NASA Antares Rocket Explodes After Liftoff

Checkout_my_Six said:
I've not heard that before....thanks for splaining that.:D
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Henning is right. Those Russian engines have an excellent t/w and a high specific impulse (not as high as the other Russian engines that power ULA Atlas, but very good nonetheless). According to Gary Hudson, designer of Roton and QuickReach, they enable a signle stage to orbit with just a modest post-boost from the payload, using conventional technologies such as metal tankage.

There's no other engine that scratches that performance envelope. The other Russian engine has astonishing fuel economy, but it accomplishes that with insane chamber pressures, and therefore it's too heavy. The best American engine, SSME (that NASA plans to waste as single-shot "RS-25" -- thank you, U.S. Senate) is actually much better than these Russian engines, but we accomplished it using hydrogen as fuel. Therefore, the tankage must be larger and SSTO does not close without exotic materials like those we tried to use on X-33. And SpaceX Merlin is simply not terribly efficient. It's just light and cheap.

So, basically, these surplus Russian engines are like magic forgotten technology for us. The main problem is in corrosion cracking in their critical components. The youngest of them was made in 1972 and they were knocked around warehouses since then. We already lost one to a similar explosion at a test stand during acceptance testing for Antares. Aerojet promised better inspection, but perhaps dyes and boroscopes just weren't enough when such pressures and temperatures were concerned.
 
sounds like x-ray and ultrasound wasn't performed?:yikes:

Yeah....I use to work for Jess Sponable. :D
zaitcev said:
Henning is right. Those Russian engines have an excellent t/w and a high specific impulse (not as high as the other Russian engines that power ULA Atlas, but very good nonetheless). According to Gary Hudson, designer of Roton and QuickReach, they enable a signle stage to orbit with just a modest post-boost from the payload, using conventional technologies such as metal tankage.

There's no other engine that scratches that performance envelope. The other Russian engine has astonishing fuel economy, but it accomplishes that with insane chamber pressures, and therefore it's too heavy. The best American engine, SSME (that NASA plans to waste as single-shot "RS-25" -- thank you, U.S. Senate) is actually much better than these Russian engines, but we accomplished it using hydrogen as fuel. Therefore, the tankage must be larger and SSTO does not close without exotic materials like those we tried to use on X-33. And SpaceX Merlin is simply not terribly efficient. It's just light and cheap.

So, basically, these surplus Russian engines are like magic forgotten technology for us. The main problem is in corrosion cracking in their critical components. The youngest of them was made in 1972 and they were knocked around warehouses since then. We already lost one to a similar explosion at a test stand during acceptance testing for Antares. Aerojet promised better inspection, but perhaps dyes and boroscopes just weren't enough when such pressures and temperatures were concerned.
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No biggie. Nasa, and therefore their subcontractors are more interested in battling man made global warming, and facilitating Muslim outreach to worry about such a little thing as space travel.
 
zaitcev said:
Henning is right. Those Russian engines have an excellent t/w and a high specific impulse (not as high as the other Russian engines that power ULA Atlas, but very good nonetheless). According to Gary Hudson, designer of Roton and QuickReach, they enable a signle stage to orbit with just a modest post-boost from the payload, using conventional technologies such as metal tankage.

There's no other engine that scratches that performance envelope. The other Russian engine has astonishing fuel economy, but it accomplishes that with insane chamber pressures, and therefore it's too heavy. The best American engine, SSME (that NASA plans to waste as single-shot "RS-25" -- thank you, U.S. Senate) is actually much better than these Russian engines, but we accomplished it using hydrogen as fuel. Therefore, the tankage must be larger and SSTO does not close without exotic materials like those we tried to use on X-33. And SpaceX Merlin is simply not terribly efficient. It's just light and cheap.

So, basically, these surplus Russian engines are like magic forgotten technology for us. The main problem is in corrosion cracking in their critical components. The youngest of them was made in 1972 and they were knocked around warehouses since then. We already lost one to a similar explosion at a test stand during acceptance testing for Antares. Aerojet promised better inspection, but perhaps dyes and boroscopes just weren't enough when such pressures and temperatures were concerned.
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Antares currently uses the old AJ-26 (NK-33) engines - kerosene and liquid oxygen. They were stored in a warehouse and were subject to corrosion. They were built for the Soviet moon program that never was successful. Given the high pressures and efficiency, any weakness will result in a spectacular failure....
 
wsuffa said:
Antares currently uses the old AJ-26 (NK-33) engines - kerosene and liquid oxygen. They were stored in a warehouse and were subject to corrosion. They were built for the Soviet moon program that never was successful. Given the high pressures and efficiency, any weakness will result in a spectacular failure....
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It did that for sure...:yes:
 
wsuffa said:
Given the high pressures and efficiency, any weakness will result in a spectacular failure....
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It's trickier than that. Our own SSMEs flew with damage. But NK-33 uses an oxygen rich cycle in order to prevent coking of the kerosene. Therefore, any damage causes metal particles that immediately flare up in the athmosphere of superheated oxygen, and explosion follows.

This property of oxygen-rich engines is in part what prompts Russians to seek Methane (CH4) as fuel. It cokes much higher and so you could run an efficient full-flow cycle. Elon Musk and Tom Mueller are working on an American equivalent of that, too. That future tech will have all the advantages of current Russian engines, but be reliable enough for manned launch.
 
JimNtexas said:
This why flying with fifty year old motors is such a bad idea.
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A big part why I thought a Luscombe was not for me. Another was a very limited payload, but yeah, dealing with an A-65 was not appealing.
 
Orbital Sciences has a reputation that preceedes themselves.....never to disappoint. :D
 
Didn't catch that gust lock on pre-flight, huh?
 
They obviously didn't read the label and bought rockets with report. Or they forgot to squeeze the clay nose cone to shut report mode off.
 
This is what happens when you operate engines in the red box!
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
Orbital Sciences has a reputation that preceedes themselves.....never to disappoint. :D
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If you mean the double debacle with OCO, then you may be interested to know that DWT purged the whole team. Ops for Taurus are transferred to people formerly responsible for Minotaur and IIRC they executed RTF already, albeit using their own fairing (that looks even more oversized on top of the slender Taurus stick).
 
I was involved with the development of Taurus and Pegasus....way back when Thompson joined the team meetings now and again.....but that was +20 years ago. :lol:...they certainly weren't afraid of risk then. :hairraise:

but....I still have friends who dabble with those guys. :D
 
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"There's a fine line between a rocket and a bomb...and the finer the line, the better the rocket."
- Sometimes attributed to Werner Von Braun

Ron Wanttaja
 
Coincidentially, in the hours since the Antares failure, a couple of launches took place.

First, the Progress M-25M was launched on top of Soyuz-2.1a. It has already docked to the station at this time. It was the first flight of Progress atop the Soyuz-2. It delivered some supplies, not sure what kind.

Second, Atlas V launched a GPS satellite, using a Russian main engine RD-180. That one, however, was not a surplus engine from the 1960s, but made specifically for the American customer some time in 2006 or so. It is closing on a perfect record of 60 successes to 0 failures now.
 
"We made one of the gravest errors of my generation when we parked the whole aeronautical industry and stopped the research airplane program. Space by forfeit then went to the medicine men, the missileers and the Germans, who all had a terrible disdain for pilots and wings and aeronautics, about which they knew nothing. These people didn’t understand the reliability that went with man-rated systems. Because everything they made if it worked they never saw it again, and if it didn’t work they never saw the pieces hardly again. And to this day they still clap and cheer whenever something works. I’ve never seen that when an airplane flew."

-- A. Scott Crossfield, 1988​
 
zaitcev said:
If you mean the double debacle with OCO, then you may be interested to know that DWT purged the whole team. Ops for Taurus are transferred to people formerly responsible for Minotaur and IIRC they executed RTF already, albeit using their own fairing (that looks even more oversized on top of the slender Taurus stick).
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Say WHAT?:confused:
 
jp4whkE.jpg
 
Pilawt said:
And to this day they still clap and cheer whenever something works. I’ve never seen that when an airplane flew."

-- A. Scott Crossfield, 1988
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He can't be serious.

An aggressive aviation experiment does indeed get that treatment. Something he of all people should know.

It comes from people investing years of their lives into something that might not work. Yes, we all did it when our own cavity door was opened for the first time, and then successfully closed without a hitch. And without 27 Hz tone we were all afraid of.
 
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