2 ms·
“It has many memories of accidents occurring during fueling that resulted in the loss of the spacecraft.” Does it? I did a brief search and only found SpaceX’s
by mikeash 9y ago
“It has many memories of accidents occurring during fueling that resulted in the loss of the spacecraft.”
Does it? I did a brief search and only found SpaceX’s explosion and an old Soviet ICBM accident where the engines ignited during fueling. I certainly may have missed something.
- jccooper 9y agoIt's not really NASA, but Atlas D and similar early vehicles did have fueling failures. But they also failed sitting empty on the pad and a hundred other ways. Propellant loading is a state change, and so it's theoretically more dangerous. But examples of real problems are rare.
- mikeash 9y agoI hit up Wikipedia to see if they discussed any of those. The Atlas had so many problems that they don’t dedicate much space to discussing individual ones, but I did come across this amazing quote: “Convair engineers noted with some pride that there had never been a repeat of the same failure more than three times....” The past sure was a different place.