Antares Rocket Explosion

".......As Orbital has little experience with large liquid stages and LOX propellant, some of the Antares first stage work was contracted to the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye SDO, designers of the Zenit series."

If they (OSC) have so little experience with this type of vehicle then why/how did they get the contract? ($$$???)

Our government at work......

 

Isn't that part of the problem? Awarding private contracts for something that should be nationalized is insane.

 

I don't have any problem with awarding a contract for a trash-hauler, but it should be awarded to a contractor that is capable of performing the work.
We have private corporations that build nuclear reactors....rather well if you consider the safety and reliability numbers for my former employer however (comma!!) those programs have to be competently administered.

Otherwise?
Space-X will have an even more limited market, and I kinda like where Elon is pointing that company.

 

Yes this seems to be a significant accident raising too many safety and program questions.

Monday nite we walked a couple blocks to try to see the dramatic night time launch, even though Wallops Island VA is 100 miles or so away, we can see it from DC region. But the Monday launch attempt was scrubbed at the last minute due to a boat or ship meandering into the red zone area. But how does that happen?

 

They were probably the lowest bidder.

 

Oh them Russians...

 

Yes, it's always about the money and The Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.

Those who are in charge always gambles and says, Don't sweat the details.

In engineerng, it is the detail that really counts.

I recall several years back; a 67 million dollar drone was lost, because one bolt was not correctly tightened.

When designing and building anything, I test everything and examine every detail. When finished, I examine it again.

This case, hopefully, is a one time occurance on one unit.

If you were manufacturing a thousand units a day, a defect can be an "extinction level event" for a company, if they cannot afford a recall.

 

These were "Refurbished" engines. Not really the sort of thing I would base my company around! If you watch the video, you can note a sudden stutter in the exhaust, then the exhaust gets thicker with flame as if a fuel pump or line failed, then it just shredded the engine , and fell down go BOOM!!!
Maybe we get some good new engines for the rest of the Antares launches!

 

Basically, they gambled on the cheap and they lost.

Their insurance just went up in cost, if they can get any.

 

Some new ISS science experiments were lost in this failure, and it is unclear if they will get sent up later. But the ISS folks won't run short of supplies because the Russian resupply mission (9 hrs later) got there.

Seems odd to me that the plan was to have 2 resupplies docked to ISS at the same time. Is it odd?

Orbital Sciences' take on the incident:

Orbital Sciences hopes to quickly find cause of rocket failure | Spaceflight Now

If Orbital Science cannot get others (including launch insurers) to have confidence in this engine, they could lose their spot in this market niche. Personally I am still upset at them for dropping the orbiting carbon observatory into the ocean.

The engine in question, in its original configuration, would have been used (30 in parallel) to put a cosmonaut on the moon. Didn't happen.

 

...that night there was some question if they hit the "self destruct" button, I heard they did but I don't think that is confimed or anything

 

Building a base on the moon may be easier and more benefitial than the ISS.

 

Don't think so!

Few individuals realize the distances in scale involved in reaching the moon. They remember the ORREY model from elementary school science class.

Comparatively, if the earth was the size of a volleyball, the moon would be the size of a golf ball nearly all the way to the fence in left field.

In the Apollo Project, nearly ALL of the vehicle was jettisoned into get to the moon and nearly all the rest of the hardware was gone by the time the Command Module splashed down.

Getting supplies there would be a nightmare.

 

It would be a nightmare, but what a cool problem to have.

Space tether here we come!

 

I agree. Something needs to be done to gain public interest and support. Mars is decades away and probably not in my lifetime and I'm only 44. The ISS whilst very worthy is dull as ditch water once you watched it fly across the night sky a couple times.

A base on the moon would be just what's needed, especially as we seem to be heading towards a new cold war with Russia.

 

As long as it's um... 'manned'? by girls like these I'm all for it too....

 

Sign me up too

Don't want any Klingons though, or clingons for that matter.