Russian Proton Rocket crashes Seconds after Launch

You mean alongside the whole vehicle ? From the link provided in another comment, it seems that the forces on the whole launcher (that made it loose its payload) put the fuel and oxidizer in contact and they ignited.

If you meant at the exhaust, it is the oxidizer which is red-brown.

deletes• 13 years ago

Russian launchers do not carry a Flight Termination System that could be used to remotely trigger the destruction of the rocket in a scenario like this.<

Hope there aren't any cities in the rockets path.

loceng• 13 years ago

My first thought it maybe they triggered the explosion to prevent it - guess not.

tsukikage• 13 years ago

Crashing in uninhabited desert isn't a feasible failure mode for the American program due to its location. The Roscosmos-owned depopulated area around Baikonur, however, is vastly larger than the parkland around Cape Canaveral launchpads.

lmm3• 13 years ago

There's a thousand miles of empty desert to the next settlement, never mind city. Kazakhstan is big (and unlike the US, its southernmost parts are not the nicest ones).

bostonpete2• 13 years ago

unlike the US, its southernmost parts are not the nicest ones

Wait, what?

twistedpair2• 13 years ago

In Kazakhstan the Flight Termination System is the ground. Much cheaper and has never failed.

jstsch• 13 years ago

This reminds me of Kerbal Space Program: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com

graupel• 13 years ago

Seriously - I have Kerbaled that exact same launch sequence a few times!

jon-wood• 13 years ago

I dunno, it looked less likely to fall apart on the launch pad due to wobbling in the breeze...

axylone• 13 years ago

It's awesome how simulation games like KSP teach people about rocketry and orbital mechanics - I bet KSP will contribute to the coming resurgence of interest in spaceflight.

Lots of KSP references in the youtube comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo&hd=1

gren• 13 years ago

"It is not the way it supposes to go" <- oh, thanks for the comment!

ioquatix• 13 years ago

"Someting going wrong here" +1 insightful.

ars2• 13 years ago

Why do they use such toxic and expensive fuel? I understand using it on a satellite, but why does the rocket need it? Why not just kerosene and LOX?

Is the specific impulse much higher?

Edit: It's not, it's actually lower than kerosene. It's simply easier to ignite - that seems like a really bad reason to use it.

Xylakant• 13 years ago

It's not "easier to ignite", it's hypergolic. The two components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact - so you don't need to worry about an ignition system that can reignite the flame in mid-flight, making the whole system safer by eliminating components. All you need is a pair of pumps and two valves: Open valve - burn, close valve - burn stop. (grossly simplified version)

smackfu2• 13 years ago

Refrigerated fuels like LOX are a pain in the ass. You need pressurized fuel tanks and need to fuel on the launch pad which means your launch pad needs to be more complex and that a lot more steps need to be done as part of the launch countdown. Plus you can't just put your fuel in a rail car and ship it halfway across Russia.

dasmoth• 13 years ago

Believe it or not, Proton (UR-500) was originally developed as a large ICBM. Hypergolic fuels are a much more attractive choice for ICBMs than kerolox because it's possible to leave the rocket fueled for extended periods of time (potentially years).

Same logic for the US Titan 2 (which also lead to a long-lived family of space launchers -- the last Titan IV flew in 2005), and many other smaller missiles, although recent missile designed have now mostly switched to solid propulsion.

Zuph• 13 years ago

Reasons are largely historical. The engines used on the Proton were designed in the late 50's/early 60's for ICBMs.

Ignition! is a great book on the history of rocket propellants: http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

pavel_lishin• 13 years ago

Red Moon Rising is also a pretty good write-up of the history of the Space Race.

arethuza• 13 years ago

"Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don't mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity".

Thanks for the link :-)

VLM6• 13 years ago

"Ignition! is a great book"

You could just stop right there.

It was pretty effective at convincing me to go into chemistry for my first year at university. I understand this experience is not all that unusual. Max Gergel's memoirs are also a pretty hair raising recruitment tool.

I got out when I figured out that anecdotes about leading an o-chem org in the 40s/50s make leading an o-chem org in the 40s/50s sound like The Best Place To Be, then I figured out I'm not likely to be a o-chem org leader and the 40s/50s are not likely coming back around again anytime soon. Kind of like reading a dotcom story about the late 90s and deciding to become a web designer in 2013, you're in for a bit of a surprise...

e3pi• 13 years ago

Thank you for this Ignition pdf link. Looks interesting. The frontipiece image identifies `Mach diamonds'. I said to myself its time to find out just what are those beats anyways, having just now viewed the Proton catastrophe video.

Mach diamonds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_diamonds

mikeash2• 13 years ago

It should be noted that "expensive" probably isn't important, as fuel is a minor cost of launching a rocket into space, on the order of 1% of the total. As for "toxic", I'm betting the Soviets didn't much care about that.

VladRussian2• 13 years ago

As for "toxic", I'm betting the Soviets didn't much care about that.

i've known people from areas downrange from Plesetsk. People there drink only water that is delivered from outside and still have some details in their appearance that prompts the question in the first place.

VLM6• 13 years ago

"It's simply easier to ignite - that seems like a really bad reason to use it."

LOL that's what makes injector design and combustion instability less of a problem than for kero/LOX. Its not a bug, its a huge feature. Aside from hard starts being chemically impossible, screaming combustion modes are less likely. This means a more reliable and cheaper rocket because the ignition system that doesn't exist, can't fail, and the cooling system doesn't have to worry about screaming modes melting thru, and the injectors don't have to have weird performance robbing (heavy) acoustic baffles.

Well, these are all relative. You can still screw up the cooling system of a hypergolic nozzle or make it scream (think about it, a rocket engine is just a giant gigawatt class whistle, after all). Its just harder to screw up than nonhypergolic.

Finally from a chemical standpoint they're not environmentally stable toxins. Organomercury compounds, or tetraethyl lead, now those would be bad ideas to spray all over the environment. But UDMH and Nit Tet are "shelf stable" but not "environmentally stable". Oh they suck all right but they're going to "poison the land" for about a day, not a millenia or basically permanently. Both break down into completely harmless stuff. Of course before they breakdown, or if they end up breaking down in your liver, then not so good.

Sami_Lehtinen• 13 years ago

Strange, I would have expected it to self-destruct immediately when navigation problem got apparent.

thu2• 13 years ago

From the writeup provided as a link in another comment, Russian launchers don't have such mechanism. Instead the engines are shut down after at least 42 seconds to allow the launcher to be further than the launch area. But here the launcher hit the ground after about 30 seconds.

fwr• 13 years ago

Such a terrible commentary in the video.

zaph0d3• 13 years ago

Compare with the ISRO launch on Monday that was a success - http://www.spaceflight101.com/pslv-c22-launch-updates-irnss-...

Luc• 13 years ago

Why?

zaph0d3• 13 years ago

Well, two launches within a day's time, both carrying navigation satellites.

magic_haze• 13 years ago

I know the PSLVs have a reputation of being very reliable. Do you happen to know how much it costs, compared to the Protons or SpaceX's new design?

Also, it's very cool that India:s launching its own GPS alternatives. The article mentions that it uses the same L5 and S bands as GPS and Galileo: isn't there any potential of interference, and will existing receivers work as-is?

zaph0d3• 13 years ago

ISRO's total budget for the year 2012-13 is ~$950 million. Apparently this project cost them ~$250 million all inclusive.

theorique• 13 years ago

"Well, it's not like it's rocket science ... oh, wait..."

pawelwentpawel• 13 years ago

This looks like they were trying to imitate SpaceX's Grasshopper but forgotten to land vertically.

zozu• 13 years ago

I hope this launch doesn't cause Russia a huge setback in their spaceprogram. That is quite the expensive launch failure if it carried a sattelite.

ddeck• 13 years ago

It was carrying three GLONASS (Russian GPS, sometimes combined with traditional GPS for improved accuracy, fix time etc - e.g. iPhone 4S/5) satellites. The loss of another three in 2010 was estimated to cost up to $160 million[1]. Expensive, but presumably nothing crippling in the scheme of things ($4.6 billion spent on the program from 2001-2011 [1])

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#Finishing_the_constella...

wtracy• 13 years ago

It carried three satellites.

jusben1369• 13 years ago

Any reason to think these wouldn't be insured?

VLM6• 13 years ago

Stereotypically satellite launch insurance is a comsat thing.

That doesn't mean there's no insurance involved in the whole process. Somebody will pay out third party liability claims, for example, either .gov or some insurance co or more likely a mixture of them. But specifically launch loss insurance is something "mostly" found with commercial comsats. Note its just stereotypical. Maybe this is the first navsat I've ever heard of with launch insurance.

JacobiX• 13 years ago

It's worth noting that the combination of Proton-M rocket and the DM-03 booster has previously failed in 2012. This is a relatively new technology compared to the mature Soyuz rocket for example.

solomatov2• 13 years ago

Proton isn't the most reliable rocket. About 10% of all its launches are unsuccessful. However, it's one of the cheapest ways to deliver cargo to the space. It's even cheaper than current SpaceX offers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch...) of course if a satellite isn't too expensive.

nawitus3• 13 years ago

That's interesting, I thought SpaceX was cheaper than even the Russian launch vehicles. By the way, are insurance costs taken into consideration? (Although the proper insurance rate might be difficult to estimate for SpaceX since they don't have that many launches behind them).

leoedin• 13 years ago

The cost of a SpaceX launch reflects not only manufacturing costs but also the cost of development. The cost of a Proton launch (and similarly for other low cost ICBM based Russian launchers) doesn't reflect the developmment cost because it was designed a long time ago and borne by the russian government. The true cost of a Proton launch is much higher than what a user would pay to International Launch Services.

reeses• 13 years ago

Silly Internet person of irrelevant gender, insurance can be bought for anything. Actuaries will calculate the risk of not knowing as well.

Whether someone can afford the premiums and abide by the term and conditions presented is another matter.

mpr3• 13 years ago

If that's well known then I wonder if they've actually done an "expected value" of cargo lifted into space by these rockets. For example, 0.9valueofcargolifted - 0.1costofcargoandfallout

cecilpl• 13 years ago

Yes, many large businesses do some kind of expected value calculation when deciding what course of action to take.

simonh2• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm reading that table wrong, but it lists the cost of a Proton-M launch at $86m while for a Falcon-9 it's $56m, though Falcon-9 v1.1 is only slightly better on cost/kg to LEO. Still, the the numbers for Falcon heavy blow Proton away. Am I missing something?

pvarangot• 13 years ago

Yes, Falcon 9 v1.1 and Falcon Heavy have not yer launched. We will know their costs when they are reliably working and have been operating at market price for some years, all first launches have already been booked at special prices for early adopters.

neurotech1• 13 years ago

Maybe thats a typo getting in somewhere. The Proton-M is reported at $85m per launch, vs a Falcon 9 v1.1 at $54m (75% payload of a Proton-M).

Soyuz is almost certainly more expensive per seat than a F9/Dragon Crewed version. 2 "passengers"(+ 1 pilot/commander) vs 5-7 passengers (+ "pilot"/commander).

enko5• 13 years ago

"you know it's all broken up and it burst into flames right there. crazy right?"

I just cannot understand how they choose these anchors. If I wanted to listen to my 13yo cousin's inane commentary on videos, then .. well I have no idea actually, because I would never want to. And I never want to listen to this idiot. Who hires them? Why!?

This is serious news, a hundred million dollar crash, and the best he can do is "crazy right?". I just don't know what to say.

Imagine if this dipshit was commenting on 9/11. "and those there planes just up and flown into them buildings right there! Crazy right?" Yeah bro! Totes crazy LOL! ROFL

nawitus3• 13 years ago

They appeal to the 'mainstream audience', not techies or even the smarter half of the population.

dkarl• 13 years ago

I would guess that half their viewership is in the smarter half. Remember that many people don't watch the news at all. I'll just leave you with that depressing reminder and go back to trying to have hope for the world.

kunai• 13 years ago

(Warning, this will sound extremely elitist.)

I'd argue that the "smart" portion of the population is even less than you figure. It depends on what you interpret to be smart. With my own personal judgment, intelligence, true intelligence, is derived from skepticism, curiosity, and a thirst for knowledge, not by success financially.

If we use those criteria, I'd say that most people in that list would be about 1/8th down on the bell curve. People just don't care, I've seen it with my own family.

VLM6• 13 years ago

Not true at all. Look up the actual viewing figures. Less than 1% of the population watches CNN's morning news show. They most intentionally do NOT broadcast to the 'mainstream audience'. Careers are made and broken by appealing to perhaps 1% of the population (or 0.5%...) rather than the current 0.9% or so.

Its a mix of HN elitism combined with gross over estimation of cultural impact WRT a cultural icon that doesn't matter anymore.

They do not broadcast to the mainstream, they try to steal away fractions of a percent of weirdo daytime news network junkies from other networks, not boost viewership from the 99% of "normal" people who don't watch that kind of thing.

Its like top40 music or hollywood movies in that way.

prawks• 13 years ago

It's very embarrassing that this is the kind of news reporting that accumulates wide viewership in America. Rather than learning anything, we'd prefer to just be wowed with an explosion.

I'm really hoping that Al Jazeera's US campaign is at least a moderate success, but I'm not holding my breath. It'll give some much needed variation in reporting, or so I hope. Likely it will be viewed about as widely as BBC America, or less.

http://america.aljazeera.com/

enko5• 13 years ago

Ah, it's not just america, although us subjects of the Queen may like to pretend it is.

What all the good news programs have in common is that their natures are dictated by an authority, not by the free market.

Make of that what you will.

VLM6• 13 years ago

"accumulates wide viewership in America."

LOL wide viewership LOL!

google for CNN ratings and the first link I found is a press release from exactly one week ago "proudly" reporting that CNN's "New Day" program from 6 to 9 am (presumably EDT?) had a whopping 302,000 viewers.

google "united states population" claims 313.9 million, but thats not counting illegals so we'll call it a cool third of a billion.

WAY over 99% of the population is doing something other than watching CNN.

You're getting pretty far down in the weeds, getting comparable to if you asked a random person on the street, the odds of them having the same birthday as you, or they watched CNN this morning, are vaguely similar to more than a sig fig.

By comparison, the mighty GOOG combined with some basic arithmetic gives the result that "about" 125 times more people watched the superbowl than watched CNN this morning. Still only about 1/3 of the population, but getting closer to broadcasting and "wide viewership".

Its a great example of extreme narrowcasting, not broadcasting and certainly not "wide viewership". Nobody watches that stuff, they just don't culturally matter anymore. Only rare and unusual oddballs (nothing personal intended) watch TV news networks.

twistedpair2• 13 years ago

Had to mute the video to manage to finish watching it. Where do they find this kind of "talent" these days? Sounds like they're breaking into Entertainment Tonight.

bvdbijl• 13 years ago

Yeah I thought that was just disrespectful. Thousands of hours were put into those satellites by scientists and the only thing they can say is that there's a neat explosion...

selter01• 13 years ago

Watch the HBO show The Newsroom. It is quite depressing.

joonix• 13 years ago

You have to understand that people are tuning into CNN all day because they want entertainment and company. People sitting at home during the day with nothing else to do but watch cable news aren't looking for hard-hitting analysis and dry reporting of facts. They want to feel like a friend is talking to them. They want to be entertained and occupied. That's what emotional reporting, tragedy porn, focus on human stories (i.e. on Snowden's escape rather than the NSA leaks), and sensationalist criminal trials is all about. Sorry to say it, but the people who actually appreciate quality journalism aren't sitting at home during a weekday afternoon watching CNN. They have other things to do, and they get their news online.

It's a business and the average viewer just wants to be entertained at home. They are on 24/7. You can't compare CNN to BBC or Al-Jazeera because both are subsidized. If they lived or died by their Nielsen score, it'd be another story.

Edit: I'm not condoning CNN's execution as of late. They've taken a decided turn for the worst since former NBC head Jeff Zucker took over. He ruined NBC and somehow got the CNN gig and he's rapidly destroyed what little quality remained at CNN. I really wonder how the corporate world works sometimes.

enko5• 13 years ago

Thanks for probably the most insightful comment here, including mine.

I really wonder how the corporate world works sometimes.

Well I do. What the corporate world wants is growth. Growth at the expense of anything and everything else. And if that 3% boost is going to come at the expense of turning the entire network into light entertainment and celebrities, then well - bonus time!

I am not a communist. But I have recently begun to perceive large swathes of the free market as being a mere race to best pander to the worst aspects of the human condition; fast food and celebrity news. And you might say, the market is giving people what they want - I say, not what I want, and not what they need.

Ask a child what they want for dinner and it might be milkshakes. Milkshakes for breakfast lunch and dinner. That is our news and that is what the free market delivers us. Tell me that adults are different and I invite you to examine the diabetes rates. Tell me that at least an elite intellectual class clings on somehow and I will tell you their votes count the same as someone who cannot even spell democracy and they outnumber us 10 to 1 if not more.

I don't know what the solution is but I think we have come too far. And I think governments should provide news channels. Television is 50% education.

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

What is it you think an anchor is exactly? Mostly they are just a pretty face with a good voice who is sufficiently trained to read off a screen and not screw up. As a rule they tend not to be well-rounded intellectuals.

BWStearns• 13 years ago

So this is where they put the Bulava staff.....

japaget• 13 years ago

See also http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1307/01proton/ for another account of this mishap.

Spaceflight Now is one of the best sources for news concerning space launches.

gesman• 13 years ago

"We warned ya, give us Snowden or else!"

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

I'm surprised they don't have a kill switch on that thing, it should never have been left to do a full 180 and fly straight down at goodness-knows-who.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

This is why the US launches rockets towards the Atlantic and Russia launches them in the middle of a (mostly) uninhabited desert.

Zikes• 13 years ago

I was just about to post about that. I thought these things had a self-destruct to prevent them from inadvertently becoming an ICBM.

sounds• 13 years ago

US rockets have a "range safety officer" who is responsible for the self-destruct switch.

I believe Russian rockets just rely on the fact that they will either make it to space, or impact the ground at high velocity.

swamp402• 13 years ago

It looks like the payload almost escaped. It pops off and a parachute comes out, but then it drifts into the flame path of the upside down rocket and burns up.

robryk• 13 years ago

Why would there be a parachute if the payload contained only non-returning satellites? I couldn't see anything I would call a parachute on the videos I watched.

swamp402• 13 years ago

You are correct. The outer shell of the payload peeled off right before the payload, and I had mistaken that for a parachute.

smackfu2• 13 years ago

Another vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo&hd=1

DoubleCluster• 13 years ago

Wow. The rocket exploded about 3 km from the guy filming it (from the speed of sound). It could have landed on his head...

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

The Proton is fueled with Nitrogen Tetroxide and a variant of Hydrazine (UDMH). Both are incredible toxic and hazardous to humans, causing death with disturbingly small doses. UDMH is also a potent carcinogen.

Hopefully these folks were on the road and miles away before those fumes drifted their way.

theguycalledtom• 13 years ago

Proton's failure rate is concerning given that it is meant to deliver the last major segment of the ISS at the end of this year.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Reminds us once again that launching rockets is hard and when something goes wrong, there aren't a lot of 'recovery' scenarios. Insurance covers the losses, root cause analysis will find the reason this particular launch failed, and perhaps prevent it from recurring.

One of the interesting questions for the Falcon9 system is whether or not the return to pad recovery system could work in an abort scenario (unlikely but you never know). I once asked a NASA engineer why they didn't put a spare parachute in to recover the payload in case of failure like this and their response was that it was cheaper to insure it than build such a system (in crewed systems the opposite is true since replacing the crew is so much more expensive). Weird to think about it that way but at least for me it made sense.

jlgreco4• 13 years ago

Even in this video you can see the inherent safety of liquid fuel rockets over solid fuel. (although this is a hypergolic rocket, not like the cryogenic fuel rockets that we typically use for people.) The launch vehicle started breaking up and became engulfed in flames, but it didn't blow up per-se until it hit the ground. Solid fuel rockets do not tend to be so considerate; see the Challenger or Delta II 7925. Lots of things can go wrong on a liquid fuel rocket (engine shutoffs, fires, vehicle breakup, etc) but on solid fuel rockets you basically only have one failure mode: "pop".

With a proper launch escape system, most failure scenarios of a liquid fuel rocket should be quite survivable. You can build working launch escape systems for solid fuel rockets too, but that is a worse situation.

IANARS

ajross• 13 years ago

I don't see how your point follows. A similar deviation with a solid fuel rocket would have resulted in basically the same event (an impact with the ground of a fueled, burning rocket at T+25s), no?

There are indeed safety reasons to prefer liquid fuel, but I don't see that this events provides any new evidence.

ommunist4• 13 years ago

The USSR in 70-ies launched ~120 Protons per year successfully. Modern Russia cannot do 30 launches. The reason - old workers and engineers physically perish because of age and no one is coming to replace them. This is sad, but true.

gus_massa• 13 years ago

In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Proton_launches_(1970%E... I only found ~10 Proton launched per year, with ~1 failure per year.

ommunist4• 13 years ago

Alltogether there have been around 300 Proton launches in Soviet times. http://www.baikonur-info.ru/kosmos.htm Partial almanac is here - http://astro.uni-altai.ru/space/view-all-list.php?page=253

mahoro• 13 years ago

In 70-ies there was A LOT of Proton failures due to Lunar competition with USA.

ommunist4• 13 years ago

Any evidence you have? I have the following - 3.88% of failures for Proton-K, 10.81% for Proton-M. Proton-M is a modern RUssian build, Proton-K is the old Soviet one. Proton-K had 311 launches, 34 failed. http://habrahabr.ru/post/185664/

ommunist4• 13 years ago

Proton-K - 311 launches. American Saturn-5 - only 13 launches. I consider Saturn-5 was never real commercial launcher. Proton-K was.

Russian Proton Rocket crashes Seconds after Launch

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