A lot of these companies are either trying different things or doing the same thing and no one is sharing their secret sauce.
They are not insurmountable challenges but each team building rockets from scratch have to go through them. I think it's vital to the long-term success anyway. Easier to learn from your own mistakes than someone elses.
There's a really good reason why caricature of a highly intelligent individual is a rocket scientist. Engineering rockets that go where you want them to go safely is still a really hard problem!
I guess that's the equivalent of writing code perfectly and expecting no compilation errors or logical errors, with the requirement that it should run perfectly.
Like the people who wrote the code for the space shuttle. I don’t remember the specifics, but I once read and article about them and it was pretty astonishing the constraints they were under.
The physics behind rockets requires the structure of the rocket to be extremely light, so structures can’t have more than an absolutely minimal safety factor. And the will experience extremely high vibration loads and g forces. And almost all the mass of the thing is extremely volatile fuel, which needs to be consumed at fantastically high rates and burned directly next to where it’s stored.
Effectively, the margins have to be so small and thus to leave a much higher risk of failure than most other engineering problems, even when done completely correctly.
And then there was the Superheavy booster comically tumbling around mostly intact for a comparatively long time despite the FTS having blown a hole in the tank (yes, I know that's an exceptional case).
They are incredibly complicated machines, and you don't have much chance to test them in realistic conditions without just firing them. They tend to fail much more early in their life, so you'll see a lot more explosions with newer rocket designs. (this is this design's first flight) Most launches to orbit are successful, I think by a wide margin.
Worth noting too, that even the rocket going off course usually means it has to be intentionally exploded by an automated system or manually by a range safety officer since that's the safest option.
It's the flight termination system. i.e. it's an intentional detonation of the rocket to limit risk.
The FTS triggers for unmanned crafts either manually from mission control or automatically based on some set of onboard checks and safeguards.
Given it detonated so quickly after launch, some piece of equipment stopped responding or a sensor started reading a dangerous value which then triggered the FTS.
This really isn't an unusual thing since this is the first launch of this rocket design (and if I remember correctly the first launch by this org).
But yeah TLDR it's better that a rocket explodes in a predictable manner that gets rid of all the fuel and breaks everything up into reasonably small parts while they are still in control of the rocket than for things to go wrong and it crash or otherwise cause more damage.
I vaguely remember reading about that actually happening some years ago. Control system written in C++, bad data comes in from a sensor causing a floating point exception which was not caught locally, and the outermost catch code was basically, “explode the rocket”.
Might have been in the c++ Users Journal or Dr Dobbs in the late 90s.
Kind of, but it's almost worse. More like a subsystem that reboots the machine if you run out of disk space or some other such "something is probably really wrong, but I can't prove it" sort of telemetry signal. Given that it seems to have been trigged by the pitchover manouver, likely something went a bit outside guidelines. Who knows how conservative those are? With an unmanned rocket they tend to lean towards pushing the big red button early and often.
A failed launch is bad. Drop a booster on an elementary school, and your nation is probably down attempting to go to space.
are rockets always blowing or is the occurrence of launches/new platforms increasing? I think it's the latter and we should expect more launches/new platforms and explosions over the next decade in comparison to the last decade.
Design of those rockets is based on design of missiles, where time to hit is the most important thing. Fully electric space launcher or space lift will be much slower, but safer.
I think it's mostly new rockets. KAIROS was a new rocket and this was its first launch.
Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped exploding long ago.
As another example, Toyota Tacoma trucks are known to be reliable... because they have barely changed for years but now are kind of dated. Ford, on the other hand, keeps changing the F-150 so you get a lot of modern comforts, but there "bad model years" and "good model years."
New stuff just doesn't have the kinks worked out, especially when you have budgets and deadlines. Just how engineering goes.
>Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped exploding long ago.
Context for others: Soyuz, the spacecraft, is launched by Soyuz, the rocket. The rocket is the latest iteration of the R-7 that the USSR developed as an ICBM in the 1950s, and which it used to launch to orbit Sputnik 1 in 1957 and Vostok 1 with Yuri Gagarin in 1961.
The Soviets had to develop such a rocket—far more powerful than US ICBMs—because its electronics and warhead technology was inferior, resulting in far larger and less reliable warheads and satellites. On the other hand, Soviets and Russians have used variants of that rocket for 65 years and counting, even while the US used many, many varieties of Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Delta, and Saturn ICBMs and rockets for its satellites and spacecraft, along with the shuttle and now SLS and SpaceX Falcon.
While Falcon 9 and the forthcoming Starship are far, far, far superior to anything the Russians (or Arianespace, or NASA or other US commercial firms) are producing today, there is a lot to be said for having gotten the booster right the first time around and iterating it over years and decades.
Which ones? The ones that do are almost all prototypes (for instance SpaceX Starship) that have new technology innovations. Unless they are manned the safest thing to do if they are operating outside limits is to use the FTS (flight termination system) to make a large fast object into much smaller pieces. Unlikely most other vehicles, rockets can't just coast or glide to a stop if they go wrong.
They're fresh designs, just like how if 10 people reimplement the same 100 page specification, they'll have a stage of fixing crashes unique to their implementation, fresh rocket designs need a few rounds of iteration to sort out all the kinks, and after a point you're just better off doing a test flight, especially as a private company. You just don't really hear about similar issues for things like cars because you don't get large fireballs and air closures indicative of testing.
Once you get the issues sorted out though, they can be almost airplane like in terms of operations. See SpaceX's crazy launch cadence and reliability streak with Falcon 9 for an example.
Rockets essentially mostly consist of things that are intended to go boom with very little prodding. On top of that, the force on a rocket engine makes it prefer to make the rocket engine go through the rocket rather than pushing the entire rocket itself, and it requires careful engineering to make it not do that. Combined, this means that if anything goes slightly wrong, it tends to cascade into going horribly wrong and cause the rocket to explode.
In this case, though, it seems that the guidance system or something similar was going wrong, and the rocket was intentionally blown up in a safer location than an uncontrolled trajectory might have taken it.
Yeah, it's not like it is rocket science. Oh wait, it is. The art of making big containers full of explosives as fast as possible. It rather is a technical miracle that most launches do not produce a big fireball.
Also it is not open source, but rather mostly secret technology. One company or country solving it, does not mean everyone will benefit. Everybody new in the game, has to invent quite some wheels again.
Vehicle is all solid 3-staged. Explosion ~5s into flight, right after immediate pitchover. Reportedly company explained that onboard auto FTS activated according to local media. Post-launch conference is/was currently planned 13:30 JST(0430 UTC). No more information for now.
I once embarked on an R&D program to make a 2-stage rocket out of bottle rockets. I'd tape the second engine under the first, and the first's fuse midway along the 2nd's fuse. Then light the lower engine's fuse.
It was nothing but explosion after explosion, the top engine would never ignite, or sometimes fall to earth and then ignite. But being a Certified Rocket Scientist, I doggedly soldiered on. Finally, success!! The rocket rose up about 10 feet till the lower engine was exhausted, then the top engine ignited! Woo-hoo! It launched skyward another 10 feet before exploding.
I was never able to duplicate that stupendous success. I bet Musk could have made it work reliably!
Estes rocket motors always supported multi-staging. I made a ton of many-stage rockets as a kid. In fact, that was probably the biggest development -- how many ridiculous stages could I chain into one rocket?
update: Conference is now over. Not much technical statements than "FTS was activated ~5s, all debris/damages localized to company property, we're investigating". No immediate change of plans for flights 2 and 3 - first time asked the answer was worded like "we transport customer assets, missions are theirs", but the second one sounded like "no we're not paying out of pocket for an RTF dummy flight"(both my interpretation).
Their astronomers and engineers at NAOJ are wonderful. They built (and paid for) the Atacama Compact Array, which forms the center of the ALMA radio-telescope and is part of the Event Horizon Telescope.
Given that the rocket blew up more or less at launch, it should be full of unspent fuel. How does one put out that fire? I'm guessing there's a lot of energy stored there, so letting it burn through doesn't seem wise.
I think the only thing to do at that point is contain wildfires ignited by the burning propellant. The other commenter's entirely right: it's not practical to stop a combustion reaction where the fuel and oxidizer are already mixed.
Here's a ground-level view from a similar solid-rocket failure, for some perspective:
55 comments
[ 242 ms ] story [ 1795 ms ] threadThey are not insurmountable challenges but each team building rockets from scratch have to go through them. I think it's vital to the long-term success anyway. Easier to learn from your own mistakes than someone elses.
Effectively, the margins have to be so small and thus to leave a much higher risk of failure than most other engineering problems, even when done completely correctly.
Worth noting too, that even the rocket going off course usually means it has to be intentionally exploded by an automated system or manually by a range safety officer since that's the safest option.
The FTS triggers for unmanned crafts either manually from mission control or automatically based on some set of onboard checks and safeguards.
Given it detonated so quickly after launch, some piece of equipment stopped responding or a sensor started reading a dangerous value which then triggered the FTS.
This really isn't an unusual thing since this is the first launch of this rocket design (and if I remember correctly the first launch by this org).
But yeah TLDR it's better that a rocket explodes in a predictable manner that gets rid of all the fuel and breaks everything up into reasonably small parts while they are still in control of the rocket than for things to go wrong and it crash or otherwise cause more damage.
As a fellow engineer, I sympathize.
Might have been in the c++ Users Journal or Dr Dobbs in the late 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88
A failed launch is bad. Drop a booster on an elementary school, and your nation is probably down attempting to go to space.
try: launch_rocket()
except: explode_rocket()
The vast majority of rockets that simply work don't make the news.
Old rockets that haven't been changed in decades like the Soyuz stopped exploding long ago.
As another example, Toyota Tacoma trucks are known to be reliable... because they have barely changed for years but now are kind of dated. Ford, on the other hand, keeps changing the F-150 so you get a lot of modern comforts, but there "bad model years" and "good model years."
New stuff just doesn't have the kinks worked out, especially when you have budgets and deadlines. Just how engineering goes.
Context for others: Soyuz, the spacecraft, is launched by Soyuz, the rocket. The rocket is the latest iteration of the R-7 that the USSR developed as an ICBM in the 1950s, and which it used to launch to orbit Sputnik 1 in 1957 and Vostok 1 with Yuri Gagarin in 1961.
The Soviets had to develop such a rocket—far more powerful than US ICBMs—because its electronics and warhead technology was inferior, resulting in far larger and less reliable warheads and satellites. On the other hand, Soviets and Russians have used variants of that rocket for 65 years and counting, even while the US used many, many varieties of Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Delta, and Saturn ICBMs and rockets for its satellites and spacecraft, along with the shuttle and now SLS and SpaceX Falcon.
While Falcon 9 and the forthcoming Starship are far, far, far superior to anything the Russians (or Arianespace, or NASA or other US commercial firms) are producing today, there is a lot to be said for having gotten the booster right the first time around and iterating it over years and decades.
Once you get the issues sorted out though, they can be almost airplane like in terms of operations. See SpaceX's crazy launch cadence and reliability streak with Falcon 9 for an example.
In this case, though, it seems that the guidance system or something similar was going wrong, and the rocket was intentionally blown up in a safer location than an uncontrolled trajectory might have taken it.
Also it is not open source, but rather mostly secret technology. One company or country solving it, does not mean everyone will benefit. Everybody new in the game, has to invent quite some wheels again.
e: conference now re-scheduled to 14:00(0500 UTC), 3p live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F5dHsgBMMU
I once embarked on an R&D program to make a 2-stage rocket out of bottle rockets. I'd tape the second engine under the first, and the first's fuse midway along the 2nd's fuse. Then light the lower engine's fuse.
It was nothing but explosion after explosion, the top engine would never ignite, or sometimes fall to earth and then ignite. But being a Certified Rocket Scientist, I doggedly soldiered on. Finally, success!! The rocket rose up about 10 feet till the lower engine was exhausted, then the top engine ignited! Woo-hoo! It launched skyward another 10 feet before exploding.
I was never able to duplicate that stupendous success. I bet Musk could have made it work reliably!
https://estesrockets.com/products/mongoose
https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/alma/
That stuff is fuel and oxidizer mixed together. It is nearly impossible to stop once it gets started.
Here's a ground-level view from a similar solid-rocket failure, for some perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTmb3Cqb2qw ("Delta II Launch Failure - Multiple Views - GPS IIR-1, 1997, Rocket Explosion, USAF, Canaveral LC-17")
Always wait for Version Two.