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Is there any info on what caused their technical issues? Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore, the dynamics are well understood, were they trying to do s

Is there any info on what caused their technical issues? Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore, the dynamics are well understood, were they trying to do something weird with manufacturing?

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Perhaps every single piece is taught in engineering school, but there are thousands of things that need to go perfectly every time. That's hard.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Turns out there's a list on Wikipedia. Looks like they found just about everything that can go wrong. Mostly fuel system issues though. It's pretty uncommon to be that bad at launch vehicle design. Recently Vulcan and SLS both launched and made orbit with new designs on the first try instead of the 7th, though you could probably just stack $1 bills and get to space just as fast. Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. Relativity almost made it and they had a very weird production technique. SpaceX has been having issues but they're building a much more complicated vehicle.
  - everfrustrated 3y ago
    >Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. IIRC their first launch was destroyed by bad telemetry requiring manual flight termination (if in doubt terminate), the hardware itself flew perfectly on first launch. Which is remarkably impressive.
  - Perceval 3y ago
    It true that Astra took 7 tries to get to orbit, but they did so in record time from founding to achieving orbit. * Astra - 5 years * SpaceX - 7 years * Firefly - 8 years * RocketLab - 12 years * Virgin Orbit - 13 years ABL, Relativity, Blue Origin, Stoke - never made it to orbit Compare the cost of SLS ($4.1 billion) and Vulcan ($100-200 million) to an Astra rocket ($4 million). If you spend 100-1000x more money, is it impressive to have better performance than a $4 million rocket?
  - adastra22 3y ago
    It's really not common for an organization to make it to orbit on their first try. SpaceX may make it look easy, but it took them 4 tries to finally pull it off on their first rocket. Astra does seem to have had more than their fair share though.
    - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
      Yeah but 7th time's a charm? I think the thing that's striking is most of the failures look like lack of ground testing to me. They had lots of failures that would have presented in ground firing and a couple that would have been obvious with proper electrical integration testing. There's a lot of process we follow in the industry that looks weird from the outside but is pretty well tuned for risk reduction, you just don't have to go full Boeing where you create tons of bonus process then circumvent it all when it becomes expensive.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        They didn't launch the same rocket 7 times. Those launches are with 3 or 4 different rockets. Startups like Astra couldn't hit the price point they wanted if they had done all those processes. So they did it a different way. In the case of Astra not successfully.
adastra22 3y ago
They'd gotten pretty close in their last launch. It may not have looked like it (the first stage exiting stage right was wacky), but from a technical standpoint it actually went off pretty well. It's the business case that failed. Mass-produced expendable rockets was a brilliant idea prior to SpaceX. It would have worked two decades ago. There's no market for it now. ETA: Apparently they had more attempts than I remembered. The next one after the sideways launch did in fact reach orbit as their first success. They've only had a 50% success rate after that though, which is really unusual.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > It's the business case that failed. They failed technically and in business. Their lunch success rate was far to late and the rockets they built were always behind what the market actually demanded. They moved from rocket model to rocket model and never managed to stable produce any of them. > Mass-produced expendable rockets was a brilliant idea prior to SpaceX. No it wasn't. Their whole idea of 'its fine if half the rockets fail' doesn't actually work. There are not enough payloads to mass-produce rockets (specially small rockets). Its a total misunderstanding of the economics of mass manufacture to think this was gone get the price low enough. > It would have worked two decades ago. No it wouldn't have. Because a decade ago they would not have gotten the money for so many failed launches in the first place. Its only because SpaceX and RocketLab proved the viability, that companies like Astra got the money to even attempted what they did. The reason why they survived as long as they did is because the were able to SPAC when the market was high. The readability is Astra was a technical failure of a company. The only success they had was because their CEO was good at twitter and selling the company.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    I can say that my lunch success rate, for the ones that took place, is easily above 99.5% (sorry, that typo was too funny)
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Dyslexia strikes again
colechristensen 3y ago
>Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore This is just plainly incorrect. There is very little room for error launching rockets and they are quite complex. Many opportunities for failure and when you don't get everything right the default outcome is a large explosion.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Vulcan and SLS both just had successful first launches. It's really not that hard if you follow the established component and integration test playbook. Source: I build space shit so I can eat.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Well here is the thing, SLS cost 20 billion $ or more. And uses lots of components that existed before SLS was around. Vulcan still cost multiple billions to develop, the engines had to go threw a very demanding air force test and validation program first. The rocket was delayed for years because of issues with both the BE-4 and the Centaur. ULA has established suppliers and established factory, with lots of people that build and launch rockets. Those suppliers are very expensive, but if you have the US military paying you 200+ million $ per launch, you can afford that. To compare those to examples to a tiny startup rocket company is kind of absurd. They simply don't have lots of legacy reliable components. They can't use existing suppliers as those are far to expensive and don't have products for micro launchers. You are comparing rockets that cost 30x or 300x of what Astra priced their rocket at. Generally if you want to understand Astra issues, you have to understand the dynamics of the market. The main problem with Astra was that they were always behind the market. They started with a micro rocket, that was simply to small for most sats. So before they ever made that reliable they made the rocket bigger. And once they had done that it was pretty clear that the market needed even bigger sats. So they iterated again and made their rocket bigger. But that happened again so they gave up that rocket and (in theory) now they are building an even bigger rocket. They never actually settled on a design. The basically launch a new rocket 1-2 times and before they had figured out all the issues were already looking at the next design and those designs had new issues. It was more important for the CEO scam and lie about how brilliant the next rocket was gone be so nobody thought to much about why the last rocket blew up. The companies main product was selling stock to uninformed people. When RocketLab and others strategically moved into space craft, Astra bought a Ion-Engine company just so they can say they do the same thing. When SpaceX had success with Starlink, Astra promised to have an even better global internet. Having a good story was more the priority then having good engineering and good execution. This book is a good read: "When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach" Its about Planet, Astra, RocketLab and Firefly. Book doesn't make the Astra CEO look great.

Is there any info on what caused their technical issues? Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore, the dynamics are well understood, were they trying to do something weird with manufacturing?

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Perhaps every single piece is taught in engineering school, but there are thousands of things that need to go perfectly every time. That's hard.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Turns out there's a list on Wikipedia. Looks like they found just about everything that can go wrong. Mostly fuel system issues though. It's pretty uncommon to be that bad at launch vehicle design. Recently Vulcan and SLS both launched and made orbit with new designs on the first try instead of the 7th, though you could probably just stack $1 bills and get to space just as fast. Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. Relativity almost made it and they had a very weird production technique. SpaceX has been having issues but they're building a much more complicated vehicle.
- everfrustrated 3y ago
  >Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. IIRC their first launch was destroyed by bad telemetry requiring manual flight termination (if in doubt terminate), the hardware itself flew perfectly on first launch. Which is remarkably impressive.
- Perceval 3y ago
  It true that Astra took 7 tries to get to orbit, but they did so in record time from founding to achieving orbit. * Astra - 5 years * SpaceX - 7 years * Firefly - 8 years * RocketLab - 12 years * Virgin Orbit - 13 years ABL, Relativity, Blue Origin, Stoke - never made it to orbit Compare the cost of SLS ($4.1 billion) and Vulcan ($100-200 million) to an Astra rocket ($4 million). If you spend 100-1000x more money, is it impressive to have better performance than a $4 million rocket?
- adastra22 3y ago
  It's really not common for an organization to make it to orbit on their first try. SpaceX may make it look easy, but it took them 4 tries to finally pull it off on their first rocket. Astra does seem to have had more than their fair share though.
  - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
    Yeah but 7th time's a charm? I think the thing that's striking is most of the failures look like lack of ground testing to me. They had lots of failures that would have presented in ground firing and a couple that would have been obvious with proper electrical integration testing. There's a lot of process we follow in the industry that looks weird from the outside but is pretty well tuned for risk reduction, you just don't have to go full Boeing where you create tons of bonus process then circumvent it all when it becomes expensive.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      They didn't launch the same rocket 7 times. Those launches are with 3 or 4 different rockets. Startups like Astra couldn't hit the price point they wanted if they had done all those processes. So they did it a different way. In the case of Astra not successfully.

adastra22 3y ago

They'd gotten pretty close in their last launch. It may not have looked like it (the first stage exiting stage right was wacky), but from a technical standpoint it actually went off pretty well. It's the business case that failed. Mass-produced expendable rockets was a brilliant idea prior to SpaceX. It would have worked two decades ago. There's no market for it now. ETA: Apparently they had more attempts than I remembered. The next one after the sideways launch did in fact reach orbit as their first success. They've only had a 50% success rate after that though, which is really unusual.

panick21_ 3y ago
> It's the business case that failed. They failed technically and in business. Their lunch success rate was far to late and the rockets they built were always behind what the market actually demanded. They moved from rocket model to rocket model and never managed to stable produce any of them. > Mass-produced expendable rockets was a brilliant idea prior to SpaceX. No it wasn't. Their whole idea of 'its fine if half the rockets fail' doesn't actually work. There are not enough payloads to mass-produce rockets (specially small rockets). Its a total misunderstanding of the economics of mass manufacture to think this was gone get the price low enough. > It would have worked two decades ago. No it wouldn't have. Because a decade ago they would not have gotten the money for so many failed launches in the first place. Its only because SpaceX and RocketLab proved the viability, that companies like Astra got the money to even attempted what they did. The reason why they survived as long as they did is because the were able to SPAC when the market was high. The readability is Astra was a technical failure of a company. The only success they had was because their CEO was good at twitter and selling the company.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  I can say that my lunch success rate, for the ones that took place, is easily above 99.5% (sorry, that typo was too funny)
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Dyslexia strikes again

colechristensen 3y ago

>Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore This is just plainly incorrect. There is very little room for error launching rockets and they are quite complex. Many opportunities for failure and when you don't get everything right the default outcome is a large explosion.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Vulcan and SLS both just had successful first launches. It's really not that hard if you follow the established component and integration test playbook. Source: I build space shit so I can eat.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Well here is the thing, SLS cost 20 billion $ or more. And uses lots of components that existed before SLS was around. Vulcan still cost multiple billions to develop, the engines had to go threw a very demanding air force test and validation program first. The rocket was delayed for years because of issues with both the BE-4 and the Centaur. ULA has established suppliers and established factory, with lots of people that build and launch rockets. Those suppliers are very expensive, but if you have the US military paying you 200+ million $ per launch, you can afford that. To compare those to examples to a tiny startup rocket company is kind of absurd. They simply don't have lots of legacy reliable components. They can't use existing suppliers as those are far to expensive and don't have products for micro launchers. You are comparing rockets that cost 30x or 300x of what Astra priced their rocket at. Generally if you want to understand Astra issues, you have to understand the dynamics of the market. The main problem with Astra was that they were always behind the market. They started with a micro rocket, that was simply to small for most sats. So before they ever made that reliable they made the rocket bigger. And once they had done that it was pretty clear that the market needed even bigger sats. So they iterated again and made their rocket bigger. But that happened again so they gave up that rocket and (in theory) now they are building an even bigger rocket. They never actually settled on a design. The basically launch a new rocket 1-2 times and before they had figured out all the issues were already looking at the next design and those designs had new issues. It was more important for the CEO scam and lie about how brilliant the next rocket was gone be so nobody thought to much about why the last rocket blew up. The companies main product was selling stock to uninformed people. When RocketLab and others strategically moved into space craft, Astra bought a Ion-Engine company just so they can say they do the same thing. When SpaceX had success with Starlink, Astra promised to have an even better global internet. Having a good story was more the priority then having good engineering and good execution. This book is a good read: "When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach" Its about Planet, Astra, RocketLab and Firefly. Book doesn't make the Astra CEO look great.