ORB-3 Loss: Business Aftershocks
Rockets blow up; we move on, Leroy Chiao, CNN
“Without a doubt, critics will arise and question why we are entrusting cargo deliveries and future crew exchanges to commercial companies. The answer is simple: It is the logical evolution of technology and commercialization, following the same path as the development of the airplane and commercial air transportation.”
Alliant Tech Evaluating Merger Plans After Orbital Rocket Explosion, WS Journal
“Alliant Techsystems Inc. said it is evaluating any potential implications from Tuesday night’s explosion of Orbital Sciences Inc.’s Antares rocket, a hint their plans to merge could be in jeopardy.”
Shares in Orbital Sciences, Alliant Tech halted after Tuesday night rocket explosion, CNBC
“The Orbital Sciences’ Antares commercial supply rocket blew up over the beachside launch complex at Wallops Island in Virginia. Trading in the stocks was halted so that Orbital, which has planned to buy Alliant, could hold a conference call to discuss the rocket’s failure with investors and analysts.”
Orbital Sciences’ stock plummets after explosion
“Shares of Orbital Sciences Corp. dropped $4.35, or 14.3 percent, to $26.02 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.”
Antares rocket explosion: The question of using decades-old Soviet engines, Washington Post
“Instead, all four launches of the mighty N1 Soviet rocket, which used an earlier iteration of the first-stage engines used in Thursday’s launch, failed between 1969 and 1972. And as the Soviet Union abandoned the idea of putting cosmonauts on the moon, those engines languished in Russia “without a purpose,” reported Space Lift Now. That was until they were snapped up by Dulles-based Orbital Sciences, which built the rocket that exploded.”
Keith’s note: The NK-33 (AJ-26) engines are actualy a product of Aerojet Rocketdyne – not Orbital Sciences.
Thompson hints there are other, unnamed options on table beyond accelerating new engine, but "too early to comment on it just yet".
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 29, 2014
On The People’s Court TV show, Judge Milian has a saying that applies here:
“The cheaper came out more expensive.”
Ironic, since Orbital’s award for the cargo services to the ISS was actually more than SpaceX’s.
They went with the Russian engines because it was a cheaper option. Now it doesn’t look like much of a bargain.
well, we’re not sure it’s the fault of the engines yet. it looks to me more like a fuel line or the oxidizer line ruptured.
Yup. The rush to blame the engines is a bit premature. There will be a report soon enough that will explain or attempt to explain what happened. I’m going to wait for actual expert analysis of crash debris.
There still has been no public info released about the cause of the AJ-26 rocket engine explosion on the Stennis test stand last May 22. So good luck with waiting for an “official report” of this incident.
Like SpaceX or SNC they don’t have to (nor should they) release a full public report. These are private companies not accountable to the public, just their customers and shareholders.
If you want a full public release, then as a taxpayer you can try to convince NASA to have them release it. Quite frankly, given the amount of second-guessing, BS, and right down ignorance displayed by people “in the know” in forums like this one or spaceflightnow, I’m glad they don’t release more information. It would only be fodder for more ignorance.
Projecting?
Let your points stand on their own merits.
Orbital created the Antares/Cygnus with funding from a NASA contract they won, spending taxpayers money. The public has a right to have a full accounting of how wisely or unwisely those public funds were spent. Unless it’s a matter of national security. Anything less is anti-democratic.
We can’t have it both ways. We are very proud of this new “commercial” way of doing business. That, however, means less transparency because commercial companies like to protect their intelectual property.
Besides, even if this was a regular FAR procurement, there would still be limitations on what can and cannot be published. Even FAR contracts protect a contractor’s IP. Furthermore, rockets and rocket engines are considered ITAR. When Orbital had the Taurus XL fairing failures, NASA released the final report – because the rocket had been procured through the NLS contract (unlike CRS which is a services contract). Even then that report was pretty sparse, of the 8 pages, only 3 talk about the actual failure and possible causes.
Those articles seem to ignore that the NK-33 engine was also used once at the end of last year in a Soyuz 2. It will be switched out with a new engine soon.
Good coverage on NBC with Brian Williams (he loves the space program) and on PBS News Hour. Unfortunately bothe got some details wrong. NBC thought there was a successful Russian rocket launch and a successful Russian cargo ship docking to ISS, though they did not put the two together. PBS thought the Russian rocket launch was to resupply the Shuttle.
Now are commercially built vehicles to put people in orbit to resupply ISS? Are we to to trust their lives to commercially built vehicles? Remember that there were political appointees to NASA who promised that they could get it done “cheaper”. Well, now we have vehicles built with questionable soviet era hardware. NASA was “too expensive”.
Oh really? These contractors should be bonded against such losses. Just like in the commercial world, correct?
Mr. C
Don’t lump commercial vehicles together. Spacex systems are designed to be safer than anything else in the industry. Simple safe engines with engine out capiablity. Their systems will be much safer than SLS, a NASA system.
It depends. The Orbital Science’s craft (which was never designed for crew) is cobbled together. That is common for OS. It repurposes old military hardware for some of its vehicles.
In this case it uses antique Soviet rocket engines, Ukrainian designed and built fuel tanks and most of the first stage, fairings and adapters from AASC, second stage from ATK, The Cygnus canister is Italian, has used Dutch solar panels, and a host of other international parts.
As SpaceX’s Elon Musk said 2 years ago, “One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke,”
On the other hand, Falcon’s and Dragons are absolute bleeding edge modern designs and materials, built in a vertically integrated company , with more than 85% components made in-house, designed as human-rated from the get-go, and engineered for redundancy and robustness..
Boeing also is bleeding edge with its CST-100.
Jeff Foust comments that Orbital is looking into other alternatives. Since they claim the last launch cost $200M could the alternative be to subcontract to SpaceX for the service at a cost of $90M and then Orbital pockets the remaining $110M? I’m just saying…
It’s impossible to know given the night time condition and overexposed cameras what are reflections, what are sparks, etc. There also appears to be a flare up along the lower left of the vehicle, but it could just as easily be catching a reflection from the main flames. Too much light for most cameras shooting for “public” consumption. Hopefully they have some seriously underexposed cameras that can catch those subtle details.
Note that the story prior to the launch is entitled “Routine…” One thing there’s no doubt we can take away from something like this is the lessona that we should all communicate to ourselves, our teams, and the public that the word “routine” has no bearing on this kind of endeavor. Doesn’t matter what side of the “who wins” debate you’re on, none of this is in any way “routine”.
I admit I have not been able to look frame by frame using a source of enough quality. Can you point me to one on the web? Most copies of the NASA TV video appear to be overly compressed with a whole bunch of artifacts especially when the whole frame is drastically changing in brightness.
I don’t have a stake. I just find that for every smart and insightful analysis someone makes there are a number of comments that are wrong,often just willfully ignorant, and significantly detract from the discussion. Too many commneters are quick to jump to conclusions with little or no evidence.
Case in point, when discussing whether the engines may have been the cause of a failure, it is fair to question their age and how that may have affected them. However, the number of comments that bring in the poor record of the N1 is outstanding, even though that record is not germane. The engines on the N1 were a previous generation and the configuration of the N1 was completely different than Antares and significantly more complex.
Furthermore, in a situation such as this, jumping to conclusions early can easily lead you down the wrong path and make you miss the real cause. Rule #1 of failure analysis, collect all your data and finish your fishbone before marrying yourself to a likely cause. Look at the investigation of the Taurus XL failure – Orbital clearly missed the root cause the first time around; and not just Orbital, NASA obviously agreed with the investigation results or they wouldn’t have launched Glory.
Coming back to the engines and Antares, even if data show that it was an “engine failure” the root causes could be very varied, and many may not relate to the engine being the “cheaper option”. A handling error could cause a failure just as easily as an aging problem. These may very well be the best engines money can buy, and they could still fail due to a variety of reasons.
So I’m automatically suspicous of folks that immediately start pointing fingers, but I welcome thoughtful analysis while understanding the constraints of the commercial world and industry.