3 ms·

It's the flight termination system. i.e. it's an intentional detonation of the rocket to limit risk. The FTS triggers for unmanned crafts either manually from

It's the flight termination system. i.e. it's an intentional detonation of the rocket to limit risk. The FTS triggers for unmanned crafts either manually from mission control or automatically based on some set of onboard checks and safeguards. Given it detonated so quickly after launch, some piece of equipment stopped responding or a sensor started reading a dangerous value which then triggered the FTS. This really isn't an unusual thing since this is the first launch of this rocket design (and if I remember correctly the first launch by this org). But yeah TLDR it's better that a rocket explodes in a predictable manner that gets rid of all the fuel and breaks everything up into reasonably small parts while they are still in control of the rocket than for things to go wrong and it crash or otherwise cause more damage.

duckfruit 3y ago
Essentially a throw new RuntimeException(e) for rockets? As a fellow engineer, I sympathize.
- skipkey 3y ago
  I vaguely remember reading about that actually happening some years ago. Control system written in C++, bad data comes in from a sensor causing a floating point exception which was not caught locally, and the outermost catch code was basically, “explode the rocket”. Might have been in the c++ Users Journal or Dr Dobbs in the late 90s.
  - trothamel 3y ago
    Probably the first flight of Ariane 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88
- TylerE 3y ago
  Kind of, but it's almost worse. More like a subsystem that reboots the machine if you run out of disk space or some other such "something is probably really wrong, but I can't prove it" sort of telemetry signal. Given that it seems to have been trigged by the pitchover manouver, likely something went a bit outside guidelines. Who knows how conservative those are? With an unmanned rocket they tend to lean towards pushing the big red button early and often. A failed launch is bad. Drop a booster on an elementary school, and your nation is probably down attempting to go to space.
- ackbar03 3y ago
  whoever wrote that line of code has the coolest job in the world. try: launch_rocket() except: explode_rocket()

duckfruit 3y ago

Essentially a throw new RuntimeException(e) for rockets? As a fellow engineer, I sympathize.

skipkey 3y ago
I vaguely remember reading about that actually happening some years ago. Control system written in C++, bad data comes in from a sensor causing a floating point exception which was not caught locally, and the outermost catch code was basically, “explode the rocket”. Might have been in the c++ Users Journal or Dr Dobbs in the late 90s.
- trothamel 3y ago
  Probably the first flight of Ariane 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88
TylerE 3y ago
Kind of, but it's almost worse. More like a subsystem that reboots the machine if you run out of disk space or some other such "something is probably really wrong, but I can't prove it" sort of telemetry signal. Given that it seems to have been trigged by the pitchover manouver, likely something went a bit outside guidelines. Who knows how conservative those are? With an unmanned rocket they tend to lean towards pushing the big red button early and often. A failed launch is bad. Drop a booster on an elementary school, and your nation is probably down attempting to go to space.
ackbar03 3y ago
whoever wrote that line of code has the coolest job in the world. try: launch_rocket() except: explode_rocket()