Rocket launch turned nasty

olasek

olasek

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olasek
I hope by now everyone saw this spectacular rocket launch failure in Russia, 3 satellites were aboard, the terrain is now contaminated due to the highly toxic fuel. Rarely these days one can watch such visually impressive failures. I personally like this amateur made video, you can find more close-up videos too. If you don't have enough fireworks for the 4-th July this should make up for it :D

http://youtu.be/Zl12dXYcUTo
 
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"The motherlands finest space rocket puts on brief aerial demonstration before hitting the ground in protest of greedy capitalist pigs"
 
DavidWhite said:
"The motherlands finest space rocket puts on brief aerial demonstration before hitting the ground in protest of greedy capitalist pigs"
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Not too far off base when you realize Proton started it's life as a ICBM targeted at us capitalist pigs.

Better that they blow up over there.
 
weilke said:
Because this could never happen in the GPS program:
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Sure it can but it dates back to 1997, it is almost a generation gap.
Oh, I failed to mention, to this date there are no range safety devices on Russian rockets that could remotely detonate a wayward rocket...
 
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dell30rb said:
At least our rocket flew straight and true right up to the point of magnificent failure. The russian rocket looked like it was drunk on vodka, then did a half assed explosion.
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No - most robust and magnificent explosion! No "anomaly"!
 
Did anyone notice how close are the spectators to the launch pad - about 2 miles which can be measured by the delay in the sound. That's pretty darn close.
 
Did I hear one of them in Russian say "that will buff right out"?
 
dell30rb said:
At least our rocket flew straight and true right up to the point of magnificent failure. The russian rocket looked like it was drunk on vodka, then did a half assed explosion.
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What got me is that the Russians apparently don't have a range-safety system...all US rockets (including manned launches) have radio-controlled explosives onboard for the Range Safety Officer to destroy the rocket if it goes out of control. Nothing like was apparent, here.

Ron Wanttaja
 
olasek said:
Did anyone notice how close are the spectators to the launch pad - about 2 miles which can be measured by the delay in the sound. That's pretty darn close.
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Good point.

I timed it at six seconds for the launch and the same for the crash, which works out to be about 2 km -- even more darn close!

The crash is not such a good thing for us, anyway. Before 2020 most of us will need new GPS receivers, and it would be great if receivers are available that can also get a fix on Glonass, especially when the U.S. GPS satellites are jammed, as happens all too often lately.
 
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olasek said:
Sure it can but it dates back to 1997, it is almost a generation gap.
Oh, I failed to mention, to this date there are no range safety devices on Russian rockets that could remotely detonate a wayward rocket...
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Why would they need it, they put the pad in the middle of nowhere, where no one lives, rather than launching with 100,000's of people living right there. All they want to do is make sure that the rocket doesn't destroy the pad, which is what the system is designed to do, if there is a problem, burn long enough to get it away.
 
NoHeat said:
The crash is not such a good thing for us, anyway. Before 2020 most of us will need new GPS receivers, and it would be great if receivers are available that can also get a fix on Glonass, especially when the U.S. GPS satellites are jammed, as happens all too often lately.
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That was one of the things I ended up wanting for just a bluetooth GPS for my tablet, and ended up with the Garmin GLO.
 
And thanks to our brilliant leaders in Congress who can't see the future beyond the next election and have stripped our country of the ability to go into space, this is the technology we depend on to get to the ISS that WE funded the vast majority of.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Why would they need it, they put the pad in the middle of nowhere, where no one lives, rather than launching with 100,000's of people living right there.
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It isn't eastern Florida but it ain't devoid of population either. There is a famous photo (too bad I lost track of it) that shows a Kazakh farmer going about his business while a huge spent mangled rocket stage sits not more than 100 yards from his homestead. I doubt he sued or even asked to have it removed ...
All they want to do is make sure that the rocket doesn't destroy the pad, which is what the system is designed to do,
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I don't think they have such system, their N1 rocket failures (there were multiple events) did destroy their launch pads and even killed ground personnel, perhaps they got used to live with it. ;)
 
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olasek said:
I don't think they have such system, their N1 rocket failures (there were multiple events) did destroy their launch pads and even killed ground personnel, perhaps they got used to live with it. ;)
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Well yeah, if it blows up on the pad, sure. But the current generation, according to everything I've read, is set to burn for 40+ seconds, then shut down, in the event of a catastrophic failure. Of course, if it totally destroys the vehicle, not much use.

Still, I think the Russians have done amazing things with their equipment. Using the same basic rocket for people that Gagarin rode on today.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Using the same basic rocket for people that Gagarin rode on today.
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Yeah, you can sort of turn it into a virtue :dunno:
On the other hand advances in hardware should be commensurate with the missions goals otherwise you end up shooting rockets toward Mars for over 30 years and having absolutely zero results, i doubt it is very cost effective.
 
The Russians seem to have a higher risk tolerance than we do.
 
olasek said:
Yeah, you can sort of turn it into a virtue :dunno:
On the other hand advances in hardware should be commensurate with the missions goals otherwise you end up with shooting rockets toward Mars for over 30 years and having absolutely zero results, i doubt it is very cost effective.
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Hmmmmm... The U.S spent over 4 BILLION dollars to send a probe to Mars and made a very simple mathmatic mistake in converting KPH to MPH and slammed the probe into the surface of Mars at 400+ mph...... Oops... We are FAR from perfect in space exploration...:(
 
N801BH said:
We are FAR from perfect in space exploration...:(
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And who is talking about perfection? :mad2:
Still 87.5% (as calculated for all NASA landings attempts) success rate is infinitely better than ZERO. (OK, Russians supposedly landed once but the lander stopped working seconds later, if you want to count as 1/10th landing be my guest :redface:).

EDIT: for all NASA missions to Mars, landers and orbiters beginning in 1964 the success rate is 76%.
 
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KSCessnaDriver said:
Still, I think the Russians have done amazing things with their equipment. Using the same basic rocket for people that Gagarin rode on today.
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I believe that the Proton rockets have historically been able to accomplish 90% of their missions. The design has been around long enough that per-unit costs are allegedly pretty low (for a rocket) and is the closest thing there is to a mass-produced rocket of its size. These are certainly valid ways to lower the cost to get into space.
 
wanttaja said:
What got me is that the Russians apparently don't have a range-safety system...all US rockets (including manned launches) have radio-controlled explosives onboard for the Range Safety Officer to destroy the rocket if it goes out of control. Nothing like was apparent, here.

Ron Wanttaja
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That's because they keep their ranges out in some desolate god-forsaken place where the thing could turn 90 degrees and keep going without hitting anything valuable.

Back when I worked at Martin Marietta's Denver plant where they had a score card for every Titan missile launch, there was a blank one where it was the only time in the history of the program they'd had to push that button.
 
olasek said:
Yeah, you can sort of turn it into a virtue :dunno:
On the other hand advances in hardware should be commensurate with the missions goals otherwise you end up shooting rockets toward Mars for over 30 years and having absolutely zero results, i doubt it is very cost effective.
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Going to the Space Shuttle set us back so far, that now we have to spend billions to get back to what we knew.
 
olasek said:
I don't think they have such system, their N1 rocket failures (there were multiple events) did destroy their launch pads and even killed ground personnel, perhaps they got used to live with it. ;)
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See, this is exactly why reading Wikipedia is hazardous for mental functions. Although the claim of a pad being "destroyed" has 2 citations, in reality it only damaged one building and downed a lighthing protection tower. It wasn't an insignificant crash, but the damage was much smaller than such caused by October 1990 Zenit explosion.

And of course, nobody was ever injured by N-1 launch failures, which claim admittedly not present in current editions of Wikipedia.
 
N801BH said:
The U.S spent over 4 BILLION dollars to send a probe to Mars and made a very simple mathmatic mistake in converting KPH to MPH . . .
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Where did you get this number? The whole MCO mission was $125 million in 1998 dollars, and this included launch services!
 
zaitcev said:
Where did you get this number? The whole MCO mission was $125 million in 1998 dollars, and this included launch services!
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Dig a little deeper for the truth.... The price was minimized by people who wanted to deflect blame and liability...... There has not been a object launched into space by the US in the last 40 years that cost only 125 million... And that is just the launch vehicle and the trip up.. Add in the years of R&D for the mission, support and vehicle tracking till it crashed and then the extensive reconstruction investigation on what went wrong and you are 3+ billion in costs.. :yes:
 
Ok, so who decided that we could fit three satellites on this rocket? :D
 
EppyGA said:
Ok, so who decided that we could fit three satellites on this rocket? :D
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:eek::sad:..

I bet Lloyd's Of London, AIG, Allienze or whoever had exposure on the satellites are not sleeping good tonight...:no::nonod::(
 
Threefingeredjack said:
And thanks to our brilliant leaders in Congress who can't see the future beyond the next election and have stripped our country of the ability to go into space, this is the technology we depend on to get to the ISS that WE funded the vast majority of.
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That's my thinking. Because of the bureaucratic lack of math skills, we have to use THESE GUYS to take the good guys into space. Wonderful. :rolleyes:
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
If it ain't broke
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It is highly debatable ... 90% success rate is not something to brag about these days although it could meet your mission objective provided the payload is not too expensive and launch costs are low enough.
 
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There have been 388 Proton family launches with 45 failures. For the Proton M it's 69 launches and 4 failures. The early failures in the 60's were some of Chelmei's first hypergolic fueled vehicles. They had difficulties with the early design but it's been a pretty reliable system. That's the first time a first stage has failed in over 30 years.

The Soviet (and later Russian) space programs have done well considering the lack of funds and insane political pressures they endured.
 
3393RP said:
.....
The Soviet (and later Russian) space programs have done well considering the lack of funds and insane political pressures they endured.
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That and the fact over there ... if you screw up they take you out back and shoot you...:eek:..

Over here you not only get a raise, they shield blame on the guilty and award billion dollar contracts to the company who #ucked up the first launch..........

Is this a great country or what.??:dunno::(
 
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