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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, @11:39AM (13 children)
The idea of an engineered frangible joint in something as demanding as a payload separator is... ambitious from the start. From the summary, it sounds like it didn't break easily enough - but that's certainly no worse than breaking too easily, and these aren't the kinds of parts you can test functionality of before use.
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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @11:46AM
So why would you ask for things from manufacturers that are without specs and then they lie? Might as well just order shit on ebay and do all your own testing because no one can do their jobs..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 02 2019, @12:29PM (3 children)
Bullshit! Bollocks!
Science itself relies on reproducibility, even more the technology. Don't tell me that everything happens by random magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 02 2019, @12:43PM (1 child)
Never said any such thing.
I will say that "human factors" are a reliable confound of reproducability, and that's why you need to do more than make one of something and declare: "it is infallible because: science."
Bean counters have a magical thinking that believes increasing risk by a tiny, invisible to them, fraction on a large thing is an acceptable risk when saving a few easily demonstrated pennies.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 02 2019, @01:48PM
And TFA is even more precise on the causes and what more one should have done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:41PM
"Math is Hard. So let's just get rid of it." -- Barbie, from Mattel
"Yeah, whatever she said!" -- Ken, from Mattel
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 02 2019, @01:08PM (2 children)
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)
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
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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:06PM
Outright falsification of documents isn't justified no matter how constrained a budget might be. Falsifying documents has a name: FRAUD. An individual or a corporation can get away with a lot of shit, so long as they don't falsify the documentation. I learned that early in life, as a young seaman. "Whatever you do, Seaman Runaway, DO NOT gundeck the logs! If you don't get the inspections done, LOG IT THAT WAY!! You may get some extra duty, if you fail to complete all the inspections you are responsible for, but you will GO TO PRISON if you gundeck the logs!"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:32PM (3 children)
I would have said: Maybe if they hadn't falsified their results on something that could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars of loss . . . .
From TFA
It might be easy to blame on a budget problem, but this falsification went on for a decade. It wasn't a one time thing. It was more like a competitive cost cutting weapon on bidding. In 1996 to 2006 this kind of thing is something I would only have expected from Microsoft.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(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.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/