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[...] 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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:31PM (2 children)
Broken culture, it happens. With an end-product as "impulse-like" as orbital launches (as opposed to a continuous widget factory, like for bullets), it actually makes sense to audit the living hell out of the vendors to try to keep the culture from getting into this kind of risk taking / profit making posture.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:43PM (1 child)
How sad.
We are sporadic and impulse-like at spending money on science or to promote commerce. (eg, rocket launches)
We fund a continuous supply of war machinery at very high and steady levels.
Is there something wrong here?
Maybe eliminate that culture. Maybe rocket launches can be shifted to COTS (commercial off the shelf) purchases from private vendors. Much like how the government (hopefully) buys pencils or condoms.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug into other computer. Right-click paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 02 2019, @06:52PM
According to my 1st grade class (in 1972) most definitely. 50% of us wanted to be Astronauts, there were scattered firefighters and policemen, but enough girls wanted to be Astronauts to bring us up to 50%. Not a single 1st grader even thought about wanting to be a soldier, and this was the population whose parents were on the hook for the draft in Vietnam.
Sure, except that the legislature lost their appetite for Apollo after 13, couldn't risk looking bad, so they played out the missions that were already sunk costs and trotted out the old depression era nugget: "we just don't have the money, honey..." and their constituencies ate it up.
We get the government we deserve. And, it will be a long, long time before government regulation / subsidies aren't the make/break factor in space industries' success, whether as government contractors, competitive entities sponsored by other nation-states, or so-called independent businessmen.
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