

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#153

Post by travelhead » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:34 AM UTC

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…

Failure is nearly always bad. It destroys company morale, drains financial resources, and creates a culture of failure. I agree that failure does often happen on the way to success, but there's absolutely nothing good about it besides giving more knowledge to a problem. The culture that failure is good is stupid.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#154

Post by golgappi » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #147

How do they root cause something like this when so much of the evidence is blown to pieces?

Telemetry

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#155

Post by golgappi » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #147

How do they root cause something like this when so much of the evidence is blown to pieces?

Telemetry

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#156

Post by gear54rus » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:44 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #147

How do they root cause something like this when so much of the evidence is blown to pieces?

Wondering the same thing. In addition to incidents like this, every once in a while, a story pops up that describes how programming error was the cause of rocket crash that happened TWENTY years ago... How? Just how can people be sure that it was programming error? It's not like you can debug a burnt piece of a microcontroller, can you?

Guess we've come a long way from a magnifying glass investigations :)

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#157

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:46 AM UTC

Ouch. A lot of rocket fuel burning all at once. I would be less concerned if this was the first or second flight but as the fifth flight one has to wonder what part of the process didn't work. This was apparently the first flight with the Castor 30XL which is the second stage, I suppose if it started its burn prematurely that would certainly be an issue.

As a testing problem, rockets have always fascinated me. At some level you have to trust in first principles but being so thorough so that you know will either fly or fail safe. That has got to keep folks up at night.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#158

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:51 AM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #10

jwise0 wrote: post #3

There aren't many blogs covering this right now, but there are no personnel injured (according to the launch loop) -- just "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage". Nobody has said much yet: https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/52722568241456742...

>> "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage" This wasn't launched in a desert/uninhabited area? Edit: Thanks for clarifying below.

The town of Chincoteague is a few miles away from the pad. I'm guessing the worst impact there was some windows got rattled by the shockwave from the destruction of the 2nd stage.

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#159

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:56 AM UTC

bennettfeely wrote: post #57

SuperChihuahua wrote: post #2

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

[deleted]

Re: Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

#160

Post by pbreit » Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 3:56 AM UTC

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.

It seems so bizarre that we're using 40 year old, Russian-made engines. I'm sure there are plenty of smart folks who will say not too worry, but I wonder.