Fixing Wallops (Update)
State assessing damage, considering future of commercial spaceport, WDBJ7
“Virginia’s Secretary of Transportation says it could take a year and up to $20 million to repair the commercial spaceport on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, after a mishap damaged the launchpad last month. Aubrey Layne says he expects the flights to resume, but with additional protections for Virginia taxpayers. “We do need to have our launch partner and the federal government take responsibility with us in this particular incident,” Layne told WDBJ7.”
McAuliffe wants risks shared for future rocket launches at Wallops Island, Times Dispatch
“We’re not going to have a repeat of this in the future,” said Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr., who is a board member of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, which owns the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island. Layne confirmed Tuesday that the McAuliffe administration may seek to renegotiate the memorandum of understanding and launch services agreement with Orbital that the state revised substantially in 2012 under the administration of then-Gov. Bob McDonnell.”
If Antares had turned a few degrees out to sea, after clearing the towers, there may have been no damage. They probably have to go straight up. It would be safer to head out. I think Shuttles always did. This is worse than it sounded at first.
There wasn’t time for the rocket to perform such a maneuver.
Sure there was. They were above the towers. Sure seems safer. The accident report may say why. It is very dangerous to go vertical as shown by this accident. Got to worry about people and property not how hard to investigate.They have made a jiggle just above the pad, so they have plenty of control. It could be a performance issue. They have to fly that profile. I don’t think it is that close though. I will watch to see if they change.
no, there really wasn’t enough time. they were only ~15 seconds into the flight when thrust completely failed.
it’s extremely unlikely they will change their launch procedure in this way.
Do you people read the whole posts? Or you don’t understand? They do an avoidance maneuver at 10′. They even have a name for it. Take a look at the different launch views on CRS-2 and you can see it. If they can do that, they could make a 3 deg turn below the lightning tower and still clear them. Why don’t you directly address that? Completely proves you are wrong or do you always have to find something that always proves I am wrong? If you go straight up, if the rocket turns a few degrees toward DC they will have destruct it. There are a lot of people and property in that direction. Like Keith. If they head a few degrees out to sea and destruct then most debris will keep heading that way. A destruct may not be on the ground like this one was. They are crazy to do what they are doing. Do you understand or will you not read all of this or do you want to just disagree or do you just put out bait? Have you ever agreed with me? Your reasoning that there was not enough time is wrong. The jig at 10′ proves your wrong, why not accept it? Your just being repetitive.
i understand what you’re trying to say, and i understand why you’re suggesting what you’re suggesting. it’s just a bad idea.
so you’re right, there may have been time to do such a maneuver, but there’s no real good reason to perform one.
tell me, would you really want to radically change the launch procedures to include a dramatic divert of the rocket immediately after launch that 1. reduces or prevents damage in a failure scenario that lasts for about 15 seconds and a failure in that time frame is unlikely, 2. reduces the amount of payload you can get to orbit because you’re burning more fuel very close to the Earth’s surface, 3. introduces horizontal stresses on a fully fueled rocket, which by the way, actually increases its chance of a structural failure, and therefore 4. serves almost NO practical value whatsoever?
to sum up: your idea “solves” a very minor issue, at the cost of reduced payload to orbit along with an increased chance of launch failure.
they are absolutely NOT crazy to do what they are doing. what they are doing is the result of decades of experience launching rockets. they are already launching on a trajectory over the open ocean, so a launch failure at almost any point after where the failure occurred in the launch WOULD have put the debris in the ocean.
And the wreckage would have been much harder to reach, making the investigation even longer and more expensive.
Roll/Pitch maneuver was supposed to occur at T+00.18 seconds. IIRC it only attained an altitude of 341m.
My point is that if a few degrees toward DC occurs at the roll/pitch that the rocket is going fast and high enough that a destruct with momentum and added speed from the explosion would spread flaming chunks on DC. If it occurs before roll/pitch it will fall straight down on the pad. Or with reaction time, it could be a lot worse. The Titan 4 destruct only happened after a few degrees off course. I need to write Orbital, NASA, President and Congress. Maybe they will agree with me.
i don’t know where you thought Wallops was, but geography lesson: Wallops is over 100 miles away from DC, and not “a few degrees” … but close to 180 degrees from the rocket’s ground track.
just to be clear: a rocket launched from Wallops would have to be going in entirely the wrong direction – for a hundred miles – to hit DC.
do not waste Orbital’s, NASA’s, the President’s, or Congress’ time.
http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloud…
It did. Did you miss the crater right next to the launch pad? It didn’t go straight up, which saved most of the infrastructure. See images.
What did you expect? A wild maneuver that torched the strongback?
It was obvious, so I did not mention it. The avoidance maneuver moved it over enough. I am not saying 200′, like this. Now if they had a larger maneuver it would be farther out to sea. Of course it would be better to clear everything than burn it. It may not be possible at 10′, but I think it is. I think a larger turn is possible and would not have 20 million damage to the pad. The turn they did worked so well, I hope in a year or two if they launch from there again they try it. Maybe the Va. space authority has a web site and I can suggest it to them. Do you have a better idea or do you think it ok to not change anything and just repair each time. The crashes are rare, but I think it is possible to stop the damage, if it gets above the towers. Change, most of the time, is good.
would you really want to radically change the launch procedures to include a dramatic divert of the rocket immediately after launch that 1. reduces or prevents damage in a failure scenario that lasts for about 15 seconds (and a failure in that time frame is unlikely), 2. reduces the amount of payload you can get to orbit because you’re burning more fuel very close to the Earth’s surface, 3. introduces horizontal stresses on a fully fueled rocket, which by the way, actually increases its chance of a structural failure, and therefore 4. serves almost NO practical value whatsoever?
to sum up: your idea “solves” a very minor issue, at the cost of reduced payload to orbit along with an increased chance of launch failure.
Why a year to repair the pad? is most of the time for awarding a contract? Get on the stick, guys.
What’s the hurry? Antares won’t fly again until it has a new engine in 2016 anyway.
Ok, we have a time frame before Wallops is usable again. How does that figure into how many launches OSC will need to contract out to meet their NASA contract for ISS resupply?
Antares is grounded until it gets a new engine, which OSC says will be in 2016 (an aggressive timetable). They plan to launch Cygnus cargo flights on a competitor’s rocket twice in the next year (somehow) and use a larger Cygnus variant to fulfill their obligations to ISS.
The definition of “commercial space” continues amuse. Per the article, >$100M in Virginia tax dollars have already gone to this spaceport, and the state expects the federal government to kick in for repairs.
$100M is chump change on the scale of state incentives or contributions to corporate operations in just about any industry.
It is commercial space. It is an example of the massively (purposely) misunderstood point that President Obama made:
…if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own… If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Those trying to make cheap points twisted that to mean that the business wasn’t created by the entrepreneur, when he was saying the infrastructure – education, roads, utilities, communications, transport, regulatory structure, etc. that the business thrived in was created by others, for all to benefit by.
Building airports, spaceports, seaports, whatever, typically require significant public involvement. Within these cooperative, publicly funded and regulated environments, commercial operations can exist. In many (most?) cases the public investment is amply repaid, both tangibly and intangibly.
It can be a massive public investment, like the interstate, or relatively minor tax abatements and credits, like for SpaceX in Texas.
The problem occurs when the investments are done as pork, or mismanaged, or inappropriate, or political/financial payback. That is our responsibility to oversee.
You make a very good case for sharing infrastructure cost via taxes. So how is fixing a pad in Virginia, when the government has several perfectly good eastern range pads lying unused in Florida, a good infrastructure investment for the federal government?
I personally think Wallops is a great base for launching sounding rockets, but not for Big Iron. However, it does make sense to spread the wealth and capabilities (and political return) across the various States. Also Virginia has both a pressing need for jobs and investment, while having a powerful intellectual and technical base.
The Feds are a funder of last resort and when a bailout is required, that’s what it is for. Also, from the political side, it does not hurt for both parties to support a powerful swing state!
No insurance to fix the pad???
Good question I wondered about myself.
Nice try, but that’s not what Obama was saying there. and in a moment of tiredness last month Hilary re-upped it. they believe in centrally planned government. they believe either that the economy of the US is automatic and no amount of government can change that, or that all economic activity starts with government deciding something is good or necessary. both views are patently wrong.
the correct view is the Reagan view: you could afford your home without your government if it weren’t FOR your government.
no such thing as a public “investment” without public tax. or debt see trillion 17+ and counting. which will be a massive tax someday unavoidably. thanks government! just wanted to have an easier time driving my harvest to market could’a done without all the extra trillions!
That’s your political opinion.
I hardly know where to start with this idea. First, yes, President Obama did say that and the quote is spot on. Secondly, your characterization of alternative economic views is self-serving and less than accurate.
The liberal view point can be summarized: The role of the federal government is the creation and maintenance of a level playing field for the benefit of all. From this notion flow environmental rules benefitting all, speed limits, seat belts and air bags- the list is endless. Is it abused? Often, sorry to say.
More to the point regarding Saint ‘Trickle” Ronnie: exactly where is the trickle down, I wonder? Why is it that normal people are making far less and rich people making far far more? Why does the right extol the virtues of the family while supporting policies requiring both parents to work, sometimes at several jobs?
Another thing: Public debt is not a necessarily bad thing; management of public debt, however, can be very poor. Example: we live in a time where public debt as a percentage of wealth is quite low. And given that interest rates are historically low, the federal government should be out there bonding billions in new project rather than- well, rather than doing nothing except threatening to impeach the President.
I would add that your characterization of the national debt is incorrect on many levels but I’m out of patience.
The “trickle” started with Reagan….
The other name for “trickle down economics” is the Horse and Sparrow Plan.
The horse gets fed all the wheat, oats, and barley it can eat and the sparrows get to eat whatever undigested grains it can pick out of the manure.
Here is an uncut, unedited video of the comments:
http://www.factcheck.org/20…
Here is Jon Stewart’s hilarious riff on the distortions of the comments:
http://www.huffingtonpost.c…
A persuasive argument. Normally I find myself wailing about tax credits for battery factories, never seeing the situation as you explained.
I suppose it is the peculiarity that is vexing- benefits go to a single company. I am constantly railing about roads and bridges and rail lines and other infrastructure projects our country so needs.
On the whole I find myself looking at the situation with tax credits in a new light. Thanks.
Where I see Boeing getting 50% more cash to provide the same service that SpaceX offers (even if they got what they requested) is annoying. NASA should have said, this is the lowest valid request, meet it or cough up the difference.
I do see the difference between a general “internal improvement” as it used to be called – bridges, interstate power grids, etc and giving a specific company taxpayer cash. It had better be a valid need and be justifiable.
With the battery factory that Musk is building, it appears to make good sense. (Beyond the value of bringing manufacturing back to the US).
The complex will receive about $50M/yr for 20 years (about $1.1 billion total)
The return on investment for Nevada is estimated at $100 billion ($40b of which is directly tied to the factory)
– It would create 3,000 construction jobs
– On-going 6,500 jobs at $25/hr (~$340million/yr) and 16,000 indirect community jobs
– It will generate $1.9b in tax revenue
In another instance, SpaceX is (with tax incentives) building a spaceport in the poorest city in America. Beyond the direct economic gain to the locale and to the state, it helps make Texas a hub for ultra high tech and manufacturing. The incentives are tiny compared to the gain.
We should hope that, long term, Wallops would build a second (yes, it would be expensive) pad.
Probably better to take over Complex 36 at the Cape, where they’d have a shot at the lucrative comsat launches that really aren’t practical from Wallops.
Orbital mechanics tells us that launches to a medium inclination like ISS are more efficient from Wallops. The Antares/Cygnus flights are to ISS.
The competition for those comm sats is fierce, Orbital Sciences does not have a rocket to compare with Atlas 5, Delta 4, Falcon 9, Ariane, etc. They have specialized in smaller rockets – so moving to Florida (like they will have to for the next couple of flights) will reduce their ability to bring cargo to ISS.
No, if anything the Cape has better performance to medium inclination (51.6) than Wallops due to the greater rotational velocity at KSC’s latitude than at Wallops (although the difference is lost in the noise.) There would be no performance hit from moving Antares from Wallops to the Cape. Orbital very seriously considered LC-36 for Antares, the reason they chose Wallops was better tax breaks and financial participation from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
If you launch directly east from Cape Canaveral, you go into a 28 degree inclination. When Shuttles launched from KSC to Mir or ISS, they had to do a “dog leg” maneuver on ascent to get to a 51.6 degree inclination. That took a LOT of energy. Moving from Wallops to Cape Canaveral would greatly decrease the mass to orbit, with the Antares.
No, Shuttle did not do a dog leg to get to 51.6. Neither would Antares from the Cape.
Sometimes people who do not understand orbital mechanics say things like that, I have taken to referring them to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
that seems to be a succinct summary that can be understood. Look under “orbital launches”
A dog leg a a maneuver out of the original launch azimuth to achieve a higher or lower inclination, what your Wikipedia entry calls a “powered turn…to deviate from a straight path.” The Space Shuttle could launch anywhere from 28.5 to 57 degrees inclination without performing a dog leg maneuver, as those were “straight path” launches. Only twice did the Space Shuttle perform a dog leg, first on STS-36 to achieve a 61 degree inclination for a spy satellite deployment, and second a very small dogleg down to 28.4 degrees to rendezvous with Intelsat VI-F3, launched from a pad slightly south of KSC. Antares launches from the Cape would have the same capabilities and limitations.
“Orbital mechanics tells us that launches to a medium inclination like ISS are more efficient from Wallops. The Antares/Cygnus flights are to ISS.”
And you would be wrong. That’s like saying that the most optimal place to launch to a polar orbit would be from the north or south pole. This is NOT TRUE.
Your reply tells me that you misunderstand basic orbital mechanics. See my reply below and look at that Wikipedia page.
I find Virginia’s/MARS’ statements perplexing. Fact: they want to have a spacesport in Virginia. Fact: rockets explode from time to time. It seems to me that if you are willing to share in the glory of a spaceport, you should be willing to share in the risk. NASA was invested and lost a whole bunch of valuable cargo. Orbital was invested and lost associated revenue plus took a hit to its reputation. Why should they have to share further in the pain by subsidizing the hit that MARS took to the launhpad? If the rocket had exploded just 10 seconds later with little or no damage to the pad, would NASA turn around and ask Virginia to help subsidize the next launch?
Wasn’t the real reason WFF was picked for resupply missions was because Sen. Barbara Mikulski pushed hard for space jobs in Maryland?
Yes – but Wallops just happens to be in Virginia ….
Ah. So for the same reason that Mission Control is in Texas, Wallops launches rockets. And the HST is controlled from Maryland.
Interesting, but WFF is geographically a reasonable place to launch to the ISS. For equatorial orbits it’s better to be near the equator, but tor a high inclination orbit like the one used by the ISS being at a higher latitude can actually be an advantage.
But isn’t administration of Wallops handled at Goddard?
I wondered about that as well. Maybe a rocket scientist can explain.
It would depend on the launch site architecture and the specific needs of the customer.
However, Watkins added, “I think it’s entirely appropriate to go in and
renegotiate that agreement. No one expected this to happen, but it did.”
No one expected? 2 blown up engines on test stands and people are surprised? NASA has seen rockets fall on the launch pad since 1957. That’s a problem. They do not come up with a fix and 55 years later the same thing happens again. 2 blown engines and NASA does not tell Orbital to add a line in the software code to turn the rocket out to sea at 10′ altitude. No cost. Result was 20 million damage to pad. No interference in private companies? IG says they can. 55 years and counting for NASA to address and fix a problem.
Gerst. said what he probably always says that NASA will learn from this accident. I guess all the engineers have not come up with a solution. Can they tell ULA on the Orion mission to turn seaward ASAP. Or SpaceX on the next CRS. Learning is good, but taking action on what is learned is better. It may take a lawsuit and a lawyer will also come up with what I have. NASA will have to pay for all repairs I predict.
actually, there was one fire, where there was a fuel leak but the engine remained intact, and one explosion.
the cause of the fire was a crack that was caused by stress corrosion, a structural flaw in the metal structure of the rocket engine’s housing. when that was determined, all other engines that Aerojet had were inspected for this type of flaw.
for the other event the root cause has yet to be determined, but Orbital has said that the causes under consideration are also issues that can be detected through inspection and testing.
in other words, it’s very likely that the engines on the Antares that failed were checked out for previously known issues. we know that Aerojet does do test firings of its engines before they are installed on the Antares, so the engines on the rocket have been successfully fired before.
so YES, it’s entirely accurate to say that they did not see this coming.
I’ve already explained to you that radically altering the launch procedures to account for an unlikely failure scenario is wildly impractical.
it’s not like all rocket engine failures have the same cause. rockets are vehicles that ride on top of a barely controlled explosion, and there are a million ways for things to go wrong, and things can go wrong at any time.
I’m not 100% sure, but I was thinking along similar lines of why should they be so shocked when a rocket blows up? It does happen sometimes.
Interesting about the failures. I was hoping to know the last one too, and I hadn’t heard it. I figured they would have finished the investigation before flying another Antares. Maybe they got far enough with just a couple possibilties and they checked this Antares engine for the same thing, not sure.
from this report, a couple of weeks before the Antares failure:
“investigators had narrowed down the failure to two potential root causes, but did not discuss them. Both potential causes can be screened for during engine inspections”
http://www.spacenews.com/ar…
so i presume that the engines that were on the Antares would have been checked (as prudence would dictate) for those.
Developing even more elaborate inspection methods will not be cheap, and because we are not building new engines we cannot find the root cause and eliminate manufacturing problems at the source. In my opinion we would be better off putting the time and effort into developing a modern engine we can manufacture today, here in America, at reasonable cost.
I don’t think the inspection methods need to be terribly elaborate. it’s probably as (relatively) simple as an x-ray or ultrasound inspection for weak areas.
well, they don’t have much of a choice but to use a different engine. they would have had to eventually. there are a finite supply of NK-33 engines and even fewer AJ-26 engines. while there’s some impetus to open a new NK-33 manufacturing line in Russia, if Aerojet isn’t going to buy any, then they won’t do that.
if it takes 3 old NK-33 engines to have enough suitable parts to build an AJ-26, and at least two of the “suitable” engines have blown up….it doesnt take a rocket scientist to suggest that either their stress corrosion cracking acceptance criteria is way too generous or they havent found all the areas it affects.
what’s your source for three NK-33 engines used to make one AJ-26? i’ve never heard that one before.
and keep it straight, just one engine has blown up, and we don’t know what the cause of that was yet. we’ve been over this already.
and yes, it actually would take a rocket scientist to say that.
Nasaspaceflight said that the first like you said had a fuel leak. That then cut the cooling to the combustion chamber. This caused a burn thru. The LOX and kerosene then mixed and it blew up. The 2nd blew up. The third is the same. The leaks may not be the same, but the result is the same. there is an explosion. So go ahead and reply within minutes and nitpick away. And waste your time, I will not read it.
your willful ignorance is bad, and you should feel bad.
the first engine did NOT explode!! it caught on fire, but the engine shut down when it detected the loss of pressure. it remained intact.
how you can ignore that and say it blew up – well that blows my mind!
Ok cool, makes sense. They either have a new cause on their hands with this one, or it’s similar and wasn’t identified/included in their analysis of the previous test failure.
a succinct conclusion. most likely a new cause. current investigation is into a failure of the turbopump, unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of things that can go wrong with a turbopump. the flame brightens immediately before the initial failure, so i personally speculate this looks like a problem with either the fuel or oxidizer line. though similarly, a lot of things that can go wrong there, too.