Russian Rocket Proton-M Crashes At Launch 145
First time accepted submitter Jade_Wayfarer writes "Today, at 02:38 UTC (08:38 local time), Russian rocket Proton-M crashed after only several seconds of flight. Proton-M was carrying 3 GLONASS-M satellites of the ill-fated Russian navigational system. There were no causalities, but evacuation of personnel was ordered because of toxic rocket fuel fumes. Video of the event can be found here."
probably... (Score:5, Funny)
...because the rocket was using GLONASS for navigation instead of GPS.
Re:probably... (Score:5, Funny)
Normally AC first post comments are throwaways, but the image of a rocket trying to follow the navigation satellites in its nose made me giggle...
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Yes, it would resemble the outcome of this 1986 Trident II test [youtube.com], which I have seen captioned as "Navy Successfully Tests New Self-seeking Missile" in this still photo [fas.org].
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Correction - just saw it again. Something weird billowed out of the engines at 0:18 or so
So glad this was only 3 satellites, rather than 3 cosmonauts. That 0:18 mystery plume would have been guessed, second guessed and investigated. As it is, they'll still need to retrace the assembly and prep of the rocket to try to identify where a flaw was introduced.
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I'm quite certain they have some escape vehicles for events like that, not for satellites but for cosmonauts.
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Why?
Why shouldn't he be glad that nobody got hurt in this accident? Where did he say anything about impeding progress?
Besides, it's completely pointless to do things exactly the same and hope all goes well, rather than spending money to find out what caused the problem. Whether the next payload is satellites or humans, it's a complete waste if the whole thing blows up again..
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So glad this was only 3 satellites, rather than 3 cosmonauts.
Why? There is 7 billion of us on this rock. Are you one of those 100% safety nuts that are willing to sacrifice progress because we might lose 0.00000000014 of our population? Cant risk hurting three Astronauts, better spend $100 Billion more on this project, meanwhile 3 people die in car accident every 10 minutes on average.
Probably because they feel that human lives are more valuable than satellites, despite the fact that there are more humans in existence than satellites. That's not to say that we should not do dangerous things because of the risk to humans, but it remains a good thing when people survive a potentially fatal accident. Similarly, a lot of people do, in fact, value lives over money, to the degree that the design of dangerous things like rockets (and, y'know, cars and such) involves careful precautions to pre
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Yeah, it looks like an engine failure of some kind (the brownish plume), and then the other engines valiantly tried to correct for it (check out the deflection of the other rocket plumes trying to correct for the spin/deviation) and fail.
It reminds me of this Delta II failure, also carrying a GPS satellite [wikipedia.org], which was a booster failure. Video [youtube.com] here [youtube.com], although the ending is rather different.
The part I can't figure out for the Proton rocket is why, as it turned horizontal and started heading back down, the rang
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Even rocket scientists get lousy - perhaps from hunger?
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This is a drag, but it's always a drag when these fail because it still means failure is possible, even SOYUZ.
Protons have historically been highly reliable. A mishap like this happens every now and then to any launcher.
Re:probably... (Score:4, Interesting)
This was the 387th Proton launch. A quick check, and I find that 36 of them have failed (including this latest one), plus three or four "partial failures" (they got into the wrong orbit, but were still usable).
So Proton has a 9.3% failure rate, which is still much more reliable than Shuttle's 1.5% failure rate.
Oh, wait....
Note, for those who would like to insist that Proton failures were common in the early days, but very rare once they got the bugs out, that Proton failed once in each of 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.
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Protons rockets are a lot cheaper than Shuttles though. It's cheaper to go with the higher failure rate and just buy insurance.
Re:probably... (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, you are comparing man-rated (multiple times the cost, built specifically for 100% reliability) with cargo-only rockets (built for price/performance, where price actually includes failures).
There is simply no comparison. For Proton to still be in use it is obviously reliable enough that its cost including insurance for cargo is competitive. The space shuttle on the other had a much larger than acceptable failure rate.
Hey, get in this "bus", there is only 1.5% chance you will blow up!
Way, way too much and all because of politics basically, it was not really an engineering choice to make the boosters far away and move them disassembled or to fly in temperatures dangerous for the O-rings etc.
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they're the bargain rocket so what do you expect..
soyuz has much better rate.
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It's always possible to fail. But Soyuz launches seem to be using the Soyuz FG rocket nowadays, so Proton failures are not directly affecting the Soyuz program.
Space flight is not yet as routine as a trip to the Circle-K for an ICEE.
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FYI, the "wooshing" sound that you heard passing over your head as you posted this response was not the sound of a rocket with a propulsion problem...
Re:probably... (Score:4, Informative)
In the words of the immortal Foghorn Leghorn: "That's a joke, ah say, that's a joke, son."
Can we have another 3 GLONASS-M sats please? (Score:1)
The video shows a rocket behaving just like mine on Kerbal Space Program.
Maybe the design is exactly the same.
Dashcam? (Score:5, Funny)
I want to see the dashcam footage!
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I want to see the dashcam footage!
You'd see Putin running away after lighting the fuse.
The U.S. is in a boom, not a death spiral (Score:2)
You seem to be confused, talking about the U.S. space program being in a death spiral - when we have working robots on Mars, and companies like SpaceX building truly next-gen space capability.
Why should you consider a countries space capability solely on government programs?
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Soviets sent probes to mars and venus 40+ years ago.
Re:Dashcam? (Score:5, Informative)
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Awesome link, thanks for this. I feel for the Russians, sucks to lose one like that.
Wonder where range safety was, but don't know what their protocol is; it might cause less damage if it goes off on the ground as long as its unpopulated versus an air burst. Someone in the know can weigh in here?
Maybe people will stop h8n on SpaceX now? Naw, h8rs gonna h8....
andy
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Wonder where range safety was, but don't know what their protocol is; it might cause less damage if it goes off on the ground as long as its unpopulated versus an air burst. Someone in the know can weigh in here?
"Russian rockets do not carry self-destruct explosives like Western boosters"
[Proton Rocket Crashes [spaceflightnow.com]].
Range safety is entirely achieved by... well... range.
That was one of the larger modifications necessary to Soyuz-2 for it to be allowed to
launch from Kourou in French Guiana: The Kourou-launched russian rockets do have
self-destruct capability.
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Launching without an automatic self-destruct system is totally irresponsible. Oh, wait, this is Russia...
This isn't the Future I was promised. (Score:3)
Where are the reliable rockets coming and going like London buses?
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Gasp! You mean I can't fly around in floating-car like the Jetsons that is able to hold into a small briefcase?
Yeh, science fiction has teased us with a bit too much. Between constraints on materials and the laws of Themodynamics we can't really do all of the cool stuff that we've seen in comics and movies. Not now, possibly never.
Obviously there's room for advancement to be made. Carbon Nanotubes offer interesting manufacturing abilities as the technology (and tube-size) improves. But things are harde
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If you're intending to suggest that software doesn't breakdown you've never encountered QA.
It's possible to make software that doesn't break down. The fact that most people don't have the chops to do it, and the fact that reliable software is a wasted on most existing hardware does not negate it.
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It is only possible to make software that can never break down when all possible values of all input parameters are known ahead of time. In practice, this is rarely the case.
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In fairness, London did have those bendy buses for a while, which had an unfortunate habit of catching fire.
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In fairness, London did have those bendy buses for a while, which had an unfortunate habit of catching fire.
True. They also all tend to come at once and then none for ages.
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This is a problem in NYC as well. Bus Bunching. [wikipedia.org]
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I believe Italy solved this problem once with its trains. People turned out to not be very happy with the results, and they hung the guy who did it. Ever since, nobody has been willing to try.
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> ...or black humor from the Italians, yes?
Sarcastic Italians? That is just inconceivable!
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Yes but fortunately Boris Johnson got rid of them. Unfortunately he's not to good with zip lines [youtube.com] and dealing with scandals and being honest about his past. [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
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In fairness, London did have those bendy buses for a while, which had an unfortunate habit of catching fire.
Three of them. The (design?) fault was fixed, and there were no further problems.
Boris' withdrawal of bendy buses now means several affected routes are overcrowded, and more buses are needed to run the routes (a bendy bus carries more people than a double-decker bus).
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Those are the ones which don't find their way into the news [lbc.co.uk].
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They're there.. right on the bookshelf where you left them, right there along with your copy of "Tin Tin - Destination Moon." [wikipedia.org] :-p
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Where are the reliable rockets coming and going like London buses?
Good news, everyone! The rockets you seek are on Futurama.
Bad news, everyone! It just got cancelled.
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The Soyuz is reliable and relatively cheap to build.
"It has become the world's most used space launcher, flying over 1700 times, far more than any other rocket. It is a very old basic design, but is notable for low cost and very high reliability, both of which appeal to commercial clients."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family) [wikipedia.org]
Just have to keep trying... (Score:3, Funny)
I heard that the rocket was also carrying Edward Snowdens political asylum request [slashdot.org].
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I heard that the rocket was also carrying Edward Snowdens political asylum request [slashdot.org].
Now that we have that out of the way...
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I think he'd have better luck predicting which country would take him if Ms. Cleo [wikipedia.org] were to help him out.
"yo say you want asylum mon? Let me look at da cards." [youtube.com]
No Causalities (Score:5, Funny)
Must have been a pretty big explosion to break the laws of space time like that.
Hard Stuff (Score:2)
Easy jokes aside, this is becoming a disturbing pattern. The Proton rocket has been launched how many times? 50? 100? It's supposed to be a rock-solid system at this point - the most reliable commercial launch vehicle available. How many launch failures is this in the last year? Someone down in the QA department must be sleeping on the job, or being bought off. Have they been making unwarrented component or material
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Oh come on, guys, again? It's not like this is rocket scie... oh, wait, yes it is.
That joke has not gotten ol... oh wait, yes it has.
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It's supposed to be a rock-solid system at this point - the most reliable commercial launch vehicle available.
So what is the most reliable commercial launch vehicle, and how does its failure rate compare with Proton's?
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No, I guess they just thought it was a cool name or something.
No one is actually using nuclear powered rockets. There has been plenty of projects in the past but they were all cancelled sooner or later.
But there could be plenty of other dangerous stuff aboard that rocket and I have no idea what might have been in the satellites.
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But there could be plenty of other dangerous stuff aboard that rocket and I have no idea what might have been in the satellites.
Nonsense. Hydrazine is wonderful stuff, and works as a cure-all tonic, guaranteed to make your worries no longer of concern!
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No, and the Poseidon missile is not powered by a Greek deity, either. The Proton series has been Russia's standard heavy-duty space launcher for close on fifty years.
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yes, it was entirely composed of nuclei surrounded by electron clouds often shared between more than one. it also contained *chemicals*
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However, remember that this is rocket science. Things happen.
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You must be Russian.
This looks like gross error (Score:4, Insightful)
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Did you even look at the video? It's obvious that there was an engine failure that also caught fire. it was probably laterally thrusting while it was burning.
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Yes, I looked at the video. And it shows nothing of the sort - as the rocket goes past horizontal, all engines can briefly be seen to be firing normally with no signs of fire. (At least in the other videos I've seen, it's not clear in the video linked above.)
The OP is correct, the indications (that we can divine from the video) point to a control failure either in the guidance system and associated electronics or the mechanics of the gimbals. One key clue is the unusually high roll rate that builds up qu
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If it was mechanical failure it makes me wonder what happened to the days when the Russians overbuilt everything at the expense of sub-optimal performance?
They ended with the USSR. We're cheapskates now, same as everyone else, and with corruption in quality control on top of that. Well, and most of our older professionals in the field have retired, and the best and brightest new ones emigrate before they can make a difference, since pay is less than meager and career prospects are non-existent.
Video from different angle... (Score:3, Informative)
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On a serious note where the hell was the Range Safety Officer on this one?
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The rocket came apart, notably the cargo section, before it crashed. Do you think this was merely due to flight stresses?
If this is hydrazine, I'd guess you'd want to burn as much of it as possible before crashing.
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Tear or eject? (Score:2)
I assumed that was the payload being ejected in order to try and save it. Was is really just structural failure?
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Yet another different angle (Score:1)
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Reminds me of kerbal space program (Score:3)
GNSS (Score:3)
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True, it would also be nice if we could expand GPS. More sats would really help.
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Newer phone are much faster than that.
I am not going to carry another GPS device everywhere I go. Even if I had to wait a couple minutes. I have had one in the past and it failed in both urban canyons and real ones.
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It's all right: They've come up with a new system called GLADOS.
Re:GNSS (Score:5, Informative)
According to the wikipedia [wikipedia.org], GLONASS has complete global coverage and is fully operational.
I have a GPS/GLONASS receiver and it certainly seems to have comparable coverage to GPS everywhere I've been in the last few years. Accuracy using both GPS and GLONASS, particularly when both are augmented by EGNOS, is quite good (on the order of 2-5 meters).
The satellites they were launching on this rocket were the GLONASS-M type, which was designed in 2001, and were not part of the new GLONASS-K series.
While certainly expensive and troublesome, I don't really see how this incident would set GLONASS back by years. /looking forward to Galileo and modernized GPS as well.
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That's really too bad. I was looking forward to GLONASS reliably augmenting GPS and improving global GNSS coverage and accuracy.
Am I right in saying you have this problem simply because you don't have a GLONASS receiver?
There's nothing wrong with GLONASS it works fine in most of the world.
"They Shall Beat ..." (Score:1)
Obvious - NSA missed! (Score:1, Offtopic)
After hacking in to the controls, NSA missed trying to take out Snowden.
You always hate to see this, but .... (Score:2)
Range Safety Officer? (Score:2)
Does anyone know whether or not there was a range safety officer monitoring this launch? From the video, it's pretty clear early on that this booster is in trouble, and since it's unmanned it seems like it would be better to detonate the Proton before it impacts the earth.
Without knowing the procedures and capabilities it's hard to know why the flight was not terminated sooner. Any Slashdotters with knowledge of Russian launch safety protocols?
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The payload was jettisoned and a parachute deployed. Aroud 32 seconds in. It appears to have been consumed by the fireball, but it may have been behind it from the viewer's perspective. No idea if that was automatic or not.
Good (Score:1)
In Soviet Russia, humans rocket from launch pad!
Bad spellchecker. BAD! (Score:3)
TFS said "There were no causalities,"
You would think that we could at least wait a week or two for the assessment teams to tell us if they'd found some causalities. Now, "casualties," OTOH...
Lies (Score:2)
The video clearly shows that the payload was successfully inserted into a low orbit before the rocket broke up on reentry.
HD distant view with impressive sound (Score:3)
The best video of the failure I have found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orOcOahNazk [youtube.com]
Others good videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH3bY6-ObGg [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSTVkkDv30k [youtube.com]
"They Shall Beat" (Score:1)
No self-destruct? (Score:2)
Why was there no self-destruct happening?
Where was the guy with his finger on the "press here to explode rocket" button?
CERN may be interested (Score:1)
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Molly is now old enough to know how to open molly-guards! be afraid!