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Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

504 points by politician 12y ago

SuperChihuahua 12y ago
Video of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMmMgdcOSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMmMgdcOSU ...and I believe this is the water-tower you can see in the video: https://www.google.se/maps/place/NASA+Wallops+Flight+Facility/@37.8336778,-75.4877723,200m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x91e6a41a07f96c6e https://www.google.se/maps/place/NASA+Wallops+Flight+Facilit...
- bennettfeely 12y ago
  This video seems a little better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo
  - deleted 12y ago
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    - InclinedPlane 12y ago
      Almost certainly. The solid fuel would be bonded to the casing of the stage, so little fragments of burning fuel and casing would likely result in generation of thrust, which could causing spiraling fragments.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- callesgg 12y ago
  I expected it to self desturct. Why would it not do that? Was it to close to the ground?
  - ericcumbee 12y ago
    I'd say it was to close to the ground to self destruct. And there would have been a call from the Range Safety Officer in the event he ordered a destruct or the computer called a destruct.
    - phkahler 12y ago
      While it probably wouldn't need to be destroyed, the last thing you want is for part of it to lay down on the ground still producing thrust. Better to be certain.
  - trothamel 12y ago
    I don't think Antares can command itself to destruct. The destruct has to be commanded by the range. There isn't any point to issuing the destruct command unless the impact point is dangerously far from the flight path, and that wasn't the case here.
    - dalke 12y ago
      I think it's reasonable to assume that Antares can command itself to destruct given that other rockets have that ability, and have so destructed. Ariane 5 (the infamous flight 501) self-destructed. http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html "The launcher started to disintegrate at about H0 + 39 seconds because of high aerodynamic loads due to an angle of attack of more than 20 degrees that led to separation of the boosters from the main stage, in turn triggering the self-destruct system of the launcher" A SpaceX rocket self-destructed: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188593-spacex-rocket-self-destructs-after-detecting-an-anomaly-reusable-space-launchers-are-tricky-business http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188593-spacex-rocket-self... "In a statement, SpaceX says the rocket detected an anomaly and automatically initiated its self-destruct sequence." The Titan IVA-20 explosion was also due to a self-destruct, and not the range officer: http://fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/titan_iv-20_sum.htm http://fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/titan_iv-20_sum.h... "At this point, the northern-most Solid Rocket Motor (SRM #1) separated from the core booster, initiating the Inadvertent Separation Destruct System. At 45.529 seconds, approximately 3 seconds after the automatic destruct sequence, Mission Flight Control Officers sent command destruct signals to the vehicle."
- rodrigocoelho 12y ago
  There's another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHkDc-CwoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHkDc-CwoQ
jwise0 12y ago
There aren't many blogs covering this right now, but there are no personnel injured (according to the launch loop) -- just "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage". Nobody has said much yet: https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/527225682414567424 https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/52722568241456742...
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Well, that's good. Property damage is insurable - let's hope that's the only loss. Listening to the audio feed for a few minutes, I always find it a bit sad how people resort to 'officialese' bullshit when they're embarrassed or stressed, eg 'we're going to triage the data'?!
  - iolsantr 12y ago
    I don't think that's just officialese. They are going to be under enormous pressure to find out what went wrong as quickly as possible. Orbital Science's future may be significantly affected by how well (and quickly) they deal with the aftermath.
  - engi_nerd 12y ago
    Having been an engineer in control room environments for both rocket launches and fighter jet flight operations -- it's not really "officialese bullshit". Aerospace has a definite jargon and there are preferred ways of saying things on comms to reduce ambiguities. "Triage the data" is actually a good way of describing what you do in an anomaly investigation. You figure out what the most likely thing that went wrong is, then the next most likely thing, etc. and look at data regarding those things in order.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage" This wasn't launched in a desert/uninhabited area? Edit: Thanks for clarifying below.
  - pdabbadabba 12y ago
kilroy123 12y ago
What a bummer... Getting to space isn't easy.
Osmium 12y ago
Very sad that this has happened. I can only imagine what it must feel like to those who worked on the rocket and its payload. It can really happen to anyone, even the best. At least we can all be thankful no one was hurt.
matthewwiese 12y ago
My entire physics lab watched this happen live. It started going up and everyone was cheering. Seconds later just caught fire, and fell to the ground and exploded. "That's what happens when you set 'a' to negative." a good lesson from my TA
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  What's 'a'?
  - eric59 12y ago
    Acceleration
  - bglazer 12y ago
    Acceleration?
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - wolf550e 12y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion
- Rebelgecko 12y ago
  Too bad your TA didn't work on that Russian rocket that crashed a year or two ago... IIRC the accelerometers were installed upside down so as soon as it took off it incorrectly thought it was pointed straight down. The rocket flipped around until it thought it was "up" and slammed into the ground.
- phkahler 12y ago
  >> My entire physics lab watched this happen live. Now imagine how people felt back in '86 when the challenger exploded with 7 people on board including a teacher. Shuttle launches were common by then but a lot of people were watching live due to the teacher on board aspect. It brings a whole different set of emotions to the event. Nobody made a joke that day.
blueboxjesse 12y ago
A good reminder that no matter how bad your day goes at your job, things can always be much, much worse. My thoughts go out to the the Orbital Sciences team.
blhack 12y ago
I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated to the difficulty of what you're trying to do. If you're failing, you're doing something right. Back when I used to mountain bike a lot, it was a personal "joke" that I wasn't really riding unless I crashed at least once. That's how I knew I was pushing myself to improve. Don't fret the failures.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  > Don't fret the failures. Except when it kills people (though this accident didn't).
  - blhack 12y ago
    Fair point. Although I'd say: fret the suffering of people, not the fact that something really difficult ended up being difficult.
    - throwaway5752 12y ago
      Not to slight your friend, but his was an unmanned launch to resupply the ISS, it's relatively common, comparatively easy, and successful (1 other failure in just under 80 missions). No disrespect intended, but this is a disruption for the ISS, a loss (hopefully insured) for Planetary Resources, a real setback for Orbital... there's no point in sugar coating anything, it sucks. There's just no point in dwelling on it, either. RCA and move forward.
      - gus_massa 12y ago
        The failure rate in manned space missions is approximately 1/50 ("failure" as in "it explodes and everybody dies"). (For example, the Space Shuttle had 2/135 failures.) The unmanned missions have a higher failure rate, IIRC ~10%, but that number probably includes prototype and old models. So a 2/80 failures is not so bad. It sucks when it explodes, but going to space is difficult.
KhalilK 12y ago
Will the logs suffice to determine the cause of the explosion or will they have to reassemble the wreckage and look for anomalies?
- daeken 12y ago
  Probably way too early to tell even that. There will be hundreds of possible causes that will have to be narrowed down; no one will know anything concrete for a good while most likely, even inside Orbital Sciences.
  - krisoft 12y ago
    You most probably meant inside Orbital Sciences Corporation. Antares is just the rocket.
    - daeken 12y ago
      Argh, I do that every time. Quite right.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  In crashes like this there often isn't enough wreckage to reassemble to tell one thing or another. But there will be lots of data to comb through which will probably lead to the cause.
ericcumbee 12y ago
They are securing the vehicle because it has sensitive crypto equipment on board.
- rl3 12y ago
  As well as for accident investigation purposes.
- MichaelAO 12y ago
  I also heard that comment. Does anyone have insight into what 'crypto equipment' might entail?
  - ericcumbee 12y ago
    I know the Shuttle carried DOD Secure comm equipment in addition to it's in the clear UHF and VHF Radios. I'm assuming that ISS has something similar.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > I know the Shuttle carried DOD Secure comm equipment in addition to it's in the clear UHF and VHF Radios. I'm assuming that ISS has something similar. There's some obvious reasons why the International Space Station might be less likely to carry sensitive US military communications gear than the NASA Space Shuttles.
      - ericcumbee 12y ago
        I don't think it is anything like that. It's for cases where they need to discuss something that they don't want every person with a HAM radio to hear. A discussion between an astronaut and the flight surgeon/spouse/clergy member. I'm sure the Russians have a system on ISS as well. Just having the hardware is not enough to crack into an enemies comms. It's more that they don't want stuff like that falling into the hands of a rouge state like Iran or North Korea, or a non-state actor that might have schemes of reverse engineering it to build their own system. I'd bet there is a Russian Transceiver racked up in JSC, and a DOD system racked up at Russian Space Control.
biscotti 12y ago
More discussion on spacex reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_antares_has_just_exploded_in_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_a...
- djyaz1200 12y ago
  Reddit thread is interesting. Pulled this off there... wow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo
  - SuperChihuahua 12y ago
    Speaking of rocket anomalies - This is a video of the Chinese rocket that's considered to be the worst rocket accident ever (counting human losses) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s
  - 3rd3 12y ago
    This has nothing to do with the current event, right? Linking to it is pure sensationalism.
  - rplnt 12y ago
    If I remember correctly, the cause of this accident was that one of the nozzles had been wired in reverse, causing it to move differently from what the rocket ordered it to.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      In that one the gyroscopes (all 3 of them) were installed upside-down, and what's truly facepalm-worthy was that the guy who did that decided to force them into place: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html investigators simulated the improper installation of the DUS angular velocity sensors on the actual hardware. As it turned out, it would be very difficult to do but not impossible. To achieve that personnel would need to use procedures and instruments not certified either by the design documentation or the installation instructions. As a result, the plate holding the sensors sustained damage.
rl3 12y ago
Yesterday's launch was scrubbed due to a boat violating the range safety exclusion zone: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/space-station-cargo-ship-prepped-for-launch/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/space-station-cargo-ship-prepped...
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trothamel 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo is a high-quality video.
ars 12y ago
Anyone know what the cargo was? Anything unique or expensive? Or just regular supplies?
- daeken 12y ago
  Nothing out of the ordinary for the ISS, as far as I know. However, it was carrying the Arkyd-3 test platform satellite, which is a bit of a bummer.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- MichaelAO 12y ago
  According to Motherboard: - A pea growing experiment from students in Houston - A human health study investigating blood flow to and from the brain in space - 19 student projects from New Jersey - A reentry breakup recorder - A meteor dust analyser - 1,360 pounds of food - Spacewalk equipment - Flight crew equipment - Fight procedures books - Computers - Classified "Crypto equipment" Source: https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/527235620578787328/photo/1 https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/527235620578787328/ph...
  - kijin 12y ago
    The students from Houston and New Jersey must have been so disappointed. I really hope that they get another chance to send their projects to space before they graduate, and that some of them will eventually take up a career in rocket science despite this minor setback.
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    > - A reentry breakup recorder Right, there was to be a video recording of the Cygnus spacecraft as it reentered and broke up (it's designed to disintegrate). Kind of ironic now.
    - Crito 12y ago
ericcumbee 12y ago
They are waiting to hear from the FAA if the NTSB will be involved in the investigation. Seems like something that would have been decided beforehand.
daeken 12y ago
In addition to the COTS resupply provisions for the ISS, this craft was also carrying the Arkyd-3 satellite (basically the whole Arkyd space telescope minus the optics, to serve as a test platform). While this is always sad, no lives were lost and that's what insurance is there for. Kudos to Orbital Sciences for pushing the boundaries of space flight, even if these losses are anything but fun.
trothamel 12y ago
The first stage engines that exploded were AJ-26 engines. These are remanufactured NK-33 or NK-43 engines built in the Soviet Union in the late-60s or early-70s for the N-1 moon rocket, but never used. In May, an AJ-26 exploded on the test stand at Stennis space center in Mississippi, severely damaging the test stand.
- gresrun 12y ago
  Pure speculation but I wonder if they rushed to test the engines that just flew. AeroJet's parent company claims they have lost over $31MM on the AJ-26 YTD[1]. There may be pressure from higher-ups to push through the issue seen at Stennis in May. [1] http://www.spacenews.com/article/financial-report/42180aerojet-rocketdyne-takes-loss-on-aj-26-engine-problems http://www.spacenews.com/article/financial-report/42180aeroj...
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I wonder if this is going to be a pressing problem, given the Russian's lack of enthusiasm for supplying more rocket gear while under sanctions and the dwindling stock in the US. http://online.wsj.com/articles/david-a-deptula-the-russians-have-us-over-a-rocket-1414105347 http://online.wsj.com/articles/david-a-deptula-the-russians-...
  - sedachv 12y ago
    AeroJet owns pretty much all of the existing NK-33 inventory and a license to manufacture them. The work for integrating the NK-33 into the Antares rocket was actually done by a Ukrainian firm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29#Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29#Design
- ianstallings 12y ago
  These engines were talked about in the documentary *The Engines That Came In From The Cold" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbl_ofF3AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbl_ofF3AM I watched it on netflix myself. Fascinating stuff.
djyaz1200 12y ago
So glad no one was hurt! I'm not a rocket scientist but it looks like fuel was coming out the side of the rocked as it lifted off (kind of a puff) then it got worse and ignited from the nozzle at the bottom.
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  That looked a lot like normal venting. Here's what a daytime launch looked like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3L7crGudVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3L7crGudVU .
hnlurker 12y ago
You will not go to space today.
- sandstrom 12y ago
  This is a reference to an xkcd-post by Randall Munroe, a former NASA employee and space proponent. http://xkcd.com/1133/ http://xkcd.com/1133/ [text at the bottom]
  - hudibras 12y ago
    Wow, I've somehow lived through 40 years of math/science/space-geekdom without learning that the pointy thing on top of the Saturn V is a part of an escape system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system But don't worry, future-people-I-will-argue-with-on-the-Internet, I'm sure that's the final gap in my knowledge base.
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codezero 12y ago
This is a bummer, I hate to see stuff like this happen. The payload in this rocket was the heaviest that has been included in an Antares launch, I doubt this had anything to do with the failure, but hopefully we'll find out. Rocket science is hard, after all. In the video, there are several pieces of debris that fly off and spin in a helical motion, I wonder what those bits are!
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rglover 12y ago
Terrible situation, but the radio chatter on the live feed is a wonderful way to learn about handling crises in a calm, collected manner. Impressive considering what's going on.
- joeblau 12y ago
  That was the most impressive part for me. It's like listening to Air Traffic control--Some of the most professional conversation even in the face of tragedy.
jakozaur 12y ago
Launching to space is very prone to failures and (almost) everyone got one. Though NASA seems to be paying for Orbital launches more than SpaceX (even considering the difference in payload): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/153960-private-spaceflight-heats-up-as-orbitals-antares-rocket-completes-test-launch http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/153960-private-spacefligh...
vermontdevil 12y ago
Wonder if the boat didn't stray into the restricted area yesterday, things would have been different? I know we might never know but I did wonder if the draining and refueling the fuel caused an anomaly somewhere and lead to this? Such a big loss for us.
- toufka 12y ago
  Or different in the other way - where had they launched with the boat there and it still had exploded. Then ORB/NASA would have to deal with a lot more than simply economic consequences.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    I don't think the rocket made it that far.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  If so, it's better to discover now. Later on, lives could be lost in a similar situation.
uptown 12y ago
Truly unfortunate that it failed. Here's Elon Musk's comment about the Antares rock two years ago: Musk: The results are pretty crazy. 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. http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  And he was wrong. They had 4 successful launches since then. Plus it seems unprofessional to be bad mouthing a competitor like that in public.
  - readerrrr 12y ago
    What exactly was he wrong about?
    - calinet6 12y ago
      Well, if you can take 80% as a success rate at a quarter the cost per launch due to re-using old parts, and build that into your business model somehow (insurance, assurance, whatever and however it might be done), then maybe it can be viable as opposed to using new materials and expensive innovation to get a more reliable result at a higher cost. I'm not arguing for that business strategy; I think it would not be successful. I also don't think that re-using old rocket parts actually reduces cost to orbit significantly (I haven't looked at the numbers). I also don't think that what I think matters a whole lot. However, it's worth a discussion beyond simply rejecting the model at face value.
      - PeterisP 12y ago
        It's not only a cost issue - those old engines have performance characteristics that (in some areas) outperform anything that they could buy today off-shelf (as much as "off-shelf" exists for rocket engines), and developing a completely new model would likely be even less reliable than the current situation.
TerraHertz 12y ago
In the videos you can see the quality of the rocket flame changes suddenly about half a second before the obvious explosion in the engine area. The jet becomes more orange and less convergent. At 1:03 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo So, as a general comment, something bad happened with the gear that pumps fuel into the engines in the right proportion. Maybe involving a major leak of fuel into the structures around the engine. Leaked fuel explodes. Complete loss of thrust, rocket falls back to earth. I wonder if the Russians would consider it a good or a bad thing for them, if the West decides to stop using those Russian-built engines? Specifically, who benefits if there's a series of failures of AJ-26 engines? Considering the current imposition of economic sanctions against Russia, based on quite untrue accusations related to Ukraine and MH17. The Russians are feeling considerably put out over that, and rightly so.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  The NK-33/AJ-26 is no longer manufactured, and most of the stockpile is owned by Aerojet-Rocketdyne or Orbital (something like 50 engines). Considering that those engines have already been bought and paid for, there's no real benefit either way to them failing just a downside to Aerojet-Rocketdyne and OSC.
- avmich 12y ago
  > I wonder if the Russians would consider it a good or a bad thing for them, if the West decides to stop using those Russian-built engines? Definitely bad. Of course, that depends on whom you ask :) and which Russian we're talking about. NK-33 is used on a recently created Soyuz-2.1v rocket (one engine on first stage). There is no production of NK-33 today in Samara - but the ability to sell engines to the West would oh so much improve economic situation for Samara's industrial space cluster. Among other things, NK-33 is a matter of pride in Samara. It's the only engine maker for first stages in Russia (if you don't count Voronezh'es LH2 engines, used on the second stage of Energiya) other than Energomash, its arch-rival. Since recently works are underway to restart the production of NK-33... and Orbital going away from using them, for whatever reason, is sad news. Still NK-33 is a great piece of technology, in some aspects still unsurpassed. It's too early to consider it's over for NK-33. As for politics and sanctions against Russia - this is quite different subject, almost completely unrelated. Leaders come and go... and people stop wars at some point, yet the aspiration of going to the stars remains.
stox 12y ago
Looks like one of the engines blew up as they went to full throttle. Since this was the first XL launch, I wonder if they are trying to push the AJ-26's too hard with the increased payload.
readerrrr 12y ago
Spacex had an engine explosion during a flight, yet their primary mission was successful. This is the benefit of modern rocket technology.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  That the SpaceX engine failure was non-catastrophic doesn't mean all failure modes are like that. I'd imagine it's still possible for a SpaceX engine to go ka-boom in certain situations. Modern tech or otherwise, they're still working with what's in essence a large bomb.
gedmark 12y ago
Using 50 year old Russian engines was a risky move on Orbital's part, but in fairness the NK-33's are a pretty amazing piece of technology. The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 297 seconds of Isp is huge. The Saturn V's F1 engine only had 263 seconds. And the closest we've come since to that level of performance in a Lox/RP-1 engine is the Merlin 1D which will have 282. They did it by using an oxygen-rich, fully staged combustion cycle. Which means that most of the fluid flowing around the engine and through the turbines of the pumps is super hot pure oxygen at 2000 psi. That's crazy. The US has brought over NK-33's and taken them apart and we still don't quite know how the Russians got it to work. Of course, performance is only one consideration. All the other things you'd expect like integration costs, reliability of your suppliers, etc. made the Antares a pretty risky bet. But given Orbital's choices of developing their own engine from scratch, buying a hyper-expensive engine from Rocketdyne, or buying a wonder of engineering for cheap from the Russians, buying a bunch of surplus NK-33's wasn't totally crazy.
- avmich 12y ago
  Closed cycle has another advantage over open cycle for kerosene - namely, the vibrations in the chamber are more manageable. Which paradoxically can make the engine more reliable. A suspicion is that the engines didn't quite survive the long storage... indeed they weren't quite designed for that. But we'll wait for results of analysis of the explosion.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  "The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance" The Space Shuttle Main Engines had an Isp of 452s and 500,000 lb of thrust, easily the most efficient rocket engines ever built.
  - swatkat 12y ago
    NK-33 is RP/LOX, whereas SSME is LH2/LOX. LH2/LOX cryogenic engines have higher Isp compared to other solid and liquid engines. ISRO's CE-7.5 LH2/LOX engine[1] has an Isp of 454s. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-7.5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-7.5
keehun 12y ago
It seemed like from the press conference that Orbital will be footing most of the bill. The best Frank from OS could say was that "some of the rocket" was insured. Someone below cited $110 million minimum insurance, but that's not even close to the number OS gave out in the conference at $200m for just the rocket (which I think included neither the manifest nor the damage to the pad/environment and any necessary repair/cleanup)
- navila17 12y ago
  Just wanted to confirm that Orbital's mention of insurance does not help the customers at all. It is up to the various companies to insure their own payload. Also, it might be fun to note that no one on that launch gets a refund. Generally you pay for something like 90% before the launch (in different milestones leading up to the launch) and only 10% after safe delivery to orbit.
bd_at_rivenhill 12y ago
Makes me really wish SpaceX were public; would make for interesting trading tomorrow.
- burkaman 12y ago
  This was an Orbital Sciences rocket, not SpaceX, which is publically traded. Down 15.5% after hours so far: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AORB&ei=Gp5QVLiKLsm28gaDoIDQAg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AORB&ei=Gp5QVLiKLsm28...
hueving 12y ago
How do they root cause something like this when so much of the evidence is blown to pieces?
- golgappi 12y ago
  Telemetry
- golgappi 12y ago
  Telemetry
- gear54rus 12y ago
  Wondering the same thing. In addition to incidents like this, every once in a while, a story pops up that describes how programming error was the cause of rocket crash that happened TWENTY years ago... How? Just how can people be sure that it was programming error? It's not like you can debug a burnt piece of a microcontroller, can you? Guess we've come a long way from a magnifying glass investigations :)
  - aragot 12y ago
    I entered an engineering school 5 years after Ariane V. Each single professor explained us why their subject was the reason for Ariane V to explode. The physics one went about how the imperial/metric discrepancy was the cause, the mechanics one went about how error margin management wad the cause, the CS one about integer overflow... Each of them made it clear that their course was the center of the world, but altogether it didn't look smart. I chose that the CS guy was right ;)
    - deleted 12y ago
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    - gear54rus 12y ago
      Seems like choosing between alternative timelines in some RPG :)
- snowwrestler 12y ago
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Ouch. A lot of rocket fuel burning all at once. I would be less concerned if this was the first or second flight but as the fifth flight one has to wonder what part of the process didn't work. This was apparently the first flight with the Castor 30XL which is the second stage, I suppose if it started its burn prematurely that would certainly be an issue. As a testing problem, rockets have always fascinated me. At some level you have to trust in first principles but being so thorough so that you know will either fly or fail safe. That has got to keep folks up at night.
zaroth 12y ago
Right before the explosion you can hear launch control saying something like "Got engines at 108%". I was curious about it, but from Reddit discussion, apparently this is totally normal; "Yes, the engines have been upgraded many times. To avoid having to recalibrate the software each time engines are upgraded, they are simply rated at over 100 percent thrust over the first engine's thrust." Another interesting fact. The pad is NASA's. So you can imagine the crew that maintained it are pretty disappointed.... "Look at what you did to my pad!?!" The fireball was enormous. The view from the Cessna incredible. That must have been just about a worst case scenario for the pad to sustain such a direct hit. Hopefully it was the strict safety protocols and not just dumb luck which kept everyone safe. That's another aspect of this event which can be studied and reported, so at least we maximize the take-aways. Track the entire response from T-6. Apparently the rocket is designed to do that little lateral kick that you can see in the video and initially seems odd. 'Why is the rocket not going straight up' causes a little unease at first but apparently is nominal. If that's the case, then the time of the explosion may correspond to a point where they kick up engine output. It also may have been a heavier payload than usual requiring higher engine output? (Unconfirmed)
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Link to the Cessna view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zarWT7H9t54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zarWT7H9t54
i_have_to_speak 12y ago
Heartwarming to see how positive and forward-looking the responses here are. Certainly more positive than the responses towards India's (successful) Mars mission.
- neindanke 12y ago
  What point are you trying to make?
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nevergetenglish 12y ago
To decide is this is a success or a failure one need to determine exactly where was the error. If this new knowledge contributes to the design of better systems then this is a success, if the actual error provides us with nothing to learn then this is a very big failure. So there is an amortized cost of success/failure in long term enterprises.
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TheBigSteve1 12y ago
Why was the payload lost? Was it considered cost-prohibitive to have furnished the payload with an escape rocket?
72deluxe 12y ago
Very interesting that they used the engines from the Soviet moon rocket from the 70s (?). The N-1 looked a great rocket, pity it never flew. Even the massive arms for lifting the rocket into position are impressive for the N-1.
TheBigSteve1 12y ago
I happened upon this website as a result of a Google search re. yesterday's failed launch of the Orbital Sciences venture to resupply the ISS, and this URL appeared as the first search result. I've read your site guidelines, as well as the many comments on this news page, and as a lay person I humbly offer this question, which I hope someone will answer: Why was there no escape rocket atop the rocket's payload module? Was it considered cost-prohibitive? Thanks for your time. Cordially, Steve Logsdon. Post Script: I hope you won't think it patronizing of me to observe that I found the apparent erudition and literacy of the contributors to this web page to be most impressive.
- narag 12y ago
  With no human lives involved, I guess the cost of the payload is insignificant compared with the rocket, maybe even with the escape rocket.
- deleted 12y ago
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- Pinckney 12y ago
  Antares has a maximum payload of 6000kg. This is roughly the same as the launch mass of the Apollo command module, which weighed 5500kg. To rescue the command module in an emergency, Apollo missions had a 4200kg launch escape system. So we might expect a escape rocket to cost Antares almost half of its payload capacity. Furthermore, adding a launch escape system would mean adding parachutes and flotation to a payload which otherwise doesn't need it.
alexvr 12y ago
I was planning to watch it the night before, but it was cancelled because of a sailboat or something nearby. How silly, I thought. It's not like it's going to explode...
Evolved 12y ago
So on one hand it is possible and encouraged to fail out of sheer ambition yet on the other hand it is possible to fail due to ignorance or laziness. Therefore failure does not always occur when one is trying too hard because it is also feasible to fail when not trying hard enough.
notjustanymike 12y ago
Someone accidentally hit spacebar twice.

504 points by politician 12y ago

Video of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMmMgdcOSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHMmMgdcOSU ...and I believe this is the water-tower you can see in the video: https://www.google.se/maps/place/NASA+Wallops+Flight+Facility/@37.8336778,-75.4877723,200m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x91e6a41a07f96c6e https://www.google.se/maps/place/NASA+Wallops+Flight+Facilit...

bennettfeely 12y ago
This video seems a little better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo
- deleted 12y ago
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  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    Almost certainly. The solid fuel would be bonded to the casing of the stage, so little fragments of burning fuel and casing would likely result in generation of thrust, which could causing spiraling fragments.
- deleted 12y ago
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callesgg 12y ago
I expected it to self desturct. Why would it not do that? Was it to close to the ground?
- ericcumbee 12y ago
  I'd say it was to close to the ground to self destruct. And there would have been a call from the Range Safety Officer in the event he ordered a destruct or the computer called a destruct.
  - phkahler 12y ago
    While it probably wouldn't need to be destroyed, the last thing you want is for part of it to lay down on the ground still producing thrust. Better to be certain.
- trothamel 12y ago
  I don't think Antares can command itself to destruct. The destruct has to be commanded by the range. There isn't any point to issuing the destruct command unless the impact point is dangerously far from the flight path, and that wasn't the case here.
  - dalke 12y ago
    I think it's reasonable to assume that Antares can command itself to destruct given that other rockets have that ability, and have so destructed. Ariane 5 (the infamous flight 501) self-destructed. http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html "The launcher started to disintegrate at about H0 + 39 seconds because of high aerodynamic loads due to an angle of attack of more than 20 degrees that led to separation of the boosters from the main stage, in turn triggering the self-destruct system of the launcher" A SpaceX rocket self-destructed: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188593-spacex-rocket-self-destructs-after-detecting-an-anomaly-reusable-space-launchers-are-tricky-business http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188593-spacex-rocket-self... "In a statement, SpaceX says the rocket detected an anomaly and automatically initiated its self-destruct sequence." The Titan IVA-20 explosion was also due to a self-destruct, and not the range officer: http://fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/titan_iv-20_sum.htm http://fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/titan_iv-20_sum.h... "At this point, the northern-most Solid Rocket Motor (SRM #1) separated from the core booster, initiating the Inadvertent Separation Destruct System. At 45.529 seconds, approximately 3 seconds after the automatic destruct sequence, Mission Flight Control Officers sent command destruct signals to the vehicle."
rodrigocoelho 12y ago
There's another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHkDc-CwoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHkDc-CwoQ

jwise0 12y ago

There aren't many blogs covering this right now, but there are no personnel injured (according to the launch loop) -- just "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage". Nobody has said much yet: https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/527225682414567424 https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/52722568241456742...

anigbrowl 12y ago
Well, that's good. Property damage is insurable - let's hope that's the only loss. Listening to the audio feed for a few minutes, I always find it a bit sad how people resort to 'officialese' bullshit when they're embarrassed or stressed, eg 'we're going to triage the data'?!
- iolsantr 12y ago
  I don't think that's just officialese. They are going to be under enormous pressure to find out what went wrong as quickly as possible. Orbital Science's future may be significantly affected by how well (and quickly) they deal with the aftermath.
- engi_nerd 12y ago
  Having been an engineer in control room environments for both rocket launches and fighter jet flight operations -- it's not really "officialese bullshit". Aerospace has a definite jargon and there are preferred ways of saying things on comms to reduce ambiguities. "Triage the data" is actually a good way of describing what you do in an anomaly investigation. You figure out what the most likely thing that went wrong is, then the next most likely thing, etc. and look at data regarding those things in order.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage" This wasn't launched in a desert/uninhabited area? Edit: Thanks for clarifying below.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago

kilroy123 12y ago

What a bummer... Getting to space isn't easy.

Osmium 12y ago

Very sad that this has happened. I can only imagine what it must feel like to those who worked on the rocket and its payload. It can really happen to anyone, even the best. At least we can all be thankful no one was hurt.

matthewwiese 12y ago

My entire physics lab watched this happen live. It started going up and everyone was cheering. Seconds later just caught fire, and fell to the ground and exploded. "That's what happens when you set 'a' to negative." a good lesson from my TA

sillysaurus3 12y ago
What's 'a'?
- eric59 12y ago
  Acceleration
- bglazer 12y ago
  Acceleration?
- deleted 12y ago
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- wolf550e 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion
Rebelgecko 12y ago
Too bad your TA didn't work on that Russian rocket that crashed a year or two ago... IIRC the accelerometers were installed upside down so as soon as it took off it incorrectly thought it was pointed straight down. The rocket flipped around until it thought it was "up" and slammed into the ground.
phkahler 12y ago
>> My entire physics lab watched this happen live. Now imagine how people felt back in '86 when the challenger exploded with 7 people on board including a teacher. Shuttle launches were common by then but a lot of people were watching live due to the teacher on board aspect. It brings a whole different set of emotions to the event. Nobody made a joke that day.

blueboxjesse 12y ago

A good reminder that no matter how bad your day goes at your job, things can always be much, much worse. My thoughts go out to the the Orbital Sciences team.

blhack 12y ago

I had a close friend who worked on this. Everybody in our lab stopped working this afternoon to watch it launch, and to cheer our friend on. Definitely went from "YAY!" to sad really quick. It's been said other places in this thread, but to echo it again: I really feel for all the engineers involved in this. That's got to be devastating. To everybody: failures suck, but big spectacular failure is directly correlated to the difficulty of what you're trying to do. If you're failing, you're doing something right. Back when I used to mountain bike a lot, it was a personal "joke" that I wasn't really riding unless I crashed at least once. That's how I knew I was pushing myself to improve. Don't fret the failures.

foobarqux 12y ago
> Don't fret the failures. Except when it kills people (though this accident didn't).
- blhack 12y ago
  Fair point. Although I'd say: fret the suffering of people, not the fact that something really difficult ended up being difficult.
  - throwaway5752 12y ago
    Not to slight your friend, but his was an unmanned launch to resupply the ISS, it's relatively common, comparatively easy, and successful (1 other failure in just under 80 missions). No disrespect intended, but this is a disruption for the ISS, a loss (hopefully insured) for Planetary Resources, a real setback for Orbital... there's no point in sugar coating anything, it sucks. There's just no point in dwelling on it, either. RCA and move forward.
    - gus_massa 12y ago
      The failure rate in manned space missions is approximately 1/50 ("failure" as in "it explodes and everybody dies"). (For example, the Space Shuttle had 2/135 failures.) The unmanned missions have a higher failure rate, IIRC ~10%, but that number probably includes prototype and old models. So a 2/80 failures is not so bad. It sucks when it explodes, but going to space is difficult.

KhalilK 12y ago

Will the logs suffice to determine the cause of the explosion or will they have to reassemble the wreckage and look for anomalies?

daeken 12y ago
Probably way too early to tell even that. There will be hundreds of possible causes that will have to be narrowed down; no one will know anything concrete for a good while most likely, even inside Orbital Sciences.
- krisoft 12y ago
  You most probably meant inside Orbital Sciences Corporation. Antares is just the rocket.
  - daeken 12y ago
    Argh, I do that every time. Quite right.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
In crashes like this there often isn't enough wreckage to reassemble to tell one thing or another. But there will be lots of data to comb through which will probably lead to the cause.

ericcumbee 12y ago

They are securing the vehicle because it has sensitive crypto equipment on board.

rl3 12y ago
As well as for accident investigation purposes.
MichaelAO 12y ago
I also heard that comment. Does anyone have insight into what 'crypto equipment' might entail?
- ericcumbee 12y ago
  I know the Shuttle carried DOD Secure comm equipment in addition to it's in the clear UHF and VHF Radios. I'm assuming that ISS has something similar.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I know the Shuttle carried DOD Secure comm equipment in addition to it's in the clear UHF and VHF Radios. I'm assuming that ISS has something similar. There's some obvious reasons why the International Space Station might be less likely to carry sensitive US military communications gear than the NASA Space Shuttles.
    - ericcumbee 12y ago
      I don't think it is anything like that. It's for cases where they need to discuss something that they don't want every person with a HAM radio to hear. A discussion between an astronaut and the flight surgeon/spouse/clergy member. I'm sure the Russians have a system on ISS as well. Just having the hardware is not enough to crack into an enemies comms. It's more that they don't want stuff like that falling into the hands of a rouge state like Iran or North Korea, or a non-state actor that might have schemes of reverse engineering it to build their own system. I'd bet there is a Russian Transceiver racked up in JSC, and a DOD system racked up at Russian Space Control.

biscotti 12y ago

More discussion on spacex reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_antares_has_just_exploded_in_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_a...

djyaz1200 12y ago
Reddit thread is interesting. Pulled this off there... wow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo
- SuperChihuahua 12y ago
  Speaking of rocket anomalies - This is a video of the Chinese rocket that's considered to be the worst rocket accident ever (counting human losses) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s
- 3rd3 12y ago
  This has nothing to do with the current event, right? Linking to it is pure sensationalism.
- rplnt 12y ago
  If I remember correctly, the cause of this accident was that one of the nozzles had been wired in reverse, causing it to move differently from what the rocket ordered it to.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    In that one the gyroscopes (all 3 of them) were installed upside-down, and what's truly facepalm-worthy was that the guy who did that decided to force them into place: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html investigators simulated the improper installation of the DUS angular velocity sensors on the actual hardware. As it turned out, it would be very difficult to do but not impossible. To achieve that personnel would need to use procedures and instruments not certified either by the design documentation or the installation instructions. As a result, the plate holding the sensors sustained damage.

rl3 12y ago

Yesterday's launch was scrubbed due to a boat violating the range safety exclusion zone: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/space-station-cargo-ship-prepped-for-launch/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/space-station-cargo-ship-prepped...

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trothamel 12y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo is a high-quality video.

ars 12y ago

Anyone know what the cargo was? Anything unique or expensive? Or just regular supplies?

daeken 12y ago
Nothing out of the ordinary for the ISS, as far as I know. However, it was carrying the Arkyd-3 test platform satellite, which is a bit of a bummer.
- deleted 12y ago
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MichaelAO 12y ago
According to Motherboard: - A pea growing experiment from students in Houston - A human health study investigating blood flow to and from the brain in space - 19 student projects from New Jersey - A reentry breakup recorder - A meteor dust analyser - 1,360 pounds of food - Spacewalk equipment - Flight crew equipment - Fight procedures books - Computers - Classified "Crypto equipment" Source: https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/527235620578787328/photo/1 https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/527235620578787328/ph...
- kijin 12y ago
  The students from Houston and New Jersey must have been so disappointed. I really hope that they get another chance to send their projects to space before they graduate, and that some of them will eventually take up a career in rocket science despite this minor setback.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  > - A reentry breakup recorder Right, there was to be a video recording of the Cygnus spacecraft as it reentered and broke up (it's designed to disintegrate). Kind of ironic now.
  - Crito 12y ago

ericcumbee 12y ago

They are waiting to hear from the FAA if the NTSB will be involved in the investigation. Seems like something that would have been decided beforehand.

daeken 12y ago

In addition to the COTS resupply provisions for the ISS, this craft was also carrying the Arkyd-3 satellite (basically the whole Arkyd space telescope minus the optics, to serve as a test platform). While this is always sad, no lives were lost and that's what insurance is there for. Kudos to Orbital Sciences for pushing the boundaries of space flight, even if these losses are anything but fun.

trothamel 12y ago

The first stage engines that exploded were AJ-26 engines. These are remanufactured NK-33 or NK-43 engines built in the Soviet Union in the late-60s or early-70s for the N-1 moon rocket, but never used. In May, an AJ-26 exploded on the test stand at Stennis space center in Mississippi, severely damaging the test stand.

gresrun 12y ago
Pure speculation but I wonder if they rushed to test the engines that just flew. AeroJet's parent company claims they have lost over $31MM on the AJ-26 YTD[1]. There may be pressure from higher-ups to push through the issue seen at Stennis in May. [1] http://www.spacenews.com/article/financial-report/42180aerojet-rocketdyne-takes-loss-on-aj-26-engine-problems http://www.spacenews.com/article/financial-report/42180aeroj...
anigbrowl 12y ago
I wonder if this is going to be a pressing problem, given the Russian's lack of enthusiasm for supplying more rocket gear while under sanctions and the dwindling stock in the US. http://online.wsj.com/articles/david-a-deptula-the-russians-have-us-over-a-rocket-1414105347 http://online.wsj.com/articles/david-a-deptula-the-russians-...
- sedachv 12y ago
  AeroJet owns pretty much all of the existing NK-33 inventory and a license to manufacture them. The work for integrating the NK-33 into the Antares rocket was actually done by a Ukrainian firm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29#Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29#Design
ianstallings 12y ago
These engines were talked about in the documentary *The Engines That Came In From The Cold" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbl_ofF3AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbl_ofF3AM I watched it on netflix myself. Fascinating stuff.

djyaz1200 12y ago

So glad no one was hurt! I'm not a rocket scientist but it looks like fuel was coming out the side of the rocked as it lifted off (kind of a puff) then it got worse and ignited from the nozzle at the bottom.

Sanddancer 12y ago
That looked a lot like normal venting. Here's what a daytime launch looked like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3L7crGudVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3L7crGudVU .

hnlurker 12y ago

You will not go to space today.

sandstrom 12y ago
This is a reference to an xkcd-post by Randall Munroe, a former NASA employee and space proponent. http://xkcd.com/1133/ http://xkcd.com/1133/ [text at the bottom]
- hudibras 12y ago
  Wow, I've somehow lived through 40 years of math/science/space-geekdom without learning that the pointy thing on top of the Saturn V is a part of an escape system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_escape_system But don't worry, future-people-I-will-argue-with-on-the-Internet, I'm sure that's the final gap in my knowledge base.

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codezero 12y ago

This is a bummer, I hate to see stuff like this happen. The payload in this rocket was the heaviest that has been included in an Antares launch, I doubt this had anything to do with the failure, but hopefully we'll find out. Rocket science is hard, after all. In the video, there are several pieces of debris that fly off and spin in a helical motion, I wonder what those bits are!

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rglover 12y ago

Terrible situation, but the radio chatter on the live feed is a wonderful way to learn about handling crises in a calm, collected manner. Impressive considering what's going on.

joeblau 12y ago
That was the most impressive part for me. It's like listening to Air Traffic control--Some of the most professional conversation even in the face of tragedy.

jakozaur 12y ago

Launching to space is very prone to failures and (almost) everyone got one. Though NASA seems to be paying for Orbital launches more than SpaceX (even considering the difference in payload): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/153960-private-spaceflight-heats-up-as-orbitals-antares-rocket-completes-test-launch http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/153960-private-spacefligh...

vermontdevil 12y ago

Wonder if the boat didn't stray into the restricted area yesterday, things would have been different? I know we might never know but I did wonder if the draining and refueling the fuel caused an anomaly somewhere and lead to this? Such a big loss for us.

toufka 12y ago
Or different in the other way - where had they launched with the boat there and it still had exploded. Then ORB/NASA would have to deal with a lot more than simply economic consequences.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  I don't think the rocket made it that far.
jessaustin 12y ago
If so, it's better to discover now. Later on, lives could be lost in a similar situation.

uptown 12y ago

Truly unfortunate that it failed. Here's Elon Musk's comment about the Antares rock two years ago: Musk: The results are pretty crazy. 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. http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
And he was wrong. They had 4 successful launches since then. Plus it seems unprofessional to be bad mouthing a competitor like that in public.
- readerrrr 12y ago
  What exactly was he wrong about?
  - calinet6 12y ago
    Well, if you can take 80% as a success rate at a quarter the cost per launch due to re-using old parts, and build that into your business model somehow (insurance, assurance, whatever and however it might be done), then maybe it can be viable as opposed to using new materials and expensive innovation to get a more reliable result at a higher cost. I'm not arguing for that business strategy; I think it would not be successful. I also don't think that re-using old rocket parts actually reduces cost to orbit significantly (I haven't looked at the numbers). I also don't think that what I think matters a whole lot. However, it's worth a discussion beyond simply rejecting the model at face value.
    - PeterisP 12y ago
      It's not only a cost issue - those old engines have performance characteristics that (in some areas) outperform anything that they could buy today off-shelf (as much as "off-shelf" exists for rocket engines), and developing a completely new model would likely be even less reliable than the current situation.

TerraHertz 12y ago

In the videos you can see the quality of the rocket flame changes suddenly about half a second before the obvious explosion in the engine area. The jet becomes more orange and less convergent. At 1:03 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL5eddt-iAo So, as a general comment, something bad happened with the gear that pumps fuel into the engines in the right proportion. Maybe involving a major leak of fuel into the structures around the engine. Leaked fuel explodes. Complete loss of thrust, rocket falls back to earth. I wonder if the Russians would consider it a good or a bad thing for them, if the West decides to stop using those Russian-built engines? Specifically, who benefits if there's a series of failures of AJ-26 engines? Considering the current imposition of economic sanctions against Russia, based on quite untrue accusations related to Ukraine and MH17. The Russians are feeling considerably put out over that, and rightly so.

InclinedPlane 12y ago
The NK-33/AJ-26 is no longer manufactured, and most of the stockpile is owned by Aerojet-Rocketdyne or Orbital (something like 50 engines). Considering that those engines have already been bought and paid for, there's no real benefit either way to them failing just a downside to Aerojet-Rocketdyne and OSC.
avmich 12y ago
> I wonder if the Russians would consider it a good or a bad thing for them, if the West decides to stop using those Russian-built engines? Definitely bad. Of course, that depends on whom you ask :) and which Russian we're talking about. NK-33 is used on a recently created Soyuz-2.1v rocket (one engine on first stage). There is no production of NK-33 today in Samara - but the ability to sell engines to the West would oh so much improve economic situation for Samara's industrial space cluster. Among other things, NK-33 is a matter of pride in Samara. It's the only engine maker for first stages in Russia (if you don't count Voronezh'es LH2 engines, used on the second stage of Energiya) other than Energomash, its arch-rival. Since recently works are underway to restart the production of NK-33... and Orbital going away from using them, for whatever reason, is sad news. Still NK-33 is a great piece of technology, in some aspects still unsurpassed. It's too early to consider it's over for NK-33. As for politics and sanctions against Russia - this is quite different subject, almost completely unrelated. Leaders come and go... and people stop wars at some point, yet the aspiration of going to the stars remains.

stox 12y ago

Looks like one of the engines blew up as they went to full throttle. Since this was the first XL launch, I wonder if they are trying to push the AJ-26's too hard with the increased payload.

readerrrr 12y ago

Spacex had an engine explosion during a flight, yet their primary mission was successful. This is the benefit of modern rocket technology.

ceejayoz 12y ago
That the SpaceX engine failure was non-catastrophic doesn't mean all failure modes are like that. I'd imagine it's still possible for a SpaceX engine to go ka-boom in certain situations. Modern tech or otherwise, they're still working with what's in essence a large bomb.

gedmark 12y ago

Using 50 year old Russian engines was a risky move on Orbital's part, but in fairness the NK-33's are a pretty amazing piece of technology. The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 297 seconds of Isp is huge. The Saturn V's F1 engine only had 263 seconds. And the closest we've come since to that level of performance in a Lox/RP-1 engine is the Merlin 1D which will have 282. They did it by using an oxygen-rich, fully staged combustion cycle. Which means that most of the fluid flowing around the engine and through the turbines of the pumps is super hot pure oxygen at 2000 psi. That's crazy. The US has brought over NK-33's and taken them apart and we still don't quite know how the Russians got it to work. Of course, performance is only one consideration. All the other things you'd expect like integration costs, reliability of your suppliers, etc. made the Antares a pretty risky bet. But given Orbital's choices of developing their own engine from scratch, buying a hyper-expensive engine from Rocketdyne, or buying a wonder of engineering for cheap from the Russians, buying a bunch of surplus NK-33's wasn't totally crazy.

avmich 12y ago
Closed cycle has another advantage over open cycle for kerosene - namely, the vibrations in the chamber are more manageable. Which paradoxically can make the engine more reliable. A suspicion is that the engines didn't quite survive the long storage... indeed they weren't quite designed for that. But we'll wait for results of analysis of the explosion.
cromwellian 12y ago
"The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance" The Space Shuttle Main Engines had an Isp of 452s and 500,000 lb of thrust, easily the most efficient rocket engines ever built.
- swatkat 12y ago
  NK-33 is RP/LOX, whereas SSME is LH2/LOX. LH2/LOX cryogenic engines have higher Isp compared to other solid and liquid engines. ISRO's CE-7.5 LH2/LOX engine[1] has an Isp of 454s. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-7.5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE-7.5

keehun 12y ago

It seemed like from the press conference that Orbital will be footing most of the bill. The best Frank from OS could say was that "some of the rocket" was insured. Someone below cited $110 million minimum insurance, but that's not even close to the number OS gave out in the conference at $200m for just the rocket (which I think included neither the manifest nor the damage to the pad/environment and any necessary repair/cleanup)

navila17 12y ago
Just wanted to confirm that Orbital's mention of insurance does not help the customers at all. It is up to the various companies to insure their own payload. Also, it might be fun to note that no one on that launch gets a refund. Generally you pay for something like 90% before the launch (in different milestones leading up to the launch) and only 10% after safe delivery to orbit.

bd_at_rivenhill 12y ago

Makes me really wish SpaceX were public; would make for interesting trading tomorrow.

burkaman 12y ago
This was an Orbital Sciences rocket, not SpaceX, which is publically traded. Down 15.5% after hours so far: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AORB&ei=Gp5QVLiKLsm28gaDoIDQAg https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AORB&ei=Gp5QVLiKLsm28...

hueving 12y ago

How do they root cause something like this when so much of the evidence is blown to pieces?

golgappi 12y ago
Telemetry
golgappi 12y ago
Telemetry
gear54rus 12y ago
Wondering the same thing. In addition to incidents like this, every once in a while, a story pops up that describes how programming error was the cause of rocket crash that happened TWENTY years ago... How? Just how can people be sure that it was programming error? It's not like you can debug a burnt piece of a microcontroller, can you? Guess we've come a long way from a magnifying glass investigations :)
- aragot 12y ago
  I entered an engineering school 5 years after Ariane V. Each single professor explained us why their subject was the reason for Ariane V to explode. The physics one went about how the imperial/metric discrepancy was the cause, the mechanics one went about how error margin management wad the cause, the CS one about integer overflow... Each of them made it clear that their course was the center of the world, but altogether it didn't look smart. I chose that the CS guy was right ;)
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  - gear54rus 12y ago
    Seems like choosing between alternative timelines in some RPG :)
snowwrestler 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Ouch. A lot of rocket fuel burning all at once. I would be less concerned if this was the first or second flight but as the fifth flight one has to wonder what part of the process didn't work. This was apparently the first flight with the Castor 30XL which is the second stage, I suppose if it started its burn prematurely that would certainly be an issue. As a testing problem, rockets have always fascinated me. At some level you have to trust in first principles but being so thorough so that you know will either fly or fail safe. That has got to keep folks up at night.

zaroth 12y ago

Right before the explosion you can hear launch control saying something like "Got engines at 108%". I was curious about it, but from Reddit discussion, apparently this is totally normal; "Yes, the engines have been upgraded many times. To avoid having to recalibrate the software each time engines are upgraded, they are simply rated at over 100 percent thrust over the first engine's thrust." Another interesting fact. The pad is NASA's. So you can imagine the crew that maintained it are pretty disappointed.... "Look at what you did to my pad!?!" The fireball was enormous. The view from the Cessna incredible. That must have been just about a worst case scenario for the pad to sustain such a direct hit. Hopefully it was the strict safety protocols and not just dumb luck which kept everyone safe. That's another aspect of this event which can be studied and reported, so at least we maximize the take-aways. Track the entire response from T-6. Apparently the rocket is designed to do that little lateral kick that you can see in the video and initially seems odd. 'Why is the rocket not going straight up' causes a little unease at first but apparently is nominal. If that's the case, then the time of the explosion may correspond to a point where they kick up engine output. It also may have been a heavier payload than usual requiring higher engine output? (Unconfirmed)

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Link to the Cessna view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zarWT7H9t54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zarWT7H9t54

i_have_to_speak 12y ago

Heartwarming to see how positive and forward-looking the responses here are. Certainly more positive than the responses towards India's (successful) Mars mission.

neindanke 12y ago
What point are you trying to make?

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nevergetenglish 12y ago

To decide is this is a success or a failure one need to determine exactly where was the error. If this new knowledge contributes to the design of better systems then this is a success, if the actual error provides us with nothing to learn then this is a very big failure. So there is an amortized cost of success/failure in long term enterprises.

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TheBigSteve1 12y ago

Why was the payload lost? Was it considered cost-prohibitive to have furnished the payload with an escape rocket?

72deluxe 12y ago

Very interesting that they used the engines from the Soviet moon rocket from the 70s (?). The N-1 looked a great rocket, pity it never flew. Even the massive arms for lifting the rocket into position are impressive for the N-1.

TheBigSteve1 12y ago

I happened upon this website as a result of a Google search re. yesterday's failed launch of the Orbital Sciences venture to resupply the ISS, and this URL appeared as the first search result. I've read your site guidelines, as well as the many comments on this news page, and as a lay person I humbly offer this question, which I hope someone will answer: Why was there no escape rocket atop the rocket's payload module? Was it considered cost-prohibitive? Thanks for your time. Cordially, Steve Logsdon. Post Script: I hope you won't think it patronizing of me to observe that I found the apparent erudition and literacy of the contributors to this web page to be most impressive.

narag 12y ago
With no human lives involved, I guess the cost of the payload is insignificant compared with the rocket, maybe even with the escape rocket.
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Pinckney 12y ago
Antares has a maximum payload of 6000kg. This is roughly the same as the launch mass of the Apollo command module, which weighed 5500kg. To rescue the command module in an emergency, Apollo missions had a 4200kg launch escape system. So we might expect a escape rocket to cost Antares almost half of its payload capacity. Furthermore, adding a launch escape system would mean adding parachutes and flotation to a payload which otherwise doesn't need it.

alexvr 12y ago

I was planning to watch it the night before, but it was cancelled because of a sailboat or something nearby. How silly, I thought. It's not like it's going to explode...

Evolved 12y ago

So on one hand it is possible and encouraged to fail out of sheer ambition yet on the other hand it is possible to fail due to ignorance or laziness. Therefore failure does not always occur when one is trying too hard because it is also feasible to fail when not trying hard enough.

notjustanymike 12y ago

Someone accidentally hit spacebar twice.