NASA Rocket Explosion
28 Oct 2014 22:32:02 UTC
Topic 197770
(moderation:
Third Orbital Sciences Commercial Resupply Services Flight (Orbital CRS-3)
Didn't make it off the ground in Virginia
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/orbital.html
(I am watching on the NASA tv channel)
NASA Rocket Explosion
)
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/10/28/unmanned-nasa-rocket-explodes-after-liftoff/
Video of the launch........YOW
Well the main engine failed
)
Well the main engine failed to give a nett thrust upwards : because it blew up !
[ I wonder if it is the ( old ) exhaust bell fracture problem from hyper-detonation resonance in the combustion chamber ? That just cuts through the metal like an ultrasonic knife. They had that trouble many years ago with the early Titan series ICBM's. It was still spewing fuel from the turbo pumps on the way down ... ]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Yes that explosion happened
)
Yes that explosion happened with most of the fuel so it dropped straight to the concrete and was a ball of fire.
I know Wallops has been around for a long time and tested the Mercury rockets back when I first got hooked on the Universe and that was years before the Apollo years.
(and I'm not happy at all with us not doing something on the Moon like constructing a building and going from there instead of just orbiting for decades only 225 miles up in the sky......and yeah I watch it fly over my place quite often)
That was Wollops first try after dark and it sure made that explosion light up the sky.
I had friends in SE Pennsylvania that went outside to watch and wondered why they didn't see anything.......until I sent them the message a few minutes later.
That was one heck of an
)
That was one heck of an explosion !
Bill
RE: That was one heck of an
)
Yes that was the biggest ball of fire I ever saw on my 82in DLP in HD
Here is the rocket facts and history [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_(rocket)[/url]
4 out of 5 is not good when it comes to launching rockets
Ah ... the engines come from
)
Ah ... the engines come from a stockpile, built some 30+ years ago by the Russians & kept in storage after purchase by a private businessman. It has the second highest specific impulse of any design ie. is quite a hot sucker as such gadgets go. There is a well known metal burn through problem, as the kero/LOX fuel mix is deliberately oxygen rich for reasons of pump cooling. The unburnt oxygen at high temperatures in the exhaust is very corrosive. The Russians had a process to combat that by using a special alloy lining, US efforts have avoided this design because of that problem. They were also going cheap ....
Sigh, you just know how this is going to go down.
Cheers, Mike
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
I just found out on the local
)
I just found out on the local news that the Planetary Resources, a Redmond-based asteroid mining company whose first experimental satellite was on that rocket and of course destroyed.
They are here in the same place as Microsoft.
Imagine all the mining we could have done if we did something on the Moon other than grabbing rocks and dust and never returning.
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/planetary-resources-vows-press-ahead-rocket-explosion/
http://www.planetaryresources.com/news/
and now another crash,this
)
and now another crash,this time from a private spacecraft.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo
RE: Well the main engine
)
Watching this launch was like reliving the Vanguard series of failures back in the late 50s. Finally they gave up and went to a military grade.