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Space

Amateur Rocket Launch a Failure; NASA Debuts Shuttle-cam 174

Posted by michael from the jennicam-gets-upstaged dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "CNN has posted the story of the failure of the amateur rocket launch that was reported in a previous Slashdot story. 'The launch was spectacular and the rocket was performing as planned. However, the rocket experienced motor failure during the flight and the flight was terminated," said Eric Knight, co-leader of the CSXT mission.' NASA is planning to mount a camera on the external fuel tank and broadcast an October 2nd shuttle launch.
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Amateur Rocket Launch a Failure; NASA Debuts Shuttle-cam More

Amateur Rocket Launch a Failure; NASA Debuts Shuttle-cam

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  • "It won't be for at least another year. We're going to regroup and take a break, but people haven't heard the last from us," CSXT founder Ky Michaelson said.

    I feel bad for them, but he sounds like he should be sitting in a large black leather chair penting his fingers or petting a persian cat while saying this :)

    • I Was There (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dr. JJJ ( 325391 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @08:53PM (#4348131)

      I helped out at this launch attempt as part of the recovery team and I can tell you the following:

      Amateur rocketry, like all rocketry, is used to failure

      If you've met or heard of Ky, you'd realize that he has had plenty of successes and failures to deal with. And Ky is just the CEO of sorts to what amounts to a massively talented technical team. Having gotten the rocket off the ground was an accomplishment itself; the FAA puts enormous safety restrictions on the launch, of which very few are satisfied at any given moment.

      The failure itself wasn't that dangerous either. The rocket did not explode like a fireball. It just made a sort of "pop" sound and broke into pieces. The selection of the launch site has a lot to do with ensuring that such pieces don't come down and harm anyone.

  • I suppose, then, that it will be a while before they can beat the Russians by offering space rides for the low, low price of $19,999,999.95.

    (yeah yeah karma-- but I just couldn't resist)

  • Stand back, I am an engineer. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Buck2 ( 50253 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:02PM (#4347378) Homepage
    Allow me to be the first to say:

    SONOFABITCH!!

    GODDAMMIT!!

    fuck

    crap

    *sigh*
    • Allow me to be the first to say:

      SONOFABITCH!!
      GODDAMMIT!!
      fuck
      crap

      *sigh*

      I believe those terms were also used by American engineers working on the post-Sputnik failures.

      And I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Wright brothers made the same comments pre-Kitty Hawk.

  • So... 'terminated' eh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spazntwich ( 208070 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:04PM (#4347388)
    Is that what they call 'just letting the fucking thing crash into the ground' nowadays?
  • motor failure during the flight and the flight was terminated,

    I think it's pretty cool if this was some sort of self-destruct mechanism. The article doesn't really say if it self-destructed by itself, or if it was triggered from the ground.

    I just wonder if they had to recite "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango" to activate it. :)


    • "Thank you for pressing the self-destruct button, the ship will self-destruct in 7 minutes..."

    • Re:Self-Destruct? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by foolish ( 46697 )
      Actually, it probably was.

      AFAIK, for flights such as these, even when the flight path has a low population index, you STILL need to have a "remote detonation" capability to keep it for veering off course and crashing into important things/people.

      With rockets, since the fuel is itself reactive/explosive, they can usually keep the explosives package fairly small and secure against false authorizations (your "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango).

      I'm more bummed that all the instrumentation was destroyed, so it's going to be *very* difficult for them to figure out why the motor barfed. I wonder what they were collecting from ground sensors... It would definitely be neat to see how their avionics package compares to say Carmack's http://www.armadilloaerospace.com lander...

    • I just wonder if they had to recite "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango" to activate it.

      Nah, it was Zero-Zero-Zero-Destruct-Zero.

      Of course, they also had to get two other launch crew officers to concur.
    • No, I have it on good authority that the motor catoed (exploded, in rocket speak) about 3 seconds into the flight. The rocket did not have any sort of built in self destruct mechanism.
  • All I have to say is that I cannot wait for the NASA Shuttle Video on the 2nd. I think its the little things like this that will help to revive popular interest in the space program.

  • Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShawnDoc ( 572959 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:06PM (#4347399) Homepage
    Its too bad really, I'd have liked to see a private alternative to NASA. They've grown so bloated and unfocused they couldn't even pull off the space station properly.

    Just look at the original proposal and plans, and look what they've cut it back to. All it is a big jobs project. And the Space Shuttle technology is so old they are having to scrounge eBay for old computer parts.

    I'm sorry, but it just makes me sick. And we actually think NASA some day will send someone to Mars. Yeah right. We need someone to come along and either replace NASA entirely, or at the very least scare them into cutting back the beaurocracy and actually performing again.

    • It's not entirely NASA's fault. Their budget gets cut more every year. It was Congress that decided not to fund the planned further development of the space station. In doing so, they crippled the station. Fixing this problem involves bitching at congresscritters, not bitching at NASA...

      And is it just me, or do most of CNN's stories not display properly under Mozilla?
      • And is it just me, or do most of CNN's stories not display properly under Mozilla?

        I think it's just you. Works fine for me (using Mozilla 1.1 in KDE).

      • Re:Too Bad (Score:2, Insightful)

        by foolish ( 46697 )
        To be fair, it IS partially NASA's fault. One, for having such bad accounting practices that they can't even tell how much they've spent in a given year (amongst other accounting sanfus). Two, for sole sourcing (excuse me, preferred vendors) the the three "Big Three", instead of smaller more efficent companies. ..Three for not having the gumption to actually stand up to Congress/the President and say "Quickly Made, Well Built or Cheap, pick any two" or to privatize the infrastructure and stick to science requirements.

        But, I do definitely agree, the porkbarrelling of each of the individual Centers and the requisite Congressional non-tech savvy rulings have caused a majority of the current NASA issues. That and a decade+ of Dan Goldin.

        Check out http://www.nasawatch.com
        Great site, always interesting scoops.
    • They've grown so bloated and unfocused

      This is the kind of thing discussed in Space [amazon.com] by James Michener. Given the state of our corporate-sponsored democracy, they simply have too many people to please, and too many backs to scratch. The public wants sci-fi extravagance (but not to pay for it), vendors want their equipment used, and plenty of other industries (aerospace, technology, chemical engineering) all want their slice of the pie. All this with an ever-shrinking budget and increasing political micromanagement. Politics as usual in the U.S. government :/
    • That's kind of harsh. It's not like there's someone else out there (anywhere in the world), that's just sending daily shuttles to the moon.

      Look at Russia's space program.

      Everything is about money these days, and nobody cares about putting up flags on the sea of tranquility... People only care about themselves and launching their Moft sattelites.
  • I love how they say the rocket test was terminated, sort of implying that the rocket packed its bags and went home to collect unemployment when in reality it was a burning metal tube of death, screaming through the atmosphere at the speed of sound looking for some poor schmuck to land on.
    • "burning metal tube of death" is actually not a bad name for a rocket! Or maybe "fiberglass tube".

      "burning metal tube of death, screaming through the atmosphere at the speed of sound looking for some poor schmuck to land on" isn't bad either, but a bit long winded.

      I'll keep it in mind...

      There's been a few of names in the same vein lately. "Flying pyramid of death" was a well known one, and at the last LDRS [ldrs21.org] there was one called something like "purple rocket of extremely painful indigestion".

      /August.

  • Question: Fund for Cheney-Rumsfeld Dictatorship (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can we set up a fund to buy one-way tickets
    to the Moon for the Cheney-Rumsfeld dictatorship
    currently residing in the:

    The White House [whitehouse.org]?

  • Secret?? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How "secret" can this location be if there's a picture of the place right at the beggining of the article?

  • Calling John Carmack! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:10PM (#4347433) Homepage
    John! When is Armadillo Aerospace going to show these n00bs how it's done? Screw Doom 3, get your ass to Mars!
    • Or better yet, how about the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society [erps.org], a bunch of Linux users who's entire project (unlike Carmack's extremely pricey endevours) are open source. You can check out their OpenVTVL [sourceforge.net] software for "in-flight control of vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTVL) model aircraft using propellers or rocket motors in a differential-thrust configuration" at SourceForge as well as several cool videos of their launches at their homepage.

      These guys doing what Carmack is with a fraction of the money.
      • From what I've seen these guys (Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack et al.) and ERPS) are nowhere near the kind of adversaries you kind of make it sound like. A lot of info is routinely shared and they seem to be getting along really well.

        /August.

    • Screw Doom 3, get your ass to Mars!
      Man, what do you think Doom 3 is ABOUT? That's why Carmack is doing this rocketry stuff -- he needs to have firsthand research about Martian military installations, so that Doom 3 will be realistic!
  • I myself am wondering how these people are funded. I imaging that building a 511lb space-capable (supposedly, not today though) rocket probably takes quite a fair bit of money

    Would also be interesting to know how they got rocket fuel. I'd assume that NASA or somebody is contributing (is it still amature if they do), as this stuff isn't really available at your nearest Esso station, although at one time Jet fuel was more publicly available.

    Preparing funds for next year: "Sir, have you got any bottles for recycling?" - phorm
    • Take some wax candles, break up the hydrocarbons into small pieces until you get rocket fuel...
    • Would also be interesting to know how they got rocket fuel. I'd assume that NASA or somebody is contributing (is it still amature if they do), as this stuff isn't really available at your nearest Esso station, although at one time Jet fuel was more publicly available.

      RTFA. They used solids. The mixture isn't that difficult, curing them is the hard part.
    • Solid rocket propellant was used for CSXT's space shot and is not difficult for the amateur to make (well maybe a little harder than CSXT thought..) The required chemicals are availble to the general public, though a federal explosives user permit from the is required in most cases. The CSXT team did have some corporate sponsorship, though I'm guessing that the bulk of the money came right out of the team's pockets. I don't know the details for this particular attempt, but similar attempts in the past have cost about $20,000.
    • Darn, happened to moderate this "troll" by mistake. So I post to erase it.
      • Thank you kind sir (or madam, made that mistake once before), I was somewhat curious at the troll marking. I'm always trolling for answers of course, but mainly because I generally want to hear solutions from individuals better educated than I.

  • How could an amateur rocket fail? (Score:3, Funny)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:21PM (#4347500) Homepage Journal
    I mean, it's not rocket science...oh, wait...
  • From the picture it appears that they launched not far from where Black Rock City [burningman.com] was a few short weeks ago.
  • While I realize that rocket science is ... rocket science, I still wonder if anyone else finds the raft of unsuccessful launches by the non-majors to be suspicious. That perhaps one or more of the successful launchers, wanting to protect their market, defend the upper atmosphere, hide something or all of the above, would take some direct action to ensure failure.

  • Whaddya mean "failure"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:28PM (#4347546) Journal
    The Darwin Awards Club is calling it a "promising success".

    Motto: "To boldly die like no man has died before" :-)
  • From the article, it looks like this is going to be nasa tv only. Does anyone want to record/webcast this for those of us w/o all the extra channels?

  • What they need is a PR expert (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @06:38PM (#4347582) Journal
    "Our experiment to study the smoke and debri dissapation patterns of atmospheric explosions has been a complete success!"
  • NASA had their share of setbacks ... Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, recent Mars probes ... hell the Boeing Delta 3 rocket that blew up on a launch back in 1998.

    To accomplish something major like this setbacks (sometimes expensive) are inevitable.

  • They havnt made it to space yet, but at least their rockets dont explode. Check out this amatuer rocket effort. They have some great videos from outside of their LV1 rocket. PSAS [pdx.edu]
  • I wonder if this has any affect on Rocket Guy's [rocketguy.com], AKA Brian Walker, thinking... Bad things can happen.
  • I remember seeing a videoclip from an external camera launch of a rocket into space. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen on TV. Anyone else remeber this? Maybe someone could point to a link containing the video.
  • The launch was spectacular and the rocket was performing as planned. However, the rocket experienced motor failure during the flight and the flight was terminated

    Ah, yes, it performed according to plan just like my motherboard's IDE controller when it died on me and I had to get a new motherboard, and turn this one into a network computer. Yup, all according to plan...

  • PR for NASA... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) <nowalmart.gmail@com> on Friday September 27, 2002 @09:09PM (#4348166) Homepage Journal
    Strapping a camera for a shuttle launch is not going to cost NASA too much in the grand scheme of things.

    For an agency that is in desperate need of government funding, however, I think it is a wonderful idea.

    Little things like the camera will only get people interested in space and science and bring public support for NASA.

    I cannot wait to see the video. The animation was great as it was.

    Now I just need to find a friend with a true satellite dish. A web-cast days later will not be the same.
    • Why wait until "days later" for a webcast?

      You can watch NASA TV live [nasa.gov] every day, for free.

      Though you'll get -much- better quality from a nice C-band feed, at least you can get Realvideo of the event live.

      Assuming their servers aren't full.

      Which, especially after this posting, they most certainly will be...

  • But thank goodness they rescued the pussy [sfgate.com]
  • I've always wondered this:

    Why drop the tank? I know it's empty but imagine leaving the external tank connected to the shuttle. Dock the shuttle to the ISS. Send the shuttle crew home on a fre Soiuze(sp?) return vehicles.
    Using the next few shuttle missions and dedicated American and Russian supply rockets, re-fuel the external tank on the docked shuttle with hydrogen and oxygen.

    During this refuel, resupply stage a dedicated, unstaffed rocket is launched with a lunar lander module. The module is sent in to lunar orbit. The module would be launched with minimal fuel to get it to the moon and in orbit.

    Finally, with one last shuttle mission load the stored shuttle with the space hab unit (not used much recently). Install a crew and send the shuttle to the moon for an extended stay. They meet up with the lander module, dock and fuel the module from the external tank. Then send down 3-4 people. to rove the moon. On return, the lander is left in lunar orbit, again fuel-less. The crew return to the ISS.

    If they could get three people there for a two weeks or so with those small Apollo capsules, imagine what kind of crew we could send like this, and the science they could do. This mission idea also extends the ISS in to being the first interplanetary space dock (well, sort of).

    We could then have two sets of on-going shuttle missions: One set from Earth to ISS. One set from ISS to the Moon.
  • Gives the expression "Actually, it IS rocket science" some added meaning. ...or not, depending on how sarcastic you are.

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