I went to my first rocket launch today. My friend and I decided to head down to Goddard Space Flight Center in Virginia, near Ocean City. We got there an hour early, visited the visitor center, then got a good spot among about 100 people. The rocket launch was awesome. For six seconds. Then it blew out its engine, crashed into the launch pad, and exploded. Video does not do justice to how bright this thing was (cameras adjust for super bright light by making everything look really dark). When it exploded it was, no kidding, as bright as the sun.
It was an unmanned flight and, according to NASA, nobody got hurt.
Sounds like they're running the latest version of KSP -- "Economic Boom".
Rocket science is still rocket science.. read somewhere else that the engines were 40 year old Russian pieces and that they have had some rather spectacular failures during testing due to being 40 years old..
We are not going to space today...
Go much notice do you get before a launch? That's not a bad ride from here and if I had enough notice to get the day off I'd like to go see one.
Wally, I think this stuff is scheduled a few months in advance. I found out about it yesterday too late to do much except hope to see it from my house. Fortunately, some shiny happy person in his boat was loitering in the water near the site, so they cancelled it yesterday and rescheduled for 6:22 today, giving me a chance to drive down there.
You could probably take the Cape May / Lewes Fairy from New York. That was always my favorite way down. Then hit up Ocean City, MD while you're in the area. Also, Chincoteague (or is it Assateague) is RIGHT down the street from the launch site. Take a sports car or motorcycle.
Saw that on the news yesterday, hate to see it. I did a little research, the ISS typically has a 90 day supply of whatever's needed or critical past the scheduled resupply date. Also, it looks like a Soyuz is just about ready to go so there's a Plan B already in place.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/index.html
I'm sure the guys at Orbital are doing all they can. As evidenced by the shuttle crashes something as complicated as a true rocket is going to, at some point, experience a failure no matter how diligent its builders are. Might be a little one, might be a big one. All they can do is try to determine what caused this, fix it, then apply as much diligence as possible to future launches.
By the way, it looks like Teledyne Brown is working on producing a US manufactured version of the Russian engine. Seems the basic design itself is not really at fault, there's been a lot of advances in materials technology though.
Yeah, I was keeping an eye out for it in Richmond. Had a couple buddies out in a field watching for it and live streaming the feed on a phone. Took us a second to realize that it just blew up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlZmlaArkTE
Curmudgeon wrote:
By the way, it looks like Teledyne Brown is working on producing a US manufactured version of the Russian engine. Seems the basic design itself is not really at fault, there's been a lot of advances in materials technology though.
rockets are fairly simply devices.. and if you have ever looked at the Atlas rockets and saw how they were handmade (and repaired) you would me amazed that they ever made it off of the ground, let alone carried men into orbit and beyond.
If you take that old soviet technology and update it with modern materials and assembly, I bet they will be great rockets. The Soviet Engineers were not stupid, they just did not have the resources to make things properly, so they tended to over specify and build to make up for any shortcomings
Apparently here in Huntsville, when they test fired the F1 motors used on the Saturn V for the first time, it blew out every window in a 4 or 5 mile radius.
t25torx
HalfDork
10/29/14 8:42 a.m.
And this is why we can't shoo tour nuclear wast into the sun or just out into space. You'd think we would be able to have a 99.99999999% success rate by now.
I've launched literally hundreds of rockets and never had one blow up on me.
Maybe NASA contracted with the wrong outfit.
My friend and I think there was probably a cooling failure that caused the engine to burn a hole in itself causing a fire and an immediate loss of thrust. Think October Sky. I think I read somewhere last night that the fuel they used (highly-refined kerosene) is prone to polymerizing under extreme heat which could have clogged the cooling lines. The engine, without cooling, would have only lasted a few seconds... like six seconds.
In reply to bgkast:
I've never had one blow up but I did hit my 7th grade technology teacher.
In reply to Wally:
I would say that was a pretty impressive shot!
Duke
UltimaDork
10/29/14 12:36 p.m.
I had a couple Estes blowups. In the first, the propellant had loosened in the casing, so it never really got off the ground, it just blew the wadding and chute on the pad, while the chunk of propellant blasted off through the fuselage.
On the other, the casing must have had a pinhole in the side, because the rocket got about 20 feet off the ground and went into a total cartwheel. The blowout burned a hole in the side of the fuselage and incinerated one of the fins.
I'm surprised we still use stationary ground launched stuff. If you look at how much of the energy is used just getting the rocket up to the first few thousand feet it seems sensible (to my dim and undereducated mind at least) to strap your orbital device to a heavy lift aircraft that can get it up 50,000 feet near the speed of sound and then let it rip into space.
I remember reading somewhere that the blackbird pilots actually had to be cautious about that, it actually risked an "accidental" suborbital trip without the heat shielding needed for re-entry.
it takes a lot of energy to get into orbit, no matter how you do it.. using ground launched rockets is the least bad way to do it right now.
The energy is cheap compared to the other difficulties involved in launching from an airplane. An extra stage of solid rocket fuel on every launch probably looks pretty good compared to just the R&D costs of getting an airborne launch going.
novaderrik wrote:
it takes a lot of energy to get into orbit, no matter how you do it.. using ground launched rockets is the least bad way to do it right now.
There have been a few aircraft launched spacecraft, but it takes a lot of fuel to get the plane up there. A balloon launched spaceship might have potential.
In reply to MadScientistMatt:
Unless you are trying to achieve docking, with a space station moving at orbital velocities.
It's going to take a fair amount of energy just to get it to 17,150 mph.
Pegasus
Seems like it skips the whole first stage business.
Back when I was doing high power rocketry as a hobby, we always knew that we'd get spectacular results whether it was a success or a failure.
As I was living in Kansas at the time, it also gave rise to the expression "Wheat Seeking Missile."
My question is: Why are they launching something into an equatorial orbit, from Virginia!?
They have to be giving up a good amount of free energy.
