NASA Morpheus Lander Test Ends In Explosion 237
First time accepted submitter DishpanMan writes "For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story, like today's Morpheus project test flight at Kennedy Space Center. The project is trying to build a low cost Moon and Asteroid lander using clean fuels on a shoestring budget. While tethered flight test were successful, today's actual flight test ended in a crash and a ball of fire followed by a spectacular explosion. Initial feedback points to hardware failure, but the investigation is still ongoing."
All I can say is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Waaaw, nice video of the crash! And immediately the action in the first 10 seconds of it. Well done!
Too bad for the money and work that went into it. But then again, this is what tests are for, this result helps progress forward as well.
Obviously it wasn't the One (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obviously it wasn't the One (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obviously it wasn't the One (Score:5, Funny)
Look, you have to take risks, if you are going to advance the sum of our shared, human experience and understanding.
Sometimes, you have spectacular and awe inspiring occurrences - that thrill as much as they inform.
Other times, you just successfully land on Mars.
Re:Obviously it wasn't the One (Score:5, Funny)
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You'd have thought a group as bright as NASA would've already known that Morpheus was not The One...
Re:Obviously it wasn't the One (Score:4, Funny)
But then, they can name the next lander "Neo" and see if they get better results...
Actually, the next one is named "Michael Bay". They decided to go for realism in their naming schemes.
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Re:All I can say is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't see how a kill switch would help them save money, and would probably just cost them more for useless expenditures.
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Re:All I can say is... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All I can say is... (Score:4, Insightful)
wrong, your gimbal would consider "down" to be the opposite direction of acceleration, rocket engines applying many times that of gravity. could put a gimbal mounted gyroscope to overcome that problem, but then you'd only be making a bigger explosion when the rocket hit the ground by stopping fuel usage.
Re:All I can say is... (Score:5, Insightful)
?
You can put in a kill switch to the fuel pump to not pump more fuel into the rocket motor, and they no doubt have such devices installed. But the tanks are already full of all the fuel the vehicle will ever carry. And you can't put in a kill switch for the existence of the fuel. Once the thing is burning, any fuel remaining in the tanks is going to get out one way or another, regardless of any switches or valves.
Re:All I can say is... (Score:5, Funny)
>>>And you can't put in a kill switch for the existence of the fuel.
brb.
filing patent.
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Re:All I can say is... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:All I can say is... (Score:4, Funny)
Unless you're in San Diego; there you'd get at most a few seconds between the explosions.
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There's another nice explosion at the 6:24 mark followed by a few more pops right afterwards of the rest of the fuel tanks going off in succession.
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Actually I was thinking more along the lines of aluminum, titanium or magnesium alloys blown to bits and heated to their burning points in the presence of LOX.
Re:All I can say is... (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, duh. Computers handle everything in 1s and 0s. If you eliminate the 1s....
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A hot piece of dead animal
That's no way to talk about your wife
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I think the saddest thing about this video is that Kennedy Space Center had to call 911 and wait 9 minutes for a fire engine to arrive to put out the flames. I guess it shows how much budget they've lost that NASA doesn't have their own emergency response teams for things like this.
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Not to mention that no one's life should be threatened in this particular situation... because people are free to move away from the fire.
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If you call 911 from within Kennedy it is probably their own emergency control you are calling. Many facilities are set up like that. Then the internal 911 makes the decision about whether to handle it themselves or call the county emergency services.
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Followed by 7 minutes of it burning and 3 minutes of them putting it out. Viewers should just stop after the first 10 seconds.
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The best explosion is at 6:20.
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NEXT time they need to have it directed by Micheal Bay. HE wouldn't have waited six minutes for the best explosion.
No way.
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The KSC firefighters are currently on strike.
Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:5, Informative)
Rocket fuel generally sits very close to it's oxidizer on the craft, no point in trying to put it out early. There were probably fifty people on the island where that happened, all of whom were wearing safety goggles and behind a barrier of some sort at a safe distance. It's not like dousing the fire ten minutes earlier would have somehow avoided the forest fires in Colorado.
Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:4, Funny)
Fire-fighters show up at 8:30 after crash. Is 8 minutes good for response time? It does seem awfully slow, especially considering that they had to have been on standby just in case of something like this happening.
Then another 7 minutes to put it out. Very stubborn fire.
Bob, I'm going to go ahead and ask you to move our helium tanks a little further away. And don't forget that laptop on the chair. That would be terrific, OK?
Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:5, Informative)
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No, leave that stuff there, just move the 2500 psi tanks further back.
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Remember, that video is shot with a telephoto lens so things appear foreshortened. But yeah, it looks a bit .... close.
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2500 psi tanks as long as a semi trailer punctured by flying debris can ruin your whole day.
Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if they'd shown up immediately, then after 2:00 the second team would have been scraping firefighter parts off the scenery. And so, after 6:21, would the third team.
There's just no way to get a burning rocket fuel tank under control. Also no point; the craft is a loss anyway, and there's nothing else close enough to be in danger.
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Re:"We have to expect this sort of thing"... (Score:5, Informative)
And yet it took more than 8 minutes for the Fire truck to arrive at the rocket test site.
I wonder how long it would take if they didn't expect this sort of thing...
Rule one of firefighting: don't put anyone needlessly in harm's way. This was an unmanned test flight, with nobody in any imminent danger.
After the initial crash, the craft still had fuel and oxidant tanks on board that hadn't yet blown up. You don't move the fire crews in until the hazardous materials are accounted for. The crews were quite obviously sitting in their fire rig at a safe distance, waiting for the signal from the range safety officer to tell them that the rest of the fuel was gone. That explosion at the 6:20 mark was the signal they were waiting for. At 8:00 the camera zooms in as they examine the wreckage for any potential surprises. At about 8:17 you could hear the diesel motor of one of the trucks as it approached the pad. At 8:40 you can hear the report from "10-1" (I assume that was the range safety officer) at gate 7 that he had advised the fire crew that there were four pressurized tanks, they believed two were gone, but there were potentially still two tanks with pressure, and that the fire crews had proceeded downrange anyway.
The crews handled the situation exactly as they should have. They expected this sort of thing.
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Next time NASA should use a tether. That would likely have saved the vehicle. It seemed like a GNC failure to me. The engine worked fine since the vehicle was propelled upwards, but then it tilted to the right. It could also have tilted because the propellant was sloshing around in the tanks or something like that.
Gee, why didn't THEY think of that..... [youtube.com]
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Unless and until you take and pass at least a semester of control systems you don't speak the language. It's about 3.5 years into an EE program.
It's easy to say something should be a solved problem without knowing any details. Just from recollection control systems involved solving unsolvable equations by using engineering tricks on the math that would make a math majors head explode.
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According to the summary they did do tethered testing, but at some point the tether has to come off to do free flight testing - this was just such a test, and apparently there was a problem that didn't show up in the tethered tests - which is the whole point of untethered tests.
Or was that a intended as a deadpan joke? We've got a /deadpan pseudotag for that you know.
I aim for the stars (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes I hit the parking lot.
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I though it was "But sometimes hit London"
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This wasn't as successful as von Braun.
That's what happens.. (Score:2)
or
Not sure I would categorize this as a "Failure" (Score:5, Insightful)
A "Failure" means loss of the mission. This is an unsuccessful test and is part of the process to ensure the hardware will work with a high degree of confidence so that the mission won't "fail" in its actual landing on the moon.
Something to learn from and move forwards on.
myke
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Thank you. Saved me the trouble.
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Yeah, if this was a failure then every time you write code that fails one of the unit tests during development that must be a failure too. That'll be a lot of fail.
Re:Not sure I would categorize this as a "Failure" (Score:5, Insightful)
The video was very nostalgic. Reminded me of early NASA - things blew up all the time.
All you whiners are just jealous. You're just upset because you don't get paid to build things and blow them up.
Re:Not sure I would categorize this as a "Failure" (Score:5, Funny)
Well I'm not sure, but my guess is that several of the test objectives did not get checked off.
Last message sent by the onboard computer: (Score:5, Funny)
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Screwed-up countdown a bad omen (Score:3, Informative)
"5...4...3...2...0" BOOM!
NASA can't count anymore? Increase their funding! (Score:3)
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Precedent (Score:2, Funny)
King Arthur: One, two, five!
Sir Galahad: Three sir!
King Arthur: THREE!
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And that also ended with a large explosion.
Failure is the norm (Score:5, Insightful)
"For every success story from NASA like Curiosity, there is a failure story"
Yes, and if you never try you'll never fail. Bravo for you.
Those of us who explore and push the boundaries do have failures, learn (if we live) and try again. Failure is the norm. Success is the wonderful exception.
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Wouldn't this be considered a successful test? I mean it would only be a failure if everything went perfectly and they felt confident to send the system out into space where it failed. This way at least they know there are still issues.
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Suggestion: Actually find out about someone before you start name calling. It will teach you a lot.
Who knew... (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know something so small could be *that* on fire.
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I didn't know something so small could be *that* on fire.
Sounds like someone exiting the restroom at the local Mexican place after eating the habenjero special ...
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Behold the power of rocket fuel...
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Apparently some fool filled up the body of the thing with methane and liquid oxygen. It's almost like they WANTED fire to come shooting out of that rocket!
That was almost comical (Score:4, Funny)
6:23 (Score:2)
Another one flew successfully (Score:3)
Coincidentally, it just did a successful untethered test flight today, see http://twitter.com/nasamightyeagle [twitter.com]
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The real test was a success. (Score:4, Funny)
Congratulations everyone!
We have discovered a folding chair that will hold up while watching failed test flights.
Order a hundred and we can sell tickets for the next launch.
Next test: Goggles for the enjoying the view at the 2:00 and 6:20 mark.
Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
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Hmmm, it's almost like it's rocket science and they don't expect it to be perfect the first time through so they run tests. I agree not really news, just some more data.
Better for the environment... (Score:2)
On the moon. And on the asteroids. Safer for the chipmunks living there. Good thing they are using cleaner fuels.
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It's not just they are cleaner but we can easily make these fuels on Mars.
Crash, ball of fire, *spectacular* explosion ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still waiting for the "failure" part.
Compromises (Score:2)
The moment you start engineering in compromises -- e.g. Clean Fuels -- into the design you are setting yourself up for less than optimal results.
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The real reason for using this fuel an oxidizer is because they can be made on mars.
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No.
First off, are you agreeing with the caption that this is a failure? It isn't it's testing to get data. So it blew up, no biggy it's data one more datum of information that says not all the kinks are worked out. Which brings us to
Point two. This isn't engineering, this is working with new designs that have not been completely tested, which by definition is science. You don't expect everything to go perfectly when you attempt something because you don't know what all the variables are and you are l
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Three words.
Mars Semi Direct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WppRQQld10&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP48ECECA63832ACC7 [youtube.com]
This is the first step to creating a return vehicle that can fuel itself from some stored Hydrogen and the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.
Also, the ISS " produces – and dumps – enough methane waste gas each year to fill the Morpheus fuel tanks." http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/morpheus_test_stennis.html [nasa.gov]
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It is my understanding that they want to get away from certain hypergolic fuels due to their very hazardous nature in fuel handling. The combustion products can range from pretty harmless to ammonia. I think the "green" side is
Right... (Score:2)
Okay, so there was a crash and an explosion?
Initial feedback points to hardware failure
D'you think?
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Okay, so there was a crash and an explosion?
Initial feedback points to hardware failure
D'you think?
Presumably this means the hardware failed sometime before the crash and explosion.
A low cost lander using clean fuels? (Score:2)
Such as, LOX/LH2?
It would be nice if the fuel and the reason why was specified in the summary. I can only image that it has something to do with expansion rations [wikipedia.org] versus LH2, although I'm not sure how liquid methane (thankfully called-out in the linked Morpheus page) represents a vast improvement. If you can use kerosene, you can use alcohols [nih.gov], which are much much more biodegradable and don't have nearly the greenhouse gas power of methane.
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These are fuels you can make easily on mars.
Maybe I'm just New to Rocket Surgery (Score:2)
Hardware failure or just wind? (Score:3, Insightful)
beer (Score:4, Funny)
Why would they need to lift that much beer on the moon??
Drop a keg or two and it might fly.
Job well done! this is how we learn! (Score:3)
Happened before, on tether (Score:3)
Looking through a few other Youtube videos of Morpheus tests, I found this video [youtube.com] entitled " This is why we test". It looks very similar, except the tether kept it from flipping completely over and crashing.
I hate to say this... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, that is indeed what they said.
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Spirit and Opportunity were both "faster, better, cheaper" concept vehicles that did amazingly well, so your conclusion based on just one point of data would be wrong. At this point I don't think there's enough data to make any conclusions about the project's value.
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As always, the only honest answer is "Pick two."