Space Station Resupply Rocket (unmanned) Explodes on Launch (October 28, 2014)

@oralloy,

Quote:

Their idea is to take the disposable fuel tank used in shuttle launches, stick 4 to 5 shuttle engines directly to the bottom of it, and call that a first stage. They still plan to have the two booster rockets on either side. The second stage will be a modernized version of one of the stages from the old Saturn program

do you notice a theme here? Are we seriously not able to do new stuff or is it that we are too cheap or lazy. I think there is a reason we are not seeing American Airlines pulling 707's out of the boneyard or asking Boeing to fire up a 707 assembly line.

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@hawkeye10,

the shuttle replacement vehicle is considerably smaller but lets remember, LEO is still the bugaboo for energy expenditure. Will early interplanetary travel be carried out by construction of interplanetary vehicles while in LEO's and then blasting off from there in more fuel efficient manner like ion engines?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

do you notice a theme here? Are we seriously not able to do new stuff or is it that we are too cheap or lazy.

It is cheapness. The overriding goal of the project is to reuse as much as possible in order to reduce design costs. They are even going to raid the space shuttles that are now in museums and take their engines for use in the first two launches of the new rocket.

And even with all that cost savings, the project is still being seriously underfunded by the government. It's being built, but much more slowly than planned.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

The overriding goal of the project is to reuse as much as possible in order to reduce design costs.

then how does SpaceX do what they do, on very little money?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

then how does SpaceX do what they do, on very little money?

They are only going to low earth orbit.

The big rocket that NASA is slowly developing is for building a permanent moon base or for sending humans on a trip to Mars.

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@oralloy,

I am not too familiar with space design but I know well the school of thought that doing much of anything big now is almost impossible to economically justify due to the costs created by government regulation and gaining a seal of approval from the courts. This is the biggest reason why High Speed Rail will not happen in the current regulatory environment regardless of how many times the politicians promise it. The insane liability risk that doers face now is another huge barrier. I think this idea of private space launches is one expensive disaster away from the end. It is clearly impossible for a private company to take on the liability of launching any nuclear material, another way that our liability environment dooms the governments plan to get into space on the cheap.

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@hawkeye10,

What happens there is the US govt helps in the indemnification of the private company for just such an occurrence. I think that helps give a financial boot to the private sector if the spector of a catastrophic claim is lifted a bit.

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@farmerman,

I think the government covers after $about $250 million . But the rate they pay for insurance on the first $250 million is based upon history, which is when the safety aware agency NASA did things, which is to say that there have been few launch claims. As we have events like the one in Alaska those rates are going to go up a lot.

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WP has a major piece on the hunch that the Soviet engines are not sound. I have not read it as I dont pay WP. It would be good to see what was replaced during renovations and what was not, but I have not seen this level or reporting on the problem yet.

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@hawkeye10,

It would not surprise me in the least if two or three years from now we get a report that the major cause of this failure was nasty combination of carelessness by the private contractor and lack oversight from NASA, That was the cause of the complete failure of a mars probe program a few years back and it sounds so much like the ObamaCare website fiasco.

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I know a lot of people hate FB but there are some good pix and commentary on the NASA Wallops Island page there.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

farmerman wrote:
The real problem is whether we still have any living "Rocket scientists"

NASA is still actively designing a successor to the space shuttle, but the government is underfunding the effort.

Their idea is to take the disposable fuel tank used in shuttle launches, stick 4 to 5 shuttle engines directly to the bottom of it, and call that a first stage. They still plan to have the two booster rockets on either side. The second stage will be a modernized version of one of the stages from the old Saturn program....

Interesting, but the thing is that they'd basically have to invent the Saturn V again. I've worked on a lot of technical projects and know that they couldn't just look at some old specs and know how to make them.

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@Brandon9000,

Yeah, few laymen understand that.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

farmerman wrote:
The real problem is whether we still have any living "Rocket scientists"

NASA is still actively designing a successor to the space shuttle, but the government is underfunding the effort.

Their idea is to take the disposable fuel tank used in shuttle launches, stick 4 to 5 shuttle engines directly to the bottom of it, and call that a first stage. They still plan to have the two booster rockets on either side. The second stage will be a modernized version of one of the stages from the old Saturn program.

Another possible returnee from the old Saturn program is the Saturn V main engine. The idea is to replace the solid rocket boosters with a pair of kerosene-burning boosters, each with two big Saturn V main engines in it.

They are going to do a test launch of the human space capsule from this rocket tomorrow morning.

Note though that they are NOT testing the rocket itself. The space capsule will be launched by one of the standard rockets for launching communication satellites.

Still, it's one more step.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

Quote:

Still, it's one more step.

With a lot of luck and more stable funding than NASA has received of late we should be able to get back to the moon in time to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Apollo 11.

YIPPIE!

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SpaceX lost yet another load today.....first off supplies on the station are getting low, and secondly this plan to use commercial launches to move stuff back and forth is yet another thing that NASA has failed at. I have sympathy for the people at NASA who need to deal with a dysfunctional Washington, needing to deal with constant change orders and never enough money to do even 50% of what they are tasked to do well, but maybe it is time to end NASA. We dont know what we want to do with them, they do little well, our days of being a superpower are ending. Maybe we bite the bullet now, admit that for the forseeable future maned space flight is for the Chinese to do, with their new buddies the Russians.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

SpaceX lost yet another load today.....first off supplies on the station are getting low, and secondly this plan to use commercial launches to move stuff back and forth is yet another thing that NASA has failed at.

I don't perceive the program as a failure.

If it is a failure though, I don't see how it is NASA's failure. The private contractors are the ones who are building these systems.

NASA is busy building a new rocket based on a combination of Space Shuttle and Saturn V tech.

hawkeye10 wrote:

I have sympathy for the people at NASA who need to deal with a dysfunctional Washington, needing to deal with constant change orders and never enough money to do even 50% of what they are tasked to do well, but maybe it is time to end NASA.

Who is going to design and operate our new rocket then?

hawkeye10 wrote:

We dont know what we want to do with them, they do little well,

I have no complaints over their performance.

hawkeye10 wrote:

our days of being a superpower are ending.

Our days as a superpower are just beginning.

hawkeye10 wrote:

Maybe we bite the bullet now, admit that for the forseeable future maned space flight is for the Chinese to do, with their new buddies the Russians.

Ceding space to the foes of freedom would be a setback for humanity.

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@oralloy,

This is the Third upply rocket that's failed. One Russain and two private. I believe th crew of the ISS have supplied till OCTOBER?
Who 's rocket is next?

The Falcon Rocket is still work in progress and perhaps of Nasa would provide some expertise in how these stage seperations need to be configured.

Weve got an entire planetary difference in electronics from just 20 yeaars ago, let alone from the days of the moon landings. However, the rocket technology is still the same. As I understood, th Falcon is a fairly slim vehicle so maybe theres a lot more force going on with such a moment arm involved. Of course, back in the old days wed go look at theO rings and fule tubes. I think the Fqlcon is a big firecracker, not one of Robt Goddards descendents.

Nope Im wrong. The Falcon 9 (the only one of the family thats "working"), is a LOX and gas generator engine MERLIN . SO, back to the issue of moment arm forces if the bunch of engines dont all fire precisely

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@farmerman,

Quote:

I believe th crew of the ISS have supplied till OCTOBER?

I read a report that they go into reserves in three weeks and run out sept 5.

NASA is sticking with the line they ran on the first two loses, the crew is fine, they plan for failed cargo missions, dont worry.

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Space Station Resupply Rocket (unmanned) Explodes on Launch (October 28, 2014)

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