Oh well, just when I commented that the village bus has 97%+ success ratio.
Nothing to do with Vostochnyi by the look of it - this is a rocket failure. Could have happened from any of the other 3 launch sites (Plesetsk, Baikonur and Guiana)
A Russian weather satellite and 18 micro-satellites are right now thought to be at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean after a Soyuz rocket carrying the birds malfunctioned shortly after launch. The launch of the Soyuz 2-b rocket – the latest addition to Russia's venerable line of boosters – took place at the new Vostochny …
Early suggestions are that the Soyuz rocket performed its job and a flight control programming error in the Fregat upper stage (which is used with multiple launch systems) is likely to blame.
Does someone really have to mention bloody kerbels every single time any aerospace topic is being discussed?
There's few better ways to gain a visceral understanding of rocket failures and orbital mechanics than Kerbal Space Program. In this case, staging errors due to incorrect flight controller programming are common in new Kerbal booster design.
Every time someone relates something in the real world to a game
Aladdin Sane's XKCD reference is worth a look.
I would like to think that Register readers can understand this sentence perfectly well:
"Instead, it fell back to Earth, possibly still carrying its payload, and was destroyed by air friction, with the debris falling safely into the sea, we're told."
And do not need this sentence to explain it to them "in other words":
"In other words, it sounds as though the rocket didn't do its job of getting the stuff up into space, and keeping it there."
"Instead, it fell back to Earth, possibly still carrying its payload, and was destroyed by air friction, with the debris falling safely into the sea, we're told."
As a red-blooded Reg reader it would be remiss of me not to also point out that on re-entry from orbit, the heat and mechanical stresses come largely from compression of the air in front of the object rather than friction.
This is the first I have heard of possum power, but NASA did a small scale animal fuel test, presumably to prepare for this.
Well, in addition to the potatoes you need LOX and something closely resembling a V2 to even be able to start thinking about solving problems, and then only a particular category of problems, really. There is also the fact that previous attempts have not shown this to be a viable approach in the long run.
Well, if you want them to go up and then land in the sea, then yes. I don't think that was the plan here.
There's the problem. Simply redefine the plan as being 'to go up and then land in the sea' and the mission was a roaring success. This used to be SOP for TASS back in the day
Or simply split the launch up into different sub-contractors, each responsible for a different phase.
Then you can claim 'n' times as many successful launch activities, claim 'n' times as much investment in the local economy and close down the one which fails
Whether Kim's ballistic rockets carry any payload at all is a good guarded secret. The Soyuz is designed to lift some 7000 kg to LEO.
"That said, we already have hardware on the International Space Station waiting to launch so there's plenty to be getting on with."
Wow... How to be completely dismissive of the loss of 10 of your customers hard work and endeavours!?!
Considering even a microsatellite takes 2-3 years to develop, I'm sure the scientists and engineers who have now lost their work and the opportunities for the scientific data they were hoping to collect are just as sanguine. 2-3 years down the drain, yeah fine whatever...
Remind me to stay away from that firm in future...
Customer is insured.
Likely - especially with micro-satellites - they have a lot of spares on hand.
Hassle, yes.
Rejigging of a timetable, yes.
But if you haven't accounted that "big stick of dynamite might go bang" in your business model as a satellite company, then you really don't deserve to be in business anyway. You'd have a number of other satellites, a number of other launch locations, a number of other launch companies, and the insurance to just say "Right, let's launch one from this other place to fill the gap we now have in the schedule, while we clean up the mess".
Seriously... space travel is still incredibly dangerous. If you haven't factored that in, you're going to go bankrupt very fast.
Meanwhile, likely the scientists are developing the next lot, testing on the ground units and anything that they do already have launched, etc. In fact, after a while, they'll be twiddling their thumbs and moving on - once the constellation is up - and this has probably just provided another 6 months of employment for most of them.
You really think there's a room of white lab-coats somewhere crying into their beakers, in ruins? Most likely they just ticked the Excel box that says "Launch: Failed", and moved onto the next one that's already 90% planned out for just such an eventuality.
Soyuz is just fine. Fregat is starting to look questionable. Especially given the glaring shortcomings found in the design after a previous failure. Lets hope for Lavochkin they can find a root cause that doesn't make them look bad, because I'm pretty sure the Fregat is done if they screwed the pooch again.
Ouch! Ariane have got a long record of mostly not going bang, but SpaceX only have a short record of similar - and the bangs have been more recent. So I'm surprised they're also massively cheaper than Soyuz - which must sting a little. Although I've read the phrase "problems with the Freigat upper stage" an awful lot in the last few years.
I seem to remember a couple of rather spectacular failures with the Ariane, including some seriously botched flight control code, which resulted in a subterranean orbit for the first Ariane 5.
It used to be, for a new rocket, it was impossible to get affordable flight insurance. This caused a lot of new rockets to be launched with ballast, just to prove the launch vehicle. Of course, there were some amateur satellite makers who would take an uninsured chance for a free launch on such a rocket (and, a few of them had satellites dropped into the Atlantic, too).
Dave
Those Russian Cosmodromes are a long way from the equator, which must make satellite launches needlessly expensive. If this rocket went down over the Atlantic, then it travelled half way around the Earth, so we should be thankful it didn't come down anywhere populated.
Are there rules allowing the rocket host to inspect the commercial satellites they carry? What if a malfunctioning satellite caused this by activating early and interfering with the electronics of the launch rocket?
I don't care who you are, where you are from, etc. I wish everyone success in getting us into space. Hopefully Russia will quickly figure out what went wrong so this is not repeated. EVERYONE has had at least one catastrophe when launching rockets as this is "rocket science"!!!
I just wish the world would unite, stop all wars, and all that money in defense saved could be spent on colonizing other planets. As more machines do the work here, putting people on other planets removes idle hands on this planet and gives everyone full employment. THAT is the only next industry that will save us as there really is no new field to get into. Plus, if one is kept busy and has a purpose, it reduces the influence from religious nutjobs.