Author Topic: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB  (Read 214714 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #220 on: 03/04/2011 12:16 pm »
Questions.

On performance?

A) Didn't shed the weight of the fairing and we can't get into orbit with that weight.

How similar to the OCO failure?

A) Don't have any data processed yet. Too early to tell if it's the same thing as we had with OCO. However, there is more instrumentation on this flight.

On where the satellite ended up?

A) We'll get a pinpoint later. Physics say its in the same spot as OCO.

On the hardware.

A) The fairings are similar (to Minotaur). Same basic mechanisms. Differences in fairing size.

How do you rebound?

A) These missions are developed over many years by lots of people who become a family. They respond to disapointments as a family. If you can imagine how any family responds to a loss, they'll overcome this one, although it is quite painful.

On OCO-2.

A) We'll have to evaluate this investigation.

Over. Poor guys, that was very painful :(
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Offline Lee Jay

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #221 on: 03/04/2011 12:17 pm »
This reminds me of the ECO sensor problem on Shuttle.  They worked like crazy, thought they had the root cause, made changes, it worked fine a few times, and then failed again.  And then they found the *real* root cause, which had nothing to do with the previous determination.

Offline Martin FL

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #222 on: 03/04/2011 12:20 pm »
Thanks for the coverage Chris for those of us waking up to this.

Offline Kabloona

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #223 on: 03/04/2011 12:34 pm »
Condolences to the Glory team, and especially to the Taurus folks. I can only imagine the anguish of the Taurus team that suffered through OCO, then worked their butts off 2 years to fix the problem.

Those are good, smart people who deserved a better fate. I am truly sorry.

Offline arikui999

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #224 on: 03/04/2011 12:39 pm »
Some ancient history from a former Orbital engineer....

Some of the early Pegasus flights had anomalies at fairing separation.  But the satellites were still inserted into "usable" orbits.  Then circa November 1992, Orbital performed a Pegaus fairing separation test in the White Sands/HELSTF vacuum chamber.  The main purpose was to measure contamination particles from the LSC due to the cleaniness requirements for upcoming payloads.  The first test produced an unexpected result in that only one of the two fairing halves separated.  The other half remained upright.  It was only then that we realized why the Pegasus flight anomalies had occurred.  The design problem was then solved, the separation charge was also changed to frangible joint for cleanliness reasons.  Then two additional Pegasus fairing separation tests were successfully performed at HELSTF.  Furthermore, a successful Taurus fairing separation test was also performed. 

The point is that testing rigor was used in 1992-1993 at HELSTF.

Questions: 

Was a full-scale fairing separation test performed for the redesigned Taurus cold gas system prior to the Glory mission?

Would another round of testing at HELSTF be useful for troubleshooting the failure?



Offline northanger

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #225 on: 03/04/2011 12:45 pm »
Every time I checked NASA's launch schedule page there was Glory. It's great when scheduled events finally reach their launch dates. My condolences to Orbital Sciences and the Glory team. I watched the press conference and could see how painful this loss was. All the best moving forward.

Offline bkellysky

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #226 on: 03/04/2011 12:51 pm »
Condolences to the Glory team, and especially to the Taurus folks. I can only imagine the anguish of the Taurus team that suffered through OCO, then worked their butts off 2 years to fix the problem.

Those are good, smart people who deserved a better fate. I am truly sorry.
I can't say it any better than this. 
I haven't watched a post-failure press conference before.
To be able to meet the press and after such a bad outcome and be so professional must be incredibly hard, especially so soon after the failure.  I hope they find a way to the solution.
Thanks for the coverage.  I'm writing a brief article for my office.
       

Offline Cherokee43v6

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #227 on: 03/04/2011 12:55 pm »
There's not much point in commenting on the loss of the mission without knowing the root causes of the problem, but it doesn't help that the media has already latched onto the similarity between Glory and OCO.

There's an old saying about mistakes...  "Mistakes are fine so long as you learn from them, but never ever repeat one."

I am concerned that they are going to find that whatever mistake caused the OCO failure will be the same as the cause of the Glory failure.

Add to that the conspiracy nuts who will jump on the loss of two consecutive climate study missions to similar/identical problems and OSC could be looking at some PR trouble.
"I didn't open the can of worms...
        ...I just pointed at it and laughed a little too loudly."

Offline Antares

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #228 on: 03/04/2011 12:58 pm »
AC-70 and -71 failed for the same cause (iced up turbopump, not rag-ed up turbopump), and we didn't pick the right cause after the first one.  So these things have happened before.
If I like something on NSF, it's probably because I know it to be accurate.  Every once in a while, it's just something I agree with.  Facts generally receive the former.

Offline rdale

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #229 on: 03/04/2011 01:13 pm »
I am concerned that they are going to find that whatever mistake caused the OCO failure will be the same as the cause of the Glory failure.

I think that would be good actually... I'd rather it be one problem causing both, as opposed to two different issues and then you aren't sure what to fix.

Offline jcm

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #230 on: 03/04/2011 01:21 pm »
I looked again at the released version of the OCO failure report - they had 4 possible root causes of which the pressurization system was only one. Of course they said they were addressing all four...  (the other 3 were: frangible joint didn't fully separate,
electrical system failed to fire ordnance, and a cable hangup).

Condolences to Orbital team, this is gutwrenching.
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http://planet4589.org

Offline bkellysky

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #231 on: 03/04/2011 01:24 pm »
I am concerned that they are going to find that whatever mistake caused the OCO failure will be the same as the cause of the Glory failure.

I think that would be good actually... I'd rather it be one problem causing both, as opposed to two different issues and then you aren't sure what to fix.
Good point!

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #232 on: 03/04/2011 01:26 pm »
The most encouraging thing is that they said at the briefing that they had installed additional telemetry on this system after OCO.  Hopefully, that telemetry will find the smoking gun that was missing from the OCO investigation due to lack of telemetry and lack of hardware recovery.

Offline John44

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #234 on: 03/04/2011 01:39 pm »
AC-70 and -71 failed for the same cause (iced up turbopump, not rag-ed up turbopump), and we didn't pick the right cause after the first one. 

Is there any typical "strategy" for return to flight after back-to-back failures caused by similar issues like these? Demo flights with no real value or some low risk payload or would Taurus be eligible for another several hundred million $ mission?

Basically, would this cause NASA to think twice before flying again before the fairing problems have demonstrably been rectified?

Offline Space Pete

Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #235 on: 03/04/2011 01:43 pm »
This is disappointing. I don't religiously follow uncrewed launches, but it's always a sad day when something that someone has worked on for years ends up in the drink. :(

Question: Does Taurus II use the same type of fairing as the Taurus XL?

If so, Orbital need to get it fixed pronto - they're supposed to be resupplying the ISS with Taurus II by the end of this year - and those flights can't fail.
NASASpaceflight ISS Editor

Offline Antares

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #236 on: 03/04/2011 02:08 pm »
AC-70 and -71 failed for the same cause (iced up turbopump, not rag-ed up turbopump), and we didn't pick the right cause after the first one.
Is there any typical "strategy" for return to flight after back-to-back failures caused by similar issues like these? Demo flights with no real value or some low risk payload or would Taurus be eligible for another several hundred million $ mission?

Basically, would this cause NASA to think twice before flying again before the fairing problems have demonstrably been rectified?

70 chose the wrong bone of the fishbone analysis, discarding what was ultimately shown to be the right one after 71 and what some thought was right after 70.  Post-OCO, all 4 potential root causes were addressed, but clearly either this is a new cause or the correct bone in the OCO analysis was discarded in error.

Hard to say what the impact will be on future procurement of Taurus XL.  Procurements are judgment calls, and I don't try to get in the heads of the decisionmakers.
If I like something on NSF, it's probably because I know it to be accurate.  Every once in a while, it's just something I agree with.  Facts generally receive the former.

Offline Danderman

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #237 on: 03/04/2011 03:07 pm »
AC-70 and -71 failed for the same cause (iced up turbopump, not rag-ed up turbopump), and we didn't pick the right cause after the first one. 

Is there any typical "strategy" for return to flight after back-to-back failures caused by similar issues like these? Demo flights with no real value or some low risk payload or would Taurus be eligible for another several hundred million $ mission?

Basically, would this cause NASA to think twice before flying again before the fairing problems have demonstrably been rectified?

I would suggest a suborbital launch to demonstrate clean separation of the fairing - the jettison event doesn't happen very high, so suborbital would be sufficient.

Online Galactic Penguin SST

Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #238 on: 03/04/2011 03:22 pm »
AC-70 and -71 failed for the same cause (iced up turbopump, not rag-ed up turbopump), and we didn't pick the right cause after the first one. 

Is there any typical "strategy" for return to flight after back-to-back failures caused by similar issues like these? Demo flights with no real value or some low risk payload or would Taurus be eligible for another several hundred million $ mission?

Basically, would this cause NASA to think twice before flying again before the fairing problems have demonstrably been rectified?

I would suggest a suborbital launch to demonstrate clean separation of the fairing - the jettison event doesn't happen very high, so suborbital would be sufficient.

I don't see this happening; in fact, I am wondering if this launch failure would mark the end of the Taurus program; after all, when:
a) Two back-to-back failures happening at the same place (not necessarily the same reasons though);
b) There's only one more flight left (OCO-2), which was a reflight of a payload lost on the very same LV;
c) There's a replacement LV that can be used (Minotaur-4/5) for the remaining customers of the Taurus LV today (the US military and NASA);
d) OSC is considering shutting down the Pegasus production line, which would impact Taurus production as well, since the two shared quite a few stages and components;
there's not much reason to continue offering this launch vehicle. In any case, I hope that the OSC engineers could pinpoint the mishap that doomed the last two missions, and that NASA could fund a replacement spacecraft and instruments for the Glory team.
Astronomy & spaceflight geek penguin. In a relationship w/ Space Shuttle Discovery. Current Priority: Chasing the Chinese Spaceflight Wonder Egg & A Certain Chinese Mars Rover

Offline InvalidAttitude

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #239 on: 03/04/2011 03:38 pm »
I hope there will be a GLORY 2 (but hopefully not on Taurus anymore).

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