Author Topic: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB  (Read 214696 times)

Offline ugordan

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #320 on: 05/17/2011 09:09 pm »
They don't have to pay for it. Absent of another customer willing to take its chances on that flight, they aren't obliged to do anything. In that case NASA will be most reluctant to fly anything on the vehicle again. And NASA at least seems to be putting this vehicle on ice, at least for the time being:

Quote
In April the agency stopped payments on a Taurus XL launch vehicle contract with Orbital Sciences for a February 2013 re-flight of the OCO satellite, dubbed OCO 2.

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #321 on: 05/17/2011 09:12 pm »
FWIW, I strongly recommend a no-payload dry run of the post-modification vehicle this time.

Why is a dry run required of the second one and not the first one?  Is a full-up test flight required to test this or can a full-scale test on a vibration table, in a thermal vacuum chamber, or whatever is appropriate sufficient to test whatever failed?

How can these questions be answered without knowing the detailed results of the failure analysis?

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #322 on: 05/17/2011 09:14 pm »
Bad news, this.

Isn't it good news that they're keeping Taurus as an option?
Yes but bad news that modern methods haven't prevented a second failure unless you are sure it was a QA or workmanship issue.
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Offline Rocket Science

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #323 on: 05/17/2011 09:17 pm »
After two failures in a row, I was wondering since the CCDev-2 awards if it had any politcal impact consideration for Orbital's proposal. What would the public think NASA giving them cash, even though the two programs were not connected.
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Offline Antares

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #324 on: 05/17/2011 10:56 pm »
For all of the second guessers out there, it's not like a test flight wasn't considered after T8/OCO.  The highest levels of NASA weighed the additional cost and schedule needed to do it and decided the cost-benefit wasn't there.  Obviously they were wrong, but risk management is what every executive team does.  Hindsight is always 20-20.  I'm not sure how the calculus is different because it's happened twice.  It's a dictum of Decision Analysis that sunk costs do not enter into the cost-benefit calculation.  To do otherwise is not rational.
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Offline Jim

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #325 on: 05/18/2011 12:30 am »


It looks like NASA agrees with you:

http://spacenews.com/civil/110516-nasa-add-delta2-list-launchers.html

Quote
Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, said NASA has lost nearly $700 million in Earth science payloads to Taurus XL over the past two years. In a May 11 interview Freilich said he would like to see the rocket fly successfully before putting another Earth-monitoring probe atop it.

“I would go more than recertified, personally,” he told Space News. “I would go demonstrated.”

Absent a demo flight, “I don’t know what anybody would say about how [we] were good stewards of the taxpayer money if we had a third consecutive launch vehicle failure; $693 million-worth of payload has gone down between the two,” Freilich said...

Bad news, this.




That is not "NASA" , it is one person's opinion.  NASA has yet to decide on this

Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #326 on: 05/18/2011 12:40 am »
This whole affair has made me really unhappy with Orbital as a company. Thats two failures because of the same thing. In a row. At least spacex's early pains were separate issues but Orbital has been around for quite some time. I just hope the COTS rocket they are developing does not experience the same kinds of issues.


Frankly have alot more faith in Spacex at this point.
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Offline robertross

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #327 on: 05/18/2011 12:56 am »
This whole affair has made me really unhappy with Orbital as a company. Thats two failures because of the same thing. In a row. At least spacex's early pains were separate issues but Orbital has been around for quite some time. I just hope the COTS rocket they are developing does not experience the same kinds of issues.


Frankly have alot more faith in Spacex at this point.

HAHA....That's too funny.

I actually put more faith in Orbital. This situation is the business: these things can (and have) happened. That's life, you fix it, and move on. As long as a company can weather these times, it only makes them stronger in the long run.

Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #328 on: 05/18/2011 01:00 am »
This whole affair has made me really unhappy with Orbital as a company. Thats two failures because of the same thing. In a row. At least spacex's early pains were separate issues but Orbital has been around for quite some time. I just hope the COTS rocket they are developing does not experience the same kinds of issues.


Frankly have alot more faith in Spacex at this point.

HAHA....That's too funny.

I actually put more faith in Orbital. This situation is the business: these things can (and have) happened. That's life, you fix it, and move on. As long as a company can weather these times, it only makes them stronger in the long run.

True enough. I do hope they get it this time. On a related note: I can't wait for the first T 2 launch. Its going to be very exciting.
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Offline edkyle99

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #329 on: 05/18/2011 01:31 am »
This whole affair has made me really unhappy with Orbital as a company. Thats two failures because of the same thing. In a row. At least spacex's early pains were separate issues but Orbital has been around for quite some time. I just hope the COTS rocket they are developing does not experience the same kinds of issues.

Frankly have alot more faith in Spacex at this point.

Orbital's experience is anything but unique.  Failure, sometimes in consecutive form, has visited all of the launch providers.  SpaceX, for example, had three of them in a row.  Two Centaurs failed in close order during the 1990s.  Two kick motors failed during the same Shuttle mission during the 1980s.  Three consecutive Cape Canaveral Titan IV missions failed during the 1990s.  Lockheed Martin suffered a very similar payload separation failure with Athena a few years back. 

It may very well turn out that both Taurus XL failures were not caused by the "same thing".  Remember that fairing separation system changes were made after the first failure.  The changes may have solved one problem but created another problem.  Or not.  We'll see. 

I would put my payload inside Orbital's next payload fairing without hesitation.  The next one won't fail (at least not the fairing separation part of the flight).  Heck, the odds of a restarted-production Delta 2 failure might be higher.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 05/18/2011 01:36 am by edkyle99 »

Offline yinzer

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #330 on: 05/18/2011 04:46 am »
For all of the second guessers out there, it's not like a test flight wasn't considered after T8/OCO.  The highest levels of NASA weighed the additional cost and schedule needed to do it and decided the cost-benefit wasn't there.  Obviously they were wrong, but risk management is what every executive team does.  Hindsight is always 20-20.  I'm not sure how the calculus is different because it's happened twice.  It's a dictum of Decision Analysis that sunk costs do not enter into the cost-benefit calculation.  To do otherwise is not rational.

Surely it's not the cost that has changed, but the perceived benefit of a test flight.  Which depends on how likely you think Orbital is right when they say "We found the fairing separation problem from the last flight, fixed it, and now have a design that works."

After T8 there was no real reason to doubt this statement.  After T9 we are in a "this time it's different" situation.
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Offline baldusi

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #331 on: 05/18/2011 11:38 am »
How similar are the Taurus 2 fairing and the Taurus XL? Because they do have a Demo Flight for Taurus 2 without a payload.

Offline Downix

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #332 on: 05/18/2011 03:32 pm »
This whole affair has made me really unhappy with Orbital as a company. Thats two failures because of the same thing. In a row. At least spacex's early pains were separate issues but Orbital has been around for quite some time. I just hope the COTS rocket they are developing does not experience the same kinds of issues.


Frankly have alot more faith in Spacex at this point.
That is funny.

Orbital did not have enough data after the first one.  They guessed what the mistake was, and corrected that mistake.  They guessed wrong.  But, for this flight they included a lot more sensors so that, if something did happen, they'd have more data so as to implement a fix.

That is how a professional company does things.  They fix what they think is a problem, but they hedge their bet by making sure if it happens again, they will nail down the root cause.
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Offline baldusi

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #333 on: 05/18/2011 04:00 pm »
They had stated that the accident board had completed the findings and was about to disclose the failure cause. But nothing came of it. Any news?

Offline Antares

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #334 on: 05/18/2011 06:40 pm »
There were/are separate NASA and Orbital investigation boards for both of these failures, as well as many NASA and Orbital return to flight executive review meetings where both sides bought into the cause and corrective action.  It's not proper to leave NASA out of the blame process (cf. "Orbital did not have enough data after the first one," and "how likely you think Orbital is right when they say").  NASA was wrong too.
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 yinzer

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #335 on: 05/18/2011 07:10 pm »
There were/are separate NASA and Orbital investigation boards for both of these failures, as well as many NASA and Orbital return to flight executive review meetings where both sides bought into the cause and corrective action.  It's not proper to leave NASA out of the blame process (cf. "Orbital did not have enough data after the first one," and "how likely you think Orbital is right when they say").  NASA was wrong too.

OK.  NASA now has less confidence in their ability to judge the reliability of a Taurus launch following a failure than they did before T9 dropped Glory into the ocean.  Their newfound lack of confidence means that a test launch now offers more benefit, perhaps enough to outweigh the cost.
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #336 on: 05/18/2011 11:15 pm »
Is there any way of testing a moving fairing without having to blast it into space?

Could a cheaper rocket, such as a sounding rocket, be used?

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #337 on: 05/18/2011 11:21 pm »
Is there any way of testing a moving fairing without having to blast it into space?

Could a cheaper rocket, such as a sounding rocket, be used?
Well, I got a few SRB's laying around here, I guess I could get you one for a good price... Let's talk money;)
« Last Edit: 05/18/2011 11:22 pm by Rocket Science »
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Offline Jim

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #338 on: 05/19/2011 12:23 am »
Is there any way of testing a moving fairing without having to blast it into space?

Could a cheaper rocket, such as a sounding rocket, be used?

no, because
A.  It would cost just as much to engineer a stand in that provides the same aerodynamic pressure, loads, dynamics, etc
b.  it would fail the policy: test like you fly.

Offline dsmillman

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Re: FAILED: Taurus XL, GLORY - March 4, 2011 - VAFB
« Reply #339 on: 08/19/2011 04:40 pm »
It has been nearly six months since the mishap board was appointed.  Has it issued a report?  Is there any additional information available on this failure?

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