Antares Rocket Explodes On Launch 443
sneakyimp writes: The Antares rocket operated by Orbital Sciences Corporation exploded on launch due to a "catastrophic anomaly" after a flawless countdown. No injuries are reported and all personnel are accounted for. According to the audio stream hosted by local news affiliate WTVR's website, the Cygnus spacecraft contained classified crypto technology and efforts are being made to cordon off the wreckage area. Additionally, interviews of personnel and witness reports are to be limited to appropriate government agencies so that an accident report can be generated. This accident is likely to have a detrimental effect on the stock price of Orbital Sciences Corp, traded on the NYSE. The Antares rocket's engines are based on old soviet designs from the '60s. While this is sure to be a blow to NASA due to the cost, it may well boost the fortunes of SpaceX, a chief competitor of Orbital Sciences. Both companies were recently awarded resupply contracts by NASA.
Flawless Countdown (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, at least they got the hard part right.
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Tech1: "Ten, nine, eight, ... um "
Tech2: "Seven, Bob"
Tech1: "Oh yeah, seven, six, ...
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Re:Flawless Countdown (Score:4, Interesting)
Elon Musk Called it Two Years Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon Musk called it two years ago in this interview [wired.com].
Musk: The results are pretty crazy. One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.
Re:Elon Musk Called it Two Years Ago (Score:5, Informative)
This is largely Orbital's *schtick*: they are basically in the business of repurposing old, obsolete hardware, and using them for launch vehicles. Antares is the follow-on to Taurus, and Pegasus and Minotaur are repurposed Peacekeeper stages. They're cheap. But they're really not in competition with SpaceX, because Orbital launches mainly smaller payloads.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Insightful)
Payload, plus collateral damage, plus market capitalization loss, plus reputation damage, plus value of future lost contracts, etc. $1B might actually be on the low side.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty sure NASA has blown more on Constellation, Orion and SLS, launchers to no where that never launch, than SpaceX has spent on successful development of 2 new rockets and Dragon1, and will probably spend on Falcon Heavy, Dragon 2 and their reusable program.
NASA's problem is not insufficient funding. Its inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors, and the inability to build or do much of anything in the vacinity of its manned space program. JPL and a few others places are doing fine but they are an exception to the rule.
Some people at Orbital probably do need to be sacked for trying to use 40+ year old Russian engines, the engines are actually that old not just the design. Some people at NASA probably should be sacked for buying in to a contractor proposing such a flawed concept.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Informative)
You know, it's that same old regurgitated bullshit. And it smells like it.
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
Let me underscore that part for you
_anything_ that West has to offer.
They have closed circuit rocket engine technology. By definition, that is going to be at least about 15% more efficient than any open circuit that is the only technology west has in orbital lifting rocket engines. Thanks for private corporation known as Lockheed Martin, that didn't believe that closed circuit was possible to do until Russians literally put a working engine in their lab and test fired it for them in 2000s. Because it was too inefficient to research the technology in more detail. Russians had to blow up something like 30 rockets to get it right. Tolerance limits on closed circuit are apparently far more tight, and that's not just the engine but all the relevant systems.
Private sector is really good at developing off existing base level development to practical development, but it's utterly terrible at actual base level development that is needed for practical development, but doesn't result in practical applications on its own. That's why much if not most if that kind of development is done in universities and government labs. And rocket engines are in desperate need of base research right now because of long term lack of funding. This has nothing to do with "inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors" or anything of a sorts. It has everything to do with the fact that they were given no funding to develop baseline research for better rocket engine technology.
Private corporations will have to blow up their share of rockets to get it right. They're banking on better simulation software in existence, but that can't simulate everything due to sheer amount of unknowns or uncertainties when it comes to rocket science. That's why rocket science is HARD, even by modern standards.
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The design is great, no problem with using it today, why screw with what works.
OTOH, the engines themselves are 40 years old. That is a different story. They were made and have just been sitting in storage. 40 years is a long time for things to go wrong bad. Apparently they were not sufficiently re-conditioned before use.
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Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
It seems to me that in order to be better, they have to deliver their payload, and not explode. When they blow up, their effectiveness falls off to zero real quick.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, western engines don't blow up on launch half as well as these do!
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
Define "better".
They have closed circuit rocket engine technology. By definition, that is going to be at least about 15% more efficient than any open circuit that is the only technology west has in orbital lifting rocket engines.
Bullshit. SSME uses the same cycle. With LH2/LOX, no less. But why do you care about the technology? I don't think it matters HOW the launch is accomplished as long as the costs are as low as possible. Whatever works and is cheap and sustainable is better than fancy stuff that's expensive. Whether fancy stuff is desirable is dependent on what it brings and what it costs. Unless you can make it work cheaply enough, it's not worth it.
Thanks for private corporation known as Lockheed Martin, that didn't believe that closed circuit was possible to do until Russians literally put a working engine in their lab and test fired it for them in 2000s.
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about! As I said, the Space Shuttle had been using this for two decades by then. And The Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator by Rocketdyne was even more advanced, and is basically what SpaceX is working on now.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Funny)
Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer... Russians had to blow up something like 30 rockets to get it right.
Make that 31.
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Not quite single use. From what I remember even though the engines were originally meant for a non-reusable rocket, they were manufactured to withstand up to 15 firings. Kusnetsov overengineered them for prospective future use. Thus Aerojet would be able to test-fire each engine several times before passing them to Orbital Sciences.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm only repeating what a couple of different experts interviewed on the subject said. I did a little research, it seems that explosive failures are usually not connected to the engines but rather the fuel supply or storage system.
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Do you know WHY they use 40+ year old Russian engines? Because they are better than anything West has to offer.
It seems to me that in order to be better, they have to deliver their payload, and not explode. When they blow up, their effectiveness falls off to zero real quick.
From what I understand, the rocket was veering off course, so they activated a self-destruct mechanism.
Re:That's the part that "counts" (groan) (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA's problem is not insufficient funding. Its inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, corrupt contractors, and the inability to build or do much of anything in the vacinity of its manned space program.
And the Congress/Senate. They've both been requiring them to do stuff that protects existing pork projects AND constantly cutting their funding.
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The whole "commercial" launch thing is a misnomer. It's business as usual, except that this time NASA does less micromanagement, and there are some new faces at the table. That's all.
And the contracts won't be cost-plus, meaning the contractors don't have a blank check and projects will actually have to stay on budget. There may be legitimate arguments why this is a bad idea for a national space program (personally, I disagree), but it does represent a rather large change from the way launches were done in
Re:Flawless Countdown (Score:5, Funny)
Other companies don't use systemd.
Orbital (Score:5, Interesting)
I have friends that worked on this rocket. Some were there for the launch. Orbital is going to have serious problems because of this.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Informative)
Ya think? They're charging 1.9B for 8 launches, versus SpaceX's 1.6B for 12. Loss of vehicle on a production launch is going to rain hell on someone.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Informative)
And it's not the first time they've blown up rockets rather than shooting them into space.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not the first time they've blown up rockets rather than shooting them into space.
Well, yes, but that happens to everyone in the launch business, including SpaceX [floridatoday.com]. Doing it on production launch is not good for business though.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, I'm not sure we have enough data yet to make statistically valid characterizations of each company's relative reliability.
Re: Orbital (Score:4, Informative)
You can insure against loss of payload on launch. [wikipedia.org]
I would expect that Orbital Sciences is liable for damage to the payload and had insured themselves, but I have no direct knowledge. Even if they are covered for direct costs, it is still bad for them.
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Yes you can, and at those prices you factor the insurance cost into the launch cost. The more times a payl;oad has been lost on a platform, the more expensive it becomes to insure a payload on that platform. So this explosion has increased the actual cost to customers of future launches by orbital.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the mechanics of the two things can be very similar.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Orbital (Score:5, Interesting)
Ya think? They're charging 1.9B for 8 launches, versus SpaceX's 1.6B for 12. Loss of vehicle on a production launch is going to rain hell on someone.
“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
John Glenn
I suppose buying from the higher bidder does not guarantee better performance. One thing you can be sure of, the bozos who gave Orbital the contract will be first among those to escape unscathed from this FUBAR.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to popular bullshit propaganda, the popular U.S. rocket launches are all done by businesses, not NASA. NASA provides program management, mission design for their own payloads, and so on, but they were never in rocket-making business, ever. Both Apollo and Space Shuttle were managed by NASA, but designed and built by subcontractors. Launched too. NASA has more input into design of their science payloads, but even then it's design only, not manufacturing. That's done by subcontractors still.
The only difference between the "commercial" launches and those prior to that is the amount of NASA management involvement. From the business standpoint, nothing much has changed between the "noncommercial" and "commercial" launches.
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More's the pity. And how cool if they could make rainbows come out too!
Only on the Teletubbies.
Re:Orbital (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody went broke over Apollo 1. This is nowhere near as serious.
Re:Orbital (Score:4, Informative)
The loss of Apollo 1 almost killed the entire project. 1) It set the development back so far they almost didn't make the deadline and 2) there was a LOT of "why are we doing this expensive thing anyway, and now we're KILLING people?" Read Eugene Krantz's book and it's there in other sources; lots of NASA people thought they'd be looking for jobs.
Not only that, but it killed three of my favorite childhood heroes, Grissom, Chaffee, and White. Horribly killed.
Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
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Delivery in 20 months, or your pizza's free?
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
ICBM silo art: delivery anywhere in the world in 20 minutes or your next one's free!
Re: Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
There's no such thing as a free launch.
CNN is reporting (Score:5, Funny)
no indications of terrorism linked to the destruction of the rocket.
Re:CNN is reporting (Score:5, Funny)
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As if that was a concern at all. Geez, can some people give up on that crap?
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Horrible track record (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me or is Orbital Sciences' track record extremely poor? Something like half their rockets fail and they give nothing but excuses. Their Taurus rocket had a 33% failure rate http://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-... [cnet.com]
It may be time to look into how they manage their company.
Re:Horrible track record (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Horrible track record (Score:5, Funny)
It's even worse when you notice that their tagline is "Innovation You Can Count On."
One two boom four boom boom seven eight nine boom...
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Re:Horrible track record (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of like Toyota's slogan
"Toyota... Moving forward.... Even when you're jamming on the brakes!"
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Given the cost of the payloads, even a 5% failure rate is unacceptable.
Re:Horrible track record (Score:4, Informative)
Given the cost of the payloads, even a 5% failure rate is unacceptable.
Which is why you buy launch insurance in the first place. I don't know how NASA wrote into the launch contract about massive failures like this, but anybody who sends stuff up on rockets is well aware that they explode. It is the nature of the business. Those companies who haven't had a massive failure like this one are just plain lucky... and all of them know it too.
Certainly a launch provider tries to do things that don't purposely cause a launch failure (the launch of the Challenger not withstanding), but anybody who claims 100% success rate and doesn't sweat the next launch is flat out lying.
Otherwise a 5% failure rate for less than 20 launches simply means bad luck instead of incompetence. If anything, earlier launches are more likely to have problems because there are far more unknowns too. All launchers eventually have failures, and many of those failures are just as spectacular as this one.
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Given the track record, the insurance premium must be in the vicinity of 50% of the payload cost.
Shows what you know about satellite payload insurance and how it applies to the vehicles made by Orbital Science.
It isn't half of the launches that have failed either... that was a statistic made up out of the GP's hind end and not based upon facts.
Re:Horrible track record (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com... [nasaspaceflight.com]
Two of their engines have blown caught fire, or blown up on the test harness. This adds a third explosion. They have successfully launched 3 times. Thus 3 time engines have blown up and 3 successful launches. Depending on how you look at this you will get different percentages.
4 engines have been destroyed, 6 have operated to their objective. You could also look at it as there are 3 disasters and 3 successes. You could also look at it that there have been 3 successful launches and 1 failed launch.
The way I look at it is that Orbital has cost NASA probably a few billion dollars in failures, and thousands of man hours. Two of those failures have been this year. I would call that pretty abysmal.
Re:Horrible track record (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody includes failures during component testing into the failure rate of a rocket. Doing so is completely meaningless and disingenuous.
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The minotaur series was basically a bunch of mothballed US ICBM & rocket hardware bolted together. Almost half of the launches were suborbital, and those that weren't were quite small for satellites, most less than half the weight of the Mars Science Lab rover. I suppose its nice that they're using up the old military stocks, but there's a big difference between using old military hardware that cost massive amounts of money to develop and was created with the major safety margins required for carrying
How could they mess this up??! (Score:4, Funny)
I mean it's not like it's rocket science...
Re:How could they mess this up??! (Score:5, Informative)
This might sound strange, but there is very little science in rockets. Its mostly engineering, QA, process management and such. Also, accounting.
Rocketry is Hard (Score:4, Insightful)
This is hard stuff and there will be set backs. I want as many competitors to succeed as possible. I hope they keep trying and have more success.
As much as I think Elon Musk is cool guy right now, I don't want his companies to have a monopoly on commercial space flight, solar power and electric cars 20 years from now.
Designs from what? (Score:2)
Soviet designs from the 60s, but Russian rockets are our only ride now. Aren't those also based on Soviet designs, possibly also from the 60s? If it's not a design flaw, maybe there's something about the Soviet/Russian construction process that's missing. It's probably like having somebody's cookie recipe. You swear you followed it; but your kitchen is different. There are timings and processes that the person who gave you the recipe isn't even aware of; because they're subconscious. If they find a ca
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I think the engines at least are not just based on Soviet designs but are actual Soviet hardware from the 60's and 70s. Leftover KN-33 engines reconditioned in the US by Aerojet and redesignated as AJ26-62. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org] I can't say anything about whether that is good or bad for reliability.
Re:Designs from what? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not the same. Glushko - stubborn as a mule and a squealer - never believed that it was possible to make a so high performant LOX/kerosene engine and so Korolev went to the Kusnetsov design bureau which previously built airplane engines (like the one for Tu-95 or Tu-154). Kusnetsov proved Glushko wrong with NK-33, so Glushko tried to one-up this with Energia's RD-170. So, not the same design, only similar.
Re:Designs from what? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't sound strange - it sounds like what it is, which is complete and utter bullshit. They have a few things ahead of everyone else, they have a few things on par with everyone else, and they have a lot of things that are in fact engineering time capsules from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's.
This really sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Orbital Science has a strong rocket program going, and has been able to deliver in the past. At best, this simply shows how even the best can get caught off guard with some stupid little thing that you didn't nail down prior to the launch. It is also why this is called "rocket science", where literally every rocket launch is an experiment to see if the current configuration is going to work or not.
In this case it didn't. The after-action engineering review is going to be brutal for the Orbital engineers,
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I thought Orbital Science actually had a rather poor record in recent years, this may just be the final nail in their coffin.
Not really (Score:3)
Go look at Pegasus and the various Minotaurs/Taurus launch systems and you will see that they do NOT have a great track record.
What I want to know... (Score:5, Funny)
OT (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Slashdot,
I fail to see how the 13-year-old story about game design, "A 'Vow of Chastity' For Game Designers" [slashdot.org], is a related story, as indicated in the panel below the story between the "previous story" and "next story" links. Seriously, WTF? Less than worthless.
I expect some stupid suggestion... (Score:2)
...that if we can't ask the Russians how to do these things reliably, "we can at least ask the Indians who went to Mars recently."
Video of the explosion from 3000ft (Score:5, Interesting)
Video of the Orbital Sciences Explosion at Wallops from a Cessna flying at 3000ft [youtube.com]. Note that the video is pretty noisy so you'll want to turn your sound down.
40 year old engine. (Score:5, Informative)
The summery isn't quite correct. The engines aren't based on an engine from the 60s. These -are- the engines built by the soviets in the 1970s. These things are 40 years old.
The RD-180s used by the Atlas-V are built new, despite their relationship to the abandoned Energia/Buran. The NK-33s that are used by the Antares sat for decades in a Russian warehouse.
Re:40 year old engine. (Score:4, Interesting)
As I said earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
OSC is a company that really has NO control of its systems. Basically, it farms out most everything, so it must depend on all others. Even now, the Antares uses old Russian engines, and counted on Russia to do the quality control.
Until OSC controls all aspects of its systems, similar to how SpaceX works, they will NEVER be able to do a launch system reliably.
Rearden Rocket (Score:5, Interesting)
You're going to love this:
https://twitter.com/hormiga/st... [twitter.com]
Another great victory for the private sector. Rocket science is hard. It's not like we've been launching rockets for half a century or anything.
Sabotage (Score:4, Funny)
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The office coffee machine is next.
Re:There's a reason why... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There's a reason why... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There's a reason why... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wasn't aborted by the RSO either (Score:4, Informative)
There have been reports of vehicles damaged, but I think those are erroneous, confusing the destruction of the launch vehicle with possible damage to ground vehicles. There shouldn't have been anything not inside-and-under-cover given the destructive power of the launch anyway.
The ground explosion did take out two of the four towers around the pad, but I'm amazed that the worklights on the remaining two towers stayed functional. They were on through the end of NASA TV coverage a moment ago.
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There is generally a launch monitoring bunker within a few hundred feet of the pad. This bunker is populated by scientists and engineers during the launch so that they can abort the launch immediately if a problem develops. At least at NASA, these people drive their own personal cars to the bunker. The bunker is hardened to survive rocket debris impacting the building but the parking lot is just that, an open lot. NASA has burned up LOTS of cars with exploding rockets. I saw pictures of about 20 some odd ca
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You know that's kind of old school. There is this new technology called "digital communications" which means that they can read the instruments from miles away, removing the need for the bunker since the mid 1960's or so. There were no bunkers for the Saturn V (I believe the first Saturn I flights still had them) or the Shuttle - everything was monitored from ~ 3 miles away. At the Cape the Range Safety Officer looks at computer screens at the Range Operations Control Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Stat
Re:Wasn't aborted by the RSO either (Score:5, Informative)
I received a tour of the restricted launch site areas due to my company have a contract with NASA at cape Canaveral. This was just after 9/11 when everything was shut down for security reasons (I have a photo of myself standing in front of the Apollo 1 launch pad memorial). The photos I saw were less than a year old. I can't say more but the launch was a failed classified launch and that may very well be the reason the bunkers were still used.
I don't know why they use them, I don't know why they need to be so close but I do know what I saw. A bunker heavily damaged (and all the surrounding vegetation was burned to the roots) where the damage was very recent. He also showed us photo's of the burned out cars, minivans and pickups taken by our "tour guide" who worked for our company and was giving us a tour of the cape. I may have pictures of the launch bunkers somewhere, but there was one next to every cluster of pads that I remember seeing. I can't recall if our guide ever said why they used the bunkers, 15 years ago is more than my memory can handle for such mundane details.
There is one thing I'll never forget about the cape though, which was how well preserved the wetlands are because NASA is using so little of the ground. There were alligators sunning themselves on nearly every road we went down.
Re:Wasn't aborted by the RSO either (Score:5, Informative)
intact
Not quite. There appears to have been a failure/explosion in the vicinity of the engines. Either a combustion chamber or turbopump failure from the looks of it. From that point on, the whole thing just 'sat back down' (tanks intact).
Good video of it on 4chan /pol/ and here [youtube.com].
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would either of the components that you mentioned be a part of that old assembly?
Possibly yes. It depends on how much they 'refurbished'.
Re:Wasn't aborted by the RSO either (Score:4, Funny)
That dog died 40 years ago somewhere in Siberia.
Re:Wasn't aborted by the RSO either (Score:4, Informative)
Higher quality here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Awww, diddums faww down go boom? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it went boom, THEN fell down.
Re:Awww, diddums faww down go boom? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, it went boom, THEN fell down.
So, we built a second one. That one went boom, fell down, then sank into the swamp.
But the third stage stayed up. And that's what you'll have lad, the strongest launch platform in these isles.
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I hate to point out that NASA was never in rocket-making business. Everything launched was made by subcontractors. NASA only provides various payloads, and in the past provided program oversight. Everything that NASA launched that you might recall was in fact done by the private sector. Including all elements of Apollo.
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Having worked for their GN&C team, it's usually due to cost cutting. OSC has been on the lower cost side to support all those NASA science and non-DOD missions--which are done on shoestring budgets.
OSC has been able to prove resuse/integration vs ground up designs can be as effective, it's just they are losing sight that QC is more important than monte carlo simulations (which sells in that business). Likely due to gov't pressure to keep the same processes in the face of SpaceX's clean sheet approach.
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