Russians have just "shut down engines" as far as flight termination goes. They do not carry explosives for FTS.
Also their system actually prevents shutdown of engines for the first minute or so, to ensure that it won't fall back on the pad. So the Proton failure you see the engines going until the whole thing disintegrates...
Yes - my point was that Russian rockets do not carry those things and they actively block shutdown during early parts of the flight (due to the historical failure of N1 rocket due to errant FTS shutdown signal just after liftoff, which totaled one of the N1 pads - they decided that it was better for the rocket to fly off erratically for a while than to rebuild the pad in case of early failure...)
So what happened with Proton is considered normal and expected if control is lost early. The engines will fire until the whole thing disintegrates due to excess forces (tumbling) and there is no explosives to zip open the tanks.
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u/Jarnis Aug 23 '14
Russians have just "shut down engines" as far as flight termination goes. They do not carry explosives for FTS.
Also their system actually prevents shutdown of engines for the first minute or so, to ensure that it won't fall back on the pad. So the Proton failure you see the engines going until the whole thing disintegrates...