October 5
Interesting that SpaceX gets grounded because a booster did not land within the projected zone, while ULA gets a pass even though part of their rocket blew off. In both cases the launches achieved their desired missions. After viewing the video, I would say that ULA is very lucky that the solid booster blew out away from the rocket and not inward where it probably would have destroyed the whole thing (remember Challenger, boys and girls?). I am very interested to see the results of the investigation into ULA’s “anomaly”, but doubt that it will never be made public.
2 replies
October 5
▶ jbmcnamee
Which SpaceX PR firm do you work for? If you don’t, you should apply.
1 reply
October 6
▶ jbmcnamee
SpaceX got grounded not because of a booster anomaly, but because the anomaly caused the stage to impact out of the area reserved for its return. There was the potential for harm to the public. Same reason Virgin Galactic was grounded for a while, several years ago…they left their closed airspace, too.
I’m suspecting the ULA failure occurred early enough that no debris came down outside the closed air/seaspace.
October 7
Probably a door plug blowing out…
1 reply
October 7
Failure rate too high I think, thus risk of major problem happening.
Worse is launching with known problems/risks - fatal for two US space shuttles.
Boeing botched by that with its crewed capsule to the space station.
ULA PR spin is silly, ‘observation’ word for what was a ‘problem’ - loss of some thrust.
October 7
▶ SL2
I’m hardly a SpaceX fan. Personally, I find Musk to be an obnoxious twit that should keep his mouth shut, but that has no bearing on my comments. I have no problems with the feds grounding SpaceX launches until they figure out what happened. I just find it interesting that they seem less interested in the fact that the ULA rocket failed a major component that, simply due to luck, did not catastrophically wreck the mission. The fact that no debris endangered people or fish is kind of beside the point. Any significant anomalies should be treated with the same process and thoroughly investigated before another launch is attempted.
October 7
▶ johnbpatson
Northrop Grumman manufactures the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket. If the failure was in the SRB as it appears to be it is not Boeing or Lockheed Martin, or ULA failure, but Northrop Grumman who purchased Thiokol. The SRB is probably built at the same facility that build the Challenger SRBs. Of course all those people are retired or have died of old age. I was a young engineer at a competitor at the time of the Challenger disaster. NASA was developing a 2nd source for the shuttle SRBs but as a result of Challenger that project was cancelled and Thiokol held its sole source position through the remainder of the shuttle program. I do believe the Columbia disaster was the result of damage from foam falling off the external tank which was a Martin design made post Lockheed merger. Boeing isn’t the only company with big fails, but their biggest fails of the past century have been the last couple of years. The merger with McDonnell Douglas is often cited as THE contributing factor to the Boeing problems, but the real problem is the power exercised by Wall Street over public companies.
1 reply
October 9
▶ MarsFuelStation
I wonder if the current SRB has the same backward design as the one that failed on the Challenger space shuttle.
Geometry reduced pressure on o-ring, which are what failed - with the result NASA’s FMEA identified. People weren’t thinking.
As Boeing was not thinking with MCAS, then did not update failure analysis as system morphed.
NASA had obscured their FMEA to reduce clutter since corrective action had been decided, I forget what that was - but useless as action was not scheduled to be taken until after Challenger was scheduled to launch.
Then NASA accepted M-T’s groupthink management recommendation to launch despite sound concern about o-rings stiffening as temperature dropped, .
FAA calculated probability of a second crash of B737 with MCAS, failing to recognize common-cause possibility (pilot confusion) and/or that probability estimate does not ensure events will be spaced in time.
