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NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:05 pm
by 82_28
Just happened apparently. . .

(CNN) -- An unmanned NASA rocket exploded early Tuesday evening along the eastern Virginia coast, causing a huge fireball but no apparent deaths.

According to NASA, the Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft were set to launch at 6:22 p.m. ET from the Wallops Flight Facility along the Atlantic Ocean. It was set to carry some 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

"There was failure on launch," NASA spokesman Jay Bolden said. "There was no indicated loss of life.

Bolden added, "There was significant property and vehicle damage. Mission control is trying to assess what went wrong."

The launch had been scheduled for Monday, but that was scrubbed "because of a boat down range in the trajectory Antares would have flown had it lifted off," according to NASA.

Just before Tuesday's liftoff, the space agency reported "100% favorable" weather and "no technical concerns with the rocket or spacecraft being worked."


http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/us/nasa-r ... ?hpt=hp_t1

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 8:34 pm
by justdrew
Ukrainian engines :eeyaa

Image

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:31 pm
by seemslikeadream
Orbital's Soviet Rocket Engines Had Already Been Slated for Retirement
By Justin Bachman October 29, 2014


Even before the launch destruction of an Orbital Sciences (ORB) Antares rocket, the commercial space company was planning to retire the half-century-old Russian engines suspected as a potential cause of the failure.

The Soviet-era AJ-26 engine was designed in the 1960s as part of Russia’s space race with the U.S., originally envisioned as a way to propel cosmonauts to the moon. The engines are “refurbished and Americanized,” Frank Culbertson, the Orbital Sciences executive in charge of the NASA program, said Tuesday night in a news conference, defending the AJ-26 as “very robust and rugged” and with a successful track record.

At least one person in the industry disagrees. Elon Musk, the founder of rival launch company SpaceX, ridiculed the Antares AJ-26 engine in an interview with Wired magazine two years ago. Musk said most commercial space companies seek “to optimize their ass-covering” by avoiding risk and employing antiquated but proven technologies. SpaceX builds an “octaweb” of nine of its own Merlin engines for its Falcon 9 rocket. Here is Musk’s riff on the AJ-26:

“One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”

Orbital Sciences had planned to replace the AJ-26 with a new engine system in about two years for its future work shuttling NASA personnel to the International Space Station. “The AJ-26s have presented us with some serious technical and supply challenges in the past,” Chief Executive Officer Dave Thompson said Wednesday on a conference call with analysts.

VIDEO: Raw Video: Rocket Explodes on Launch in Virginia
A review of alternatives began last year, and a replacement was recently chosen—work that may be accelerated if the engine is found to be a culprit in the failure. Due to competitive reasons, Orbital is not disclosing which propulsion system it selected, a spokeswoman for the company said in an e-mail.

Orbital Sciences has a $1.9 billion contract to complete eight ISS resupply missions for NASA and plans to bid for more. The Antares mishap could affect the company’s next scheduled flight for NASA, in April, and may delay launches for a year or longer. Thompson said the failure will not affect the company’s 2014 financial results.

The Antares destruction won’t deliver a major financial hit, given that most of the revenue for the launch had been paid and insurance should cover any funds NASA declines to pay, according to a research note by Raymond James analyst Chris Quilty. The bigger troubles could be for the company’s reputation among commercial clients. Quilty also predicted that a “protracted accident investigation” would prompt NASA to shift more supply work to SpaceX.

VIDEO: Should NASA Rethink Reliance on Corporate Rockets?
Orbital says it has a 96 percent success rate on 106 launches since 2004, and a 95 percent rate for 284 launches in the last 30 years. The company, based in Dulles, Va., is also planning to merge with the aerospace and defense units of Alliant Techsystems (ATK), a deal that was announced six months ago. In a statement, Alliant said it planned a “thorough evaluation of any potential implications resulting from this incident” including the merger. Orbital shareholders are scheduled to vote Dec. 9 on the $5 billion “merger of equals.”

Orbital’s stock plummeted more than 15 percent Wednesday. Alliant shares declined 5.5 percent, nearly erasing the gain for the year.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 8:20 pm
by thrulookingglass
I highly recommend watching this. It's astounding. Incredibly catastrophic explosion. Umm...these eclipses have been occurring in the constellation Aries. = /

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 7:00 pm
by Ben D
Some details of the failed mission...

http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html

The Orbital Cygnus Orb-3 cargo ship was destroyed during launch from the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad 0A at Wallops Island, Virginia on Oct 28. The lower end of the Antares 130 vehicle exploded 14 seconds after launch at an altitude of about 100 metres, and the vehicle and payloads fell back to the pad, resulting in a large explosion.

As well as ISS cargo, the Orb-3 mission was carrying 26 PlanetLabs Flock-1d 3U cubesats, the JPL/U-Texas RACE 3U cubesat, the Arkyd-3 3U cubesat from Planetary Resources, and also the GOMX-2 ship tracking 2U cubesat from GOMX of Aalborg, Denmark. All of the payloads were destroyed. The first stage of Antares 130 is built by Yuzhnoe (Ukraine) and derived from the Zenit tankage; the engines are Aerojet AJ-26 models, which are refurbished/modernized Kuznetsov NK-33s left over from the Soviet N-1 human lunar landing program. It is not yet clear what the cause of the failure was, although I note the rocket appeared to be flying normally until a large flash was seen near the base of the rocket, suggesting some kind of problem in the first stage propulsion system as a likely suspect (although a first stage tank structural or plumbing failure is also a possibility).

Since there seems to be some confusion on this point, I recall to readers that although commercial space station cargo ships (the thing on top of the rocket) are something new, commercial space launch vehicles (the rocket itself) are not, and indeed have been the norm in the US civilian space program since the early 1990s when NASA transferred Atlas and Delta launches to the private sector and retired the Scout in favor of buying small satellite launches from Orbital's Pegasus. There have been no orbital NASA launches since then with the exception of the Shuttle.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 9:00 pm
by Ben D
Some more background on 1960's Russian engines...

Orbital and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX and headed by billionaire Elon Musk, have NASA contracts to ferry cargo to the space station.

After retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011, the space agency turned to the private sector to resupply the station with water, food and other supplies. It depends on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the orbital outpost, though recently awarded SpaceX and Boeing deals to develop spacecraft to do the job.

During the press conference, officials said there is enough sustenance aboard the station to sustain astronauts through March — months after SpaceX’s next planned resupply flight in early December. They couldn’t say how the failure might affect congressional support for the so-called commercial crew program to fund privately developed human-rated spacecraft.

Orbital and SpaceX want to challenge United Launch Alliance LLC, a Boeing Co.-Lockheed Martin Corp. joint venture, in competing to launch medium-sized military and spy satellites as part of the Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, or EELV, program.

Antares is Orbital’s newest and biggest rocket, and it employs Soviet-era engines. The two-stage booster, initially developed for the defense market, for its first stage uses two liquid-fuel AJ26 engines, made by Aerojet, part of California-based GenCorp Inc. They’re modified versions of the NK-33s built in Russia more than four decades ago for its moon program, which was later canceled.

Aerojet bought about 40 NK-33 engines in the mid-1990s and, under a contract with Orbital, modified them specifically for Antares, according to Aerojet. The second-stage of the rocket uses a solid-fuel engine made by Arlington, Virginia-based Alliant Techsystems Inc.

When asked why the company selected the Russian engines, Culbertson said officials still don’t know whether the propulsion system caused Tuesday’s failure. He acknowledged the engine was “designed to carry cosmonauts to the moon,” and described it as a “very robust and rugged” design that was tested extensively before launch without any suspected problems.

“There are not many other options around the world of using power plants of this size and certainly not in this country, unfortunately,” he said.

Culbertson estimated the cost of the Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft at about $200 million. He said a portion of the cost of the launch was insured, but didn’t specify any details. Neither he, nor other officials, said how much it might cost to fix the launch pad, which news outlets reported was significantly damaged.

Orbital and ATK’s defense units earlier this year announced a plan to merge in a $5 billion deal to create Orbital-ATK. Shareholders are expected to vote on the merger Dec. 9.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2014/10/28/orbit ... z3Hg9Ja8VZ
Defense.org


Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 9:00 am
by DrEvil
It wasn't an explosion, it was a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'. :)

Sucks that it was full of student projects, plus Planetary Resources' first prototype Arkyd.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:49 pm
by Wombaticus Rex
thrulookingglass » Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:20 pm wrote:Umm...these eclipses have been occurring in the constellation Aries. = /


Is that a Harbingers of War omen? Over my head.

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 2:20 pm
by Perelandra
thrulookingglass » Wed Oct 29, 2014 4:20 pm wrote:I highly recommend watching this. It's astounding. Incredibly catastrophic explosion. Umm...these eclipses have been occurring in the constellation Aries. = /
Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, said such a colossal fire was to be expected.
"It takes a lot of propellant to take a spacecraft of that size moving 25 times the speed of sound," Kelly told CNN, explaining how fast the rocket should have gone on its way to the space station. "So when it fails, it's usually pretty catastrophic."

What in the world do eclipses have to do with this? The most recent was five days previous in the sign of Scorpio, FYI.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:25 pm
by elfismiles
... meanwhile ...

One dead in Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test crash
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29857182

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:51 pm
by Wombaticus Rex
elfismiles » Fri Oct 31, 2014 3:25 pm wrote:... meanwhile ...

One dead in Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test crash
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29857182


Timing couldn't be worse, there's a huge, huge PR push for "Space Tourism" that kicked into high gear (got some friends working on one of those PR appendages) last week. For this to happen while they're trying to build awareness...well, timing couldn't be worse. Shit like this is when your media buy money starts actively conspiring against you.

Interested to learn whether the casualty was a VIP guest or an employee, because I am a decadent American and news exists for my capricious entertainment.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 5:50 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen
Wombaticus Rex » Fri Oct 31, 2014 3:51 pm wrote:Interested to learn whether the casualty was a VIP guest or an employee, because I am a decadent American and news exists for my capricious entertainment.




"The more bad news there is, the faster this system collapses. Fine by me!"

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 7:47 pm
by thrulookingglass
The rocket's name was "Antares." I have seen the star sign/constellation spelled Aries/Ares/Aris. I believe ares is an acceptable spelling of Aries. I would interpret "Antares" to mean...against Aries. The eclipses have been happening under this star sign during/near Hebrew holidays. I don't think God liked the name of that rocket. I hear the Hebrew are looking for their mashiach and believe the year 5775 is the year of the mashiach. I'm pretty sure they're looking for an Aries.

"I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke" Joel 2:30

I found this one most impressive. The observer gets it quite right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0SgAU9LXI

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 8:12 pm
by justdrew
Wombaticus Rex » 31 Oct 2014 12:51 wrote:
elfismiles » Fri Oct 31, 2014 3:25 pm wrote:... meanwhile ...

One dead in Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test crash
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29857182


Timing couldn't be worse, there's a huge, huge PR push for "Space Tourism" that kicked into high gear (got some friends working on one of those PR appendages) last week. For this to happen while they're trying to build awareness...well, timing couldn't be worse. Shit like this is when your media buy money starts actively conspiring against you.

Interested to learn whether the casualty was a VIP guest or an employee, because I am a decadent American and news exists for my capricious entertainment.



it's a little strange so far if you ask me. SS2's 'fuel' shouldn't have been able to explode which is what I hear it looked like happened.

but really, for all the further it's meant to go, it should be called space boat 2.

Re: NASA SUPPLY ROCKET EXPLODES

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 8:19 pm
by zangtang
they were testing a new fuel 'mix' apparently (Beeb news @ten) - the fatality was one of the pilots, the other injured, but ejected.

crying shame - and so hot on the heels of the Antares/Arkyd....my paranoid goof-ometer went haywire