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Space Ship Two Crash

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Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 14:39:27

In the news now, Virgin Galactic Spaceship Two just crashed in test flight, and "catastrophically exploded:"

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes During Flight Test

Virgin Galactic said its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane suffered an "in-flight anomaly" during a powered test flight on Friday — and other sources said the anomaly involved a catastrophic explosion and crash.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-crashes-during-flight-test-n238376


Guys, look, these NITWITS -- Orbital and Sir Richard -- are giving the industry a bad name.

Congress may kill it all, and that's not fair to SpaceX.

We need to pick a winner and that's Elon Musk he knows wtf he's doing. What NASA should do is give more support to Musk, let's pick this best company and help them and make sure it's the best it can be.

If you've got 5 different launch systems you're contracting to and they are all startups then all you're going to have is a bunch of crashes all the time.

SpaceX is the winner. They're the safest. We ought to pool our resources and put it to spacex.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 14:52:38

According to news, there may have been two test pilots on the Virgin craft. So that's sad, they're presumably lost. (it's all early news, on CNN now)

We need to just support SpaceX.

Musk has done so much with mostly his own money. He's perfectionist and obsessive. He's the next Werner Von Braun. We need to call it a day, give up on Oribital, I honestly think none of these other startups can make it and spacex is the best shot.

So let's help spacex to be as safe as it can be, and throw some billions at them.

As it stands, we have two contractors for future astronaut launches. Boeing-Lockheed, reliable but old school and they milk the taxpayer and cost a fortune. And they would take 5 years and two billion dollars to design a new engine. Then the other is spacex, which already has its own engines. SpaceX has done a great job, but one wonders if maybe they could use some more funding and NASA know-how. Better to give that to what looks like a winner, than waste it on Orbital Science.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:02:47

Per California Highway Patrol, one test pilot died in the crash, one with major injuries.

EDIT: cnn reporting that virgin galactic had problems with their rocket engine about a year ago and they thought they had it worked out.

So, more rocket engine problems. :|
Last edited by Sixstrings on Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:06:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:16:43

Watching CNN right now -- there's a woman being interviewed saying that the "enthusiasm" of Sir Richard Branson was never in line with where Virgin's technology is.

She's a friend of the lost test pilot.

She's very angry, she says it's a bad engine and the engine never would have got people anywhere near space!

You can call me a fanboy if you want to, but this is rocket science and spaceplanes it's serious business. People trust Musk. I always had a bad feeling about Virgin Galactic, like it wasn't a really serious thing, and here they were going to start taking passengers up next year.

Maybe Branson was deluded about it. He believed in it, and was planning to go up on it with his family.

The friend of this lost pilot is pretty angry though, she said the technology was just not there. And it's a bad engine.

(I actually think that if we're going to have these startups and they get as far as what they do, like Virgin, then really they should have got some taxpayer dollars and NASA knowhow. Maybe all Virgin needed was a good engine and some help from NASA. You'd have to cut these corps off the taxpayer support at some point, but clearly they need more help with better designs and not bad engines on the Spaceship Two and not using old Soviet rockets on the Antares.

Either support them and have some NASA oversight when they make bad design decisions, or pick some winners, right now all we've got we can count on is Boeing-Lockheed and SpaceX)

And I don't mean to rag on Branson, he's a space dreamer I get that, but I like Elon Musk because he is a dreamer but he is also a physicist and engineer and he already revolutionized two other industries, EVs and batteries.

Dreamers are good, but a perfectionst physicist engineer dreamer with a proven track record is better.
Last edited by Sixstrings on Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:39:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:31:14

Here's what I wonder -- why couldn't they put parachutes on the Spaceship Two?

I've seen a Cessna model before with a parachute built in, and it works, so why not on something like this. It looks like the engine has failed on the VG craft and since it's a glider it just crashed.

If they'd had parachutes, the pilot would be alive right now.

I assume they didn't put chutes on to save on weight, but see that's not planning for contingencies. You're better to have a bigger craft that can carry the chutes too, and that's safety. Which costs more money.. ergo.. the problems with these companies trying to do such big things with so little money. Only Musk has made it, and he came very close to going dead broke in the test phases.

EDIT: correction, watching the news, sounds like maybe it broke up in the upper atmosphere so chutes wouldn't have helped.

Clearly there was no pilot / passenger escape system though, in this design.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 15:49:25

Some more info: Virgin Galactic was planning on taking paying passengers up in just three months.

700 people were already signed up for flights, at $250,000 per ticket. That's $175 million.

VG has a quarter billion dollar spaceport. Looks like they had a bad engine though, and luckily there were not paying passengers on this. Hard to see how this company will fly again, I mean someone has to start doing some oversight on this you can't have the public going up on rockets if they are not safe.

edit: latest news, it did have pilot parachutes and that's how the copilot survived

and I want to reiterate it's very sad, but I'm with the friend of the pilot, it sounds like they had a bad engine and Branson's enthusiasm didn't match the engine. You can't cut corners and launch unsafe stuff -- they were talking passengers in three months.

Crying out loud, we've got JPL making mars rovers can't we find someone to make a rocket engine to sell to the US aerospace industry? This is ridiculous, it's the USA, it's 2014 -- we're having rocket engine failures.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 16:16:56

About the quarter billion dollar spaceport, it's actually the taxpayers of New Mexico state that paid for it:

Taxpayers footed the bill to build the state-of-the-art hangar and runway in a remote stretch of desert in southern New Mexico as part of a plan devised by Branson and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Critics have long challenged the state's investment, questioning whether flights would ever get off the ground.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SPACESHIPTWO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-31-15-42-41


Image

edit: nevermind I'll stop ranting. This thing is sad, there is loss of life, and it looks like the problem is that they had a bad engine design.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 17:22:25

I separated out the two crashes into their own threads, if I missed any posts let me know.
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To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 17:23:33

http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/31/vi ... st-flight/

I prefer sources who know the industry better than random news reporters.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Scrub Puller » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 17:27:32

Yair . . . One of Branson's vehicles has suffered an "anomaly" with one fatality and it is only a matter of time before the other players have mishaps . . . it all seems so bloody pointless.

What has been achieved?

Would our world be any different had they never gone into the manned space flight bullshit . . . they could have done something useful with the cash.

For the average Joe the only result of space flight has been the ability to access various satellite services and, in many cases, this is of rather dubious worth.

I believe this private space flight carry-on is just a few megalomaniacs with too much money playing with their toys.

Cheers.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 17:38:50

Withnail wrote:I just hope Space X doesn't crash next or Six $ will have a nervous breakdown.

Newsflash - Americans are launching these things that are crashing.

You don't get to blame Russia.


First of all, Sir Richard is British. Secondly, it's not funny I don't want to joke about this, one pilot died and another in critical. It's sad, and I hate to say it but I always felt like Virgin Galactic was sketchy, that was just my hunch.

Thirdly -- if they knew they had a crap engine, then that is negligence. There needs to be more oversight. VG was getting ready to start launching American paying passengers off on that rocket engine that apparently does not work. That may turn out to be Branson's fault, or not, we will find out.

As for a hypothetical spacex payload failure -- I'd feel bad for poor Elon Musk, he's the one that would have a nervous breakdown. He's very prickly and doesn't take well to failure or criticism -- and that's a good thing -- it's what makes him work so damn hard.

But he's a physicist and engineer, whereas a Branson is a dreamer and may have covered some problems up. A Musk will get in there and make it work, if there's a problem. See the difference?

That's what you need in this business. Someone that takes personal responsibility. The buck stops here. And taking personal pride in craftsmanship, and being obsessive on every last detail and getting it perfect.

We'll see what happens with spacex. They've made 100 engines so far and have successfully launched 80 of those engines. If I recall there was one flight that an engine had an auto shutdown, but the other engines continued on and completed the flight as they were designed to.

Latest spacex news, by the way.. I was reading a WSJ article saying NASA rated Boeing-Lockheed's bid superior to spacex, and they got twice as much money. But the reality is that both contracts were accepted, it's just that Boeing-Lockheed's bid cost twice as much and that's another two billion dollars.

But anyhow, NASA rates Boeing-Lockheed as being "more responsive to government inquiries and government direction." The report gave Boeing-Lockheed "excellent" ratings in every category, and gave SpaceX "very good."

I also noticed in the report that NASA isn't happy that Elon Musk has designed his own radiation protection system, and also he wants to design his own docking port, and he also wants to design his own space suits. (ya gotta love that guy! control freak! insists on making his own eva suits!)

It'll work out, Withnail. Boeing-Lockheed knows how to make rockets we're just going to have to pay them $4 billion to do it and will take them five years because they switched over to Russian engines. But they'll get it done, and we taxpayers will pay for it through the nose, but it'll get done and it will work.

And we'll also have the exciting Spacex Dragon as well, it's best of both worlds, one foot in good ole reliable gumbint-contract-milking Boeing-Lockheed and another foot taking a chance on the best one of the startups, SpaceX.

My criticisms of spacex:

* Their grasshopper reusable landing rocket stages is probably overly ambitious and will take a lot longer to get done than they think. Others have tried that before. And SpaceX will have more test crashes with that. If they get a completely reusable system done, though, then that's revolutionary.

* As far as I can tell, it doesn't look like they will have any parachutes on their capsule. They're going to do propulsion landings. Now, that looks very cool and is very cool but -- put chutes on it too. Nobody wants to be the first astronaut that pushes the button and the rockets don't fire and then instead of landing on a dime you crash into the earth like a meteor. So put chutes on it, too. Maybe I'm wrong and it will have parachutes too, I'm not 100% sure.

* Lastly, maybe spacex could ramp up if we threw billions at them, but at is it we do need another supplier. SpaceX can't do it all. And the NASA report may be right about their schedule reliability. Also, spacex is looking to launch for the air force too and then they've got all their satellite clients from other nations and companies.

So they are busy, and we do need more than one. After the first contracts, then probably NASA will pick the winner and stick with it -- Boeing-Lockheed's capsule, or Spacex's. I would hope that politics and all of ULA's lobbyists don't win out in the end and the dragon capusle gets killed even if maybe it's better but they just don't have ULA's lobbyists or pay bribes, like that one air force big wig that was given a VP job at ULA *after* he gave them the big contract.

Poor elon musk, he's got to fight everyone, government too, it's like Hank Reardon out of Atlas Shrugged.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby dissident » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:04:14

Where does the notion that new designs should be functional straight out of the box come from? This is a common expectation that shines through in these threads. Probably from Hollywood and TV scifi.

This crash is like all the previous crashes of experimental aircraft and rockets. It is sad that someone died and that is why test pilots were considered heroes in the past in their own countries (e.g. Yuriy Gagarin).
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:06:52

Scrub Puller wrote:Yair . . . One of Branson's vehicles has suffered an "anomaly" with one fatality and it is only a matter of time before the other players have mishaps . . . it all seems so bloody pointless.

What has been achieved?

Would our world be any different had they never gone into the manned space flight bullshit . . . they could have done something useful with the cash.

For the average Joe the only result of space flight has been the ability to access various satellite services and, in many cases, this is of rather dubious worth.

I believe this private space flight carry-on is just a few megalomaniacs with too much money playing with their toys.

Cheers.


Yair alright. They got lotsa fanboys too. Just like all the other superheroes, Batman, Catgirl, etc.
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Re: US Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff!!!

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:09:13

700 people were signed up for tickets on the VG suborbital spaceship.

I'm not sure if all of them prepaid -- would they get their $250 grand back, if the company fails?

Celebrities were signed up to fly on it too, like Tom Hanks and a bunch of them. VG was going to start flying passengers in February.

I hate to poo-poo the dreamers of the world -- like the guy that made the Delorian, like perpetual energy engine guys -- I'm just saying you gotta know the difference. Musk is a dreamer that is a physicist and proven engineer. That's what makes spacex so interesting, and also that he's so blunt and talks about all the engineering and you notice you don't hear the Orbital Sciences ceo ever doing that right?

Musk is just more trustworthy. I've liked this guy ever since he said the rest of the industry charges whatever they think they can get out of clients, whereas he puts his prices right on his website and he charges everyone the same whether it's the air force or Argentina or Bulgaria. That's a man with wicked business sense, and he's a physicist, and engineer, and dreamer. That all adds up to success, spacex will make it.
Last edited by Sixstrings on Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:12:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:19:48

Indeed, all of the early American astronauts were high speed aircraft test pilots before being chosen for the space program.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Rod_Cloutier » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:37:26

They've been running a contest to win a trip into low-orbit. (I entered)

http://www.space.com/27019-win-a-trip-t ... video.html

If I win I hope it doesn't blow up!
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 18:42:46

Would love to see Galactic's cancellation policy, anyone got a copy? $175 million in pre-sales. Probably all of which will be wanted as refunds, today.
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Re: Space Ship Two Crash

Unread postby Sixstrings » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 19:16:51

Repent wrote:They've been running a contest to win a trip into low-orbit. (I entered)

http://www.space.com/27019-win-a-trip-t ... video.html

If I win I hope it doesn't blow up!


You'd still get on that thing, if you won? 8O

GASMON wrote:Who the f*** is Tom Hanks ?

NASA trained ???????????

Gas


He played an astronaut in a movie:

Image

Guys, look -- if you want to see space, then it's actually a lot safer to spend your $250 grand on a space suit and a weather balloon and some good parachutes.

It's the same darn thing pretty much as Virgin Galactic, except your parachutes will work. (most likely, more reliable than a VG engine rocketing you into suborbit anyhow and then the engine fails and your craft breaks apart and you crash to the earth. Weather balloon. And parachutes. You'll see space and see the earth from space and it's safer.)
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