Antares rocket explodes just seconds after liftoff, investigation underway

It'll be interesting to see what the fallout of this will be. I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I'll hold my tongue, lest I burn any bridges behind me.

bsman said:
Kinda' hard to believe that over 50 years into the "space age" and we've still got nothing better than a big, chemical explosion as a device to propel ourselves into space.
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There's no getting around physics. Unless we switch to nuclear power or use fuels that spew out poisonous exhaust, we've pretty much reached the theoretical maximum lift limits of rockets. You can build bigger rockets, but they'll work on the same principles. And ultimately, the payload that gets into space is just a fraction of the mass of the the entire rocket with its fuel. Look at the size of the Saturn V that sent Apollo off to the moon, and all that came back from the trip was a little capsule. If we attempted the same trip today, the ratios wouldn't be much different. And then consider what it would take to get to Mars and back.

Back in the 60's, popular media led people to believe they could take vacations to the moon by the year 2000. We're just now getting to the point where private companies are on the verge of sending people into a sub-orbital flight at a $100K a seat.
 
shoeless said:
There is a lot of optimism for Elon Musk's SpaceX company and their Falcon platform. He has a good track record so far of doing things smartly and getting it right. This Orbial failure, along with a previous one a few years ago on Sea Launch, will likely only help his business.
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I wish SpaceX the best. I'm a fan. But don't think for a minute there won't be a SpaceX disaster, or similar "incident" in their future. It's going to happen. And yes, we've been joking around here that Elon and Co. were probably popping the champagne corks the other day.
 
Steverino said:
I wish SpaceX the best. I'm a fan. But don't think for a minute there won't be a SpaceX disaster, or similar "incident" in their future. It's going to happen. And yes, we've been joking around here that Elon and Co. were probably popping the champagne corks the other day.
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Agreed. It's kind of like driving a car...eventually you will have an accident. The main difference being, there's no such thing as a fender bender when there's that much potential energy involved.
 
Kerouac said:
People seem to forget sometimes how fucking BIG of an accomplishment getting into outer space, let alone the moon, is/was. It's scary, dangerous science and incredibly rewarding when it works, but statistically tragic.
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Actually, the stats have been anything but tragic, considering the risk and the size of the accomplishment. Any accidents will skew it, but still.
 
Mark Wein said:
Amazing but not surprising:

The N-1 launcher originally used NK-15 engines for its first stage, and a high-altitude modification (NK-15V) in its second stage. After four consecutive launch failures and no successes, the project was cancelled. While other aspects of the vehicle were being modified or redesigned, Kuznetsov improved his contributions into the NK-33 and NK-43, respectively.[5] The 2nd-generation vehicle was to be called the N-1F. By this point the Moon race was long lost, and the Soviet space program was looking to the Energia as its heavy launcher. No N-1F ever reached the launch pad.[6]

When the N-1 program was shut down, all work on the project was ordered destroyed. A bureaucrat instead took the engines, worth millions of dollars each, and stored them in a warehouse. Word of the engines eventually spread to America. Nearly thirty years after they were built, disbelieving rocket engineers were led to the warehouse. One of the engines was later taken to America, and the precise specification of the engine was demonstrated on a test stand.[6]

About 150 engines survived, and in the mid-1990s, Russia sold 36 engines to Aerojet General for $1.1 million each. This company also acquired a license for the production of new engines. Aerojet has modified and renamed the updated NK-33 to AJ26-58 and AJ26-62, and NK-43 to AJ26-59.[7][8] [9]
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So these engines that never evar made it to space were sold for over a million a piece? :messedup:
 
Yep, Virgin lost a space plane today, killed the co-pilot.
This will always be dangerous business.
But if I had a ticket, I'd go.
 
Pine Apple Slim said:
Yep, Virgin lost a space plane today, killed the co-pilot.
This will always be dangerous business.
But if I had a ticket, I'd go.
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Agreed. I'm one that was convinced I'd be able to vacation in space by now. I wasn't alone either. We seemed to be making advances in leaps and bounds. Now I know I'll never see space unless it's in an urn. That makes me sad and losses like this along with the Shuttle program will only make the progress slower. Unfortunately (and I know this will not be agreed to by some) exploration is a dangerous business and there will be losses and that shouldn't stop the progress. But in this day and age of lawsuits and blame games it will I think. Had this been the way 100's of years ago we'd all still be living in Europe :P
 
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