KA-BOOM! Russian rocket EXPLODES over Siberia minutes after lift-off Russia's Proton-M rocket burned up over Siberia this morning just minutes after blast-off, the country's federal space agency has confirmed. Roscosmos said in a statement that the rocket, which had been carrying Mexican satellite MexSat-1, suffered an "abnormal operation of the third stage engine booster" at around nine …
"Earlier reports had suggested that Proton-M and the bird it was carrying had crashed landed in Siberia. However, those claims were pooh-poohed by state-run Sputnik. It said that there had been no local reports of space debris plummeting to the ground in populated areas."
...which, of course, does not mean that debris did not land in unpopulated areas. Take it from me, Siberia is very empty; I've flown over it many times.
I would be totally unsurprised.
Russia's got a lot of engines in storage, and they're selling some to the west --- e.g. both Orbital and Antares are buying cheap NK-33 engines from Russia which were originally built in the 60s and 70s for the N1 lunar flights. Orbital will be using them for ISS resupply missions!
The N1 used 38 NK-33s in its first two stages. They built a *lot* of NK-33s (and NK-15s, the predecessor), and when the N1 was cancelled they got put into storage.
They're seriously good engines, with a top-rate thrust-to-weight ratio, and amazingly reliable; and loads cheaper than building your own. The only comparable western engine is SpaceX's Merlin 1D, and SpaceX aren't selling them. The Russians would be idiots not to use them. They're in such demand that I've seen rumours they're thinking of restarting production. Whether this will actually happen, and whether the new engines will be as good as the old ones, I don't know.
Lots more info here: http://rostec.ru/en/news/4232
Orbital will be using them for ISS resupply missions!
Once they get one off the pad.
There is a reason for why reusing old engines meant for a rocket that never survived launch back when UFOs were fresh is not the best idea.
amazingly reliable
Evidence says no, at least for the refurbished ones. Also, Preparing of NK-33 engine mass production says "NK-33 acquired the outlook for mass production restoration due to those successful launches.". This does not necessarily mean that russians re-use old engines, just that up to Feb. 2014 they didn't mass-produce them.
Additionally, the failure modes seems to have nothing to do first first-stage engines.
abnormal operation of the third stage engine booster
Not the NK-33. These are RD-0212 made by "Kosberg". Do they have any in store back from the glasnost era? I don't know...
On second thoughts, these guys most likely source a good percentage of the parts from the eastern provinces of Ukraine, which are now being freedomized by the neocon cabal...
their old stock of soviet built equipment and technology has dried up
Seriously [citation needed].
Building rockets from venerable tech of 25 years ago? A likely story.
Most components of the older lines of Soyuz, Progress and Proton rockets are Soviet era. Either in production date (for some of the computer and rocket components) or at least in design and level of technology. The basis of the Soyuz is the R-7 rocket. Most of the components for the structural parts and large parts of the engines will have changed very little from that first basic design. That is in part what gives the older series of Soyuz their great reliability (All those little niggles that plague a new design have been optimised and engineered out).
And yes, there are probably parts being used made in the good old USSR. In that regard they are/were like the americans. Massive overstocks of lots of parts were made to keep people in work, have strategic reserves in case of war, etc, etc. Problem is, stocks of those old parts are starting to run low, some of the production processes needed to produce new parts are no longer available (because we now actually pay attention to environmental and human safety concerns, drawings are lost, they moulds were tossed, etc) or the old farts who just knew how to build those hard to assemble subassemblies with no real documentation in existance are starting to retire and/or croak.
There is a reason the Soyuz, Progress and Proton lines are all getting major refurbs on electronics and component levels and its not just for nice to have eyecandy. Structurally they are fine, in terms of payload to orbit they are fine. Electronics wise they are just getting old. Hence the update program.
However, any update of old technology is going to run into the same problems one would encounter with entirely new technology. And then on top of that the problems and complications from combining new and old technologies. I'm sure the russians will be able to get things back under control, but I'm also convinced we'll be seeing more of that --> before this is all said and done. (Loss of a Soyuz with crew is not likely, they are using the Progress to "proof" any new tech for Soyuz launches)
And yes, I am typing this at 4am, aren't night shifts wonderful...
"Didn't this kind of "only" exercise take ~10y for the X-33. Then the towel got thrown in?"
The X-33 might not be a good example. It was selected as the most technologically challenging of the bids for the program, rather than the cheapest or most likely to work.
I recall watching the VentureStar evolve and then right at the end they started going through radical design changes, like moving the cargo bay to the exterior, and thinking, "Someone overreached there." I was new to materials engineering when the X-33 program blew up, but when I heard the details of what Lockheed tried to do with the liquid hydrogen tank...oi. Foam, lobes, extreme temperatures, pressure, vacuum - bleh. There's an easier way to reduce mass (proportionally) on rockets: make them bigger. The square-cube laws of tankage volume work in favor of big dumb boosters and erase a lot of engineering problems. Aluminum might not be sexy, but it works.
" After all NASA has passed the engines as working, now all they need to do is manufacture the airframe and body."
While I hope the best for Skylon, I don't think more than a partial testbed (for ground testing, not flight) of the engine's precooler has been demonstrated, which is a long way from a working engine. And NASA didn't have anything to do with the test. However, I haven't been following closely - do you have a citation for Skylon's engine being complete and working, with or without NASA's approval?
Skylon has had backing from a variety of agencies, including the ESA and UK government.
It looks like the basic idea does work, and that the precooler (the most important part) is indeed a practical technology.
There's some really neat ideas in Skylon. For example the heated helium coolant from the precooler is used to drive the turbine pump that pressurises the hydrogen fuel. The cold fuel in turn is used to condense the coolant for re-use back in the cooler. They have turned the heat that normally limits high speed jet aircraft performance into a useful energy source.
And the whole precooler idea means they can run on atmospheric oxygen for more of the flight profile, which in turn brings about big savings. It really is a masterful collection of engineering ideas that complement each other to minimise the energy needed to get to orbit.
Skylon works in principal and if built would likely end up dominating the space launch industry. If someone really went for it, they would certainly become way cooler than Musk and his boring old rockets.
Skylon looks like a pretty neat idea, if rather complicated. Problem is that at the rate it's being developed, Elon Musk will be flying interstellar warp ships by the time a complete Skylon actually gets into orbit. One does wonder if Skylon is being developed by one old boy in his garden shed, who's funding it from his pension.
Please could we see some proper investment and some more entrepreneurial management? Move faster, make a few mistakes.
Skylon is a neat idea. Sadly, while SpaceX is (or was) funded largely by Elon Musk's rather large bank balance, thus creating a risk-welcoming environment in order to get the big payoffs, REL is in the UK where one Whoops-bang-crash will likely see most of the investors bolt for the exit, and convince the UK government that Skylon is one of those ideas that'll never fly.
Slow and steady keeps everyone in the boat, (mostly) rowing in the same direction.
That said, it's looking like we'll see the first (of two) prototype flying in 2020 with the first production model flying in 2022.
Given the environment REL is operating in, better a game-changing, rule-altering beast in seven years than many years of people debating 'What might have been...'
And on the subject of Russian rockets, the Russians have had several years of not enough funds and attention so now there's a few experienced old bods at the top and a lot of young bods at the bottom undergoing a steep learning curve. Problems a-plenty for the next five-to-ten years methinks...
" One does wonder if Skylon is being developed by one old boy in his garden shed, who's funding it from his pension."
Well, perhaps you and maybe Elon Musk might count £60million from the UK gov to be "garden shed" levels of effort. But at the stage of proving the principals fo the propulsion system and design work, that sounds like a good level of funding.
Once the propulsion system is well understood the actual design and building of the whole aircraft should be a fairly low risk. It's not like there's any particular mystery about how to make a vehicle operate in space, and guidance and control systems for that kind of thing simply build on the many successful developments done previously all round the world over the past 6 decades.
Too Good to Pass Over?
Really the only question is will anyone stump up the money? There in lies an interesting question with a heavy dose of politics.
First, the Europeans backing Ariane have gone for an Ariane 6. They might not be too keen on funding a competing launcher that might show up their initial choice of Ariane 6 as having been a waste of money.
Second, the Americans sometimes suffer from bouts of "not invented here" syndrome, though they did buy up and get interested in Russian engines.
Third, the current wave of space-enthusiast private investors have all plumped for rockets, and even they might find it too difficult to toss all that away and buy into Skylon.
Fourth, the Russians simply haven't got the money.
Fifth, the Chinese like to be able to say that they did it all by themselves.
Sixth, British investors are often not ambitious enough for something like this.
Seventh, investors / backers / competitors all over are probably at this moment asking themselves whether they can afford to buy into the project.
Whatever. Given that it looks pretty certain that the propulsion system would work it is arguably simply a case of when, not if, it gets built. If it does get built and it works, whoever owns it will own the launcher market. The rocket guys would be instantly out of date, uncompetitve and doomed.
The first investor that asks themselves whether they can afford to not buy into it, that's the investor who might clean up.
It's not even as if the project could be bought, canned buried. UK gov has a stake in it, so the IPR is not wholly purchasable. And besides, ideas are difficult to bury forever. Once thought of, forever known.
(I have no connection whatsoever to REL, Skylon, etc).
"One does wonder if Skylon is being developed by one old boy in his garden shed, who's funding it from his pension.
Please could we see some proper investment and some more entrepreneurial management? Move faster, make a few mistakes."
Three old boys effectively. They're averse to taking government funding because they all worked on HOTOL which was great until the government cut funding, causing the project to fall apart.
They also actively avoid investment from one of the biggest sources of venture capital (the USA), for fear of getting strung up under ITAR regs and becoming beholden to the whims of the US Gov once an American entity owns a slice of the tech. Even if Musk offered them money they wouldn't want it. The ESA have granted various lumps of funding, but they've deliberately limited their investment options which unfortunately limits their rate of development.
"And the whole precooler idea means they can run on atmospheric oxygen for more of the flight profile, which in turn brings about big savings."
The challenge is that reducing oxygen mass in a single stage to orbit vehicle is NOT a big weight savings by the time you get into orbit.
Yes, oxidizers are the largest fraction of a launcher's mass when it's sitting on the ground. But the thing is, most of that mass goes out the tailpipe by the time you reach orbit. Take a moment to consider the rocket equation (if you'll pardon the simplification):
Delta-V = Exhaust Velocity x natural log (fueled mass / dry mass)
The fueled mass doesn't matter much by itself because an SSTO is going to throw most of that away. More important values are the exhaust velocity (or specific impulse times G, if you prefer) and the ratio of fueled mass to dry mass. An SSTO really wants to have a big ratio between fueled and empty masses and, of course, a high exhaust velocity would be nice.
Skylon claims to achieve a specific impulse in the atmosphere, and I won't question that. So let's look at the ratio of dry to fueled masses for SSTOs. The dry mass consists of frame, oxidizer and fuel tankage, avionics, landing gear, engines, cargo, and anything else that didn't get dropped during flight.
In the case of a rocket, the in-orbit leftovers of the oxygen system are oxygen tanks. Rocket oxygen tanks are light, around 1% or less of the mass of the oxygen they carried. For example, the shuttle external tank's oxidizer tank was about 10 tons for 600 tons of liquid oxygen.
There are heavier bits on a rocket headed for orbit than oxygen tanks. The perennial favorite fuel, hydrogen, needs about 10% of its mass for tankage. The shuttle ET's hydrogen tank was about 15-20 tons and held 100 tons of liquid hydrogen. The dominant factors in tankage mass are volume and pressurization - interestingly, liquids' weights scarcely impact rocket fuel tank design, even when you're looking at the weight at 3Gs. Liquid hydrogen has low density (1/14th of water, 1/16th of liquid oxygen), and its fuel pumps need high tank pressurization to help prime them, on the order of 35psi. That calls for a large, sturdy tank and thus high dead mass per unit of liquid hydrogen.
Engines may be a large part of an SSTO's mass, or not. Dense fuel rockets, like kerosene-oxygen rockets, achieve better than 100:1 thrust to weight ratios, meaning a 1000-ton SSTO requiring a 1.3:1 takeoff thrust only has 13 tons of engines. SpaceX is nosing around 150:1. Hydrogen:oxygen rockets rarely beat 75:1 and tend to be around 40 to 60:1 simply because they need such massive fuel pumps for a given thrust level - fluid pumping horsepower requirements are largely dominated by fluid volume, not mass, but thrust levels are determined by the rate (mass per unit time) you're burning fuel. Dense fuel engines can burn a lot of fuel mass with a light pump; hydrogen/oxygen engines are screwed by hydrogen's low density since they need a big pump to move a little fuel.
Rocket engines aren't the only game in town, as Skylon and scramjet enthusiasts demonstrate. However, airbreathing engines have much worse thrust-to-weight ratios than rocket engines. A good, military, afterburning jet engine manages about 10:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. Scramjets might not break 1:1.
Skylon's SABRE hopes to reach 14:1, which is good for an airbreather. Still, that's a lot of deadweight to carry into orbit just so you can shrink the already-lightweight oxygen tanks.
Skylon's design (and that of other airbreathing SSTOs) runs into other issues. It needs to be sleek and aerodynamic so it can fly at high speeds through the atmosphere. "Sleek and aerodynamic" mean "high surface area for a given volume." That means a proportionally high mass for tankage and frame compared to chunky SSTOs like the Kankoh Maru, SASSTO, or even the VentureStar. The "high speed atmospheric flight" also means "more heat shielding," compounding the surface area issue.
Admittedly, a larger liquid oxygen tank does drive several other weight increases: more heat shielding, larger frame, more engines, etc. However, those are modest increases. Frames, rocket engines, and heat shields are percentages of masses they carry, not multiples.
I'm not saying Skylon's impossible, just that it took the more painful route. The "big savings" in oxygen mass really isn't a big savings since oxygen tanks are so light, and you're getting those oxygen system savings at the expense of enormously heavier engines, more challenging aerospaceframe design, heavier heat shielding, and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launches
"Due to the size of the list, it has been split into several smaller articles"
There are a good number of failures in the early sections. A lot of them. We had to LEARN what was needed to be successful, and to a degree the efforts from around the world cross-pollinated, and everyone failed less as time went on and lessons were learned and shared. SpaceX has a good number of engineers from other launch companies, the knowledge-share information from NASA, as well as fresh-faced college kids, for instance.
Looks like our Prez Peña-Nieto is just extending his "Bad Luck Brian" aura to satellite launches as well. I also wonder why the hell haven't they just switched to SpaceX. It's closer to us, and those have better odds at actually not blowing up on launch. For those who don't know, Mexico has lost a lot of satellites thanks to shoddy Russian launches.
Neither's the oxidiser for that matter.
The first two stages and thus about 85-90% of the propellant had already burned out, and the disintegration on re-entry (if it hadn't come apart sooner due to the failure or a self-destruct order) should have allowed most of the remaining propellant to mix.
Also, it should disperse pretty well at that altitude!
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