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Russian Supply Rocket Malfunctions, Breaks Up Over Siberia En Route To ISS (npr.org) 135

Posted by BeauHD from the technical-difficulties dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: An unmanned cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station was destroyed after takeoff on Thursday. The Russian rocket took off as planned from Baikonur, Kazahkstan, on Thursday morning but stopped transmitting data about six minutes into its flight, as NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reported: "'Russian officials say the spacecraft failed [...] when it was about 100 miles above a remote part of Siberia. The ship was carrying more than 2 1/2 tons of supplies -- including food, fuel and clothes. Most of that very likely burned up as the unmanned spacecraft fell back toward Earth. NASA says the six crew members on board the International Space station, including two Americans, are well stocked for now.'" This is the fourth botched launch of an unmanned Russian rocket in the past two years. Roscomos officials wrote in an update today: "According to preliminary information, the contingency took place at an altitude of about 190 km over remote and unpopulated mountainous area of the Republic of Tyva. The most of cargo spacecraft fragments burned in the dense atmosphere. The State Commission is conducting analysis of the current contingency. The loss of the cargo ship will not affect the normal operations of the ISS and the life of the station crew."
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Russian Supply Rocket Malfunctions, Breaks Up Over Siberia En Route To ISS More

Russian Supply Rocket Malfunctions, Breaks Up Over Siberia En Route To ISS

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  • almost made it (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    at 190km they can't have been that far away from being pretty safe?

    • um (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02, 2016 @03:25AM (#53406917)

      BASIC astrophysics: it's the horizontal velocity that matters. If it were not for obstacles and atmospheric drag slowing you down, you could orbit the Earth at 5000 feet. You can certainly orbit the moon (which has essentially no atmosphere) or any similar body at any altitude.

      During WWII German V-2 Rockets flew to as high as 206 km (128 miles) which is space, but they never had even a third of the horizontal velocity to achieve orbit. It's that horizontal speed which causes things reentering the atmosphere to heat up and burn, and the lack of that horizontal speed is why V-2 rockets, Spaceship One, Spaceship Two, and the Red Bull parachutist could all plunge back to Earth from space without heat shields.

      To orbit the Earth, you must be going "sideways" so fast that as the Earth's gravity pulls your trajectory "down" (towards the center of the Earth) you've moved "sideways" far enough for the Earth's curvature to equal that bent trajectory. That's about 14500MPH for low Earth orbit. Most rockets burn an enormous amount of fuel initially getting off the pad and climbing vertically to get up out of the thick lower atmosphere quickly, but then execute a "gravity turn" in the upper atmosphere so that they then spend most of their fuel thereafter building up the great horizontal velocity needed to achieve orbit. This Soyuz apparently had a third stage failure, so it was plenty high but unable to continue accelerating to orbital velocity - it was doomed the moment the third stage either shut down or failed to ignite.

      • Re:um (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @05:09AM (#53407233) Journal

        Usually they don't wait for upper atmosphere for starting the gravity turn - Apollo started the roll and pitch program at 15 seconds into flight, having only cleared the tower 5 seconds before. For altitude reference, the Apollo 11 flight plan has them passing 14,000 feet at 51 seconds into flight.

        But you are correct - orbit is mostly not about altitude, rather it's about going fast enough horizontally to continually fall back to Earth and miss.

        • Re:um (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @08:34AM (#53407789)

          You should probably add that one of the key reasons for this being that they don't want debris to fall back down onto the launch facility, either 'cause something goes wrong early on or because a stage gets jettisoned.

          Also, it is actually more economical to start the turn early on, it gives you a way better flight profile that also puts less stress onto the parts.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Jaegs ( 645749 )

          ...going fast enough horizontally to continually fall back to Earth and miss.

          So, in a way, Douglas Adams was correct about flying, then:

          http://www.extremelysmart.com/... [extremelysmart.com]

      • Simple and correct explanation. I mean, it's not like it's rocket science.

      • You can certainly orbit the moon (which has essentially no atmosphere) or any similar body at any altitude.

        Ideally, that would be true. In reality, you don't want to do that because lunar mascons would guarantee you wouldn't stay in that orbit for long.

    • Re:almost made it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @06:19AM (#53407419) Homepage

      Unlike the others, I'm going to assume that you're saying "at 190km, they must have also been far enough along into the burn that they also had significant horizontal velocity" :)

      And yes, like the overwhelming majority of modern Russian launch vehicle failures, this was an upper stage failure. Their lower stages have been reliable workhorses, but they've long struggled with upper stages.

      • So who is the common worker in failures? I can keep waiting another five hundred years for the second space station, but these people cannot wait to say space is just being on the mooon, Spacey.

  • Tuva or bust! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orzetto ( 545509 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @03:10AM (#53406881)

    [...] over remote and unpopulated mountainous area of the Republic of Tyva

    Apparently, it was rather Tuva and bust [wikipedia.org].

  • I happened to be watch the post-launch coverage of this launch. The images were taken inside the Russian Command Center near Moscow and showing the orbital graphics on the room's main monitor. The NASA reporter mentioned that the "telemetry after launch was reported to be fuzzy" and he was told the third-stage booster shut off / ejected early.
  • ...I'd wonder if the cargo was actually inside.

    • The cargo is the cheapest part of the whole thing

      • Which then makes me wonder whether the actual components of the rocket were all there. Send up a shell which had no intention of going into space. And then send those parts...elsewhere.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )
          Any launch failure makes other launches more expensive due to higher launch insurance costs.

          • Any launch failure makes other launches more expensive due to higher launch insurance costs.

            Insurance only spreads out the cost. The only increase is the profit made by the insurance company, but that's their fee for providing the cost-smoothing service. If the launch companies wanted to do their own cost smoothing they could (but they know that a watchful third party is also a good idea, to keep everybody honest). OK, that's two services they provide.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by khallow ( 566160 )

              Insurance only spreads out the cost.

              Among other launches as I noted. The problem with the original assertion that Russia was doing it for the insurance money, is that even a small number of such tricks would greatly harm the rest of their business. One doesn't pull stuff like that unless one is short term thinking and cashing out their business. I don't believe that is happening in this case. They simply have too much to lose in future business to attempt it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khallow ( 566160 )
        True in this case (since we're speaking of low value supplies for the ISS), but in general, the overall cost of the mission is 5-10 times the cost of launch. So it quite possible for the payload to be a lot more expensive than the launch. This is particularly true for US military payloads which tend to be very expensive relative to the launch.

  • Every time I read about something like this I'm just so glad it was only a supply ship. I'm sure it must be stressful for the crew on the ISS to hear about this.

    • Same here. I'm also glad that SpaceX and even Blue Origin are getting in on the act, since NASA seems to be in a less capable mode right now (especially with the Shuttles decommissioned). Imagine being stranded up there to starve, freeze, or suffocate, or some combination thereof.

      • Even when Shuttle was flying, they weren't using it for resupply unless they were already going to the ISS for a crew transfer or delivering another module for construction.

        Why spend $100M+ sending (and risking) Shuttle on the world's most extravagant DoorDash delivery, when a $40M rocket will do?

  • NASA has, perhaps rightly so, cautious about utilizing private space transport contractors. You know, all that need to see reliability. While the Russians (essentially a private contractor at this point) have a good record overall, I'd like to see a comparison over the last 5 years. What is the success to failure rate for Roscosmos, SpaceX, Nasa (ULA), etc...?

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