[Subjectivist]

CNN is reporting with video that the American ISSA supply rocket failed and fell back onto the launch pad, exploding and causing massive fire and concussion damage. This is the commercial rocket that uses Russian engines in a Ukrainian first stage. Either the engines or tanks failed seconds after liftoff.

[Subjectivist]

The good news Russia already has a supply rocket on the launchpad schedualed to take off tomorrow, so the crew on the ISSA won't have any critical shortages for a while.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/tracking/

[Newfie]

It was supposed to launch Monday but was scrubbed because of i authorized boat down range.

I'll bet that crew is a little dumbfounded.

http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/l ... /18059957/

[Keith_McClary]

It was supposed to launch Monday but was scrubbed because of i authorized boat down range.

I'll bet that crew is a little dumbfounded.

http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/l ... /18059957/

How does that work - they were 40 miles offshore (international waters?)?

[Synapsid]

Keith,

If the boat was downrange, it was in the hazard zone and thus in danger if something went wrong after launch. I'm guessing that that was the reason the launch was scrubbed.

[Sixstrings]

CNN is reporting with video that the American ISSA supply rocket failed and fell back onto the launch pad, exploding and causing massive fire and concussion damage. This is the commercial rocket that uses Russian engines in a Ukrainian first stage. Either the engines or tanks failed seconds after liftoff.

Ok, I have never had a good feeling about Orbital Sciences.

They're trying to compete with SpaceX.

But nobody can compete with SpaceX. And now see Orbital sci's rockets blowing up. NASA shouldn't be using this company. Just give the business to SpaceX, or Boeing or Lockheed but Musk is exceptional these other space startups aren't going to make it and will just keep having accidents.

Also -- while, as you said, they're using Russian engines and Ukrainian stages, guess where SpaceX stuff is made? Right here in the USA. And it doesn't blow up.

[Sixstrings]

Some more info: the rocket wasn't just carrying supplies, but also something "classified" up to the space station. So sabotage is a possibility.

Also, wasn't it like 3 weeks or a month ago that a Russian Proton rocket blew up? Maybe there's a problem with those Russian engines.

And let me say this again -- which company should NASA be using, the one that just buys a ukrainian booster and a Russian engine and sticks them together, or the company that is making every inch of their rockets -- engines too -- in house and so obviously they know what's going on because they built the damn thing from scratch.

If you're just using a Russian engine and it blows up then of course you don't know wtf happened.

[SeaGypsy]

They're trying to compete with SpaceX.

But nobody can compete with SpaceX. And now see Orbital sci's rockets blowing up. NASA shouldn't be using this company. Just give the business to SpaceX, or Boeing or Lockheed but Musk is exceptional these other space startups aren't going to make it and will just keep having accidents.

Also -- while, as you said, they're using Russian engines and Ukrainian stages, guess where SpaceX stuff is made? Right here in the USA. And it doesn't blow up.

3 seconds on Google will prove the above comment inane,

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/ ... /14472939/

Funny they don't mention this most recent failure, just 3 early ones on their company timeline.

http://spacexstats.com/previous.php

Rocket science is both tricky & dangerous, besides expensive 6, & even rocket scientists get it wrong, often.

[Sixstrings]

3 seconds on Google will prove the above comment inane,

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/ ... /14472939/

SG -- you are wrong, SpaceX is better. That's their reusable rocket system they are testing.

It's a TEST rocket.

And they blew it up themselves when it began to fail. It's a revolutionary system they are working on, and there will be more blow ups and crashes.

There is a difference between new system tests and finished product launches. It's Orbital Sciences that had their rocket blow up, and they don't even build their own engines much less trying to develop something revolutionary.

SpaceX suffered a setback Friday when a test rocket exploded in Texas after a problem was detected, triggering the on-board system that automatically destroys the vehicle.

No one was injured during the test at SpaceX's facility in McGregor, Texas, and the vehicle stayed within its designated test area, according to a statement the company posted on Twitter.

(seriously you don't realize what spacex is doing, they're having rockets hover in MIDAIR -- HOVER -- that's never been done before. It's a new system in development. There ware going to be some crashes.

Look at the Russian Proton rocket. That's got a big bloody trail of development history, crash after crash, and giant infernos and explosions the Soviets never told anyone about. But you know what, as long you didn't lose a payload, who cares -- you LEARN from a crash, anyway.)

[SeaGypsy]

I think you need to change the filter on your distillery old chap. You said "Space X rockets don't blow up." Which they clearly do. I called this a wrong comment because it is a wrong comment. Calling my comment calling your wrong comment a wrong comment, is, well, why the first comment in this comment.

[Sixstrings]

I think you need to change the filter on your distillery old chap. You said "Space X rockets don't blow up." Which they clearly do. I called this a wrong comment because it is a wrong comment. Calling my comment calling your wrong comment a wrong comment, is, well, why the first comment in this comment.

Correction: spacex hasn't blown up any customers' cargo.

They're testing a rocket that can hover in midair and land on a dime. These new test rockets are going to crash and blow up sometimes, in the course of development, just as every other new rocket system has had a lot of blowups and crashes on its way to production.

Spacex may have an accident one day though, it could happen, but I'm just giving my opinion they are the superior company to orbital sciences. SpaceX engineers designed and built it all from scratch. That's a massive difference from buying a Russian engine and a Ukrainian stage. Nobody can know an engine as well as the engineers that designed and built it.

[Sixstrings]

Comparison between the competing launch vehicles.

Antares is the smaller one, that just blew up, the one with an American company using Russian engines. The Falcons use Merlin engines made right in their facility -- steel comes in one end of the plant, and engines out the other.

I say that's better than buying engines from Russia, anyway. Why would we be giving contracts to a company that's really just outsourcing. Give the contracts to the one making their own engines, in the USA.

[Sixstrings]

Canadian astronaut on CNN says it looks like the engine stopped producing thrust.

It stopped in middair and then some debris came out the engine, then it's likely the mission control team blew it up per standard procedure. (that's what this astronaut says anyhow)

So -- it's a faulty Russian engine, apparently.

And to be fair, these things happen whether it's Russian rockets or Boeing-Lockheed or the old space shuttle or the Europeans. Rockets are controlled explosions, after all.

Having said that, I've heard Elon Musk give interviews saying he designed the Falcons so that they can still get to orbit even if they lose multiple engines.

(as a taxpayer -- I don't like this oribital sciences having a billion dollar contract. They look like nice people but they are using Russian engines and Ukrainian stage and they aren't even making the damn thing so where is all the money going??????

They've got a billion dollar contract, that's my tax dollars, and I think it's wasted on them. Better to give it to spacex, or Boeing-Lockheed, we can't have failed launches just because we're trying to help some little company out, this is throwing good money after bad.)

[Sixstrings]

Orbital science's stock already down 12%.

According to daily mail's article on this, the rocket was carrying a private company's asteroid-mining prototype satellite.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2810128/Ready-liftoff-Nighttime-rocket-launch-International-Space-Station-visible-East-Coast.html

Anyhow.. I really don't have a good feeling about this company, I never did to be honest, and now they have this explosion.

And now NASA is committed to giving them the one or two billion dollars or whatever.

What can the government do, if it gets stuck with a lemon contractor like this? Can they get out of this contract? I really think orbital is just going to be a big waste of taxpayer money and they're going to have more accidents and it's not wise to be using them.

They just don't seem anywhere close to a spacex or Boeing-Lockheed.

It's wasted taxpayer money. They don't even make their own rockets. Why are they getting billions of dollars.

EDIT:

The engines Orbital uses are actually FORTY YEAR OLD *refurbished* *Soviet* engines.

The company behind a resupply mission to the International Space Station that ended in a spectacular explosion over a Virginia launchpad has defended the use of ageing Soviet rockets amid growing questions over Nasa’s reliance on private contractors to fill gaps in the US space program.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment, ranging from “classified cryptographic” gear to school science experiments, was destroyed in a giant fireball on Tuesday evening after technicians detonated a self-destruct mechanism six seconds after launch because of a “catastrophic” equipment failure.

...

“The history of this engine has been well documented. Basically this was an engine that was designed to carry cosmonauts to the moon,” he said. “A number of them were bought by Aerojet to be refurbished and Americanised. It’s an extensively tested engine, very robust and rugged.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/28/antares-rocket-explodes-nasa-launch-pad-orbital-science

It's utterly outrageous.

They aren't even new Russian engines, they're used Soviet engines almost a half century old. Where are our tax dollars going to, CEO bonuses in that company? They can't even buy new engines from Russia, wtf?

SpaceX makes ITS OWN engines and they are American not Russian, and they are brand new and not 40 years old, and they have proven to automatically shut down during failure and then the other engines in the cluster can still get it to orbit.

This half century year old used Russian engine just blew apart.

It's just so outrageous, that these Russian engines are even being used, and that our tax dollars are paying for it.

Title of this thread should be changed -- this is NOT a "US" rocket, it is a private company not ready for the big leagues and it's a 40 year old RUSSIAN engine and Ukrainian body. It's not an American rocket.

SpaceX merlin engines are American, brand new and made here and not from Russia.

Everything about Spacex is American. Oribital seems to outsource everything, that's a hodgepodge Russian / Soviet rocket they've got.

(p.s. ok last thing I'm going to say.. I *think* these engines are the famous Russian N1 rocket engines I've read about before. They were in fact revolutionary for the time, but didn't all the N1's blow up on the pad? So why are we using those old engines? It just goes to show, Musk did the right thing and he's a physicist and he made his own darn engines. Whereas Orbital thought they found a shortcut and some nice Soviet engines in a Russian warehouse.

Those engines are 40 years old, that's too old to be using, no wonder this thing blew up, good grief.

And one final thing -- orbital is charging the US taxpayer $237 million per flight and that's what this blown up one cost.

Whereas spacex costs the taxpayer only half as much, $133 million, and Falcon 9's hold more payload and can return cargo as well. And again -- SpaceX engines are made in USA and they are brand new and they are not 40 year old engines from the failed Soviet N1 lunar rocket from the early 1970s.

It's outrageous, this company charges taxpayers twice as much for doing less and then they're cheapskates using these refurbished half century old engines from the Soviets. And it all blows up. No surprise.)

[Withnail]

Orbital science's stock already down 12%.

Anyhow.. I really don't have a good feeling about this company, I never did to be honest, and now they have this explosion.



...

“The history of this engine has been well documented. Basically this was an engine that was designed to carry cosmonauts to the moon,” he said. “A number of them were bought by Aerojet to be refurbished and Americanised.

The engine failed because it became American.

[Tanada]

First off, this was the third launch of the Antares system so the graphic Six posted from 2012 is somewhat deceptive.

Secondly I love what Elon Musk is doing, but he isn't God and his company will have hiccoughs along the way if it stays in business long enough. Claiming nobody has ever hovered a rocket before is also a false claim the DC-X program did it a dozen times back in the 1990's before the Clinton Administration killed the project.

Thirdly, rocket engines are freaking expensive to build because of the precision machining done on them. They are made to minimum tolerances because ounces of unnecessary weight in their structure equals pounds of payload not getting to orbit. Every country that has built rocket engines has some stored away from old production runs, for example NASA has a couple dozen Space Shuttle engines sitting in storage right now. An engine is pretty much a one time use item, it is built, test fired, refurbished and then launched. These stockpiled Russian/Soviet engines are no different, they were built, test fired, refurbished and stuck on a warehouse rack somewhere for 40 years. Then they were sold to a US company that paid for them to be refurbished again (seals age and old connections become question marks). Then they were attached to a Ukraine built first stage and shipped to Virginia where they were assembled into a complete launch vehicle. Remember these things are designed to produce maximum thrust for minimum weight for about 10 minutes, then be dropped into the ocean never to be seen again.

On the audio track of the NASA footage you can hear the flight controller say, running at 108% of rated thrust right before the engines shut down. These engines were designed about 50 years ago to run at 100% rated thrust. Testing has allowed engineers to calculate that they can actually run harder and survive just like the Space Shuttle engines did when it was flying. However any time you push an engine beyond its design limits like that you increase the chances that it will fail. This time they lost the bet and the engine failed at 108% of thrust.

Fourth the company involved got a 1,800,000,000 contract from NASA for 10 flights to the ISSA. They already completed two successful flights. This was the third flight, which failed. Averaged over the 10 flights the company is getting 225,000,000 from NASA for each launch. What happened last night is the reason every company involved buys launch insurance. Whoever the insurance carrier is took a big hit because they have to pay someone for the lost cargo replacement and for structural damage on the ground. NASA already paid for the rocket with that 225 million per launch and depending on how the contract details were written they will probably write off this vehicle loss as a structural failure or Act of God unless they can prove sabotage.

[Subjectivist]

Cool, 1993 DCX test flight, 100 feet vertical, hover test, horizontal flight 100 feet, vertical descent and landing. I vaguely remember watching these back in those days, I was part of the campaigne to get CATS on the California state ballot. Cheap Access To Space CATS was a plan for California to finance development of the prototype DC-Y which would have been full size and able to move people ballistically from California to Hawaii in 30 min.

http://youtu.be/0IWIv2MKcyg

http://youtu.be/JzXcTFfV3Ls

[Subjectivist]

New footage posted on YouTube shot from a plane at 3000 feet.
http://youtu.be/zarWT7H9t54

[Sixstrings]

Then they were sold to a US company that paid for them to be refurbished again (seals age and old connections become question marks).

It looks like that's what happened here, fuel nozzel or something flew off it. It's a 40 year old engine built for the N1 lunar rocket, that never was successful:



Tanada, I have to wonder, was this company fully aware of all the history with the Soviet N1 rocket and these engines?

These engines have failed too much, N1's blew up in massive fireballs back in the 70s and that's why it was canceled. And they kept the engines in a warehouse. And now the same engines are blowing up our rockets; these engines should not be used, they didn't work in the 70s, and they're are too old now anyway and nozzles are gonna fly off from age.

This time they lost the bet and the engine failed at 108% of thrust.

Oh, it gets better and better, so they had a 40 year old soviet engine in overdrive. No wonder it blew up. This is outrageous, this company needs investigated by Congress and they need to lost that $2 billion gubbmint contract. They are charging double what spacex is, for a far inferior product, that blows up anyway.

Now NOASA and NTSB and all of that have the expense for an "investigation" and nasa doing this contractor's work for them and seeing if nasa can get russian engines to work on ukrainian stages, but, it's all a bunch of crap we should be using american engines to start with and building it all here, to starter with.

They already completed two successful flights. This was the third flight, which failed. Averaged over the 10 flights the company is getting 225,000,000 from NASA for each launch.

[/quote]

Yeah, they are charging too much, twice as much as spacex.

And, orbital carries less payload and can't even bring stuff back.

Why are we paying Lockheed prices to a ltitle fly by night thing like this orbital sciences. It's going to wind up giving all commerical space a bad name, congress could cancel all of it and that's not fair to spacex which isn't all screwed up like this orbital sciences is.

I just don't have a good feeling about this company, tanada, and I hope they're never allowed to carry human passengers.

And I realize Elon Musk "is not God" but -- success is success and failure is dangerous in the rocket business.

There's no good reason to pay more for failure and explosions and lost payloads, all on the principle of creating artificial competition for Elon Musk.

Orbital's rockets suck and they don't know what they are doing and they were fools to use these half century old Soviet engines that didn't even work in the 1970s.

Compare that to SpaceX -- they are making their engines, from scratch, and Tanada you say it's too expensive to do that but somehow they do it you know? They charge the gov half what Orbital science charges.

Why use the russian engines at all. And worse, they had it at 108% of capacity well no wonder. I think they're a bunch of cheapskates, looking for profit #1, that's dangerous nasa needs to drop this company like a hot potato.

[dinopello]

They are charging double what spacex is, for a far inferior product, that blows up anyway.

Were you on the source selection ? Most federal contracts these days are lowest cost, technically acceptable rather than best value. Was this one different ? In any case, SpaceX also received a contract for 1.6 Billion for space station resupply. They probably needed both to meet the sortie requirements. And, in case you are just dividing the total contract value by the number of contracted flight that would be an incorrect way to valuate the cost per flight without considering the payloads, weight, and other factors.