Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) - Feb, 2013

[marsman2020]

They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.

Especially when it became clear that Orbital had no intent to actually address all of the issues that came out of the OCO MIB report (no change was made to the flawed design of the frangible joints on the payload fairing).

Does this mean the end of Taurus?

9 launches in 18 years with a 33% failure rate.  Who in their right mind would manifest their payload on that?

[Jim]

They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.

Yeah, right.  You have all the hindsight.  There were no more Delta II's at the time nor a DPAF available, which is still not available even though Delta II is.

[Antares]

They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.

Especially when it became clear that Orbital had no intent to actually address all of the issues that came out of the OCO MIB report (no change was made to the flawed design of the frangible joints on the payload fairing).

All 4 NASA MIB recommendations were mitigated, and hundreds of people participated in RTF reviews and decisions.

Your statements are somewhere between FUD and lies.

[marsman2020]

They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.

Especially when it became clear that Orbital had no intent to actually address all of the issues that came out of the OCO MIB report (no change was made to the flawed design of the frangible joints on the payload fairing).

All 4 NASA MIB recommendations were mitigated, and hundreds of people participated in RTF reviews and decisions.

Your statements are somewhere between FUD and lies.

The NASA Engineering Safety Center flagged the failure of the frangible joints to completely separate as a red risk - probability of occurrence 11-50%, impact - loss of mission in NESC-RP-10-00630, "Assess Qualification of the Taurus Fairing Frangible Joint System", dated May 27, 2010.

As far as I am aware the redesign from hot gas to cold gas on the separation system did not include changes to the frangible joints. 

Per the NESC report, qualification of the frangible joint *prior to* the OCO failure was based on a total of *3* firings, which yields a statistical reliability of 36% on a 95% confidence interval (!!).  Typical qualification programs for launch vehicle pyrotechnic devices include 10s of firings.

That's what the taxpayers got for their money when they paid Orbital ~$50 million for the OCO launch services contact.

[deltaV]

Why doesn't NASA charge launch providers (or their insurers) for the value of the payloads it loses to launch failures? I would think charging for failure would be a simpler and more effective way to ensure reliability than mountains of paperwork.

[Jim]

Why doesn't NASA charge launch providers (or their insurers) for the value of the payloads it loses to launch failures? I would think charging for failure would be a simpler and more effective way to ensure reliability than mountains of paperwork.

Then nobody would fly several hundred million dollar spacecraft.

Also, do you know that it is actually "mountains of paperwork?"