BREAKING NEWS: NASA Sucks at Rockets

Looks more like an episode of Top Gear to me. The funding is about the same anyway.

We won't know until they finish investigating, but in their press conference they said that the range safety officer triggered the self-destruct when a fault was found. Better to explode it on the launch pad than over my house.

ah I see. Well in that case the range safety officer should have a clue what fault it was that was so drastic that he pulled the trigger within seconds after the thing tried to start.

Yeah I think they will know a lot very soon. The press conference I listened to was from a few hours after the explosion.

I know they exploded a rocket and all, but I'm impressed with everything from a safety point of view. They actually had planned the launch for the day before, but had to wait because a sailboat wandered too close. If they had launched anyway we might be seeing a whole different story in the news. If they really did detonate their own rocket without any hesitation on the chance that it could have hurt some people, that shows just how mature and professional they are. I hope this doesn't hurt the future of the company.

Well if they really used russian engines build in the 60s it does look rather ... expected that those might actually be faulty by now.

I'm sure those extremely unqualified rocket scientists just threw those old things in without any inspection or testing

Unless something new was announced in the last couple of hours , for all you know it wasn't a problem with the engines. All of the couple of articles I skimmed said the engines were modified, but I'm sure those rocket scientists have nothing on the collective ksp hours of this subforum

Oh I doubt they'd do that. It just reads bad when you read the engines where from the 60s and now the rocket exploded

Maybe you guys are interested in Scott Manley's opinion:



The old engines are actually pretty amazing and it's not certain they are are responsible for the explosion. We will have to wait for the conclusion of the investigation. I guess it will help that the rocket exploded shortly after launch and they have good video and sensor data.

Well I am joking when I criticize them for whatever they do. I have so no idea of launching rockets into space.
I have not even played KSP so far!

Play it and consider it research for your possible future in the gaming industry.
KSP is really an amazing game, even more so because it encourages people to invest a lot of time into learning physics and orbital mechanics.

I really enjoy reading wikis and forums to the games I'm playing and with KSP it was the first time I had the feeling it wasn't just for fun. A perfect mix of education and entertainment.

Timemachines. TIIIMEMACHINES.
Somebody have one? ;D

I will have one yesterday.

That officer only knows that something is wrong, not what's wrong. If machines told you exactly what went wrong, 99% of all repair-related jobs wouldn't exist. fixing things is easy. Figuring out what's wrong is the hard part.

if it was some first-stage related problem, the RSO would see a drastic difference in thrust compared to what's needed, or pressures dropping or whatever. Some major important figures dropping like bricks or skyrocketing, enough to know that it's horribly and catastrophically wrong

a rocket contains tens of thousands of parts. Any part of it can fail. So while refurbished engines are a suspect, it's not certain.

As I said I realize I know nothing, I am just making jokes about old engines that were hidden away somewhere for a few decades

i think elon musk (spaceX) described them as "the punchline of a joke".

Virgin Galactic's ship smashed into the ground

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sc...g-california-test-flight-20141031-11faul.html

And they still promise to bring completely normal civilian passengers to space by the end of 2015.

Yeah sure, if you call people who are able and willing to pay for that "normal"