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Space United Kingdom

Britain's Groundbreaking Satellite Launch Ends in Failure (reuters.com) 100

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Britain's attempt to become the first European nation to launch satellites into space ended in bitter disappointment early on Tuesday when Virgin Orbit said its rocket had suffered an anomaly that prevented it from reaching orbit. From a report: The "horizontal launch" mission had left from the coastal town of Newquay in southwest England, with Virgin's LauncherOne rocket carried under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 called "Cosmic Girl", and later released over the Atlantic Ocean. "We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit," the company said. "We are evaluating the information." The failure deals a further blow to European space ambitions after an Italian-built Vega-C rocket mission failed after lift-off from French Guiana in late December.
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Britain's Groundbreaking Satellite Launch Ends in Failure More

Britain's Groundbreaking Satellite Launch Ends in Failure

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    • Re: (Score:2)

      by robbak ( 775424 )

      U.K launched from Australia. France, from South America. Don't know where Italy did their launches from.

    • msmash's summary is woefully inaccurate. As you point out, plenty of European nations have previously launched satellites into space. What's actually claimed to be new here is a first launch from the European continent. It's recently been announced in the news that "Spaceport Esrange" in Sweden is the European "mainland's" first launch facility, with a launch scheduled in three days' time, on January 13th. I guess the UK were rather cheekily trying to trump that with this air-launch and claim some sort of "

      • What's unclear to me is whether Russia's Dombarovsky launch facility is in Europe or Asia. If it's in Europe, then this becomes more of a political claim rather than a geographic one.

        As far as I can tell from Google Maps, Russia's Dombarovsky facility (the air base, at least) is just a smidgen to the east of the Ural mountains ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), although it's also significantly further south. So I'd lean towards "Dombarovsky launch facility is in Asia".

    • The launch sites were never in Europe.

      • TFA says: "Britain's attempt to become the first European nation to launch satellites into space" Which is obviously totally false... Europe still launches satellites, not from Europe obviously and it is not the best place to do so. I don't know why reuters is lying.

        • The journalist meant "first launch into orbit from western Europe". This is how the first paragraph is worded in a paper he published few hours later https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]

          As usual this is incompetence not malice (i.e. it's a mistake, not a lie). We already could understand from the original article that the journalist did not intend to hide launches from other European nations, as he mentioned Ariane 6, Vega, and Soyuz.

  • This was never a "British"/"European" launch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SchnauzerGuy ( 647948 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @03:52AM (#63194550)
    The rocket was developed in California, the plane was built in Washington state, and it all just happened be taking off from Cornwall.

    Maybe you can argue the financing was via UK Space Agency and the Virgin SPAC (on an American stock exchange, NASDAQ), but this was about as British as Freedom Fries.

    • Nothing is ever one country's then, since the technologies and people building/designing it are from all around the world. That's also why nationalism is stupid, but whatever.

      • That's true, to an extent. I don't think anyone would call Falcon 9 or Ariane 5 or Soyuz anything other than American/French/Russian. Even an Atlas V is American, despite the engines.

    • Wernher von Braun right back at ya.

    • Re:This was never a "British"/"European" launch (Score:4, Informative)

      by Serif ( 87265 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @08:42AM (#63194938)

      Agreed, but yesterday before the launch the story of the upcoming launch was all over the BBC talking about a great British success and the dawn of a new age for the UK space industry, how important the satellites being launched were, blah, blah... Strangely it's all gone a bit quiet now.

      • It's the Brexshit Space Programme; all for show & to make nationalists feel all smug & superior. So in that respect, that they managed to do anything at all was a resounding success.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ac22 ( 7754550 )

          what would have been the first launch into orbit from western Europe

          https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]

          Having the ability to launch things into space from one's own country seems like a good national security policy. The UK may not always be able to rely upon those nice chaps from countries like the USA to launch their space hardware.

          With regards to your "Brexshit" comment, which EU country has launched into space from within their own borders?

    • The idea is that it offers a more convenient launch platform for the UK and UK companies -- they don't need to travel to the US or NZ to launch their stuff.

  • Mission accomplished. (Score:5, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @03:55AM (#63194554)

    It was in fact groundbreaking, falling from that height.

    • It was in fact groundbreaking, falling from that height.

      Record for highest attempt at orbit?

      Never thought I would hear of a dubious honor that outdoes Crash Davis. Wow.

  • European Space Ambitions (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @04:02AM (#63194564)

    I guess I was imagining it when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5? A launch that went so perfectly that Webb's expected active lifetime doubled?

    Too bad about this launch, and I certainly don't know much about Britain's space industry; but let's not pretend the Europeans are just getting started at doing this.

    • Let's not pretend that England is European anymore

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jay age ( 757446 )

      I must have been imagining that the whole US space program was based on a diligent work of German rocket scientists (e.g. Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, ...).

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        There's lot of German film of "glorious" V2 rocket failures during tests and production launches. The guy with the short mustache inadvertently funded R&D for the coming space age.

  • I really want to see all space launches succeed, so something like this I just really feel for all the people trying to make it work.

    SpaceX needs real competition so I want to see Virgin Galactic improve and become a real force.

    I'm not sure they have the same focus and drive SpaceX does though.

    • I'm not sure they have the same focus and drive SpaceX does though.

      I'm not sure they have the engineering talent that SpaceX has.
      In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't have it. At least, not yet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      SpaceX needs real competition, and it could have been Blue Origin. But Jeff Bezos cares less about reaching orbit than about having a yacht so large it needed to have a bridge removed to get out of the shipyard. Did you know that BO was started a few years before SpaceX?
      • Turns out they didn't really need to disassemble the bridge, all they really needed to do was not attach the mast that would have hit on the bridge... d'oh!

  • Weasel word... (Score:3)

    by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @04:12AM (#63194578)

    It used to be, back in the old days, that when a satellite launch failed it was said to have... failed.

    Nowadays it suffers "an anomaly". Nuffin to do wiv me, squire.

    Maybe earth orbit is plagued by those vicious, spiteful anomalies, which hang around up there waiting for innocent satellites to harm.

  • The front fell off (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @05:08AM (#63194642)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Sounds like a particularly large gravity wave hit it..

  • The UK launched a satellite back in 1971 called Prospero. Atop a Black Arrow launch vehicle it went up from Woomera, Australia.

  • "Britain's attempt to become the first European nation to launch satellites into space "

      Russia (a European nation) was the first country ever to launch a satellite. I believe France also launched satellites into space.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      I think the correct claim is that it was intended to be the first launch of a satellite from Europe into orbit. The USSR did most (all?) of its launches from the Kazakh SSR and Russia continues to have arrangements with Kazakhstan for launches; the ESA launches are technically from French soil but in South America. I included from orbit because I'm sure that cubesats have been sent into space, for at least some definitions thereof, from Europe with weather balloons.

  • The first European nation to launch satellites... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bev_tech_rob ( 313485 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @08:22AM (#63194902)
    ????? Who launched the Ariane rockets, then?
  • Only failed satellite launches are ground breaking.
  • Man, don't you just hate it when you lose one of these giant phallus competitions?

  • It may have been a failure, this time, but they have a lot of new data on what happened. Soon they'll know why and progress will move forward. I hope they try again. Data gathering, new methods, and discovery are never complete failures.

  • If USA could get astronauts to the moon and back in the 60s with a calculator for a computer why is it in 50+ years later we can't even get a satellite into orbit with the 1000 fold improvements in modelling and tech? My personal opinion is that people are getting more stupid, or to be precise, the number of people with high intellect for these positions is relatively smaller because it's certainly not the tech that's failing, it has to be human error caused by a wrong assumption or something without a bac

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Reason we were able to get to the moon was basically resources were provided. Since then it has been extremely difficult to even talk about the moon. For space technology overall has vastly improved with amazing capabilities, so much that are humans really needed?

    • Why? Because engineers were more inventive, smarter, and harder-working than today.

  • Then it would have been ground-breaking!

  • If your new satellite launcher is "groundbreaking" .... I think you might have it pointed in the wrong direction. Just saying.

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