ISS resupply rocket blows up

[cartman]

The Antares rocket to resupply the ISS exploded shortly after takeoff from Virginia. It looks like it gets one hundred feet or so up, then blows up.

[NobodyHere]

Thanks Obama

[Kodos]

CT & Jivin would not be impressed.

[DaddyTorgo]

da fuq TK?

[PilotMan]

Ebola.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Ebola.

And now it's airborne!

[cartman]

I bet it was the guy from the DFW airport incident.

"It was bad enough they let that gay guy on a plane, but I'll be damned if they are gonna give supplies to those ISS bastards in the Middle East"

[Buccaneer]

Virginia just quadrupled their total carbon footprint for the year.

[bob]

Originally Posted by Kodos

CT & Jivin would not be impressed.

Sigh.... Those guys really need to do a reunion show just to catch up. Wonder how many orchid shows later it's been.

[Kodos]

Absolutely. They could have a Science! ISS Update Spectacular!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Have a friend who works on those launches. Feel really bad for her.

[SackAttack]

...sideeyes MBBF

[terpkristin]

...

I'm really annoyed with the press on this. I watched a good bit of CNN and was appalled at the stories they were making up and the rampant speculation. Bad Astronomer had the best reporting on the subject. Antares rocket explodes on takeoff: Unmanned rocket launch ends in explosion.

I don't work on the rocket side, I work on the spacecraft side. I was tangentially involved in the payload. Still, it's going to be a shitty next few weeks at work in general.

/tk

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

...sideeyes MBBF

Don't you know that he has friends everywhere except here? j/k

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Have a friend who works on those launches. Feel really bad for her.

Who? If she works in Dulles, I'm guessing I know her. If she's a Wallops person, it's more of a crap shoot. Since I assume you're not talking about me.

/tk

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

...sideeyes MBBF

Seriously. She's a rocket scientist for NASA on that program. She was posting the flight plan for her FB friends a couple days ago talking about how they'll be able to see the rocket go overhead. I'm guessing this wasn't the glow she was anticipating.

[cartman]

NASA contracted out the rocket and launch.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

She just posted to Facebook. Said the damage to the launching platform is substantial.

[cartman]

You mean that tens of thousands of gallons of rocket fuel exploding right above the platform caused substantial damage? That is some top shelf insight right there.

[terpkristin]

The Wikipedia entry for the Antares rocket was kinda messed up shortly after the incident. terpkristin on Twitter: "Well, the wikipedia entry for #Antares is a little messed up. http://t.co/Jh2CbjBfHI Screenshot for posterity. http://t.co/Ozd63Swng6"



/tk

[cartman]

Great. Now DT is gonna be pissed because he has to go and clean that entry up.

[terpkristin]

It's already fixed. But yeah...

/tk

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by cartman

Great. Now DT is gonna be pissed because he has to go and clean that entry up.

huh? I'm not the wikipedia editor among us. That is/was Foz.

[cartman]

Dammit. I get you Boston guys mixed up.

[DaddyTorgo]

LOL

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Thanks Obama

Shit, that's going on his resume.
*Cancelled shuttle launches (whew!)*

[Toddzilla]

Didn't it seem there were a lot of buildings and other structures (the water tower) *really damn close* to the launch pad? Seems a bit risky now in hindsight. I'm surprised most of them didn't go up in flames (too). It's the Eastern Shore* for cryingoutloud, they have nothing but open space out there.



*birthplace of Ace Custis

[terpkristin]

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap | NASA

The *pad* itself actually looks reasonably unscathed. The rest of the area... http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/fi...er-failure.jpg

/tk

[cartman]

So it sounds like the rocket was intentionally destroyed.

40-Year-Old Russian Engine at Heart of Rocket Investigation

At a news conference on Tuesday evening, Bill Wrobel, director of the NASA facility, reported that safety officers blew up the rocket within 20 seconds of its engines firing up, when it became apparent that the launch was headed off-course.

So a question for TK: How do they do this? Do they just tell the engines to go to some ungodly thrust amount, or are there other methods they might use?

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Who? If she works in Dulles, I'm guessing I know her. If she's a Wallops person, it's more of a crap shoot. Since I assume you're not talking about me.

/tk

I realized that when I wrote this, it sounded like trolling. I was actually really interested to know if I know her. This industry is rather small, quite often only 1-2 degrees of separation. PM me if you'd like.

/tk

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by cartman

So it sounds like the rocket was intentionally destroyed.

40-Year-Old Russian Engine at Heart of Rocket Investigation

So, you just hit on a nerve without knowing it, so I'm going to lecture a little but hopefully not in a total douchey lecture way.

I wouldn't put a lot of stock into anything you see in "normal" news. Very little has been released officially and a lot of what you see is rampant speculation from people who know nothing. Even when they have "experts" on (like CNN having Bill Nye on the night of the failure). Yes, he's smart. But no, he doesn't design rockets for a living. Even I, who's studied aerospace engineering, who jokingly calls myself a rocket scientist...the truth is, I'm not an expert. Yes, I know more than Bill Nye. And I definitely know more than your average person, even a scientifically-knowledgable person. But there are a lot of nuances to rocket design and a lot of the reporting is speculation at best.

It does seem as if the FTS (flight termination system) was engaged at some point, though the timing is not clear. But a lot of the other reporting about how we can't trust Russian rockets and that kind of crap is pure political BS. The first stage for Antares is the AJ26. It is a Russian/Ukrainian engine (NK33) that has been upgraded by the well-known rocket engine company Aerojet. Yes, it's old. But it's robust. And has a fairly good track record in general. And most of what I've seen on NBC, FOX, CNN, etc, is pure speculation without actually basing it in fact (and there is a fact of why it should be considered/evaluated. If you would like to get more-reliable reporting/less speculation, you're best off looking at industry news sites like SpaceFlightNow.com, SpaceNews.com (though they've always seemed to have an anti-Orbital bias in general), NASASpaceflight.com...actually, the NSF.com forums usually have some interesting speculation from people who are in the industry. So that's an interesting place to hang out.

For whatever it's worth, the reason to raise the 1st stage engine to the top of the list is that a different AJ26 recently had a catastrophic failure during the hot fire test. It actually postponed the ORB-2 launch (the one before this one). So there's been some recent stuff with the engine, even though the particular problem had been screened.

Originally Posted by cartman

So a question for TK: How do they do this? Do they just tell the engines to go to some ungodly thrust amount, or are there other methods they might use?

I don't know the exact method (and actually have questions on how they "control" the solid stage, because that is one of the biggest risks if it comes down intact), but from what I understand, most FTS use shaped explosive charges to puncture the tank domes on the liquid stage pressure vessels and solid stage motor to depressurize them and make them non-propulsive. Basically, they ensure that the system uses all its energy when THEY want it to, as opposed to a less-expected way. With the liquid stage, the lox and kerosene mix, causing combustion of most of the propellant very quickly. As I said, I'm not sure how the solids are handled. I'd imagine that they want most of it to burn up quickly, but not sure how that's ensured short of making everything else combust.

/tk

[DaddyTorgo]

TK LAYS DOWN THE ROCKET SCIENCE ON YA CANDY ASSES!!!

[cartman]

Cool stuff. Thanks for the info!

[terpkristin]

I just talked to a friend. He thinks that charges are used for the solids, too (generically speaking), that the charges break the solids to small bits that can burn up more quickly/easily, though the charges move so fast that they don't ignite the solids.

/tk

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

I just talked to a friend. He thinks that charges are used for the solids, too (generically speaking), that the charges break the solids to small bits that can burn up more quickly/easily, though the charges move so fast that they don't ignite the solids.

/tk

So did they have stuff like that on the Space Shuttle too?

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Dutch

So did they have stuff like that on the Space Shuttle too?

Yep...

Space Shuttle Destruct Switch - NASA Prepared to Blow Up Discovery - Popular Mechanics

[terpkristin]

Yes, there are FTS in most US rockets, including shuttle. And if Orion every gets built, it too will have a variety of termination systems including crew escape.

I spoke with a guy who worked on a variety of FTS. He said that the solids they just take out the motor and let the rest of the stage burn/explode. By taking out the propulsive element, it just won't go anywhere (up) without the motor. They don't try to get fancy with solids. For liquid, they disrupt the tanks, depressurizing them so that they can't provide thrust. The system still combusts, though.

/tk

[DaddyTorgo]

Not a good week.

Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 accident today apparently.

Seemingly both pilots got out.

[Dutch]

Sad days for the space program(s).

[Toddzilla]

One pilot dead, the other critical

[terpkristin]

Definitely a sh*t week. It's one thing to lose a vehicle. It's a different thing entirely to lose a family member (and if the SST team works like most teams, they really are a family, to say nothing of the pilot's actual family). Pilot dies in crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane | Spaceflight Now

It demonstrates what we all know: space is hard. But, as you've probably read a lot today, it's true...per aspera ad astra.

/tk

[DaddyTorgo]

Sucks for the obvious reason of the loss.

Also sucks because anything that contributes to slowing the pace of getting this species off of this rock so that we're not so exposed to the potential for a calamitous end is really bad.

[PilotMan]

Awful. Tailwinds and clear skies forever.

[JPhillips]

The Rosetta comet landing is fascinating. The Guardian liveblog has a lot of great info.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/a...ding-live-blog

[JPhillips]

The Rosetta craft sent back a picture of the lander heading to the comet.

[terpkristin]

Related to the original thread topic...
Engine turbopump eyed in Antares launch failure | Spaceflight Now
Orbital looking for Cygnus launch slots next year | Spaceflight Now

/tk

[cartman]

The embargo has been lifted, so many of the pics and videos of the event have been released. Here is a link to a page with quite a few close up pics and videos of the explosion.

Inferno Over Wallops! A First-hand Photo And Video Account Of Antares Launch Failure « Zero-G News