Brazilian Rocket Explodes on Launch Pad

steman writes "BBC News Online says that 16 people have been killed and a Brazillian space rocket was destroyed in an explosion in Brazil. It seems that the space race is heating up again, with many countries getting involved such as China, Europe and Japan to name just three. Will the future of space exploration be dominated by names other than Russia and the USA?"

space race heating up is a good thing

[net_bh]

There is nothing wrong with other nations developing their space technology. Sure, the naysayers will frown upon this and say that this will be used in ICBMs but we cant be elitist anymore.

In the long run, the US and Russia alone cannot run the International Space Station....they just cant afford it. This will give other nations a change to chip in.

Ofcourse this being /., there will be a barrage of posts saying that China, Brazil, India, etc. should concentrate on feeding their people and improving human rights situation. So much for intelligent, objective conversations...sigh.

progress

[milliyear]

I predict that someday, one of these 'newcomers' to the space race will invent some radical new concept in the design/manufacture/launching of rockets, that will eventually be adopted by the USA and others. But they, too, will suffer their share of failures along the way.

Condolences to the people killed/injured and their families, and hoping they did not die in vain and the Brazilian Space Program and all others will continue.

Offtopic: not a country - yet

[pwarf]

Okay, the writing is a little sloppy.

However, the slip was understandable in this case given that for the purposes of space exploration and research Europe acts as if it were a single country through the ESA.

Also, calling Europe a country is really just extrapolating based upon current trends. EU member states have given a surprising amount of sovereignty away to the union as a whole, and the current setup looks like it invites a gradual erosion of national sovereignty in favor of centralized power.

Of course, significant cultural differences may slow unification, but increased immigration rates needed to compensate for falling native birth rates may quickly reduce cultural differences between European countries.

I expect the EU to essentially be a single country within my lifetime.

Do Europeans forsee an inevitable centralization of power until the EU acts like a central country, or is there a limiting factor to centralization that I missed?

Re:What Space Race?

[evilWurst]

Your points are all good, but don't tie in to each other. The Chinese and Indian programs will heat up the political space race, but not the economic one. The lack of business Boeing complained about was commercial/civilian satellites - mergers have cut back on television satellites, and major failures like Iridium have cut down on demand for communications satellites.

With China, India, and Brazil able to launch satellites, that's even more suppliers, and therefore potentially less business for Boeing. Those countries will eventually want to launch more satellites, both civilian and military, but they'll be doing it themselves, not contracting it out to the US, EU, or Russia. Similarly, the EU equivalent of GPS will be launched by EU rockets.

I still want to see that space elevator cable built...

Re:Europe is a continent

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but there is no journalism without agenda. Hell, there is no science without an agenda.

Why? Because human beings always have an agenda and it's the human beings who do the reporting and science.

However, serious journalists and scientists are often either consciously or unconsciously motivated by the need for respect and reputation. Since the science and journalism are fundamentally self-correcting by peer review, you'll get neither respect or reputation in the long run if you twist the reporting too much. Witness the debacle at the New York Times.

In BBC's case, no-one has been able to show that the coverage by BBC has been false or even remotely as twisted and sexed up as the governments' version of the events. Quite the opposite, actually.

Re:Interesting commentary on the article

[grozzie2]

The first space program ran in the 40's, it was used to hurl missles from continental europe into england. Historically the failure rate on the V-2 program was approximately 20%.

After the war, those engineers ended up in the USA and started building bigger/better missles, with an undisclosed, but miserable, rate of failure. Eventually they sort of got it under control, and the Mercury and Gemini programs were launched with much fanfare, and a pretty decent success rate.

The apollo program followed, and there were 2 failures during the apollo program. The first burned on the pad resulting in the loss of the crew. The second failure was on apollo 13. Ingenuity, hard work, duct tape, and luck, prevented a loss of life during that mission. Overall, the combined failure rate for the 3 programs was in the range of 5 %.

During the same time period, the Russian program progressed with it's own set of problems. It's to late in the evening to go try dig up numbers, but it's a reasonable guesstimate that thier failure rate was on par or higher than the equivalent in the USA at the time, 5% or so.

The space shuttle program has been ongoing for 20 odd years, with it's own set of failures. Statistically speaking, the mission failure rate for the shuttle is on the order of 2%.

The data is pretty conclusive. Playing with rockets is dangerous stuff, they do blow up once in a while. The trend is pretty clear, the technology is improving, and the next generation of space launchers should be able to achieve a mission failure rate of sub 1% on current trends.

We live at the bottom of a very deep gravity well, and there is a price to pay in escaping that well. It's not a good day to hear/read about another failure, but, as long as folks keep looking up, they will keep trying, and, eventually, somebody will come up with a more reliable propulsion method that is capable of escaping our gravity well, without strapping folks on top of many tons of high explosives, and lighting the fuse.

Technology has a tendancy to mature very rapidly during times of war. The trend on launch vehicle reliability suggests that it'll be another 2 generations before it's an item we can take for granted, like an airplane today. Cant help but wonder if the political landscape will break that trend, like it did for the trend in aviation development between 1939 and 1945.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Arianespace, Europe's commercial launch service, estimates its marketshare in the satellite launch business to be 50%. In that light it is a little yesterdayish to ask if there will be other players but USA and Russia in the future of space exploration. Plus it is not unlikely, despite the current trend in the US to go alone and try to become as independent as possible, that future space missions will require new levels of global cooperation to become feasible economically and know-how wise.

Re:Like, WTF?

[TomV]

I think the point that you're missing is that people died

It seems to me that the next 22 characters, completing the sentence you part-quoted: " (no sex, no story...)" suggests rather strongly that Lshmael, far from missing the point, hit a very clean bullseye.

Here in the UK, we regularly get news along the lines of "something trivial happened in Lancashire, something fairly dull happened in Kent, some minor stuff went down in Dyfed, and in other news, 12,000 people died in a disaster on another continent; no Britons are thought to be involved". I'm sure whichever country you call home exhibits the same tendency.

TomV

Re:Since when...

[presroi]

I'm living in Frankfurt/Germany. Last month I was at a study session in Strasbourg/France. I could have left my passport or my ID card at home. As long as your skin is white enough, borders within the Schengen countries [auswaertiges-amt.de] do not apply to you. You enter the train in - let's say Karlsruhe - and you leave it in Strasbourg without having noticed a thing called "border".

If I were a German of turkish origin, my experience would be totally different. German or French border police would have picked me up, would have checked my passport and maybe my pockets.

Under these circumstances, it might be arrogant to say ist but for me as some kind of WASP, Europe has become one country.

If you take it from a legal perspective, there is more evidence. About 50 per cent of the new laws in 'the German part of Europe' are more or less ratifications from European ones.

Well, and nobody can take away my optimism that this European Constitution [eu.int] will come into effect soon. (Actually, this is not the first European Constitution but this is the first time they call it that way).

The Republic of Texas....

[waferhead]

Actually Texas is a odd case, as It CAN secede,
as it was an independant Republic prior to becoming a state.

It can also split itself into up to 5 states.

There have been some interesting studies done (usually someones final year project in college) that makes it appear Texas would be a very powerful country in its own right if it did secede.

I don't believe those still apply to Texas

[jfern]

After the Civil War, Texas had to be re-admitted to the United States , and I don't think those provisions were included then.

Re:Since when...

[Kryptoff]

Apart from the fact that European Union != Europe, I would like to stress the fact that there are a lot more countries that have space programs and astronauts.

Shameless plug for my country: Here [spacefacts.de] you can read about a Romanian astronaut. :-)

Re:Since when...

[presroi]

I have nothing in common with lets say someone from Italy other than currency and open boarders as an european.

This would be a good point if I had declared Europe as one *nation* rather than one *country*.

Go back 50 years in history when the German constitution was made. The free state of bavaria did not agree to this constitution - claiming the same as you did. From 'their' perspective, they did not have anything in common with people from northern Germany.

On my passport as a dane it says Danish citizen, not a citizen of european union.....

Look at Article 8 of the Draft Constitution of the European Union. Here is a link to the dansk version [eu.int].


Article 8: Citizenship of the Union
1. Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union
shall be additional to national citizenship; it shall not replace it.

Re:Since when...

[nusuth]

I'm a Turkish citizen with Turkic origin. I never had to show my passport during my travels inside Schengen countries since, I guess, 1995. And I didn't try not showing it either. You attribute too much racism to EU. Germany, in my experience, is by far the most racist of the bunch and you now it is not really that much.

The visa process is another matter though. I hate to have to prove my EU-entry-worthiness each and every time I want to travel there. A visa from Germany is the hardest to get but I think that has more to do with number of turkish immigrants there than racist policies.

just a little of information

[protomala]

There isn't much news about the explosion or victims names because the base is military and they want to check everthing (because body reconizition is now impossible, not much left unhappily) before going to media (i quite understand in this case). Most workers where from Sao Bernardo dos Campos, a city from the Sao Paulo state and where changed to Alcantara base for the launch. The explosion (even the fire) could be seen from many kilometers. The Alcantara base is just probally the best rocket launch base in the world. It's just very near to equator line and have a excelent climate, so you can launch things all year. USA tryied to use this base, but they tryied to make a deal where their containers could not be checked when entering Brazil or their personal could not talk to anyone. So it was going to be a american base in Brazil as in many europeans and gulf countries... well here we don't like this kind of thing (Brazil only looses to Jordania as the country that most dislike americans) and have a history of not allowing this kind of thing, so the deal was cancelled. Now we are trying to reach a deal with Ucrania that would make both countries change technology and bases use. In the end I think the important thing is that as the UN bombing, most people is going to keep working in memory of their dead friends. Explosions happens, it happened a lot for USA, Russia, etc, even that they where masked by cold-war. My toughts for the families. And my wish to keep trying to explore space (yes, I like star trek).

Re:Brazil

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that you...

• ...are frustrated because you cannot fit in any manner into Brazilian society due to your lack of minimal social skills (although people tell me that it is truely effortless when compared to other attempts to socialize in different cultures)?
• ...think that knowing differential calculus is a plus and that you are grossly undervalued (as a person) in Brazil because Brazilians actually do not really give a shit for your mastery in calculus and other more obscure and highly specialized math topics and, more important, just realized that you will never get paid accordingly, in whatever field of work you do because the Brazilian mind-set rarely pays a premium for it?
• ...are extremely disgusted by the sloppy public administration and the services it provides and cannot get things done?

While I do not appreciate the tone of your post (a flamebait -- you like getting attention, don't you???), I respect your views and the courage/insanity to express them in such a non-diplomatic way.

And Brazilians have a different mind-set. Learn to live with that, because your attempts to change it will fail, mostly because while in Brazil, you'll be surrounded by some 250 million people that think otherwise.

Re:Like, WTF?

[freeweed]

Interestingly, about as many people (~20) died in this Brazilian accident as died in the history of NASA events (17)

I think this shows just why no other country has gotten as far along in its space program as the USA, and no, it's not just blind luck.

All the usual "hey, let's bash an entire nation of 300 million just because one guy made a silly submission to some geek website" bashing cannot replace the fact that the US did (most of) it first, and did all of it best.

And no, I'm not an American.

Re:Brazil

[Molina the Bofh]

I've always lived in both Brazil and US. I have more contact with Brazilians from Sao Paulo and Americans from the eastern coast (DE, NJ, MD, PA).

That said, I guess, from my experience, I have some authority to disagree with some points from your posting.

Brazilians are more disorganized, yes, mostly. But one thing about Brazil that cannot be forgotten: It's a multi-faced country.

While some areas, like some north-eastern cities can be [almost] as poor as most African coutries, other cities like Sao Paulo mix some beggars with extremely wealthy people. Well, they don't really mix, as they live two worlds apart. The poorest people can't possibly grasp the life of a rich one. And that's the problem.

Social distribution is very bad, and that leads to a big distortion. Not an easy problem to solve.

Anyway, I know of an American company that, despite all red tape, prefers to hire Brazilians than Americans, because they think Brazilians are more hard working. So, their oppinion differs from yours.

But why does it differ ? Maybe you have had contact with just one "type" of Brazilian. You may be aware that inside Brazil the "paulistas" (those from Sao Paulo) are known for working hard.

Sao Paulo reminds me of NYC. Just with more homeless, more trash on the pavement, more violence (due to social distortion) but's that's basically it. Most people in Sao Paulo are hard workers. It's actually Brazil's economic capital. Lots of choppers there. Its helicopter fleet one of the biggest in the world, second only to Tokyo.

You said you live in Rio. So you had most contact with happy-go-lucky cariocas. I'm not saying all hard-working Brazilians live only in Sao Paulo, just making a generalization. Generally speaking, paulistas tend to work more than cariocas. Of course there are exceptions.

And, yes, there ARE buzzcut, Coke-bottle bi-focal, white button-down Oxford, pocket protector wearing, STRAIGHT-LACED, ANAL RETENTIVE, NO SOCIAL LIFE HAVING NERDS in Brazil. Think about ITA, one of the hardest universities in Brazil. It has a very hard entrancy test, in wich there's about 70 elite candidates per vacancy. The ones that manage to join ITA are trully nerds. BTW, ITA stands for Instituto Tecnico da Aeronautica, and they did help building this rocket.

For more info about Sao Paulo (in English), please read
http://www.fragilecologies.com/jul09_97.html [fragilecologies.com]
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/saopaulo/2851 010001.html [frommers.com]
http://www.skyscrapers.com/re/en/wm/ci/101076/ [skyscrapers.com]

Countries???

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Boeing and Mitsubishi?

The World Bank wants an end to "socialized" space exploration like NASA.

That's why privitization forces in the US have been cutting NASA funding over the last decade.

In the future, all space exploration will be done by multinationals driven by profit motive (not "science").

Hell, in the future all WARS will be fought by multinational corporations. Nations will still exist, but they'll be mercenary forces to supplant Corporate Security. 1/10th of the US presence in Iraq are "private security forces".

(And of course we all know now the reason for invading Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism or ANY Iraq-led threat to US people or properties. Or fucked up, profit-driven foreign policy that "spreads Democracy" about as much as the Catholic Church spreads food to Africans not willing to convert)

Personal Reflection on Brazil

[Teancum]

As an American that has lived in Brazil, I would have to agree that Brazilians do have a strong distrust of the American government but love American culture and people.

There were many times people would come up to me, seeing that I was an American, and try to strike up a conversation and learn about who I was and were I came from. American music groups and movies are heard and seen throughout Brazil, (in addition to many local groups and productions that are outstanding) and a very common second language to learn in the public schools is English. I ended up meeting several High School English teachers, several of whom wanted to practice their English skills with me (all while I was trying to practice and learn Portuguese).

I will agree that the U.S. government policies toward Latin America in general are simply terrible and show a very strong colonial attitude (as in Latin American countries are treated as though they are colonies of the USA...I do know better). There is also a very strong tendancy of US foriegn and trade policy being set up to compete with Pacific Rim countries, Europe, and the Middle East, and Latin America in general gets screwed over because of the overly broad policies set up due to its relations with other world powers.

For Brazil in particluar, historically it has been a very faithful ally of the USA, and was the only Latin American country to send soldiers into battle during WWII (they had a couple of major engagements in northern Italy against the Third Reich...well, major for Brazil, and would have been headline international news if it weren't for other battles elsewhere at the same time). The Brazilian military is still quite friendly with the US military, but that fact politically in Brazil is more of a liability than an asset right now.

One particular issue I remember back during the Reagan Administration was in regards to shoe import tarriffs. There were a bunch of shoe manufacturers in New England in the 1980s that were having a really hard time competing against international manufactuers, especially because making shoes requires quite a bit manual labor to produce each shoe. Rather than admitting that paying $20/hour for unionized labor (and everything else that brings up...just don't think I'm anti-union however) and considering they are compeating against countries that have laborers that earning less than $10 per day, the shoe manufactures tried to substantially increase the import tarriffs to something like 300% tax on imported goods.

At that time about half of the shoes sold in America were made in Brazil. What actually happended was that no only did the price of the imported shoes go up (the desired affect), but the price of the domestic shoes also went up. Demand for shoe purchases dropped almost overnight, and huge numbers of shoe factories in Brazil shut down for more than a decade, sometimes permanently. Of course these shoe workers were pissed at US policy. And this was something that, to be honest, most US citizens didn't really care about anyway, and would prefer the cheaper shoes as well, even if they did come from Brazil. BTW, those American shoe companies that "needed" that tarriff protection: they closed up shop anyway, or moved production to some place like Malaysia or Singapore.

Another incident that I had while living in Brazil: I had lived in Brazil for almost two years and had over time aquired a pretty good suntan (seasonally too, because summer is between December and March), as well as some more local clothing. I was walking in downtown Sao Paulo with a native-born Brazilian and mistaken for a local myself. A Texan with a traditional 30-gallon cowboy hat, 150 lbs. overweight, wearing blue jeans (Levi's), a bolo tie, and a huge 10 lbs. belt buckle with the words "Don't mess with Texas", came up to me and said something that I considered rather insulting in English. Then he said something like "Why can't y'all learn how to speak a real language". I can't remember exactly what he asked, but even tho

Re:The Republic of Texas....

[L. J. Beauregard]

The Texas Constitution still has the provision to divide the state into five smaller ones. It does require the consent of Congress, though, and I don't know if that's still in force; there'd be no particular reason to repeal it, though, even with the "readmission" after The Woah.