Jamie

Jamie

Well Known Member
This is completely off-topic, but I thought you space enthusiast types would find this interesting. It's a video of a Delta II rocket w/ a GPS satellite payload exploding on lift-off. It has to be one of the most massive explosions of a rocket ever recorded.

The video attributes the explosion to a 17 foot long crack in a booster.

A quick google search shows that this happened in '97.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1381963273853382138
 
That's why It's the Greatest Career there is

People talk about dreams of being an airline pilot etc., etc. There is NOTHING that holds a candle to space exploration. The Delta II is probably the most reliable of the ELVs and yet the risk is great. The KSC/CCAFS teams are great. The sad thing associated with these launch vehicle failures is not the the ELV itself but the payload and the years of totally dedicated work by many people to develop the one of a kind payload just to get it to the launch phase. It takes so long for scientists to develop their skills gain recognition/credibility/unique science perspective and get a proposal selected for development that for many this is the last project they will ever fly - the culmination of their life's work. The teams that transport the spacecraft from the final test/prep areas on KSC out to the Launch Pad 17 complex on the Canaveral side, stack the spacecraft on the Delta launce vehicle, install the shroud, maintain all necessary controls and execute the count down checks and launch, are very conscious of the enormous responsibility placed on them. When these failures occur, in depth investigations by independent teams of experts are conducted, appropriate changes are incorporated to prevent recurrence and NASA lessons learned database is updated to alert future projects. But still, the risks are there and each successful launce is an exhilarating event. And, this is just the start of the mission - awesome work.

Bob Axsom
 
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WHOA!

I can imagine how the phone call with the auto insurance company went...
Claimant: "There was an accident, my car was destroyed."
Claims Adjuster: "Could you explain what happened sir?"
Claimant: "Well, see, there was this rocket..."
:D
 
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When people take a trip out to the SHuttle launch pads, they sometimes ask "why are they so far away from everythgin else?" All you have to do is show them this film clip, and they understand pretty quick - you don't want to be anywhere within a couple miles if we have a catastrophic failure shortly after liftoff!

Bob is right about the precious nature of research payloads - those experiments truly are sometimes the culmination of a lifetime of work for a scientist, and I always try and remember that when making inflight decisions about what we can and can't accomplish...

Paul
 
Soviet Union "beat us" on this one ...

I saw a short movie clip of one of the Soviet Union's N-1 rockets exploding on the pad at Baikanor recently on the History Channel. It was their "moon rocket" and was basically like a Saturn V. Used a cluster of 30 engines on the first stage. It seemed to lose thrust, and fell downward into the blast tunnel, basically making the most awesome blow-torch in the history of mankind.

They never succeeded in getting this design to work - from what I recall, getting reliable coordination of all 30 engines was a big issue for them.

Couldn't find a video, but here is a reference for those interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_rocket#Problems

Tim
 
RV7Factory said:
WHOA!

I can imagine how the phone with the auto insurance company went...
Claimant: "There was an accident, my car was destroyed."
Claims Adjuster: "Could you explain what happened sir?"
Claimant: "Well, see, there was this rocket..."
:D
Click to expand...
A few years back we were doing a simulated seismic loading on a mock-up of a nuclear power plant. The idea being to see how big a piping crack could withstand how big an earthquake. The NRC rep observing the test was parked too close and the piping failed in an unexpected manner, knocking down the building.
When returning his car to Hertz, and trying to explain the caved-in fender he said "you heard me right the first time, the building jumped out and hit me, not the other way around!":eek:

-mike
 
On Wednesday, 10-25-06, I was watching a Delta launch. It was carrying the two STEREO spacecraft, which I worked on for two years. I was quaking in my boots! The Delta has a reliability of more than 90%, but still...

Once the Delta burnt out, I started to worry about "our part": separation from the launch vehicle, separation of the two spacecraft from one another, deployment of the solar panels, powering up the heaters, etc. There's about a bzillion things that can go wrong AFTER you're done worrying about the rocket exploding or being "terminated" by the range safety officer.

For now, the two little spacecraft are in their phasing orbits out to about the distance of the moon, being checked out and so far working well.

See stereo.jhuapl.edu for more details about the mission. Another one of my spacecraft (my only other one) launched in 2004: messenger.jhuapl.edu. It'll get to Mercury in 2011, if memory serves.

Each of those things weighs about as much as my RV-7 will weigh, and costs about 1000x more! (And has the work of a few hundred people in it, by the time you take the spacecraft, the instruments, and its components into account.)
 
Could be wrong, its been a while, but I remember that explosion was caused by a failed support beam that connected one of the smaller rocket boosters to the main tube- it flopped around before it ripped out the case. We made the Delta boosters, along with Titan IVB boosters, and Pegasus motors at my old jobsite in Magna, Utah. That case is made of approx 2" thick reinforced graphite epoxy composite at the ends, tapers down to abt 1/4" for most of the wall length. The propellent is a cured rubber tube that contains aluminum powder fuel and ammonium perchlorate oxidizer. The Delta boosters were approx 4' diameter and about 40' long.
 
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