Genesis Capsule Crashes; Chutes Blamed

Cyclotron_Boy writes "The Genesis probe (reported here) has crashed to the ground, near a road in the Utah desert. The stunt chopper pilots were not to blame, though. The drogue chute didn't open on re-entry. NASA TV is covering it currently. The choppers have landed near the probe, but no word yet as to the condition of the space dust." Many readers have also pointed to CNN's coverage. Update: 09/08 16:39 GMT by J : MSNBC has more coverage and a sad photo of the half-buried capsule: "The capsule broke open on impact. It was not yet clear whether the $260 million Genesis mission was ruined."

Hold off on blame

[FTL]

This was an interesting mission, but not a vital one. Thre was nobody on board, there were no missions that depended on the success of this mission. NASA was right to try to keep costs down and take some small gambles on this one.

I'd much rather NASA send up three cheaper/faster/riskier missions of which one crashes and two succeed, than send up one bullet-proof mission. So don't jump all over NASA for screwing up. If they didn't screw up now and again (on this type of mission), then they were clearly playing it too safe.

Sounds odd, but "Well done NASA". Keep it up.

Another grand example...

[bigirondawg]

... of the fallacy of the "faster, better, cheaper" policy that NASA had started to implement in the past. I mean, designing a spacecraft where multiple stages of parachutes were all single points of failure? That's just not thinking ahead. Something always goes wrong on every mission, and if that something is even one of the parachutes, then your mission fails.

I'm all for being more efficient, but there are some corners you just shouldn't cut.

Re:The disturbing thing....

[flux]

At 100 mph a sea might not be that much better thing to impact anyway. Plus this way they know where it is; I would imagine the capsule to be heavier than water, thus it would sink into the ocean, turning the capsule capture mission into deep sea exploration one..

Yeah right

[jayhawk88]

"The capsule broke open on impact. It was not yet clear whether the $260 million Genesis mission was ruined."

Any time the press in mentioning the price tag in their headlines, you know you're screwed.

Re:Failure timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

"Space Ain't Easy." ...but it's necessary.

Re:On MSNBC Too! *sigh*

[Barlo_Mung_42]

No, on Fox news the headline would be "Kerry's vote against funding results in more disaster."

Re:Failure timeline

[balster neb]

But seriosly, anyone else here feels real sad about this? Just seeing the wreckage of this fairly high tech thing lying in the desert sand. There were a lot of high hopes for this fairly interesting scientific experiment.

Forget the lost money -- the folks behind the probe at NASA must be feeling terrible seeing years of hard work lying broken and half buried in the sand.

Sure, this is a relatively small failure (compared to say, Columbia), but anything of this sort is sad.

Re:Pictures of it happening?

[el-spectre]

Yeah, check nasa TV, they've got the whole reentry. The actual impact is missed, I guess the cameraman was panning and zooming, but 100mph straight down is hard to focus on.

OK, so now what? Repurcussions?

[Thalia]

Well, it failed. The entire project, >$200M may have been toasted. What are the options?

1. Find a scapegoat. Claim the entire waste was due to some employee, subcontractor, part, etc.
2. Claim success. Claim that the real mission was accomplished, that all the data was salvaged, and that nothing particularly went wrong.
3. Claim providence. Show uncertainty. Emphasis on how hard the problem was to accomplish. Use big numbers. Ask to try again.

And then you have to think of the correct response:

1. Penalize NASA. The project failed due to NASA error, and NASA must figure out how not to fail. Error causes less funding. Success good. Failure bad.
2. Reward NASA. There is now more work to be done than if the probe were caught. Time to build another one, just like the last one. There is no fear in failure.

Is there a correct answer?

Re:Failure timeline

[jafac]

Note to self:
For subsequent capsule re-entry operations, include a redundant RF-remote override for firing of pyros for chute.

Thank God this thing was unmanned.

Re:Hold off on blame

[John Miles]

I do it a dozen times on the weekend

After spending three years in space being repetitively frozen, superheated, and irradiated?

Re:Failure timeline

[anubi]

RobertB: You are so right about these projects not at all being easy.

They are at the cutting-edge of cutting-edge technology.

I noticed one poster joking about NASA having a 0.500 batting average. You know, when you consider what kind of game NASA is playing and the complexity of the playing field, 0.500 sounds damn good to even me, and they have been doing a helluva lot better than that.

I think you must have worked in the arena in the technical area to have had the insight on just how complex the issues are. Very few can appreciate the job JPL/NASA have done until they have been intimately involved in it. Once someone comes to term with the complexity and the unforgiving realities of natural laws governing mission success or failure, one understands why engineers and scientists cannot always be the obedient underlings the Dan Goldin types would like us to be.

Even with our best work, we cannot guarantee success - all we can do is get the statistical weights of success more in our favor. Even with our utmost care and attention, there are still so many things that can possibly go wrong.

Like anything else though, even if the thing we worked on failed, we still learn a helluva lot on how to do it better next time.

To me, the greatest tragedy is when we lose one of our guys, through accident, layoff, or retirement, because that represents a total loss of all the accumulated experience of that individual. Everything else can be replaced, but the experience and knowledge gained from it is priceless.

Re:Failure timeline

[jerde]

it looked to me that, even when the capsule was just a bright dot with changing luminosity, it was spinning at much higher than 15 rpm. More like 60 - 80 rpm.

If it were spinning the way it was supposed to, you wouldn't have been able to see it: it was supposed to spin neatly around its axis, for stability. (Like a flying saucer spinning)

Instead, it lost aerodynamic stability altogether, and started tumbling randomly in all directions, which is what you saw. I think once it started tumbling, all hope was lost, since the G-forces of re-entry were jolting the insides in all different directions as it tumbled. Some of those forces might have been even higher than what it encountered on impact.

(i.e. you don't want to be spinning in different directions as you're doing a 30-G descent) :(

- Peter

Re:Failure timeline

[karstux]

>> Thank God this thing was unmanned.

Well, a manned craft probably wouldn't have had this problem: Surely there would have been manual override controls.

This is precisely why probes and other un-manned spacecraft will never completely replace manned missions: If thinngs happen out of schedule, or different from a predicted sequence, a human will always be able to find a creative solution.

Re:Failure timeline

[edsarkiss]

When I was watching the thing via the long-range camera on NASA TV, it looked to me that, even when the capsule was just a bright dot with changing luminosity, it was spinning at much higher than 15 rpm. More like 60 - 80 rpm.

you would have a hard time seeing even 15rpm watching tv (30 fields/sec), let alone "60-80".

why do i even read the comments on slashdot?

Re:Failure timeline

[cpt kangarooski]

Because they aimed.

It's not as though we just deorbit stuff and pray like hell that it lands somewhere reasonable. This is why we had ships hanging around where our early capsules landed, why the Russians could get their capsules to land in Russia, and why the Shuttle, when not exploding, lands safely at any of a few predictable locations.

We certainly don't have a worldwide sky of helicopters, so they'd better well have aimed this thing towards the few (or one) copters they had to capture it.

It's not that hard.

It's only when we're not carefully controlling things -- like meteors, Skylabs and such, that they land all over the place. And even then we can make some guesses.

Re:Space.com coverage

[TehHustler]

Shit i would appear to have taken your post the wrong way. I thought it meant no trophies for the pilots because they failed to catch it, but you meant because they didnt get their moment of glory so to speak. Apologies, im a prick.

Re:Failure timeline

[kevlar]

Well the problem with NASA is it has severe budget problems. The organization hemorrhages millions of dollars and they don't know where. When organizations can't account of millions of dollars missing, its a definite sign of fraud. People at NASA are embezzling tax payer dollars and as much as I love NASA and what they stand for, I don't want more money to end up in their pockets.

I'd much rather we provide grants to comericial companies like Scaled Composites where you can gauge results better.

Obviously NASA is not going away and they shouldn't, but they have severe budget problems.

Re:Hold off on blame

[Kiryat Malachi]

So you've never heard of vacuum welds, the fact that this craft went comparatively close to the sun and thus experienced high thermal gradients (and no, constant heat gains aren't as nasty as expansion/contraction cycles, but a constant thermal gradient is still bad), heavy solar radiation (or did you forget those massive solar flares that would have wailed all over this craft?), micrometeorites and all the other crap that goes on in space?

Space is a *nasty* environment, and is in no way shape or form benign.

Re:OK, so now what? Repurcussions?

[georgewilliamherbert]

Should also fire all these quack jobs that think parachutes are the answer to everything. This isn't a freaking $260 million egg-drop contest. Kinda sad that these engineers would lose to most 4th graders. If it is landing in the desert, use thrusters, sheesh.

No.

Historically, parachutes are about an order of magnitude more reliable in practice than landing thruster rockets.

Parachtues just have to fire the deploy pyro and not get tangled up, and you can have more than one in case one gets tangled up.

With rockets, you have to control the orientation so you're thrusting down, you have to measure the altitude so that you slow down to land softly, the rocket motors have to start and run reliably, etc.

Please leave spacecraft design to people who actually study it. Knee-jerk uninformed reactions aren't going to help. It broke, but why it broke and the implications and possible lessons are important. Read some more.

Re:really sad day

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, I've seen this happen several times, and the common thread has been Lockheed's involvement. I know it is probably unfair to make this generalization, but they were responsible for the Hubble debacle (as integrator), the lost science on Galilleo (stuck HGA, low data rate), Mars Polar Land, and several other failed unmanned probes. If you look at the string of failures, it makes one wonder if the NASA/JPL administrators that evaluate contractors' proposals for these missions actually look at the track record of the contractors. It sure doesn't look like Lockheed knows how to build unmanned science platforms that get the job done.

Re:Failure timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit water it's more like, 'splat', then various pieces sink. I'm pretty sure hitting water that fast is as bad as hitting ground.

Re:Failure timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

miracles they performed in getting Men to and from the moon several times without a single fatality.

I guess you're not counting the three men who died on the launch pad in the Apollo 1 tragedy [nasa.gov]...

Nope, I havn't read the book, nor do I intend to

[Teancum]

No, I havn't. I havn't even had a real desire although I've seen the movie on network television. Yeah, I know that Hollywood tends to ruin good books (like Starship Troopers, as a good example), but even then there have been many other books that I've rather wanted to read first.

Still, I do see the relationship here to the basic story, but I also consider it to be totally bogus that any DNA life form from space is going to have any real impact on the Earth. I think the Earth would be considered the harmful biological hell hole that you would want to avoid, avoid, avoid if you were from another world. Most forms of DNA from outer space would be eaten alive (litterally) by most of the critters on this planet. The climate zone you landed in would only specify the length of time that it took.

While it would seem like a good SF, there are a number of reasons to believe that life forms raised on this planet would be much stronger, faster, swifter, and smarter than just about anywhere else. I won't elaborate here at the moment.

Re:Failure timeline

[anubi]

There was one heck of a "paradigm shift" ( to use management words ) that took place in the 90's. You must have seen it too.

Engineering wasn't all that got hit. Our factories took it hard. We all got to hear that "whooshing sound" Ross Perot spoke of.

Being able to do something special wasn't valued much anymore as we strove for commodification of the labor market. No-one seems valued much for being able to make things work anymore, what seems valued highly are the "people skills" to tell someone else to do it.

We are spawning off a generation of people who barely know how to use something, much less fix it if it breaks. Who among us can fix a broken TV... or even explain to their kid how it works? ( I pick that because I used to fix TV's at the neighborhood fixit shop for fun when I was a kid.)

I am seeing such a mad rush today to adopt technology without a prerequisite understanding of how that technology works.

I feel it started with the transistor radio, as soon after they came out, it became the norm to just toss it when it breaks. Soon thereafter, nobody included schematics with the purchase of an electronic product.

I still have my old "Technical Manuals" that came with my original PC... Not only did they have the wiring diagram for each card in the book, they also had SOURCE CODE of the BIOS!!!

Things are different today. We are expected to use things without understanding how they work.

I remember well when the "managementization craze" hit our little aerospace company. Everything changed from us understanding exactly what we were doing, and trying our best to do it right the first time, to trying to do it under ever decreasing cost goals.

Ever tried to take a timed test where the instructor gives you a bit more work to do than you have time for? Yes, it is a good way to make sure not a minute is wasted - but then, one is very apt to make mistakes one should have not made.

In the space exploration world, the only passing grade is 100%. Genesis got a point knocked off for some little doodad in its drogue chute system malfunctioning after an otherwise perfect score.

Am I a little bitter... yes.

I was one of those guys who did not go well with management techniques when they got in the way of doing something right. It takes me a lot of time to work with something long enough to understand it to a point I really feel comfortable with it. It became the order of the day to have someone constantly lording over me and goading me on with books full of charge numbers and accounting systems to manage me by the hour on how long I am allocated to work on something.

It became just like that timed test...

How do I tell someone making twice as much money as I am to buzz off? The company has kinda made it obvious whose expertise is more valuable.

There was a day when each of us techies felt we were an indispensable member of a team, and each of us relied on each other much like components of a race car.

As we became commoditized and interchangeable, something happened to my "inner drive". I feel I am just another nut in the box.

I've seen this psychological warfare going on in the workplace, as the manager types strip us of our individuality to make us all look like commodity parts. We have to act the same, dress the same, look the same, and spend our day in identical cubicles like rows of laying hens.

Remember when engineers worked in labs, not cubicles?