Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha FLTA006 rocket suffered a launch failure on Tuesday, resulting in the loss of the Lockheed Martin satellite it was carrying.
Well, crash-patch-crash worked for Elon Musk. :-o)
It looks so simple but is likely one of the most complex things to be accomplished, with a host of things that can (and sometimes does) go wrong. Failure prediction can go only so far - the rest show up after the button is pressed. It takes an incredible amount of energy to escape the pull of this big ball of dirt and water and things don’t always go as planned. I hope they can resolve the issues and see success.
That’s why thoroughness and attention to reality are essential.
As for failure analysis, the FMEA for o-rings in joints of the Morton Thiokol booster rockets sued to launch US space shuttle clearly stated ‘loss of mission, loss of crew’ if both o-rings failed. But NASA obscured the risk from crew by only listing risks that did not have committed fixes - never mind fixes that were not yet implemented.
Morton Thiokol’s FEA of the booster was duff backwards, anyone who looked at joint configuration seriously would see that internal pressure would reduce pressure on o-rings, didn’t take a computer to see that.
Then Morton Thiokol executives had a group-think meeting with only one technically knowledgeable person in it, to recommend NASA launch. Ignoring indications of increased o-ring erosion at lower temperatures.
(Material wasn’t good either, as Richard Feynman demonstrated with a glass of ice water.)
Mr. Dodgey finally told his staff to fix problems well instead of patching.
But he’s a slow learner, ignoring his own advice.
Material wasn’t good either, as Richard Feynman demonstrated…
Thx - Feynman tales are always worth reading (or watching).
Four out of six failures!?! Maybe Lockheed should stop listening to the TDS crowd and have a chat with SpaceX.
I had worked that mission as a flight designer - wasn’t part of the launch decision.
We (my work group) had been occasionally checking the video feeds that morning and were amazed that the launch was going to happen. Actual icicles on the vehicle.
There were two Morton Thiokol engineers responsible for signing off on the launch commit that morning - both refused. Ambient temperatures were well outside of the certification limits of the SRBs. Rumor had it that NASA management was not happy and went looking for someone at Morton Thiokol who would sign off. They found someone - and the rest is history.
I think both those Morton Thiokol engineers were kind of blacklisted and only given menial tasks after that episode. Retaliation for doing the right thing.
Some where in my boxes of old stuff I have a copy of the Rogers Commission Report. Will have to re-read it some day.
Thanks
Brave engineer Roger Boisjoly has spoken to IEEE meetings about Morton-Thiokol’s behaviour. Years later I encountered a space industry hanger-on engineer who ranted against Boisjoly.
The group-think meeting of M-T executives has been well reported, only the V-P Engineering had any technical ability and he was out-voted.
Richard Feyman demonstrated the brittleness of some rubbers in ice water on TV for the Rogers Commission enquiry. The report should be on the Internet.
Well, SpaceX is not doing great at the moment.
Yes, a brilliant scientist and person common sense, has written books.
Thanks, couldn’t remember Roger’s last name.
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