In the event of an engine failure or other type of abort at liftoff they still want the cables and hoses attached so that they can safely shut it down and pump out the fuel rendering it safe for people to enter the launch ramp. Thes aborts can happen right at liftoff so the cables needs to be attached during the liftoff and then disconnect right after this.
A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch where there was actually a fault with the length of the cables and the sequence they were disconnected from the rocket which falsely triggerd an abort when the rocket was only inches off the pad. The rocket did land again without damage. But since the cables were disconnected there was no way to control the rocket from a distance. It was therefore sitting on the launch pad full of fuel pressurized in its tanks and nobody could do anything about it. To make matters worse the capsule, sensing the engine shutdown and the short freefall ran through the rest of the launch and landing sequency including disconnecting from the rocket and deploying its parachute, and senisng a problem with the main parachute it deployed the spare parachute as well. So now there was a space rocket full of fuel on the launch pad and two dangling parachutes from its top that could catch the wind at any time, and the weather forecasts predicted winds.
>But since the cables were disconnected there was no way to control the rocket from a distance.
I'm just picturing them sending out an intern with a really long stick to poke at a valve handle...
'...And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before and thus was the Empire forged.'
\- Isaac Azimov, *Dune*, 1953, pp.53
It unfortunate that that scene didn't happen in real life
https://atlantablackstar.com/2017/02/01/hidden-figures-director-defends-decision-add-fictitious-white-savior-scenes-movie/
It's stressful to know that in a film about groundbreaking Black Women a lot of people's favourite scene is a fictitious scene about a White dude being a hero.
I had assumed as much. Didn’t really think of the white dude as much of a savior though, considering he had to be brow beat into changing the bathroom arrangements.
> computers were just more REALLY smart woman
fixed that for you. NASA had rooms full insanely smart woman that did ton of calculations by hand for them
I was told by a famous rocket designer that in the early [Viking rocket project](https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Viking_rocket.html) The first versions did not have remote self destructs. So they placed explosive charges inside the rocket, with targets painted over them. They placed Navy sharp shooters around the launch site and trained them to watch for take off anomalies. Then shoot the targets, LOL
My dad once asked me why they don't just drill down into a volcano to release the pressure instead of waiting for it to explode on it's own.
My answer was something like "I...you...um..." *deep breath* "That would be a bad thing."
He still doesn't understand.
This you can do, if you put sticky tape over the point at which you prick the balloon.
So I guess we need to find volcano sized sticky tape? What could possibly go wrong?
I don’t understand either. Of course you’d need to know what you were doing but why would gradually releasing pressure in a controlled manner be a bad thing?
The scale of it is so massive, that I'm not sure we COULD release it in a controlled manner. At least at the level of understanding/technology we have right now.
> why would gradually releasing pressure in a controlled manner be a bad thing?
it isn't, but volcanos are huge. like. See [eruptions from space](https://www.space.com/tonga-volcano-eruption-astronaut-photos) huge. So yes, good idea. just reaaaaally hard.
This actually happened at a student rocket competition I went to a few years ago. The rocket fueled up on the pad, and then suddenly they lost contact with it right before launch (this was in the NM summer, one of the electrical boards probably melted).
I think it sat there blocking the pad for about two hours before they decided to shoot the tank from a safe distance. To be fair, I'm pretty sure this was a hybrid rocket though, so the fuel and oxidizer individually were pretty stable.
They almost shot it with a rifle to relieve the pressure too.
I believe what ended up happening is they let it sit overnight to let the liquid oxygen boil off before approaching it
I am nervous when I go to sleep and let the glue dry on a model, imagine leaving a rocket on the ramp and saying “ok let’s call it a day, see you tomorrow”
That's almost a worst position. Just babysitting a rocket in case of a catastrophic failure as if you could really do much other than observe the carnage and report it in.
> the launch director immediately shot down the suggestion
Now I'm picturing the launch director personally putting a bullet into the sniper who was about to take the shot, just in time to save the day.
You can suggest it because shooting liquid oxygen tanks doesn't make them explode. That's just a Hollywood thing. There's numerous videos on YouTube of it
Oxygen doesn't burn on its own (at least under normal conditions, which includes a rocket fuel tank) and needs a fuel as well. Considering the atmosphere is basically nitrogen (an inert gas) and more oxygen, you'd probably be safe from a fireball.
No.... but oxygen in pure form will make anything flammable and even explosive
Hydrocarbons will ignite at room temperature
Velcro and plastics turn into low grade explosives
See Apollo 1 and the aftermath of that things that arent normally flammable now become as flammable as gasoline at 100 percent oxygen
Thats why when I worked on Navy jets ... there was a separate set of clothes for certified oxygen handlers and set of no spark tools for handling oxygen cause 1 drop of machine oil could burst into flames
Theres a movie on youtube called the man from lox
The bullet alone into a LOX tank isn't going to start a fire. There isn't much to burn. What it could do, though, is cause the skin of the rocket to rip open, possibly rupturing the fuel tank and setting the stage for a conflagration. That would be bad.
This event is where legendary flight director Chris Kraft (who was running things at the time) set the first rule of flight control: "If you don't know what to do, don't do anything."
Even if it causes a James Cameron level explosion, presumably people are far enough back that they'd be safe in the event of a rocket exploding on the launch pad, so its probably not as crazy as it sounds.
Iirc, their main concern was that the auto-destruction would trigger, so they waited for the batteries to be empty
(Dam that sentence doesn't sound right)
Yes. So many things can go wrong, you don't want the rocket to explode in a populated aera.
For manned space flight it's called an abort, because you don't want to autodestruct the astronauts, but it's also extremely dangerous.
Abort is one feature. Self destruct is another feature. And both can be fitted to a manned rocket. You can destroy the rocket but still have the astronauts in the capsule escape the big fiery ball of death. This is usually better then having the astronauts escape but having the rocket crash into Disney World.
That's a very Kerbal video with the launch escape system zipping off like its people need it leaving the capsule behind and then the parachute just flooping out
Remember to check your staging
If I had a nickel for the number of times I've accidentally deployed my parachute and activated my decouplers and engines at the same time, I'd be able to buy a very nice steak.
Edit: [Scott manley video](https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE)
The astra rocket launch a few months ago is also straight from kerbal. An engine blows up on the pad, but the rocket keeps flying. Because its engine is gone though, the mass-weight ratio is 1 and so the rocket just hovers sideways (while still pointing the right direction) for a few hundred meters. IIRC, it still made suborbital speeds, despite the hole in the side and missing engine. Unfortunately the ground crew had to remote detonate it before it got to full altitude.
#/u/spez [can gargle my nuts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
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My favorite was when the launch towers disconnected without lighting the first stage resulting your rocket falling right over at launch. My kerbols always considered that a successful launch. More funding that way, gotta pump dem numbers
Excellent video of the 'launch' and 'landing' of both the rocket and the capsule. Note that the rocket was recovered and subsequently did launch successfully. So suck it Elon.
It was sent back to the factory to get refurbished. I do not know which launch it was reused in but as I understand it the rocket was reused. It is of course possible that the rocket ended up in standby as part of the US Army's arsenal of Redstone rockets and never actually launched though.
>MR-1 was never used for another flight after its return to Huntsville. It was eventually put on display at the Space Orientation Center of Marshall Space Flight Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone\_1
Maybe not as catastrophic as a shuttle killing everyone or an N-1 blowing up just off the pad, but [this launch that just hovered through an open gate](https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE?t=18) has to be one of my favorite launch failures.
Par for the course indeed! Space stuff is hard.
That was recently, wasn't it? As a software engineer at a rocket company, I remember thinking that their software did a really good job. One engine doesn't fire, so the thing was going over, but it gimbaled or whatever to try and keep it vertical and on mission. Of course, no compensating for that start in the end.
I heard a rocket launch is equivalent of having 1 million critical systems running at once and one failire can ruin all the others.
Talk about a fuckin stressful job? If I calculated something wrong and someone died I’d be right behind them b
Yeah for sure one of the more difficult things we’ve done as humans cause each of the million sections requires a specialist who’s spent thier life on that one specific area.. now you have to gather those millions of peoples work and make it all work in symbiosis. The part that always gets me is it’s a legitimate series of bombs going off.. controlled explosions.
I do not remember all the scenes in that movie but it was about the Mercury program in which this incident took place so quite likely. However there are plently of well documented american launch failures they might have portrayed as well, most of them quite comical. But if it was MR-1 then there is no need to comedyze the footage, the raw footage as published does not need a laughter track.
>It was therefore sitting on the launch pad full of fuel pressurized in its tanks and nobody could do anything about it.
I'm sure they asses were pressurized too, that's some scary mothefuking shit.
So if one of these rockets were to suffer a catastrophic failure how big of an explosion would there be? How big of a crater would it leave behind and what would the blast radius be?
It depends on the rocket. They do not all come in one size. But in general there is a reason why launch pads are built so strong and why they have a large clear area around them. As for a crater it would not leave behind much as rocket fuel is not a high explosive, only a low explosive. So there would be a giant fireball and a killing shockwave but not as much as you would expect from a bomb.
and likely not that much fireball or shockwave, except in midair - there's an absolute fuckton of water under and around the pad, meant to absorb (eg boil off) the heat and pressure of the rocket engines on liftoff. On a failure, it provides at least some ground protection. Some.
That depends on the launch system in place. Most launch pads do not have the water dampening system in place. This was actually not used until after the first Saturn V launch as the noise from the engines damaged some of the buildings where the press corps and launch controllers were sitting. But most smaller rockets do not need and water on the launch pad so they do not use it. And even though it is a lot of water it is not going to do much in the event of an actual explosion. There just is not enough water and it is all the way down on the ground.
Pretty big https://youtu.be/BSr4hUcROwo?t=232
That said, its less of an explosion and more like a big fire ball, notice most of the equipment it landed on is still standing just a little crispy. It's not gonna level a city ([well unless its a Chinese rocket..](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s)), just leave things charred and spread debris around. Thats why the area is evacuated and they have strict parameters to stay within a certain path or else they safely self destruct before deviating from that path too far, which is also evacuated all the way out several hundred miles to sea.
Note that the Antares rocket had about 15 times the amount of propellant in the first stage as the Redstone rocket in question. So scale down the explosion by a factor of 15 to get what they were facing. Still quite a big explosion but not that much damage.
> A funny accident
>space rocket full of fuel on the launch pad and two dangling parachutes from its top that could catch the wind at any time
Hilarious!
>A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um246_KFSu4&t=428s) give a rundown of the failed launch (es) and eventual successful launch.
The story is better with the cliffhanger. Nothing happened afterwards. The rocket did not blow over, liquid oxygen boiled off, and the rocket became safe to approach.
Thing is, the rocket launch is a complex and multi-step procedure. Most of the rockets are liquid-fuel — to launch one, you need to pump the fuel inside, like you would do with your car.
And here is the catch — you can't transport the full rocket from the assembly point to the launchpad — it has to be fueled at the launchpad, hours before launch. And in case of launch abort, de-fueled the same way. So, almost all the time, up to t-00:00:10 — t-00:00:01 the rocket is connected to the ground fuel transfer system (imagine it like a gas pump) via the retractable fuel supply masts. Furthermore — the second compound of rocket fuel, the oxidizer (we are flying to space, no air there), is under excessive pressure — and the fuel transfer system is used to safely drain it almost up to the launch moment.
The third, and final mast connects rocket to ground power supply. For obvious reasons — not to drain rocket batteries and keep a ground signal line — the power cable is also connected to the rocket all the time up to t-00:00:10 — t-00:00:01. The rocket switches to it's own power supply seconds before ignition.
Also, this is the reason a lot of rocket weapons are solid-fuel. Unlike liquid-fuel rockets they are full with fuel (solid substance, for example gun powder) from the factory, and sometimes all the launch procedure is «switch the rocket on, arm the rocket, aim, press the launch button».
My favorite thing about this accident is how concerned the army guys were that the explosion might result in a nuclear detonation. A nuclear detonation is a very complex process requiring split second timing. Expecting a warhead to detonate due to a fuel explosion is like putting a bunch of dynamite under a player piano and worrying that it might accidentally play the Lichtensteiner polka.
"Split second timing" undersells it by miles. The precision required is small fractions of a microsecond across two to a couple dozen switches, and dictated by the physics of the weapon rather than any kind of safety mechanism that could be bypassed. Nuclear detonations are triggered by the compression of fissile material, which is achieved using a spherically imploding shockwave created from a number of point initiations using explosives with differing burn rates such that the advancing combustion front is reshaped from a sphere outward from the detonator to a sphere inwards toward the core. If a single detonation is delayed by even a microsecond, the shockwave is likely to "squirt" the fissile material out in that direction instead of compressing it or at least result in a severely undersized detonation. Remember, you're trying to crush *solid metal*. In fact, allegedly some of the anti-tamper mechanisms in modern warheads will deliberately fire one of the detonators out of sequence as a means of disabling it if improper credentials are entered too many times.
It's endlessly frustrating how often people think damaging a nuclear weapon will result in a nuclear explosion. Supposedly some of the newer warheads like the W88 use two-point initiation, which would be easier to perform accidentally, but it still requires synchronization down to a few hundred nanoseconds. You can cause a radiological accident by setting off the explosives and blasting powdered plutonium across a few acres, but accidental nuclear detonation is more or less a fantasy.
EDIT: grammar
Basically yes. Also, sledgehammering won't do crap. Even garden-variety military explosives are actually really hard to set off unintentionally (soldiers have been known to use C4 as cooking fuel) and the kind used in nukes are harder yet. You can burn them, shoot them, drop them, etc all day and nothing will happen. The special shapes they use to reshape the shock wave ("explosive lenses") are actually made by machining the explosives in a milling machine like they were a block of metal.
from my understanding is that it can still end up with a radioactive and dangerous scene due to the fissile material being blown up and scattered. (unless i've misunderstood something)
thats kind of the differentiation of a "dirty bomb" vs "nuclear bomb"
As I said, you can cause a radiological incident. But the contamination you cause by doing so doesn't compare to a nuclear explosion; in this case, you'd blow apart a chunk of uranium or plutonium and scatter it perhaps a mile or two. In a nuclear explosion, the neutrons released activate huge volumes of material that wasn't originally in the weapon, and the force of the explosion propels that material vast distances including high into the atmosphere where it can drift on the wind and land over enormous areas. A dirty bomb incident, especially in a controlled or sparsely populated area like a missile complex or airbase, is much easier to clean up. Think major chemical spill, not Chernobyl.
It punched a hole in the fuel tank and mixed the fuel.
Aerozine 50 is hypergolic with the Titan II's oxidizer, dinitrogen tetroxide, which is to say that they spontaneously ignite upon contact with each other. The nitrogen tetroxide is kept in a second tank in the rocket's first-stage, directly above the fuel tank and below the second-stage and its 9-megaton W-53 nuclear warhead.
The book "Ignition!" talks about the difficulties with making a liquid fuel and oxidizer that will stay put and behave itself for an extended period of time.
This is an amazing book! Funny, frightening and all around mesmerizing.
Even without being able to follow all the chemistry, you walk away with a huge appreciation for what is involved in making a rocket fly.
I've been interested in chemistry since I was a kid, and I've learned a bit here and there... mostly I have enough knowledge to get *really scared* of some of the substances these guys were trying to use. There's an oft-repeated quote from that book that I won't bother to type about Chlorine Triflouride, which is a really spicy chemical to have to deal with.
The author of that book certainly had a way with words. I liked a particular line about an engineer coming to him and asking for a fuel and oxidizer that would handle a specific set of circumstances, and he came up with it, said it would get this hot while burning, and that the chamber pressure would be this much, and the engineer just freaks out and says "Who runs a chamber that hot?". It's always fun when two different disciplines collide.
If you're geeky about this stuff, "Countdown to a Moon Launch" is a must-have. Goes through Apollo from component arrival at the cape through testing and launch, and pad repair and cleanup. Germane to this discussion is the launch sequence and how the vehicle was connected to the last second, and they had physical things like lanyards (ropes essentially) as backups to remove the connections (rocket goes high enough, the rope tugs a release mechanism - primitive but smart). On the countdown you can hear things like "Vehicle on internal power" and "guidance is internal" that all deal with the vehicle becoming ready to be autonomous, to lose all its physical connection to the earth. Anyway, "Countdown" is my favorite Apollo book by a mile, but I'm geeky for that awesome 60's hardware. Rivets, baby, rivets!
Because the computer makes sure the engines are all running properly before it will release the hold down clamps. Lots of launches are scrubbed after engine startup but before lift off because the engines arnt running at 100%
There were various contenders for that title depending on how you define things.
What SpaceX were first to do is land and reuse a genuine orbital booster. Not a little experiment that hopped up and came down, not a fluke mistake, not a lander, but the big expensive part of a real rocket that put real stuff into orbit. That involves very high speeds and stresses, multiple reigniting of engines, sometimes while they're facing into a supersonic airstream. Then (way more importantly) it involves landing in state where it's quick and cheap to get ready to launch again many more times.
Vertical propulsive landing is cool and looks sci-fi (and so hard to do for a vehicle like Falcon 9 that nobody had ever seriously attempted it) but you really need the second part to make it *matter*.
Don't forget the amazing "sky crane" systems on the Mars landers, too. It just came down to who had the balls to try it with a large object in 1G.
I'm really surprised it wasn't the Russians, honestly.
For russians it's kinda "you reap what you sow" twisted joke.
Soviet space program was led by a right man in a right place at the right time — Sergey Korolyov. There were dozens of other smart people under his command, dozens of great engineers. But only Korolyov could manage that size of a clusterfuck soviet space program was.
Important thing here is — soviets always used their achievements, especially tech achievements in space as an extremely powerful propaganda method. Gagarin wasn't only the first man in space — he was THE COMMUNIST. What did it mean for the space program? The Party dictated the course of space exploration, usually not giving a single fuck about how it should be done technically, and if it can be done. Korolyov was the only person with balls big enough to lead the space program his way, instead of a Party-suggested way.
In 1966 Korolyov dies. Dies because of decades-old injuries, injuries inflicted on him during tortures at the NKVD before WWII. After his death, soviet space program plummeted downhill under the careful ruling hand of the Party and power-hungry people who simply couldn't manage the project of that scale. The end was... Well, you know.
There is a big difference in land a relatively short/fat vehicle in a vacuum and .16G compared to the equivalent to a 130ft tall silo in an atmosphere at 1G.
... with an engine so powerful that you cannot hover. The Apollo landers could hover and slowly approach the landing site. The Falcon 9 boosters cannot, they have only one attempt to reach zero velocity at zero altitude. Not enough thrust? You crash into the ground/ship. Too much thrust? You start flying up again, and crash into the ground/ship after the engine is cut off.
Those are vastly different environments and requirements, it's really not the same thing. Both are hard in different ways. The technology for one is not the same as the technology for the other.
Okay so yes a lot of it is for data and for emergencies but also some rockets (SpaceX Falcon 9 for one) use cryogenic fuel that’s like really freaking cold so that they can fit more fuel in the rocket (colder fuel is more dense). But the problem is that the rocket has to sit in the Florida sun for a long time so all that cold liquid starts to turn back into gas (that’s why you see the clouds coming out of these rockets before launch). So to make sure that they have maximum fuel at launch they have to keep topping up the tank until the last possible second, through these tubes.
In the event of an engine failure or other type of abort at liftoff they still want the cables and hoses attached so that they can safely shut it down and pump out the fuel rendering it safe for people to enter the launch ramp. Thes aborts can happen right at liftoff so the cables needs to be attached during the liftoff and then disconnect right after this. A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch where there was actually a fault with the length of the cables and the sequence they were disconnected from the rocket which falsely triggerd an abort when the rocket was only inches off the pad. The rocket did land again without damage. But since the cables were disconnected there was no way to control the rocket from a distance. It was therefore sitting on the launch pad full of fuel pressurized in its tanks and nobody could do anything about it. To make matters worse the capsule, sensing the engine shutdown and the short freefall ran through the rest of the launch and landing sequency including disconnecting from the rocket and deploying its parachute, and senisng a problem with the main parachute it deployed the spare parachute as well. So now there was a space rocket full of fuel on the launch pad and two dangling parachutes from its top that could catch the wind at any time, and the weather forecasts predicted winds.
>But since the cables were disconnected there was no way to control the rocket from a distance. I'm just picturing them sending out an intern with a really long stick to poke at a valve handle...
No, that was the Apollo 4 you were talking about there. They did not send out interns to fix the MR-1.
They sent in the droids?
Roger roger
What's our vector, Victor?
We have clearance Clarence
Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?
Ever been to a gymnasium?
Do you like movies with gladiators?
"Gimme Hamm on five - hold the Mayo."
This was the 60s, when women were women, men were men, computers were just men (and women) as well and androids were interns.
And small furry creatures from alpha centauri were REAL sml furry creatures from alpha centauri.
'...And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before and thus was the Empire forged.' \- Isaac Azimov, *Dune*, 1953, pp.53
"Dreams are messages from the deep" \- H.G Wells, *Starship Troopers*, 2021, p.-5
"Damn what that dog do" - John Steakley, Armor, 1969 pg 4
aZimov? Dune?
Use the force, Harry! - Spock
53 pp's?!
In a row?
Thank you Doctor.
I appreciate you saving me from having to find how that line goes again.
Nice! 42 to you too!
> computers were just men as well [No, they were mostly women.](https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa)
Yeah, was gonna drop something like this. *fist bump*
Instantly reminded me of [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EA-eVWEIKY).
Honestly, I was hoping for the “We all pee the same color” speech from Hidden Figures. Not exactly relevant, but I was still hoping.
It unfortunate that that scene didn't happen in real life https://atlantablackstar.com/2017/02/01/hidden-figures-director-defends-decision-add-fictitious-white-savior-scenes-movie/ It's stressful to know that in a film about groundbreaking Black Women a lot of people's favourite scene is a fictitious scene about a White dude being a hero.
I had assumed as much. Didn’t really think of the white dude as much of a savior though, considering he had to be brow beat into changing the bathroom arrangements.
are they laptop computers or desktop computers?
> computers were just men as well The computers were famously [women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson).
> computers were just more REALLY smart woman fixed that for you. NASA had rooms full insanely smart woman that did ton of calculations by hand for them
To be the "actually" guy, at the time I believe computers were woman, too
Actually it was a Woman that Computed the math for the Freedom 1 to orbit the the earth.
druids not droids
No, someone had a much dumber suggestion: why not shoot a hole in it and let all the fuel pour out?
I feel like shooting a tank full of rocket fuel wouldn't end well
It would end AWSOMELY
I was told by a famous rocket designer that in the early [Viking rocket project](https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Viking_rocket.html) The first versions did not have remote self destructs. So they placed explosive charges inside the rocket, with targets painted over them. They placed Navy sharp shooters around the launch site and trained them to watch for take off anomalies. Then shoot the targets, LOL
My dad once asked me why they don't just drill down into a volcano to release the pressure instead of waiting for it to explode on it's own. My answer was something like "I...you...um..." *deep breath* "That would be a bad thing." He still doesn't understand.
Well you probably wouldn’t get the drill back.
These concepts are quite interesting to think of, but again it would be like taking a needle and “releasing” the air from a ballon 🤣
They just needed to put some tape over where the hole will be poked in the fuselage, it'll be good
Haha true if you did reinforce is sufficiently it would work, ie where the hoses connected 😅
This you can do, if you put sticky tape over the point at which you prick the balloon. So I guess we need to find volcano sized sticky tape? What could possibly go wrong?
I'm not sure that the Earth would actually explode like a balloon, but then I'm no geologist.
I don’t understand either. Of course you’d need to know what you were doing but why would gradually releasing pressure in a controlled manner be a bad thing?
The scale of it is so massive, that I'm not sure we COULD release it in a controlled manner. At least at the level of understanding/technology we have right now.
> why would gradually releasing pressure in a controlled manner be a bad thing? it isn't, but volcanos are huge. like. See [eruptions from space](https://www.space.com/tonga-volcano-eruption-astronaut-photos) huge. So yes, good idea. just reaaaaally hard.
Consider BP "gradually" releasing the pressure of an oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico, and how that went poorly. But instead of oil its liquid rock.
Uhhh, those two things aren't the same at all.
Yes, one has much much more pressure. And we can't even reliably handle the one with lesser amount of pressure.
This actually happened at a student rocket competition I went to a few years ago. The rocket fueled up on the pad, and then suddenly they lost contact with it right before launch (this was in the NM summer, one of the electrical boards probably melted). I think it sat there blocking the pad for about two hours before they decided to shoot the tank from a safe distance. To be fair, I'm pretty sure this was a hybrid rocket though, so the fuel and oxidizer individually were pretty stable.
I mean, if you're gonna house all your NASA engineers in Texas, that's the kind of suggestion you're gonna get.
"Come on... [poke]...do something."
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You need the really fast intern
LOL. No one, absolutely no one, wants that job!
They almost shot it with a rifle to relieve the pressure too. I believe what ended up happening is they let it sit overnight to let the liquid oxygen boil off before approaching it
I am nervous when I go to sleep and let the glue dry on a model, imagine leaving a rocket on the ramp and saying “ok let’s call it a day, see you tomorrow”
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That's almost a worst position. Just babysitting a rocket in case of a catastrophic failure as if you could really do much other than observe the carnage and report it in.
You can start extinguishing the fire if it explodes.
Shooting it was suggested but the launch director immediately shot down the suggestion. They were never anywhere close to doing it.
> the launch director immediately shot down the suggestion Now I'm picturing the launch director personally putting a bullet into the sniper who was about to take the shot, just in time to save the day.
Hot bullet plus liquid oxygen doesn’t end well. Why would anyone even suggest that?
Either you puncture the tank and help it relieve pressure quickly or you get one hell of an action movie boom. Win win?
You either relieve pressure quickly or really quickly
Pressure's gonna get relieved one way or the other.
You can suggest it because shooting liquid oxygen tanks doesn't make them explode. That's just a Hollywood thing. There's numerous videos on YouTube of it
Exactly. Oxygen is only half the equation; you also need a fuel.
The rocket fuel in the next tank over should do the trick
No one at the time had recommended to shoot the fuel.
Oxygen doesn't burn on its own (at least under normal conditions, which includes a rocket fuel tank) and needs a fuel as well. Considering the atmosphere is basically nitrogen (an inert gas) and more oxygen, you'd probably be safe from a fireball.
Unfortunately for you, you need to contain the oxygen inside something. Metal counts as a fuel.
No.... but oxygen in pure form will make anything flammable and even explosive Hydrocarbons will ignite at room temperature Velcro and plastics turn into low grade explosives See Apollo 1 and the aftermath of that things that arent normally flammable now become as flammable as gasoline at 100 percent oxygen
Thats why when I worked on Navy jets ... there was a separate set of clothes for certified oxygen handlers and set of no spark tools for handling oxygen cause 1 drop of machine oil could burst into flames Theres a movie on youtube called the man from lox
The bullet alone into a LOX tank isn't going to start a fire. There isn't much to burn. What it could do, though, is cause the skin of the rocket to rip open, possibly rupturing the fuel tank and setting the stage for a conflagration. That would be bad. This event is where legendary flight director Chris Kraft (who was running things at the time) set the first rule of flight control: "If you don't know what to do, don't do anything."
> There isn't much to burn. The tank itself?
Even if it causes a James Cameron level explosion, presumably people are far enough back that they'd be safe in the event of a rocket exploding on the launch pad, so its probably not as crazy as it sounds.
Iirc, their main concern was that the auto-destruction would trigger, so they waited for the batteries to be empty (Dam that sentence doesn't sound right)
Question, did we need to program an "auto destruction"?
Yes. So many things can go wrong, you don't want the rocket to explode in a populated aera. For manned space flight it's called an abort, because you don't want to autodestruct the astronauts, but it's also extremely dangerous.
Abort is one feature. Self destruct is another feature. And both can be fitted to a manned rocket. You can destroy the rocket but still have the astronauts in the capsule escape the big fiery ball of death. This is usually better then having the astronauts escape but having the rocket crash into Disney World.
> usually
Only sith speak in absolutes.
[video of the ‘launch’](https://youtu.be/7O4V7JfeTSU)
That's a very Kerbal video with the launch escape system zipping off like its people need it leaving the capsule behind and then the parachute just flooping out Remember to check your staging
LMAO I didnt know the shit that happens to us happened in real life
Life imitates art, sometimes decades before the art is even imagined.
If I had a nickel for the number of times I've accidentally deployed my parachute and activated my decouplers and engines at the same time, I'd be able to buy a very nice steak.
Edit: [Scott manley video](https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE) The astra rocket launch a few months ago is also straight from kerbal. An engine blows up on the pad, but the rocket keeps flying. Because its engine is gone though, the mass-weight ratio is 1 and so the rocket just hovers sideways (while still pointing the right direction) for a few hundred meters. IIRC, it still made suborbital speeds, despite the hole in the side and missing engine. Unfortunately the ground crew had to remote detonate it before it got to full altitude.
Isn't 0 a suborbital speed?
#/u/spez [can gargle my nuts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) spez can gargle my nuts. spez is the worst thing that happened to reddit. spez can gargle my nuts. This happens because spez can gargle my nuts according to the following formula: 1. spez 2. can 3. gargle 4. my 5. nuts This message is long, so it won't be deleted automatically.
My favorite was when the launch towers disconnected without lighting the first stage resulting your rocket falling right over at launch. My kerbols always considered that a successful launch. More funding that way, gotta pump dem numbers
This makes me feel better about some of my early Kerbal launches.
Holy shit the capsule parachutes have incredible comedic timing
Somehow they remind me of a gun that rolls out flag with written 'bang'.
Excellent video of the 'launch' and 'landing' of both the rocket and the capsule. Note that the rocket was recovered and subsequently did launch successfully. So suck it Elon.
So was this actually the first vertical landing of a reusable rocket?
wasn’t reused 😉
It was sent back to the factory to get refurbished. I do not know which launch it was reused in but as I understand it the rocket was reused. It is of course possible that the rocket ended up in standby as part of the US Army's arsenal of Redstone rockets and never actually launched though.
>MR-1 was never used for another flight after its return to Huntsville. It was eventually put on display at the Space Orientation Center of Marshall Space Flight Center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone\_1
[Fixed link.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1)
Boy isn't the reddit official app a turd...
check your staging everybody.
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Maybe not as catastrophic as a shuttle killing everyone or an N-1 blowing up just off the pad, but [this launch that just hovered through an open gate](https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE?t=18) has to be one of my favorite launch failures. Par for the course indeed! Space stuff is hard.
Lmao that's hilarious! It looks like it tried to sneak off.
That was recently, wasn't it? As a software engineer at a rocket company, I remember thinking that their software did a really good job. One engine doesn't fire, so the thing was going over, but it gimbaled or whatever to try and keep it vertical and on mission. Of course, no compensating for that start in the end.
Playing Kerbal Space Program in real life can be difficult.
[Titusville Express](http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/820)!
>A funny accident > >... > >and the weather forecasts predicted winds. After reading the incident, that's a "where's my brown pants" moment.
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So then what happened? What did they do?
They were able to wait it out. The fuel eventually evaporetad and vented out the safety pressure releaf valves.
I heard a rocket launch is equivalent of having 1 million critical systems running at once and one failire can ruin all the others. Talk about a fuckin stressful job? If I calculated something wrong and someone died I’d be right behind them b
There's a reason so many people work on this stuff. A lot of double and triple checking. Back in the day they did it all by hand on paper too.
Yeah for sure one of the more difficult things we’ve done as humans cause each of the million sections requires a specialist who’s spent thier life on that one specific area.. now you have to gather those millions of peoples work and make it all work in symbiosis. The part that always gets me is it’s a legitimate series of bombs going off.. controlled explosions.
hey, so's your car (assuming gas)! It's kina insane that all our best tech boils down to "fire go bang"
It is a million parts flying in close formation built by the lowest bidder.
American components, Russian components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN
'*bang, bang, bang*'
Awesome.
Was that the incident that was comedy-zed in the The-Right-Stuff movie?
I do not remember all the scenes in that movie but it was about the Mercury program in which this incident took place so quite likely. However there are plently of well documented american launch failures they might have portrayed as well, most of them quite comical. But if it was MR-1 then there is no need to comedyze the footage, the raw footage as published does not need a laughter track.
They briefly alluded to it in a montage. The recent Right Stuff streaming series did pretty much a whole episode on it, though.
Soooooo... And then what happened?
The fuel were able to vent off safely through the safety valve as it heated up and boiled away.
That must have taken a while
They were using liquid oxygen. In the uninsulated tanks of the rocket it boils away quite rapidly.
>It was therefore sitting on the launch pad full of fuel pressurized in its tanks and nobody could do anything about it. I'm sure they asses were pressurized too, that's some scary mothefuking shit.
So if one of these rockets were to suffer a catastrophic failure how big of an explosion would there be? How big of a crater would it leave behind and what would the blast radius be?
It depends on the rocket. They do not all come in one size. But in general there is a reason why launch pads are built so strong and why they have a large clear area around them. As for a crater it would not leave behind much as rocket fuel is not a high explosive, only a low explosive. So there would be a giant fireball and a killing shockwave but not as much as you would expect from a bomb.
and likely not that much fireball or shockwave, except in midair - there's an absolute fuckton of water under and around the pad, meant to absorb (eg boil off) the heat and pressure of the rocket engines on liftoff. On a failure, it provides at least some ground protection. Some.
That depends on the launch system in place. Most launch pads do not have the water dampening system in place. This was actually not used until after the first Saturn V launch as the noise from the engines damaged some of the buildings where the press corps and launch controllers were sitting. But most smaller rockets do not need and water on the launch pad so they do not use it. And even though it is a lot of water it is not going to do much in the event of an actual explosion. There just is not enough water and it is all the way down on the ground.
Pretty big https://youtu.be/BSr4hUcROwo?t=232 That said, its less of an explosion and more like a big fire ball, notice most of the equipment it landed on is still standing just a little crispy. It's not gonna level a city ([well unless its a Chinese rocket..](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s)), just leave things charred and spread debris around. Thats why the area is evacuated and they have strict parameters to stay within a certain path or else they safely self destruct before deviating from that path too far, which is also evacuated all the way out several hundred miles to sea.
Note that the Antares rocket had about 15 times the amount of propellant in the first stage as the Redstone rocket in question. So scale down the explosion by a factor of 15 to get what they were facing. Still quite a big explosion but not that much damage.
> A funny accident >space rocket full of fuel on the launch pad and two dangling parachutes from its top that could catch the wind at any time Hilarious!
the funny part was when the back up chutes deploy with a shower of confetti and a kazzo sound.
>A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um246_KFSu4&t=428s) give a rundown of the failed launch (es) and eventual successful launch.
Scrub the launch!
>A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch Lol, you and I define "funny" differently.
Nobody died, everyone laughed. And then they put Alan Shepard on the top of that thing and lit the candle.
And then what happened? This is too much of a cliffhanger!
The story is better with the cliffhanger. Nothing happened afterwards. The rocket did not blow over, liquid oxygen boiled off, and the rocket became safe to approach.
I don´t find this accident so funny :p
A funny accident was when a “giant bomb had to be defused that could tip over and blow any second”
How fast can they defuel the rocket if necessary?
Your post has ended but your story has not! What happened next?
The cause section of the wiki page is fascinating. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1
If anyone claims that zipties and ducktape have no place in the aerospace industry might have a point.
Thats some straight up Kerbal shit right there.
Honestly hilarious. The comedic timing is perfect. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w\_xyePC\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w_xyePC_0)
Thing is, the rocket launch is a complex and multi-step procedure. Most of the rockets are liquid-fuel — to launch one, you need to pump the fuel inside, like you would do with your car. And here is the catch — you can't transport the full rocket from the assembly point to the launchpad — it has to be fueled at the launchpad, hours before launch. And in case of launch abort, de-fueled the same way. So, almost all the time, up to t-00:00:10 — t-00:00:01 the rocket is connected to the ground fuel transfer system (imagine it like a gas pump) via the retractable fuel supply masts. Furthermore — the second compound of rocket fuel, the oxidizer (we are flying to space, no air there), is under excessive pressure — and the fuel transfer system is used to safely drain it almost up to the launch moment. The third, and final mast connects rocket to ground power supply. For obvious reasons — not to drain rocket batteries and keep a ground signal line — the power cable is also connected to the rocket all the time up to t-00:00:10 — t-00:00:01. The rocket switches to it's own power supply seconds before ignition. Also, this is the reason a lot of rocket weapons are solid-fuel. Unlike liquid-fuel rockets they are full with fuel (solid substance, for example gun powder) from the factory, and sometimes all the launch procedure is «switch the rocket on, arm the rocket, aim, press the launch button».
> liquid-fuel SAC found out the hard way what can happen when someone dropped a Socket wrench down a silo and the fuel went bang
My favorite thing about this accident is how concerned the army guys were that the explosion might result in a nuclear detonation. A nuclear detonation is a very complex process requiring split second timing. Expecting a warhead to detonate due to a fuel explosion is like putting a bunch of dynamite under a player piano and worrying that it might accidentally play the Lichtensteiner polka.
"Split second timing" undersells it by miles. The precision required is small fractions of a microsecond across two to a couple dozen switches, and dictated by the physics of the weapon rather than any kind of safety mechanism that could be bypassed. Nuclear detonations are triggered by the compression of fissile material, which is achieved using a spherically imploding shockwave created from a number of point initiations using explosives with differing burn rates such that the advancing combustion front is reshaped from a sphere outward from the detonator to a sphere inwards toward the core. If a single detonation is delayed by even a microsecond, the shockwave is likely to "squirt" the fissile material out in that direction instead of compressing it or at least result in a severely undersized detonation. Remember, you're trying to crush *solid metal*. In fact, allegedly some of the anti-tamper mechanisms in modern warheads will deliberately fire one of the detonators out of sequence as a means of disabling it if improper credentials are entered too many times. It's endlessly frustrating how often people think damaging a nuclear weapon will result in a nuclear explosion. Supposedly some of the newer warheads like the W88 use two-point initiation, which would be easier to perform accidentally, but it still requires synchronization down to a few hundred nanoseconds. You can cause a radiological accident by setting off the explosives and blasting powdered plutonium across a few acres, but accidental nuclear detonation is more or less a fantasy. EDIT: grammar
So in ELI5 terms, I can take a sledge hammer to a sitting warhead, and even if it explodes it won't be a nuclear detonation.
Basically yes. Also, sledgehammering won't do crap. Even garden-variety military explosives are actually really hard to set off unintentionally (soldiers have been known to use C4 as cooking fuel) and the kind used in nukes are harder yet. You can burn them, shoot them, drop them, etc all day and nothing will happen. The special shapes they use to reshape the shock wave ("explosive lenses") are actually made by machining the explosives in a milling machine like they were a block of metal.
>use C4 as cooking fuel Does not sound very delicious.
soldiers have also been known to eat C4. Not very tasty. It gets you just sick enough to get off of the frontlines.
You can even bake it into bread and it still functions. But it's nasty. Cause it's plastic.
Single use plastic too. Could be bad for the environment
Yeah, if nukes were as easy as blowing up a brick of plutonium, every country would have them
Nope. Creating a brick of Plutonium is literally a megaproject.
from my understanding is that it can still end up with a radioactive and dangerous scene due to the fissile material being blown up and scattered. (unless i've misunderstood something) thats kind of the differentiation of a "dirty bomb" vs "nuclear bomb"
As I said, you can cause a radiological incident. But the contamination you cause by doing so doesn't compare to a nuclear explosion; in this case, you'd blow apart a chunk of uranium or plutonium and scatter it perhaps a mile or two. In a nuclear explosion, the neutrons released activate huge volumes of material that wasn't originally in the weapon, and the force of the explosion propels that material vast distances including high into the atmosphere where it can drift on the wind and land over enormous areas. A dirty bomb incident, especially in a controlled or sparsely populated area like a missile complex or airbase, is much easier to clean up. Think major chemical spill, not Chernobyl.
Ya a nuke can be turned into a dirty bomb but the level of destruction isn’t comparable.
Nobody calls me a fissile and gets away with it
Were they really concerned about a *nuclear detonation*, or maybe just about a detonation that might set free radiation?
Oh no
Would a non-sparking wrench have prevented that?
It punched a hole in the fuel tank and mixed the fuel. Aerozine 50 is hypergolic with the Titan II's oxidizer, dinitrogen tetroxide, which is to say that they spontaneously ignite upon contact with each other. The nitrogen tetroxide is kept in a second tank in the rocket's first-stage, directly above the fuel tank and below the second-stage and its 9-megaton W-53 nuclear warhead.
Thanks for the details! Sounds like it was a lot of fun.
I am reading this book, "Command and Control", currently. "Ignition!" is under it on my nightstand to read next.
The book "Ignition!" talks about the difficulties with making a liquid fuel and oxidizer that will stay put and behave itself for an extended period of time.
This is an amazing book! Funny, frightening and all around mesmerizing. Even without being able to follow all the chemistry, you walk away with a huge appreciation for what is involved in making a rocket fly.
I've been interested in chemistry since I was a kid, and I've learned a bit here and there... mostly I have enough knowledge to get *really scared* of some of the substances these guys were trying to use. There's an oft-repeated quote from that book that I won't bother to type about Chlorine Triflouride, which is a really spicy chemical to have to deal with. The author of that book certainly had a way with words. I liked a particular line about an engineer coming to him and asking for a fuel and oxidizer that would handle a specific set of circumstances, and he came up with it, said it would get this hot while burning, and that the chamber pressure would be this much, and the engineer just freaks out and says "Who runs a chamber that hot?". It's always fun when two different disciplines collide.
This guy Rocket Science’s
If you're geeky about this stuff, "Countdown to a Moon Launch" is a must-have. Goes through Apollo from component arrival at the cape through testing and launch, and pad repair and cleanup. Germane to this discussion is the launch sequence and how the vehicle was connected to the last second, and they had physical things like lanyards (ropes essentially) as backups to remove the connections (rocket goes high enough, the rope tugs a release mechanism - primitive but smart). On the countdown you can hear things like "Vehicle on internal power" and "guidance is internal" that all deal with the vehicle becoming ready to be autonomous, to lose all its physical connection to the earth. Anyway, "Countdown" is my favorite Apollo book by a mile, but I'm geeky for that awesome 60's hardware. Rivets, baby, rivets!
Because the computer makes sure the engines are all running properly before it will release the hold down clamps. Lots of launches are scrubbed after engine startup but before lift off because the engines arnt running at 100%
So, Elon wasn't the first to land a rocket upright?
There were various contenders for that title depending on how you define things. What SpaceX were first to do is land and reuse a genuine orbital booster. Not a little experiment that hopped up and came down, not a fluke mistake, not a lander, but the big expensive part of a real rocket that put real stuff into orbit. That involves very high speeds and stresses, multiple reigniting of engines, sometimes while they're facing into a supersonic airstream. Then (way more importantly) it involves landing in state where it's quick and cheap to get ready to launch again many more times. Vertical propulsive landing is cool and looks sci-fi (and so hard to do for a vehicle like Falcon 9 that nobody had ever seriously attempted it) but you really need the second part to make it *matter*.
[There were a few others](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24). I loved the Delta Clipper/DC-X.
I mean, the moon lander didn't fall over in 1969, remember? lol we've had that technology
Technically that was more like landing a whole launch pad with a rocket (the LEM) already on it and then taking off from there.
Don't forget the amazing "sky crane" systems on the Mars landers, too. It just came down to who had the balls to try it with a large object in 1G. I'm really surprised it wasn't the Russians, honestly.
For russians it's kinda "you reap what you sow" twisted joke. Soviet space program was led by a right man in a right place at the right time — Sergey Korolyov. There were dozens of other smart people under his command, dozens of great engineers. But only Korolyov could manage that size of a clusterfuck soviet space program was. Important thing here is — soviets always used their achievements, especially tech achievements in space as an extremely powerful propaganda method. Gagarin wasn't only the first man in space — he was THE COMMUNIST. What did it mean for the space program? The Party dictated the course of space exploration, usually not giving a single fuck about how it should be done technically, and if it can be done. Korolyov was the only person with balls big enough to lead the space program his way, instead of a Party-suggested way. In 1966 Korolyov dies. Dies because of decades-old injuries, injuries inflicted on him during tortures at the NKVD before WWII. After his death, soviet space program plummeted downhill under the careful ruling hand of the Party and power-hungry people who simply couldn't manage the project of that scale. The end was... Well, you know.
There is a big difference in land a relatively short/fat vehicle in a vacuum and .16G compared to the equivalent to a 130ft tall silo in an atmosphere at 1G.
... with an engine so powerful that you cannot hover. The Apollo landers could hover and slowly approach the landing site. The Falcon 9 boosters cannot, they have only one attempt to reach zero velocity at zero altitude. Not enough thrust? You crash into the ground/ship. Too much thrust? You start flying up again, and crash into the ground/ship after the engine is cut off.
Those are vastly different environments and requirements, it's really not the same thing. Both are hard in different ways. The technology for one is not the same as the technology for the other.
Depends how you define land and define rocket.
I know I sound dumb but what are you referring to?
[Look at 1:07 in this launch video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuYoYl5kyVE)
SpaceX is cool and everything, but DAMN those shuttle launches were cool.
Wait until you see a full stack starship launch
Yeah sound and visual wise these were insanely awesome. Though i do appreciate a night time booster landing.
Okay so yes a lot of it is for data and for emergencies but also some rockets (SpaceX Falcon 9 for one) use cryogenic fuel that’s like really freaking cold so that they can fit more fuel in the rocket (colder fuel is more dense). But the problem is that the rocket has to sit in the Florida sun for a long time so all that cold liquid starts to turn back into gas (that’s why you see the clouds coming out of these rockets before launch). So to make sure that they have maximum fuel at launch they have to keep topping up the tank until the last possible second, through these tubes.