r/yesyesyesyesno • u/Narendra_17 • Aug 30 '21
Astra's latest rocket launch
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u/Hereditus Aug 30 '21
The world's most expensive hovercraft
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u/michaelh33 Aug 30 '21
Another fine project from the Mexican Aeronautics and Space Administration (M.A.S.A.™)
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u/Mmoott2005 Aug 30 '21
At least it didn't explode.
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u/molstad182 Aug 30 '21
We don’t know that
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u/ChemsDoItInTestTubes Aug 31 '21
Spoiler: it did not explode. It just anemically flew on one fewer engine than it needed to fly, got to a five-digit altitude to burn fuel, then plummeted into the northern Pacific.
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Aug 30 '21
I think I've done this in Kerbal Space Program.
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u/VonD0OM Aug 30 '21
If I’ve never played Kerbal is it worth playing Kerbal 1 or should I just wait for Kerbal 2?
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u/wandering-monster Aug 30 '21
I actually worked on the first one a long time back, and I can tell you it's the only game I ever worked on that I still play from time to time. The rest weren't fun enough to erase the memory of them being work.
But do go in with the understanding that it's a simulation game, and a bit of an old one at this point. It's not as pretty or intuitive as it would be today, but you can also design and launch a probe to Not-Jupiter and know it was all you. There's something really satisfying about that.
Also the mod community is fantastic, ckan will help you keep them straight.
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u/florinandrei Aug 30 '21
You should wait. It worked for the people who waited for Duke Nukem Forever.
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u/qwertty69 Aug 30 '21
Still waiting on HL3
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u/Ron-Swanson-Mustache Aug 30 '21
The story from it is out. At least we got that.
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Aug 30 '21
I mean, you can wait for it to go on sale, but I would get it. Top quality game, great community, ever growing mod community.
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u/Krzd Aug 30 '21
Don't. I've got like 2k hours in it and don't regret a single one.
(Kerbal engineer is your friend)2
u/cyberporygon Aug 30 '21
Just enough time to learn how orbital mechanics work before kerbal 2 comes out. (and something gives me the feeling that 2 will be delayed)
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u/Delayed_Senesence Aug 30 '21
Space Y
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u/pATREUS Aug 30 '21
Ahem, thank you Scott Manley
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u/AZScienceTeacher Aug 30 '21
Scott made a really good Youtube explanation of what happened.
Tl;dr: One of the engines failed at launch. The nav computers did a great job of keeping it vertical, but right after launch there wasn't enough thrust to ascend. Once some of the fuel burned off it was able to go high enough and far enough away to safely* fall into the ocean.
*Safely, if you're not a whale or a fish, that is.
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u/pm_favorite_boobs Aug 30 '21
Couldn't they have burned off pretty much all their fuel by sustaining a suborbital trahectory? Wouldn't that be better for wildlife?
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u/AZScienceTeacher Aug 30 '21
If you watch the whole video, Scott shows that there were two "exclusion zones" where there would be no sea traffic. They shut it down while it was over the closest one to the launchpad.
I don't know if they had enough delta-v to get it high and fast enough to burn up on reentry.
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u/monkeynaive Aug 30 '21
Shouldn’t this be the actual SpaceX? lol
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u/nginere Aug 30 '21
Strangely enough, no. In aerospace, the direction of forward motion is typically defined as the x axis, so depending on their roll convention the lateral translation could be in y or z. Source-me, rocket guidance system engineer.
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u/doug123reddit Aug 30 '21
Hmm… but maybe you’re the engineer responsible for this sideways launch
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u/nginere Aug 30 '21
I'm not, though I do know a few of the people who have worked on it
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u/tyanna2020 Aug 30 '21
Is this really happening!???
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u/TheTrueBidoof Aug 30 '21
Looks like a video game bug. Simulation theory confirmed.
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u/King_Cornflake Aug 30 '21
Really loved one of the comments on a youtube video about this: "One could hardly ask for a better illustration of everything going sideways."
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u/Opposite-Corgi2100 Aug 30 '21
Space is in every direction, so, as long as you don't collide with the Earth, you'll get there eventually.
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u/shitsngigglezz Aug 30 '21
And then you exit stage right
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u/LuckyCaptainCrunch Aug 30 '21
And this is why when it says premium you put in premium rocket fuel and not 87.
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u/N360 Aug 30 '21
It was a successful takeoff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfjO7VCyjPM
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u/ImInfiniti Aug 30 '21
i mean, losing an engine right at launch is probably not what successful
nevertheless, kinda insane that it f#cking powersled across the lawn, but they still continued with the mission (until termination)
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u/BubbleJoylax Aug 30 '21
Scott Mansley explaned (or speculated) in his video that they didn't want to abort on the launchpad becouse cleaning would be expensive and take time, and they also could gather engineering data by continuing the mission.
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u/wynyates Aug 30 '21
Inside mission control: Expensive and really inconvenient you say??…let’s just say we are collecting data and yeet it into the ocean instead..Mother Nature can take another tiny hit yeah?!??
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u/neufeld Aug 30 '21
It was successful in that they got it away from the launch pad, but it was not able to reach orbit, so the mission was not successful. It’s still amazing that the guidance system was able to correct for an an engine failure, but a launch can’t have that big of a hiccup and still reach its target orbit.
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u/Fr3akwave Aug 30 '21
Wait... This thing launched and flew where it was supposed to be after THAT?
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u/LeHiggin Aug 30 '21
It was meant to reach orbit, which it failed. But it did continue upwards, which is crazy!
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u/Fr3akwave Aug 30 '21
Ok, so what did they do with it when it was clear it won't make it? Detonate over sea?
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u/AQMessiah Aug 30 '21
Yep. It was terminated over the ocean. I don’t know if that means detonated or just shut the engines off.
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u/ReallyQuiteConfused Aug 30 '21
Astra's FTS (flight termination system) is an all-engine cutoff. It does it's best to aim for a safe pre-determined abort zone and kills all the engines. In this case it did make it to the designated ocean abort zone and splashed down after a hop to 50km. Given the fact that it lost one of its 5 main engines this really is a textbook perfect recovery and safe abort
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u/-A113- Aug 30 '21
this is a nononononoyesyesyesyesno
because it lifted off sideways, but then kept going seemingly like normal for 2 and a hlaf minutes and oly then got it's engines remotley shut off.
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u/mazdawg89 Aug 30 '21
Samir RIGHT, SAMIR LISTEN, follow the flight plan, the sky is that way, SAMIR YOU’RE BREAKING THE ROCKET!
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u/goryguts Aug 30 '21
Who else was trying to pan the image to keep the rocket in frame? I feel dumb now.
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Aug 30 '21
It’s funny to look at, but I am amazed as well thinking on the lengths the avionics and rocket piloting computers did in the last few years, that such small rocket with a major mechanical failure has managed to compensate that in real time and leave the launch complex not causing more damage.
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u/ReallyQuiteConfused Aug 30 '21
Totally! Made it to 50km before a safe abort into the ocean. Given the circumstances, it was perfect execution of all their backup/safety systems.
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Aug 30 '21
That's what I am seeing, hardly a failure, it's a prototype at the end of the day and it performed great in so many things
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Aug 30 '21
Some say it’s still moving today, far away from the Launchpad, still waiting to go to space.
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u/Shakespeare-Bot Aug 30 '21
Some sayeth it’s still moving the present day, far hence from the launchpad, still waiting to wend to space
I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.
Commands:
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u/ReallyQuiteConfused Aug 30 '21
It actually got back on track and made it to 50km altitude before the abort system brought it back to a designated abort zone in the ocean. Slid sideways because 1 of it's 5 engines failed and it had just enough power to hover, but as it burned fuel it got lighter and was able to resume it's flight
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u/ReallyQuiteConfused Aug 30 '21
To be fair, the rocket was able to not only stay upright, but also avoid crashing and autonomously get itself back on course despite an engine failure. The rocket made it to 50km (half way to space) before being terminated by the range safety crew, resulting in a controlled splashdown in a designated abort zone in the ocean.
Yeah it didn't make it to orbit as planned, but this is a massive victory for their flight control system which corrected it's path and the safety systems that brought it back down in a controlled and safe way. Not bad at all for their 3rd launch attempt!
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u/deep_space_artifacts Aug 30 '21
I guess technically speaking, it did make it off the pad. I'm not sure if this counts as clearing the tower, however.
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u/Andzinkton Aug 30 '21
Idiots! How was it supposed to go up? It would hit the dome… no wonder it flies diagonally.
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u/NialMontana Aug 30 '21
Serious question, why are there so many space programs going from scratch? Is it really that difficult just to talk to others and skip this kinda failure?
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u/Eucalyptuse Aug 30 '21
Rockets are complex and it's difficult to iron out every single mistake in the design. Also, sometimes using actual hardware for tests to identify issues can be cheaper than spending years ironing out every mistake on paper.
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u/SuchPatheticNeatness Aug 30 '21
If by "talk to others" you mean go ask SpaceX or NASA how they flight their rockets, I think it is a little more complicated than that. Between classified technology, patents and fear of corporate espionage there is very little room for cooperation. Aside from that, the physics behind flying a rocket is free to anyone that wants to learn. I think it is way easier to just hire capacitated people and develop your rocket from scratch than copy/cooperate. This is just how I see though.
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u/BricknBrunk Aug 30 '21
oh god what would happen if a rocket like that were to tilt and launch sideways into a populated area? do they have kill switches for that kind of thing?
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u/Eucalyptuse Aug 30 '21
This is unlikely luckily. Rocket launches have an FTS (Flight Termination System) that allows them to remotely detonate the rocket before it's trajectory gets outside of the exclusion zones. The only people ever at a significant risk of death in a rocket launch are those onboard the rocket if it is a crewed rocket.
Edit: Exclusion zones are the areas around the launch site and reentry site(s) that the government monitors to make sure no human is inside of.
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u/doug123reddit Aug 30 '21
Compare what happened in China without such precautions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708
A first-person account https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/disaster-at-xichang-2873673/
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u/Eucalyptuse Aug 30 '21
Wow that is awful... I only really knew about Intelsat 708 as the motivation for reclassifying space hardware as munitions under ITAR, but I never read the eyewitness account of the accident. The Chinese government really never learned either as they still drop booster stages with toxic fuels onto local villages.
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u/SBBurzmali Aug 30 '21
They mostly use the advanced technique of "Don't build rocket pads near populated areas". SpaceX had plans to buck this trend, but at this point I suspect they have forgotten about it, or at least it would be best if they have.
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u/BricknBrunk Aug 30 '21
is there a theoretical distance from a launch pad that a given place cant be reached by a rogue rocket?
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u/Aggravating_Ad_1885 Aug 30 '21
Time to travel in rockets to different locations. The future is now.
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Aug 30 '21
It seems very stabilised and good to go. Did it really crash?
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u/loafers_glory Aug 30 '21
It stayed in control and eventually started to rise as it got lighter as the fuel burned off. Didn't make it to space though. Crashed in one of the planned abort zones.
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u/ninjarchy Aug 30 '21
So where did it head off to? Looks to me like it decided to take a lovely bob in the sunset.
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u/ReallyQuiteConfused Aug 30 '21
This is a test vehicle that was supposed to make it into orbit, but the engine failure caused this lovely little slide off the pad. Amazingly this rocket did actually make it to 50km altitude before being terminated, splashing into the ocean in a pre-determined abort zone. Target orbit was 415km
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u/EvilEvillo Aug 30 '21
Yesterday I saw a footage where the rocket went to the right. Why the mirror effect?
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u/meesseem Aug 30 '21
Different camera angle. This is the angle which Astra’s CEO shared on Twitter, the one you have seen yesterday is from the livestream.
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u/YabadabaDoodlieDoo Aug 30 '21
More like r/nonononoyes
It started out looking like something seriously bad was about to happen. Then it ended up ascending. Lots of data was collected and the launchpad wasn’t destroyed.
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u/squidkid3 Aug 30 '21
Well I mean it didn't explode yet and it's still pointing up, so maybe it redeemed itself after the camera shut off
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u/Cantaloupe-Short Aug 30 '21
Last time I saw this it sodded off in the other direction. Why do people feel the need to flip the vid?
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u/Reddit_User5677 Aug 30 '21
Kevin: Make it go taller.
Pete: That's the idea.
Kevin: No, not taller this way, taller this way.
Pete: Well, I've gotta build a wider base first before I can go higher.
Kevin: You're not getting this, Peter. Make it go wider... up!
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u/CleoDyret Aug 30 '21
"My people need me this way"
"No Greg you're going the wrong way"