Rocket launch turned nasty

N801BH said:
That and the fact over there ... if you screw up they take you out back and shoot you...:eek:..
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Even someone as blood thirsty as Stalin was not too keen on shooting his rocket engineers, he knew there were just too few of them to go around, Korolev for example was sent to gulag not because of his rocket misfortunes/experiments but because he simply lacked proper socialist orthodoxy. But he was eventually freed and returned to work - all such people were extremely valuable. So even the current threats by Russian president Medvedev that 'extreme harsh measures' will follow this debacle have to be taken with a grain of salt, such harsh measures were also promised but never materialized after the Phobos debacle 2 years ago.
 
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EppyGA said:
Ok, so who decided that we could fit three satellites on this rocket? :D
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These days, make it *only* three. Spacecraft getting lighter, smaller, they're packing more and more aboard each launch. The Teledesic concept, ~15 years ago, depended on getting twelve vehicles on a single launcher. I was the lead engineer on the payload for the Teledesic T1 demonstrator, and we co-launched with another spacecraft...on a Pegasus, which can only take ~1,000 pounds or so to LEO.

Many launches these days carry batches of mini, micro, and nanosatellites as well. I was at a conference last month, and one company will sell you a nanosatellite kit for $8,000....including launch.

Ron Wanttaja
 
N801BH said:
That and the fact over there ... if you screw up they take you out back and shoot you...:eek:..
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Don't forget the true economic feature: They would then bill your family for the cost of the bullet.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
These days, make it *only* three. Spacecraft getting lighter, smaller, they're packing more and more aboard each launch. The Teledesic concept, ~15 years ago, depended on getting twelve vehicles on a single launcher.
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While Teledisc only made plans, Orbcomm did in fact launched 8 apiece aboart Pegasus, a couple of times even.

Note that for many years satellites were not getting any lighter, despite widespread expectations for it. For comsats, it was driven by GSO slots being a limited resources, primarily. But just about any kind of satellite was getting bigger, on average, even remote-sensing ones. This is especially noticeable with subsequent generations such as GPS and Orbcomm's.

The lighter satellite appears to be the eternal hope. Today's standard-bearer is the cubesat. The idea is: if existing families cannot be shrunk, let's create a whole new niche of small ones. Here's an article at TSR from this week:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2322/1
 
N801BH said:
There has not been a object launched into space by the US in the last 40 years that cost only 125 million...
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Wrong. There was plenty of missions way below $125 million in the last 40 years. Back when Pegasus started flying, the whole launch with mission assurance was way below $20 million (naked launch for $11 million), and it was used for a number of cheaper birds, such as Explorer-class NASA missions. The aforementioned Orbcomm sats weren't all the expensive either.
 
zaitcev said:
While Teledisc only made plans, Orbcomm did in fact launched 8 apiece aboart Pegasus, a couple of times even.
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Yup... in fact, Teledesic T1 (aka Batsat) was made using three ORBCOMM rings and a pair of its solar array paddles. Three-axis controlled, using torque rods instead of the gravity-gradient stabilization used by ORBCOMM. IIRC, Teledesic paid $8 million for the Pegasus launch (half the actual launch cost; we shared the ride).

Attached picture was taken during payload integration...I'm the guy on the right.

Satellites have the capability of being lighter, but once they meet their launch margin, designers usually add more capability rather than shave weight off. Even if they drop some poundage, the launch folks would often just add ballast anyway.

Ron Wanttaja
 

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N801BH said:
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:
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Dig a little more carefully for the truth.

There is a MASSIVE difference in cost -- for reasons that should be obvious -- between a manned mission like the Space Shuttle and an unmanned satellite or deep space probe launch.

How many people's lives were at risk in the Mars debacle, once the launch vehicle cleared the tower?

The debacle is an embarsassing cautionary tale in managing interface control documents, and is currently used as such. There are a bunch of those in systems engineering. Another is the uncaught exception for the maiden Ariane 5 launch.
 
wanttaja said:
I was at a conference last month, and one company will sell you a nanosatellite kit for $8,000....including launch.
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That amount suspiciously matches the Nanosat Challenge prize. Coincidence?
 
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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http://www.timesdaily.com/news/local/article_ed12b886-e51f-11e2-baef-10604b9f6eda.html

I know one of the engineers working on the next project. He said their focus isn't doing shallow orbits. They're shooting for the moon....literally.
 
MAKG1 said:
Dig a little more carefully for the truth.

There is a MASSIVE difference in cost -- for reasons that should be obvious -- between a manned mission like the Space Shuttle and an unmanned satellite or deep space probe launch.

How many people's lives were at risk in the Mars debacle, once the launch vehicle cleared the tower?

The debacle is an embarsassing cautionary tale in managing interface control documents, and is currently used as such. There are a bunch of those in systems engineering. Another is the uncaught exception for the maiden Ariane 5 launch.
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I understand the ability to put a small 10 lb nanosatellite in orbit and the chance that cost is quite alot less then a full sized comm, spy or GPS bird up there... A decent sized C, KA KU band comm sat is running 250 mil to deliver it to space... I was comparing the size of the payload the Russian rocket blew up... Not a baseball sized toy..
 
N801BH said:
they shield blame on the guilty and award billion dollar contracts to the company who #ucked up the first launch..........
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Not sure what you are referring too.
But the world is not perfect, there is a limited number of contractors which can do this sort of work. Even someone who screwed up will eventually bounce back and be rewarded another contract and will do it well. I am looking at the big picture - so far there is no space agency on this planet that can achieve as much as NASA on a per dollar basis. For example European ESA has a budget close to 1/3 of NASA's and I don't think they even get 1/5-th of results.
 
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olasek said:
Not sure which accident you are referring too.
But the world is not perfect, there is a limited number of contractors which can do this sort of work. Even someone who screwed up will eventually bounce back and be rewarded another contract and will do it well. I am looking at the big picture - so far there is no space agency on this planet that can achieve as much as NASA on a per dollar basis. For example European ESA has a budget close to 1/3 of NASA's and I don't think they even get 1/4-th of results.
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I believe you and a few other POA members either work for NASA or work for contractors who provide services for NASA...... I respect that kind of work and your talents... I contend those people cannot give a unbiased comment as they see the world through rose colored glasses and their paychecks come from the space industry. It is just human nature to deflect defects in a system... YMMV.
 
N801BH said:
I believe you and a few other POA members either work for NASA or work for contractors who provide services for NASA...... I respect that kind of work and your talents... I contend those people cannot give a unbiased comment as they see the world through rose colored glasses and their paychecks come from the space industry. It is just human nature to deflect defects in a system... YMMV.
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Quite the contrary. When you work in a system, you know its defects all too well, and have to come up with ways to get work done in spite of it.

The biggest problem by far is ill informed interference, and the reactions to it.

Like the idea that all this work must be 100% defect free all the time. And the idea that NASA's budget is more than a small fraction of the Federal total. The public gets surveyed about that periodically and reports numbers dozens to hundreds of times larger than they really are.
 
Well, even I (very indirectly) work for NASA (my paycheck doesn't come from NASA), my work has ZERO connection with the space exploration, satellites or rockets. I also thought (perhaps incorrectly) that we can attempt to be 'objectives' by engaging in concrete arguments rather than descend into personalities. I would have had the same identical opinion 10 years ago when my work had zero connection with NASA.
 
MAKG1 said:
Quite the contrary. When you work in a system, you know its defects all too well, and have to come up with ways to get work done in spite of it.

The biggest problem by far is ill informed interference, and the reactions to it.

Like the idea that all this work must be 100% defect free all the time. And the idea that NASA's budget is more than a small fraction of the Federal total. The public gets surveyed about that periodically and reports numbers dozens to hundreds of times larger than they really are.
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And who do you work for ???:dunno::dunno::rolleyes:
 
olasek said:
Not sure if the question was direct at me.. I am not MAKG1
University of California Santa Cruz.
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I know... silly wabbit.... You have mentioned where you work before.... And that institution has contracts with NASA, and you are involved with Aerospace stuff..

Or maybe I am mixing you up with another POA member... Let me review the archives..
 
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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You're a little low. If you include DS2 (Space JARTS!) it's about $250 million (in 98 dollars). Launch services were another $100 million, operations another $50 million.

MCO was not a flagship class mission and wouldn't have had a billion dollar budget, much less 4 billion as others claim.

JPL does full cost accounting and is an FFRDC. Its workers are contractors and not "free" civil servants.

--Carlos "works there" V.
 
First view I thought 'over-gross'? Then after seeing the closer video it clearly looks like one (of 4?) engines failed. There's a checkride joke in here somewhere.
 
whatever else happened it's interesting the see the magnitude of the rocket plumes angling trying to regain control
 
The cause of the crash was determined an installation of gyroscopic sensors upside down into their fixtures. Sensors have a shape of cylinders, like a tall soda can. Connectors are on one end, so they were thought as self-keying: if you install it backwards, cables can't reach. However, it turned out to be possible to install _all_ of the sensors in a block backwards by moving the whole wire harness.

Sensors also have visual markings in the shape of an arrow, which points towards the pointy end of the vehicle. However, rocket is assembled in horizontal position, so the worker apparently was confused as to where the front end is.
 
zaitcev said:
The cause of the crash was determined an installation of gyroscopic sensors upside down into their fixtures. Sensors have a shape of cylinders, like a tall soda can. Connectors are on one end, so they were thought as self-keying: if you install it backwards, cables can't reach. However, it turned out to be possible to install _all_ of the sensors in a block backwards by moving the whole wire harness.

Sensors also have visual markings in the shape of an arrow, which points towards the pointy end of the vehicle. However, rocket is assembled in horizontal position, so the worker apparently was confused as to where the front end is.
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Ouch. That hurts.
 
zaitcev said:
The cause of the crash was determined an installation of gyroscopic sensors upside down into their fixtures. Sensors have a shape of cylinders, like a tall soda can. Connectors are on one end, so they were thought as self-keying: if you install it backwards, cables can't reach. However, it turned out to be possible to install _all_ of the sensors in a block backwards by moving the whole wire harness.

Sensors also have visual markings in the shape of an arrow, which points towards the pointy end of the vehicle. However, rocket is assembled in horizontal position, so the worker apparently was confused as to where the front end is.
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DOH!!!!
 
Unbeliever said:
They were still able to recover the sample and get useful science out of it.

--Carlos V.
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My main point was the 250+ million dollars...


Quote:
Originally Posted by N801BH
There has not been a object launched into space by the US in the last 40 years that cost only 125 million...

Wrong. There was plenty of missions way below $125 million in the last 40 years. Back when Pegasus started flying, the whole launch with mission assurance was way below $20 million (naked launch for $11 million), and it was used for a number of cheaper birds, such as Explorer-class NASA missions. The aforementioned Orbcomm sats weren't all the expensive either.
__________________
zaitcev.mee.nu
"They truly appreciated the freedom that GA allowed them, and looked askance at a lot of the ironclad rules and regulations that we kowtow to today." -- Jay Honeck, 2011
 
zaitcev said:
The cause of the crash was determined an installation of gyroscopic sensors upside down into their fixtures. Sensors have a shape of cylinders, like a tall soda can. Connectors are on one end, so they were thought as self-keying: if you install it backwards, cables can't reach. However, it turned out to be possible to install _all_ of the sensors in a block backwards by moving the whole wire harness.
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It looked like a control reversal. Once it got off course, the error intensified instead of damping. A feedback loop with the feedback (or response) wired backwards is a bad thing in an automated system.
 
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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"Austin, we won."

"Oh. Yay capitalism!"
 
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