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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 26 2020, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the That's-what-testing-is-for dept.

Virgin Orbit loses its first rocket shortly after engine ignition:

After more than seven years of development, testing, and preparation, Virgin Orbit reached an important moment on Monday—dropping and igniting its LauncherOne rocket over the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, shortly after ignition an "anomaly" occurred, the company said.

"LauncherOne maintained stability after release, and we ignited our first stage engine, NewtonThree," the company stated on Twitter. "An anomaly then occurred early in first stage flight. We'll learn more as our engineers analyze the mountain of data we collected today."

This was the company's first attempt to ignite LauncherOne. Previously, it had strapped the liquid-fueled rocket to its modified 747 aircraft, and flown out over the Pacific Ocean, but not released the booster from beneath the plane's wing.

After Monday's launch attempt the crew on board the 747 and a chase plane safely made it back to the Mojave Air & Space Port without harm. The company stressed that it now has plenty of data to dig into, and is "eager" to get on to its next flight.

Here's the official press release from Virgin Orbit: Virgin Orbit


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @06:31AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @06:31AM (#999113)

    launch rapidly and reliably, into any orbital inclination, with the mobility of the 747 aircraft.

    This sounds like enough to keep the idea alive.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @07:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @07:27AM (#999123)

      Jut put fucking Branson on the next one and charge the bill to his hotel room.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Tuesday May 26 2020, @10:39AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday May 26 2020, @10:39AM (#999159)

      At least they didn't pick the 737 MAX...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16AM (#999139)

    Happened with my Virgin Rocket, too. Premature Rocketification.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:38PM (#999178)

      Ah..., that explains it. The rocket was bent upwards (on the exhaust side), having the emissions go up instead of down.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:38PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:38PM (#999180)

    This is starting to read like a plot for a television dramatization of the events surrounding... be sure to subscribe to Virgin pay-per-view to get the whole dramatic story.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:39PM (4 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:39PM (#999207)

    Hope they do better next time.

    But - what is the advantage of launching from a 747? Is there any point?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @02:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @02:23PM (#999216)

      you can point the rocket down, have it enter denser athmosphere, which compressed at the intact shock-cone, eliminates the need to carry oxydizer then after getting to about 11km/sec, pull up and cost to orbit ... oh wait, that's something else: "the virgin hunter".

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by aiwarrior on Tuesday May 26 2020, @04:08PM (1 child)

      by aiwarrior (1812) on Tuesday May 26 2020, @04:08PM (#999265) Journal

      Very much advantage. Most of the fuel and energy is spent on the lower part of the atmosphere where drag is at it's highest. It also requires a launch pad which is not a trivial infrastructure to build. It also allows you to launch wherever the more advantageous. It is quite a remarkable problem they are trying to tackle.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @05:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @05:08PM (#999284)

      I think the idea is that you get to pick your launch site rather than needing to wait for your launch site to fall into the desired window.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:32PM (#999239)

    The carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl and all of its crew landed safely at Mojave Air and Space Port, concluding the mission.

    So what happened to the rocket? Did it land safely on the pacific garbage patch? Was it captured, probed and then beamed back to earth? Did it even leave the hangar?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:16PM (#999361)

      Didn't you read the headline? They don't know, they lost it! Steve over in operations had ONE JOB to do: keep an eye on the rocket! And he couldn't even do that and he lost it. And he put his finger to his mouth and very cheekily said "Oops, I guess I did it this time!" and we all had a jolly laugh.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:03PM (#999407)

    SpaceX lost three of their first five rockets. NASA lost some of theirs, and the Russians lost quite a few as well. Rocket science is hard, yo.

    "This was the company's first attempt to ignite LauncherOne."
    Really? They never did ground testing?

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