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After a Decade, NASA Finally Reveals Root Cause of Two Failed Rocket Launches

posted by mrpg on Thursday May 02 2019, @11:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the debar dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

[...] Combined, the loss of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory satellites cost the space agency $700 million. In the years since, the space agency's Launch Services Program and the rocket's manufacturer, Orbital Sciences—which has since been acquired by Northrop Grumman—have been conducting investigations into what happened.

[...] But only now has the story emerged in greater detail. This week, NASA posted a summary of its decade-long investigation into the mission failures. Long story short: faulty aluminum extrusions used in the mechanism by which the payload separates from the rocket, known as a frangible joint, prevented the separation from fully occurring. Much of the report drills down into the process by which NASA reached and then substantiated this conclusion.

Source: After a decade, NASA finally reveals root cause of two failed rocket launches

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 02 2019, @01:08PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 02 2019, @01:08PM (#837835) Journal

    Maybe if budgets weren't squeezed to the limit, they could have manufactured a series of 20 joints, and tested every other one, and if they were all within tolerance then selected the joint in-between the two best performers to send on the actual launch. But, that would look wasteful to someone... in need of a more efficient approach, like taking a risk of total mission failure on a $700M mission.

    20 tests is a drop in the bucket on that budget. They could do 20,000 tests without budgetary strain.

    I think the real problem was that mission failure just wasn't important. It shouldn't be, but only because they should have several more dual missions on that budget not because most of the funding goes into making stuff rather than doing stuff.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:14PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:14PM (#837986)

    what they didn't tell is these scheduled failures were done in order to fast forward the privatization of NASA

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:13PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:13PM (#838085) Journal

      what they didn't tell is these scheduled failures were done in order to fast forward the privatization of NASA

      At least that'd be something useful. My take is that NASA is one of the worse uses of US federal funds, made more glaring by its stated high-minded purposes. That includes the US military.