Pretty good considering all their calculations have to account for everything being upside down and filled to the very top with venomous hybrid monsters.
One of those engines looks to have either not lit properly, or had a failure of some sort. You can see the right exhaust plume looks a lot more disorganized than the left, and the vehicle struggled to maintain orientation. Their wikipedia page says they're using hybrid (solid fuel + liquid oxidizer) engines, but I wasn't able to find out what actual propellants are. That tech's not nearly as well worked out as liquid or even solid engines, so a failure isn't at all surprising.
Law states hovering is flying. I think layman and philosophy wise it gets in as flying on a technicality. Gliding and floating are unpowered "flight" as they represent 'moving through the air' while hovering implies an active state of fighting against gravity to stay aloft. That active state counts for something. Like "pushing a wall with 100,000 newtons of force" doesn't have to imply you are moving the wall even though "pushing something" usually means movement.
Amazing how, when its any company other than SpaceX, Imgur suddenly remembers that Rocket Science is /proverbially hard/, and that an experimental launch not getting into orbit is not a sign of failure and incompetence.
(Yes, Musk is a dick and should die in a fire. The actual rocket scientists at SpaceX, however, deserve respect.)
Amazing how, when its any company other than SpaceX, Imgur suddenly remembers that Rocket Science is /proverbially hard/, and that an experimental launch not getting into orbit is not a sign of failure and incompetence.
(Yes, Musk is a dick and should die in a fire. The actual rocket scientists at SpaceX, however, are not.)
It depends heavily on what program you're talking about. Falcon 9 is a resounding success (most reliable, cheapest launch system ever), but Starship is proving tougher (the SuperHeavy booster is doing a lot better).
The UK developed a rocket and launched a satellite into orbit from Australia in the early 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow The UK is the only country ever to have developed satellite launch capability and then give it up.
This very much depends on *when* they fail. I’m guessing normally it shouldn’t unclamp unless all engines are working. Then one (or even more) could fail successfully later when the rocket is lighter.
It did account for it. That's why it didn't yeet itself off to one side. The trouble is there wasn't enough thrust to achieve altitude which probably saved it from going off course midair. Looks like 2 rockets didn't ignite, you can see clouds of fuel pouring out one side.
I don't think it really works that way with rockets. Having the extra weight of a spare engine is a big problem. Better just to make a system whose odds of failures are really really small.
They are: "While rockets aren't built with the plan for engine failure, they are designed to be tolerant of it. This means that if an engine fails during launch, the rocket is designed to compensate and still complete its mission successfully. SpaceX, for example, designs its Falcon 9 rockets to be "double-fault tolerant," meaning they can handle the loss of one or even two engines. "
Its a risk/reward balance. Extra expense of additional engines vs 1 large, extra expense of igniting multiple engines simultaneously (look up the Russian Vostok failures), extra expense of carrying additional weight, extra expense of needing to refurbish multiple engines, just in order to have redundancy. Whereas less complication means less risk of failure, but bigger failures since no redundancy. Its a balance each company must find.
If one engine fails and your entire rocket/payload is lost, that's a hell of a failure. I'll take the wisdom of the guys making 32 story rockets fly and land between chopsticks being caught by a building.
I don't think they do that because they can't afford the weight of a 'dead' engine. I mean I'm not disagreeing, I just know it's all about weight. You need four engines to go up, we put only four engines on it. In a perfect world there would be backup engines yeah, or maybe powerful vectoring engines to allow them to bring it back down safely on a failure. But rockets/ships are just too big.
Not backup. More thrust from the engines than minimally needed to launch. Enough extra thrust to account for a failure of an engine. SpaceX is doing great allowing for up to 2 engines to fail and not risk the loss of the rocket or payload.
That'd be the same issue. We need x amount of weight/thrust ratio we're putting just that on it. The other issue is that attitude adjustment is pretty strenuous. It's pretty difficult to engineer a rocket with redundant thrust given it's a tube pointed up with the thrust at one end that doesn't want to point the same way as the other end. Cheaper, less failure points, and easier to "simply" make a rocket that doesn't fail. Australia's not Space-X yet, but with this performance: soon.
I mean, I'm not a rocket ship designer. I suppose it could also come down to the type of engines used. Of course, haha, we're not talking like SpaceX hasn't had crashes here are we? :D
Of course not, but they're still accomplishing things NASA hasn't been able to dream of. They are trying technologies and techniques that NASA wasn't permitted to do, some failure is going to occur, but they're learning. And there's a reason they are practically the only sourced service for lifting materials to space in the US.
I know it's just a joke, but for anyone unaware the US does use metric for any sort of science and a lot of engineering to avoid this exact confusion ever since NASA contracted an aerospace company back in the 50s or 60s without realizing said contractor was using SI units, resulting in an exploding rocket
Idk about the 50's/60's, but in '99 we destroyed an orbiter with mars' atmosphere because engineers didn't convert between lb-seconds and Newton-seconds.
REOJackwagon
"Boomerang test a success"
"Boomerang? It was supposed to go into orbit"
"...."
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MGUzNjVhZGFxaTJkaWU5dHF6dXZ0aXBkeG5qbnI2eXQ3YTVrYjUzaSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/LSoiZC2ix9lf2/200w.webp
wolfenstien98
I mean, for a first try that's pretty good
arajad
14 seconds is longer than some of the U.S.'s first attempts.
ErindorGhostPope
You'd think it would be easier to fire a rocket down rather than up.
craigwilliams69
Can you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover?
ruint
Edgekrsher
My thoughts exactly
Lugh314159
someone has stolen the Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator!
IakobZ
rolliefingers
Pretty good considering all their calculations have to account for everything being upside down and filled to the very top with venomous hybrid monsters.
WeAllLiveInAUserSubmarine
Dude, just turn off the anti-gravity and let nature take its course
jesting
You mean "filled to the bottom ".
rolliefingers
I prostrate myself before your mastery.
woozle
RowanUnderwood
I'm actually VERY impressed it was able to remain stable with one of the engines not even firing :D
eromitlab
bugger!
gman003
One of those engines looks to have either not lit properly, or had a failure of some sort. You can see the right exhaust plume looks a lot more disorganized than the left, and the vehicle struggled to maintain orientation. Their wikipedia page says they're using hybrid (solid fuel + liquid oxidizer) engines, but I wasn't able to find out what actual propellants are. That tech's not nearly as well worked out as liquid or even solid engines, so a failure isn't at all surprising.
snoogns
Progress doesn't always look pretty
MisterFr
Ya can’t park that there mate
lonosham
You can’t park THAT there, mate. FTFY
LoopStricken
Fah korf!
SwiftyGuy
Rocketry is hard. Even today :(
rhymeotheancientsubmariner
After all, it IS rocket science
dashers
Well, it's not like it's brain surgery
JediUrsa
14 seconds of flight is a generous description of what happened
HashMaster9k
4 seconds of flight, 10 seconds of hover.
PectorialMuscles
Isn't hovering a form of flight? I'm uneducated on this subject.
OnlyWantToSayOneThing
Law states hovering is flying. I think layman and philosophy wise it gets in as flying on a technicality. Gliding and floating are unpowered "flight" as they represent 'moving through the air' while hovering implies an active state of fighting against gravity to stay aloft. That active state counts for something. Like "pushing a wall with 100,000 newtons of force" doesn't have to imply you are moving the wall even though "pushing something" usually means movement.
CrisprCAS
Engine misfire
0570
Seems to fail after initial release from what I see through the smoke. Would they not have aborted if it was still clamped in place and misfiring?
KaJuN
Put a can of Seafoam in the tank and send it.
PubMed12927120suckssobad
And it took a second one with it after a little bit
Carl99
AKA Engine Rich Exhaust leading to RUD.
malbec
Miss Fiyah?
imakeeper
Looked like the attitude adjustment thrusters did a good job of keeping it pointed in the right direction though.
MuttMonkey
Gotta always keep a good attitude.
truthader
Attitude over altitude any day. Well, any day on which you don’t find much altitude in a situation like this one.
DocWino
I used to build rocket engines for Rockwell.
PubMed12927120suckssobad
And... you're on the spectrum, right?
Botticelliii
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1N2dkN3pmbzZ0b3NxbzYydDJ3bzF3d3R0bWF3NWVhazA4Z3B3c3UyOCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/h1zJMhT5XOT927e0aw/200w.webp
Acc87
...and? What else can you add to the conversation?
PicassoCT
Let the DocWino have a little pride in what s/he did?
pandajack
Was expecting massive explosion. At least they engineered the tanks well I guess.
Nuttsy
Hybrid rocket. Hydrogen peroxide flowing through a core of unspecified solid fuel.
Guessing it's harder to have the two mix in case of cracks this way.
macdjord
Amazing how, when its any company other than SpaceX, Imgur suddenly remembers that Rocket Science is /proverbially hard/, and that an experimental launch not getting into orbit is not a sign of failure and incompetence.
(Yes, Musk is a dick and should die in a fire. The actual rocket scientists at SpaceX, however, deserve respect.)
theskepticinme
Congrats on your rocket not blowing up immediately on test!
ShoopDeDoop
Even though it crashed, getting off the ground is the first step.
Kyzyl
nslatz22
Not hitting the ground is the second step.
truthader
Definitely not this ground, and definitely not yet.
quadraspaz1
The next one burned down, fell over, then fell into the swamp (Monty Python)
wearsPantsOften
Exactly.
floatingPoi
Which is my daily mantra every morning.
Stefnos
and it crashed the right way up.... it didnt do a flip or anything (thoe that would have been relly cool and arwsom)
Acc87
and it was actually supposed to take off, so it can't be Chinese either
iLoveItWhenMyFingersSmellLikePussy
Well, they only expected it to fly for a few seconds and not destroy anything, so it was a success!
macdjord
Amazing how, when its any company other than SpaceX, Imgur suddenly remembers that Rocket Science is /proverbially hard/, and that an experimental launch not getting into orbit is not a sign of failure and incompetence.
(Yes, Musk is a dick and should die in a fire. The actual rocket scientists at SpaceX, however, are not.)
PlanckEraWasMyBestEra
You gotta fail a whole lot before you succeed.
cptjellyjiggeler
only some money lost and some some shit in the air... lets try again
ketchapOnHotdogs
Elon, is that you?
hyptosis
NKato
No. An European space agency did their very first home-grown space rocket launch and it still blew up anyway because they knew it was going to.
This is literally how we learn. By failing.
NKato
THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT ELON FUCKING DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO QUIT BECAUSE HE DOESN'T KNOW THE WORD "NO".
NKato
(And that's not a good thing.)
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
It depends heavily on what program you're talking about. Falcon 9 is a resounding success (most reliable, cheapest launch system ever), but Starship is proving tougher (the SuperHeavy booster is doing a lot better).
NKato
Right. Still, Musk needs to fuck off. Like, from this mortal plane entirely.
DOcelot1
Getting to space is not easy
angelofsnark
The little rocket that couldn't.
Wankbiscuit
YA CAN'T USE BUNDY AS FUEL, MATE.
nobodyspecial995
Next up, Vegemite!
lonosham
That was the payload. No, seriously.
nobodyspecial995
Lol you're right, that's hilarious. One of the prototype SpaceX rockets had a wheel of cheese, so this follows form.
Otomasoteraph
That's a start!
laDisparitionDesHeures
No kaboom? We were expecting a kaboom! Give!
somnif
Solid fuel rocket, basically something like candle wax. It's only the oxidizer flow across it's surface that gives a sustained burn.
laDisparitionDesHeures
Sustained burn, title of your sextape.
kerdude
To be fair that part of the world has New Zealand's RocketLab which is one of the top small launch vehicle companies there is
CarlBassett
The UK developed a rocket and launched a satellite into orbit from Australia in the early 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow The UK is the only country ever to have developed satellite launch capability and then give it up.
dynamojoe
It looks like one of the engines failed.
Tangomangoboi
I'd like to made it plain that is NOT NORMAL
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
Seems like engine design should account for loss of one and accommodate it with enough thrust from remaining ones.
peterCorgiWatcher
This very much depends on *when* they fail. I’m guessing normally it shouldn’t unclamp unless all engines are working. Then one (or even more) could fail successfully later when the rocket is lighter.
wascallywiddlewabbit
It did account for it. That's why it didn't yeet itself off to one side. The trouble is there wasn't enough thrust to achieve altitude which probably saved it from going off course midair.
Looks like 2 rockets didn't ignite, you can see clouds of fuel pouring out one side.
wadatahmydamie
If only the rocket scientists had your foresight
Nuttsy
It's a hybrid rocket. If an engine's out, they've either lost a quarter of their first stage fuel, or are launching questionably fuel rich stages.
iRecommendBooks
I don't think it really works that way with rockets. Having the extra weight of a spare engine is a big problem. Better just to make a system whose odds of failures are really really small.
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
They are: "While rockets aren't built with the plan for engine failure, they are designed to be tolerant of it. This means that if an engine fails during launch, the rocket is designed to compensate and still complete its mission successfully. SpaceX, for example, designs its Falcon 9 rockets to be "double-fault tolerant," meaning they can handle the loss of one or even two engines. "
jeips
Its a risk/reward balance. Extra expense of additional engines vs 1 large, extra expense of igniting multiple engines simultaneously (look up the Russian Vostok failures), extra expense of carrying additional weight, extra expense of needing to refurbish multiple engines, just in order to have redundancy. Whereas less complication means less risk of failure, but bigger failures since no redundancy. Its a balance each company must find.
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
If one engine fails and your entire rocket/payload is lost, that's a hell of a failure. I'll take the wisdom of the guys making 32 story rockets fly and land between chopsticks being caught by a building.
LMTMFA
Falcon 9 seems to be a pretty good balance.
hyptosis
I don't think they do that because they can't afford the weight of a 'dead' engine. I mean I'm not disagreeing, I just know it's all about weight. You need four engines to go up, we put only four engines on it. In a perfect world there would be backup engines yeah, or maybe powerful vectoring engines to allow them to bring it back down safely on a failure. But rockets/ships are just too big.
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
Not backup. More thrust from the engines than minimally needed to launch. Enough extra thrust to account for a failure of an engine. SpaceX is doing great allowing for up to 2 engines to fail and not risk the loss of the rocket or payload.
PectorialMuscles
That'd be the same issue. We need x amount of weight/thrust ratio we're putting just that on it. The other issue is that attitude adjustment is pretty strenuous. It's pretty difficult to engineer a rocket with redundant thrust given it's a tube pointed up with the thrust at one end that doesn't want to point the same way as the other end. Cheaper, less failure points, and easier to "simply" make a rocket that doesn't fail. Australia's not Space-X yet, but with this performance: soon.
hyptosis
I mean, I'm not a rocket ship designer. I suppose it could also come down to the type of engines used. Of course, haha, we're not talking like SpaceX hasn't had crashes here are we? :D
OnFridaysWeWearBeskar
Of course not, but they're still accomplishing things NASA hasn't been able to dream of. They are trying technologies and techniques that NASA wasn't permitted to do, some failure is going to occur, but they're learning. And there's a reason they are practically the only sourced service for lifting materials to space in the US.
holgerdk
Well, at least the front didnt fall off.
ProbablyWrong524
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1OWo4anV0ZW1raHd3NDdqa3JwMmJrZmN4ems3M2kybDFvOGF5ZnUzcSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/a4kUaskDOZ5iU/200w.webp
DarwinsAgain
Reference received, thank you, but ironically the back is supposed to fall off albeit at a much higher altitude.
4t0m1c4
Must be one of the other ones..
Antininny
A component was installed upside-down.
Shuey
Right side up*
kewakl
XKCD Up Goer Five ( https://xkcd.com/1133/ )
Joeybigtimes
Ten Hundred? I’m guessing “thousand” isn’t on that list?
Verbodentoegang
all because the filming was done rightside up.
M1ntysandwich
Mother fu**er you made me spit my beer out. Well done!
PocketCleric
"Pointy end up, flamey end down."
spittleteets
Tbh wouldn't be as bad as the probe NASA yeeted face first into the Martian soil bc they didn't convert metric to Imperial properly.
tesseract4d2
It wasn't the soil, it was the atmosphere. It was going way too fast to ever reach the soil. It disintegrated 37 miles above the surface.
zenoshogun
Delliardo
): ǝɯ sɐʍ ʇɐɥʇ 'ʎɹɹoS
mikeatike
Learning from Russia's Polyus.
justpullnpray
Trollero
You can see the entire earth's core probe moving in the wrong direction
dbox
A down underrated comment
PaperinoVB
You mean right side up? It's down under, after all.
chewmaca2
They must've outsourced that one right side up part.
Antininny
It's this kind of confusion that led to the error in the first place.
PaperinoVB
ʇɥƃᴉɹ ǝɹ'no⅄
HashMaster9k
NorthmanoftheNorth
*wrong side upn't
RalphH
So why didn't they just drop the rocket?
PaperinoVB
They tried: /gallery/straya-failing-to-drop-rocket-off-earth-qVFgn64
sharK11
You'd have to adjust for planetary rotation, once it's high enough it could fall into Texas and kill a coyote.
GanjaPlanet
Because Earth also sucks in the Southern Hemisphere.
RalphH
Not only there :(
JacksNaggingProcrastination
Probably used US notes and didn’t convert from freedom units to the rest of the world’s metric system
Antininny
either that or a 6 was inverted to a 9 or vice-versa
Athenalite
It can be difficult to convert "3 washing machines" lbs of fuel to kilowhatevers.
Antininny
@hohohoooo Refrigerators?
ThatLoserTheFourth
I know it's just a joke, but for anyone unaware the US does use metric for any sort of science and a lot of engineering to avoid this exact confusion ever since NASA contracted an aerospace company back in the 50s or 60s without realizing said contractor was using SI units, resulting in an exploding rocket
JacksNaggingProcrastination
Not just a joke… I was making a veiled reference to the very same ‘splodey rocket you mentioned! +1
myfirstandlastpostever
lol, when Concord was drawn up, two sets of plans had to be produced, Imperial for the British and metric for the French.
tesseract4d2
Idk about the 50's/60's, but in '99 we destroyed an orbiter with mars' atmosphere because engineers didn't convert between lb-seconds and Newton-seconds.