Antares Launch Update
Orbital Schedules New Antares Rocket Launch Window
“Orbital Sciences Corporation today announced that the next launch attempt for the new Antares rocket will be no earlier than Saturday, April 20, at 5 p.m. The mission management team met this afternoon to evaluate weather forecasts and optimum crew work schedules to provide two back-to-back opportunities for a launch attempt.”
Orbital’s Antares Rocket Launch Postponed
Graphics: How To See The Antares Launch From The Washington DC and Virginia Area
Keith’s note: For some reason Orbital Sciences seems to be uninterested in posting these graphics on their website or otherwise distributing them to people in the Greater Washington DC/Virginia/Maryland area such that people can see the launch of Antares. Yet another odd PR decision from Orbital.
Keith’s update: Orbital posted some (but not all) of these charts via Twitter after @NASAWatch pestered them. Alas, they do not know how to post them on their website, so they tweet a link to our posting at SpaceRef where all of their charts are posted. Odd.
Orbital Overview briefing (PDF)
Antares Status Report 14 April 2013
“On Saturday, Orbital conducted the wet dress rehearsal for the Antares rocket in preparation its Test Flight scheduled for later this week on April 17. Late in the countdown, at about T-16 minutes, the test was halted because the launch team had detected a technical anomaly in the process. Orbital has determined that a secondary pyro valve aboard one of the two first-stage engines used in the propellant chilldown process was not functioning properly. A replacement unit will be installed within 24 hours with the goal of maintaining the April 17 launch date.”
Folks:
………………………… creeeek, creeeeek …………………………………… …………………………………………… creeeek, creeeeek ………………………….
Awfully quiet around here…
tinker
I can’t say nothing but “no comment” but IRL me and my coworker are gonna watch it live, drink, eat popcorn and see if it goes bang or not. Good times.
That’s the best thing about a first launch, and getting the live sound must be awesome. Enjoy the view!
Joe:
Antares/Cygnus just doesn’t have the ‘cool factor’ of others we know ;). Too many foreign parts, too much cosying up to ‘old space’ companies, no real plans to advance toward something beyond this particular contract. Oh, who runs Orbital Sciences anyway? (rhetorical question)
But, yeah, I’ll watch too… and cross my fingers as I always do because every bit helps us along. 🙂
tinker
That’s a little shortsighted. This company is using repurposed ICBM parts from the former USSR to launch a peaceful science mission to an international space station… Just outside Washington DC for that matter. Can you imagine trying to tell that to the guy who designed this engine, back in the height of the cold war? It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
I think the NK-33 engine has some cool factor. I
The NK-33 is more “cool” than SpaceX’s Merlin engines – just look at the specs. The engines are “high pressure, regeneratively cooled staged combustion cycle bipropellant rocketengines, and use oxygen-rich preburners to drive the turbopumps”. Not your garden variety engine.
But wait, here comes the Merlin 1D 🙂
http://spaceref.biz/2013/03…
Hmm, has SpaceX ever run their Merlins through Stennis to confirm Musk’s claims?
Does this launch include a demonstration of fairing separation?
Richard:
My guess would be yes. They need the test for next flight and it wouldn’t be a very good ‘mass simulator’ without one.
tinker
One can only hope…
Third time’s the charm. But have they yet figured out exactly why the last two failed?
Yes, it did. And fairing separation was successful.
I’m glad they’re still on schedule. These guys really need a break.
I have mixed feelings about their use of “imported” components. On one hand, I think it’s a socially mature approach to a difficult task. International interactions at this level are hopefully a hallmark of the future of aerospace, but on the other hand, there is still too much leftover nationalist thinking combined with increasing industrial ambition (read: greed) to make this a comfortably sustainable approach at this time. An obvious indicator of the problem is the perpetually rising cost of a Soyuz ride. Hopefully Orbital’s suppliers will be more reliable.
I would be a lot more comfortable if they had not elected to go with a solid second stage (even though they know solid motors better than liquid engines). Aside from the often-discussed relative dangers of SRBs, we’ve learned the hard way that they’re not economical when considering reuse. We also seem to have a continuation of the situation where the SRB used by any US LV is single-sourced (ATK), which is not promising for either stable pricing or availability, and this situation is made even more critical by the fact that they are upgrading the stage every couple of launches, making for no real track record.
As for the pyro problem, I’m glad it’s a quick fix. I don’t see this as a failure. This is exactly what these tests are for.
A non working valve sounds pretty bad. I hope this doesn’t happen on the actual launch.
I also worry about this rocket using very old Soviet N1 moon rocket engines…I think that is a mistake, personally. Maybe they will work fine, but it could be a source of problems. Even SpaceX has had engine problems with it’s brand new Merlin engines…
These engines are not old N-1 engines (NK-33); they were never used and were completely reworked, upgraded and tested by Aerojet before Orbital ever saw them.
Exactly! The Jetters wouldn’t put their rep on the line for hardware they’d never had a look at. Aerojet is about to release if they haven’t already the AJ-1000 based on all the work over many years they’ve done to re-vamp the NK-33s allowing them to meet all new flight requirements for manned rating by NASA.
All I’m saying is that if I had a chance to build a new rocket I wouldn’t choose to use 40+ year old engines, even if never used. But they’ve been sitting in some storage for that long and who knows the real condition of the metal, the welds, everything else.
I’m sure AeroJet has done as much as is possible to refurbish the engines and I will keep an open mind as to their performance. Maybe they will have no problems.
I just would have never chosen to pick these engines in the first place, I just think it was a bad decision and probably primarily driven by cost. They probably got them for next to nothing.
You are right about one of your four assertions. They were tested.
These NK-33’s were built for the N-1 but were never used. They were put into storage until sold, after which Areojet tested, refurbished, upgraded, and then retested them. They now have an Aerojet part number.
The N-1 program wasn’t really a “failed” program. They had not yet had a successful launch, it’s true, but the N-1 was their “Moon” rocket. Once the US got to the Moon first, the Soviet government cancelled their entire Moon program, including the N-1, rather than spend more money to come in second.
All of this is well documented.
“The N-1 program wasn’t really a “failed” program.”
I guess it depends on your definition of “failed”. If you say any program that was eventually cancelled didn’t fail, then its impossible to have any rocket program fail.
The N-1 was designed to beat the U.S. to the moon. It had already failed at that before it was cancelled. Before it was cancelled, four launch attempts were made, and all four failed spectacularly.
If N-1 isn’t considered a failure, what rocket program would be considered a failure?
“If N-1 isn’t considered a failure, what rocket program would be considered a failure?”
Well if we grade on the amount of fireworks, I’d say the Falcon 9, 1, Space Shuttle, Atlas V, Delta II…
My point is that they made a decision to stop working on the N-1, as opposed to they kept trying but could never make it work despite their best efforts. A minor difference, I guess.
The whole point of my comment was to address the comments up above about the NK-33s. They were damn good engines, possibly the best design going in their time, yet some above were talking about them as if they were abandoned junk. Far from it.
Joe,
“”If N-1 isn’t considered a failure, what rocket program would be considered a failure?”
Well if we grade on the amount of fireworks, I’d say the Falcon 9, 1, Space Shuttle, Atlas V, Delta II… “
Huh? I really don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you seriously saying Falcon 9, the space shuttle, Atlas V, and Delta II are more of a failure than the N-1? I don’t understand. The N-1 had four attempted flights and four complete failures. All the other launch vehicles you mention have better track records (except maybe for the shuttle, if you consider that the shuttle killed two full crews and N-1 never killed a crew).
“I really don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Sorry.
I wrote, “If grading by fireworks”
They all had less explosions.
Never used, but nontheless intended for the N1. Reworked and refurbished…from a failed rocket program. Does not inspire confidence to me.
The failure of the N1 program isn’t due to problems with the engines. They work just fine; in fact they have rather impressive performance numbers.
“The failure of the N1 program isn’t due to problems with the engines.”
I don’t think that’s accurate. From Wikipedia, here’s a list of the causes of the failures of all four N1 launches:
1. “unexpected high-frequency oscillations in the gas generator” — that sounds like part of the engine to me.
2. “a loose bolt was ingested into a fuel pump” — it’s not clear weather this bolt came from somewhere in the engine assembly or from outside it.
3. “experienced an uncontrolled roll immediately after liftoff…stabilization was done by directing exhaust from the main engines…engine control system would also be reworked, increasing the number of sensors from 700 to 13,000” — that sounds like an engine problem to me; not a full engine failure, but a failure of the engines to do proper roll control.
4. “a programmed shutdown of some of the engines to prevent over-stressing
of the structure led to an explosion of the oxygen pump on engine number
4″ — that’s definitely an engine failure, though there were additional contributing factors.
So three of the four flights failed because of deficiencies in the engines.
Maybe those problems have since been fixed, but it’s still not accurate to say that the failure of the N1 program isn’t due to problems with the engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
If you read the translated program reports and histories (which someone from Energia finally made available some years ago) the engineering teams singled out two main causes for their on-going failures: 1) political interference, priorities and schedules were being changed weekly, sometimes daily, because of multiple political “bosses”; 2) from a technical standpoint, what they called the “plumbing” was the problem — the many fuel lines, pumps, valves, etc., to feed and control 30 first stage engines. They admitted that it was far too complex to get it all to work at once. Stage one had 30 concentrically arrayed engines that were all supposed to fire at once. It was based on the same engine clustering concept as all of their designs, including the Soyuz, but there is obviously a limit to how many you can cluster before it becomes a house of cards. I doubt anybody today could get 30 engines to fire in a controlled manner all at once.
Steve,
“I doubt anybody today could get 30 engines to fire in a controlled manner all at once.”
In the next year or so we’re likely to see SpaceX do it with 27 engines at once. I remember when people were saying 9 engines on Falcon 9 was too much and they’d never get them all to fire at once.
I just don’t believe that firing some number of engines at the same time is any harder than firing them one at a time in consecutive launches. If a given engine has a 1 in 1,000 chance of failure, you have a 1 in 30 chance that any one of 30 engines in a 30-engine cluster will failure. I don’t think there’s any reason it has to be worse than that.
Further, if you design your system properly, a single engine failure doesn’t have to be a problem for the whole system (see Falcon 9 flight 4).
Steve,
“…the engineering teams singled out two main causes for their on-going failures: 1) political interference…”
A failure in the gas generator may ultimately be due to political interference, but that doesn’t stop it from being an engine problem.
If political interference caused the engines not to be very reliable, the engines still weren’t very reliable. The reason why they weren’t isn’t relevant.
I always thought that trying to control 30 engines with the technology that they had back then was just wishful thinking. I can imagine it would be akin to trying to build a 30 cylinder gasoline engine using only carburetors and mechanical distributors to control the fuel and spark, compared to doing it today using computer controlled MPFI and electronic ignition which would be much more doable (not that it would make any sense)
“I can imagine it would be akin to trying to build a 30 cylinder gasoline engine”
I think the key difference is that the cylinders in a single engine all have to be in sync with each other in their internal timing. There’s no such requirement for separate engines on a single rocket.
I think a closer analogy with gasoline engines would be 30 gasoline engines, driving 30 different axles, on a very long truck. That’s entirely doable.
Using your example of a truck with 30 gasoline engines, which I guess we can call a Freightliner Model N1, if something like this was built in the 1960’s they would have had to rig up some type of electrical or hydraulic method to control the throttles of each of the 30 engines from a central location. And how would they have controlled 30 separate transmissions?
Nowadays electronic throttle control is quite common even in passenger cars, so the central computer in a modern Model N1 truck would have no problem accurately controlling the individual throttles on each of the 30 engines. Not only that the computer could control the spark and fuel spray in each individual cylinder of each of those 30 engines, and even the valve timing in each cylinder. And the computer could easily control 30 electronic transmissions.
Makes you appreciate even more what both U.S. and Soviet engineers were up against trying to build Moon rockets in the 1960’s.
The failure of the N-1 was due to the inability of the relatively unsophisticated computer control system to manage the potential instabilities and anomalies in the engine cluster. The US had difficulty with the Saturn as well. Today this would be much easier to manage sinc both cotrol systems and testing and simulation are much more sophisticated.
In response to the last bunch of comments: I have to keep coming back to the same point — it wasn’t the NK-33 engines that failed to perform as desired; it was the complex (old tech) systems feeding and controlling them that weren’t reliable enough. It was an absolute forest of “plumbing,” as they called it, and the failure or mis-timing of almost any component within that forest could send the whole thing out of control. It was speculated that the explosions started from simple pressure build-ups that quickly went out of control.
I think we have to realize that pretty much every component type involved has evolved significantly in the intervening 50 years. Things as basic as turbo pumps or pressure valves are radically changed in size, precision and reliability. I think that if we had to use the same technology today as they used on the N-1, we’d probably be just as unsuccessful (and spend a lot more money getting the same disappointing results).
But the NK-33 engines themselves were a very good design, and the upgraded version of them from Aerojet has been given very good reviews from people who know.
Yes, the N1 *program* failed because it was too rushed. The next N1 launch attempt probably would have succeeded. I’ll bet a dime there’s nothing wrong with these engines.
Given Orbital’s limited capital compared to SpaceX, I think they have done pretty well. They don’t have any current plans to attempt a reusable or manned system. However if they meet their contract they will have some capital available for new developments, and we need a variety of ideas.
Say what? At some point, the only thing that kept SpaceX going was Musk’s personal pockets, and those weren’t so big back then. He was borrowing money from friends to pay his home bills…
Weather report for the DC area on Wednesday is favorable to watch the launch!
A NASA TV Wallops PC is at 2pm & Antares at 3PM Tues. All those foreign parts & only 2x as SpaceX.
S13:
Antares/Cygnus is only twice the fixed cost of Falcon/Dragon? Even with the non-recoverability of Cygnus that’s still not a bad price. Granted, they didn’t have to actually build their first stage engines, so they saved money there I guess. You know, I always thought that solid rocket engines were cheaper but, hey, maybe ATK is charging them a premium…
Wait a minute here! Now that I think about it, why is Antares/Cygnus still twice the fixed cost of Falcon/Dragon?
tinker 🙂
I’d be speechless if it was much less than twice the fixed cost, considering that Orbital isn’t building most of the rocket or spacecraft. Those subcontractors (ATK, Thales, Aerojet) all need to a make a profit, and then Orbital has to make a profit on top of that.
A success for Orbital is another success for the fixed price Space Act Agreement approach.
And if the components came from anywhere and everywhere, it’s another demonstration that NASA does not need total control, or to have everything custom made, to it’s own detailed specification, from scratch.Fingers crossed.
PhoneSat team is also watching this launch very closely as their cubesat with a cellphone for much of the electronics will fly on this rocket. Satellite will transmit health status on amateur radio packet on 437.425 MHz. Hams can contribute to the project by submitting received data to Phonesat’s packets page at http://www.phonesat.org/pac…
This small cubesat is one built under Ames Research Center’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program, http://www.nasa.gov/directo…
Folks:
Having a tattered Flag on the side of the Antares rocket is very unprofessional IMHO:
http://spaceflightnow.com/a…
tinker
I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, probably just a lousy sticker application job combined with high winds. But yeah, it doesn’t exactly make them look good. Hopefully it’ll be fixed in time for the launch.
I care more about successful launch than details like this.
Wow! Holy Mother of the Gods! Why, they should stop the launch and fix that because that says everything about them as an operation.
Oh, wait: no it doesn’t. Minutia. Simple minutia.
Well, it is a Ukrainian first stage with Russian engines. Bought on the cheap. Guess the US flag was bought on the cheap too.
It would have been funny if there was a Russian or Ukrainian flag underneath, lol. I keeed. Go Orbital!
Don’t worry, it (unfortunately) won’t be there for long.
If those photos are indeed from yesturday, then unless they have a very tall cherry picker to go up and tack it back in place, there’s no way Orbital or NASA would do anything else just to fix that at this point in the Count. My guess is that the Wallops environment within which they had applied that decal was not conducive to a good bonding.
After launch, the increasing velocity will take hold of those peeled edges and pull Old Glory right off the fairing, I’m afraid. I don’t believe in omens, but that still is not a pleasant image to contemplate (though I suppose the Russian & Ukrainian partners couldn’t care less).
Folks:
Perhaps we should show Orbital, ULA and their employees the same respect (although not necessarily the blind idolization) that we do SpaceX. This launch, and future Antares launches, are critically important for the spaceflight industry as a whole. These companies are free to select the vehicle components, business model, and contractor partners that they feel are appropriate to sustain their business. In the end their own successes, failures and ingenuity will define whether or not they survive.
Good luck to Orbital and Antares. Congratulations on getting this far.
stinker
Keith:
Am I being spoofed here?
tinker
Consider this a compliment.
Keith:
Maybe you’re right! I certainly want Orbital to succeed but if they’re their own worst enemy, I’ll call them out on it for sure! There’s a lot more at stake here than Orbital’s bottom line.
tinker
2x cost comes from the cost per flight for CRS. Development may be the same. They have no orders for flights. NASA said this was partly to develop commercial flights. Looks like they miscalculated. Orbitals strategy has failed. They said they may change. So 2 a year for CRS. If they want orders they will have to try to build everything themselves, like SpaceX to lower the cost. They were the next lowest,so NASA wanted a backup. 2X SpaceX. I hope it was just a goof up and NASA was not trying to help out the subs.
S13:
If Aerojet is going to manufacture an indigenous version of the engine maybe it could be sustainable at least as a far as sourcing is concerned. It is a big, powerful engine so it has potential for heavy lift launch vehicles too. They have a little more then twice the thrust of the Merlin 1d. If nine were clustered together like a Falcon 9, they could lift 25 tons to LEO (a little more than Delta IV Heavy). Put three cores together and you might get 80 tons into orbit. Use five cores and you’re up to about 150 tons… hey, this is sounding a little like SLS!
Maybe the ol’ NK-33 can finally fulfill it’s designers goal forty years after the fact!
tinker
You really come up with some great paper rockets. They have no orders. Would this one give them some. What do you estimate the development costs would be? What would the stockholders say? I think they could go to some large metal building and start to build a first stage. At my calculated $10 a pound for materials,that would be $660,000. I heard them say the first stage when it arrives,weighs 66,000lbs. They can afford that. They may be happy with their price they charge NASA. They may be making a huge profit. NASA with COTS takes what ever price people come up with. They could not negotiate. Not good publicity though when customers see they are twice as high as SpaceX with less capability. It would seem they are high though,since they have no orders.
you are completely fprgetting the largest costs with a contractor (and any line of business for that matter) is charges for labor and overhead, not the direct cost of materials. Overhead and labor doesnt even include if the contract has fixed fees, FCCM charges, tech recovery charges, etc.
The viewing graphics you refer to are being posted on Orbital’s Twitter feed. Granted, with the current weather conditions it is very unlikely anyone in the greater DC area will be able to see anything.
Folks:
From SpaceFlightNows Mission Status Center:
“Once engineers begin loading super-cold liquid oxygen into the rocket’s
first stage, the available launch window will be condensed to 15
minutes. Orbital says the reason is to make sure the cryogenic oxidizer
does not boil off too much during the countdown, a concern due to the
limited supply of liquid oxygen available at the launch pad to replenish
the rocket’s tanks.”
Ditto!
tinker
“limited supply of liquid oxygen available“
A sign of the times or did they pick a cheap launch pad?
Steve:
They built the launch pad from scratch (actually, they contracted that job out). Since they’ll have a zero time window for ISS cargo missions, this isn’t really an issue. It just looks like they built to the edge of their mission profile with little margin for error. For a one time expense they should have built more margin into the launch pad.
Let’s hope for the best. At least the engines have some promise (see above).
tinker
If all goes well then viewing the launch from DC is great PR. If that big solid second stage motor blows up, not so much :_>
It will blow up slowly, out the bottom, in the manner intended 🙂
There is a Ustream feed. From Stennis/AJ126. Go to Orbital Twitter.
Folks:
There’s hope for Orbital yet! Looks like they fixed the Flag. It’s a good omen (superstitious lot, aren’t we?).
tinker
Folks:
Scrub! Loose second stage umbilical.
tinker
Tinker,
That’s the kind of scrub we can live with. A whole lot better than dumping another one in the drink. I assume they’re sitting exactly where they need to be to diagnose and fix it. Guess it’s time to send out for more LOX?
Steve
Steve:
I realize that. Their team was cool and sharp on the abort too.
tinker
Well, maybe Orbital purchased the umbilical from the same place they got the flag decals? Sometimes paying attention to details means something.
When is the next launch window?
Saturday and Sunday. After that, I think they’d need a full reschedule.
Damn. SpaceX & ULA makes it look too easy to go into space.
Think next launch attempt is Friday.
SpaceX and ULA have had lots of launch delays themselves for various reasons. Especially since this is the first launch of a new vehicle, there’s nothing surprising about some glitches causing delays.
It’s not entirely the LV’s fault in this case – A loose umbilical connection and then unfavourable met conditions can happen to anyone.
Teething problems.
Any word on why the umbilical fell off on Friday?
Folks:
Antares is go for launch Sunday at 5pm. During the last abort I heard the flight team turn off the rocket cam so we could be in for quite a ride when that solid fueled second stage kicks in! 🙂
BTW: Anyone know how they maintain stability in the 90 second coast phase before the second stage lights? Rotation? Reaction control thrusters? Reaction wheels? If it’s simply rotation, that could effect the ride I was mentioning above!
tinker
Woo hoo! Competition is good :_>
Folks:
Whoa Nelly! That was quite a ride! Now we know that the second stage used cold gas thrusters for attitude control (though I don’t know how they accomplished it before fairing separation).
Slow off the pad, but those last two minutes…
tinker
Congratulations to Orbital Sciences on this major milestone!
Well done.
Perhaps now that one of the “right” companies has been able to make progress, the hostility to commercial cargo and crew will diminish?
Nahhh. The naysaying was never about the substance of the arguments.
Obama praises the privatization of access to space while attempting to nationalize our health care. Schizophrenic?
There’s only one solution and it works for every problem?
Apples and oranges. Some things are better handed off to a contractor, like LEO access. Other things are typically disasters of overpricing and loss of oversight when contracted out, such as health care. Two different sets of requirements; two different most cost-effective solutions. Take a look at what has happened and is still happening in others countries that have privatized health care. Their citizens are getting less care at more cost. The rich get healthy and the other income classes too often go without.
HS:
In every other industrialized country, health care isn’t even a issue. Why?
tinker
Actually it’s a constant political issue, because people don’t intuitively feel how much better off we are then the US system (the US system is so mad we can’t really imagine it), and there’s a large US-funded lobby group constantly trying to convince the right-wing politicians here to break it.
Oh, please.
During the press conference I felt like NASA representatives were happy to be there side by side with Orbital reps (they had all smiley faces and so) versus during the press conference with SpaceX they looked like they were lost and didn’t wanted to be there.
Why is it that?
1. They’d done it before.
2. OSC is one of the Right Companies. Spacex is Not.
Chalk up another success for privatization of Space and this occurred from another launch site other than Canaveral.
Very nice. That looked like a very smooth flight (and the faring even worked). It seemed like NASA was a lot more involved than they have been on any of the SpaceX flights.
It was also a very interesting trajectory and flight sequence. It seemed like a very lofted trajectory. The coast after first stage jettison was really unusual.
OTR:
Yes, you’re correct that it’s an odd trajectory. The solid second stage accounts for that for two reasons. The first is that they want as circular an orbit as possible so that they don’t need to make a critical circularizing burn in the first orbit. It saves Cygnus fuel and adds contingency time (which SpaceX really needed last flight). The ‘high loft’ trajectory gives the stage most of it’s short powered flight to refine it’s coarse with the least amount of vector change and associated efficiency loss.
The other reason is that the second stage burn has the same length and force every flight. There is no option like the Centaur stage has to burn longer or shorter depending on first stage performance. The velocity change during the coast phase is used by the flight computer to calculate when to light the engine to make orbital velocity as close as possible.
Even though the cargo was a mass simulator, it was conservatively light. Heavier payload will make the coast phase shorter, higher performance second stage engines will make it longer. We’ll see where it settles out three flights from now when upgraded Antares and fully loaded Cygnus fly.
tinker
It would be interesting to see if AJ can reproduce the entire engine – sophisticated metallurgy is critical to the ability of the turbopump to withstand the oxygen-rich environment. Even back in the 60’s the Russians had some pretty advanced work in this area.