Author Topic: FAILURE: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - September 12, 2020 (03:19 UTC)  (Read 75385 times)

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 7, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #80 on: 08/07/2020 02:12 am »
Hold!

twitter.com/Astra/status/1291557714280058880

"Holding/ troubleshooting the water deluge system. Will provide updates shortly"
« Last Edit: 08/07/2020 02:13 am by Steven Pietrobon »
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline otter

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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline CorvusCorax

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 7, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #83 on: 08/07/2020 02:47 am »
https://twitter.com/Astra/status/1291564453368979457

Quote
    Lost pressure in our water deluge system. We are going to stand down to fix the issue.
    — Astra (@Astra) August 7, 2020
« Last Edit: 08/07/2020 02:47 am by CorvusCorax »

Online Comga

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 7, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #84 on: 08/07/2020 02:54 am »
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1291560572123779073
Dr McDowell is being very generous.
When Musk heard the price of military grade air conditioning units to supply temperature-regulated dry air to the Falcon 9 fairing, he bought double or triple the capacity in commercial air conditioning units.
Low cost and reliability thru redundancy.
Time is the most precious resource.
That Astra has lost a day of their launch window to their water deluge system is hardly understandable as “getting to know the rocket system”. 
« Last Edit: 08/07/2020 02:55 am by Comga »
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Online ZachS09

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 7, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #85 on: 08/07/2020 03:05 am »
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1291560572123779073
Dr McDowell is being very generous.
When Musk heard the price of military grade air conditioning units to supply temperature-regulated dry air to the Falcon 9 fairing, he bought double or triple the capacity in commercial air conditioning units.
Low cost and reliability thru redundancy.
Time is the most precious resource.
That Astra has lost a day of their launch window to their water deluge system is hardly understandable as “getting to know the rocket system”. 

Wasn't there a similar issue on the first attempt of OCO 2?
Liftoff for St. Jude's! Go Dragon, Go Falcon, Godspeed Inspiration4!

Offline CorvusCorax

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 7, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #86 on: 08/07/2020 03:56 am »
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1291560572123779073
Dr McDowell is being very generous.
When Musk heard the price of military grade air conditioning units to supply temperature-regulated dry air to the Falcon 9 fairing, he bought double or triple the capacity in commercial air conditioning units.
Low cost and reliability thru redundancy.
Time is the most precious resource.
That Astra has lost a day of their launch window to their water deluge system is hardly understandable as “getting to know the rocket system”.

I'd give them some slack.

They still have to make their first orbital launch, that means their virtual list of "unknown unknowns" is really really large, and a lot of stuff pops up unexpected. Remember the crap that happened to SpaceX with F1 - tanks collapsing due to valve malfunctions on the pad in recycles and the like?
Or the recent explosion of Starship SN4 due to quick disconnect malfunction?

Stuff like that can not be planned until it happens. If you try anyway, out of risk-averseness, you spend so much time modelling potential could-be's and worry-abouts you are never actually going to fly.

Naturally the more complicated systems, such as propulsion and avionics might typically get more scrutiny than the seemingly simple stuff like water deluge. Especially if you have limited manpower and a small team, you'd rather have your engineers triple-check the propellant lines first and the pad water lines later, because the first make your vessel blow up and the latter only cost you a day if there's a flaw.

But in the beginning, before you have a dozen launches on your belt and the kinks worked out, the chances of a flaw in the simple systems having been overlooked is just as high as in the complex ones: unknown unknowns can lurk anywhere.

For a launch to succeed, both the simple and the complex systems need to work perfectly.

If this deluge system issue had them stand down a week, or even a month, your comment would be more justified.

But fixing it, then trying again the next day. That's not slower than what SpaceX is doing in Boca Chica right now. It's just right. Also gets them practice at recycling their rocket and pad equipment, which makes stuff flow smoother next time.

I see nothing wrong here :)
« Last Edit: 08/07/2020 04:49 am by CorvusCorax »

Offline ncb1397

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probably a kink in the garden hose. Happens to me all the time.

Offline zubenelgenubi

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 8, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #88 on: 08/08/2020 12:31 am »
https://twitter.com/Astra/status/1291884652894941184
Quote
Update: We are preparing for a launch attempt tonight, but upper level winds are expected to be unfavorable for our launch window that begins at 7pm PT. Hoping weather improves!
***

The original launch campaign window ends with this launch window.
Will the campaign continue on the 9th, etc.?
Or will they take a break of a day or more?

Is there a forecast stating when the winds aloft and/or wind shear will ease?
« Last Edit: 08/08/2020 12:33 am by zubenelgenubi »
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 8, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #89 on: 08/08/2020 02:00 am »
The launch window is now open. No word from Astra yet on when or if there will be a launch today.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2020 02:02 am by Steven Pietrobon »
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - August 8, 2020, 02:00 UTC
« Reply #90 on: 08/08/2020 02:00 am »
Scrub for the day!

twitter.com/Astra/status/1291917105713963008

"Update: we are standing down due to extreme wind shear, particularly near Max Q. We will have an update soon on our next launch window"
« Last Edit: 08/08/2020 02:01 am by Steven Pietrobon »
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline ringsider

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I suspect they are being so careful because it is their last shot. With all the cutbacks and also some recent and quite public, acrimonious departures, it may be that this is the last roll of the dice for Astra. I wish them luck, but some of the issues on this campaign do not bode well.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2020 07:35 am by ringsider »

Offline HMXHMX

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I suspect they are being so careful because it is their last shot. With all the cutbacks and also some recent and quite public, acrimonious departures, it may be that this is the last roll of the dice for Astra. I wish them luck, but some of the issues on this campaign do not bode well.


What departures?  I'll admit to not tracking their status that carefully.

Offline high road

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I suspect they are being so careful because it is their last shot. With all the cutbacks and also some recent and quite public, acrimonious departures, it may be that this is the last roll of the dice for Astra. I wish them luck, but some of the issues on this campaign do not bode well.

You think they're doing a Vector? That would explain how they went to a second launch opportunity so quickly. Well, this does look like how we predicted the eventual confrontation with reality of the 100+ smallsat launchers would go. Those with a lot of hardware are the first to go because they have the highest running costs. Those who are mostly fictional stick around because fantasy doesn't cost a lot.

Fingers crossed for a hail Mary like Falcon 1.

Offline ParabolicSnark

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I suspect they are being so careful because it is their last shot. With all the cutbacks and also some recent and quite public, acrimonious departures, it may be that this is the last roll of the dice for Astra. I wish them luck, but some of the issues on this campaign do not bode well.

What departures?  I'll admit to not tracking their status that carefully.

I'm aware of Roger Carlson, their VP of Launch and distinguished engineer. He was part of the crew that migrated from SpaceX to Virgin Orbit and then later split off when Astra started to ramp up. Adam Brown was part of that same crew and was their Astra's head of structures. Looks like he disappeared before the COVID-culling.

Offline butters

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I suspect they are being so careful because it is their last shot. With all the cutbacks and also some recent and quite public, acrimonious departures, it may be that this is the last roll of the dice for Astra. I wish them luck, but some of the issues on this campaign do not bode well.


What departures?  I'll admit to not tracking their status that carefully.
Ben Brockert, Masten veteran and early Astra hire, recently departed, after tweeting about bad management:

https://twitter.com/wikkit/status/1279127128617807872

July 3: While we were in the middle of integrated vehicle static fire operations, the executive team created and published a list of "toxic employees". Three of the six people in the control room were on the list. Just such a WTF moment. It's hard to not see it as sabotage at this point.

July 28: So ends my tenure at @Astra, I was one of the first hires. Two leadership lessons from the 3.5yr there: a exec that shows characteristics of the “dark triad” will poison everything. Everyone comes out worse in the end, I definitely was a worse person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad ... And putting people in technical leadership positions who can’t make decisions and be leaders will mean the entire engineering org will struggle. I hope the work I and others did there will come to something, but on the current course it's hard to see them becoming competitive.

Offline ringsider

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You think they're doing a Vector? That would explain how they went to a second launch opportunity so quickly.

No, Vector was another set of issues entirely.

Astra may have had mishaps but they are trying to build something serious.

They had very poor luck on their timing going public earlier this year, but perhaps had no choice with the DARPA challenge publicity.

Since then it's been one thing after another - missed the DARPA prize, severe cutbacks, a fire, some kind of acrimony and now what looks like some basic issues with ground equipment and possibly a missed window.

We will see. I do wish them luck.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2020 10:56 pm by ringsider »

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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https://twitter.com/astra/status/1293221140291149828

Quote
We are still finalizing our launch window, but it looks like our next available opportunity will be later this month
« Last Edit: 08/11/2020 04:23 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline Ken the Bin

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From the USCG ...
Summary:
Quote from: USCG
The Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska (PSCA) is planning to conduct a rocket launch from launch pad LP-3B at Narrow Cape, Kodiak, Alaska from 310200-310430 UTC which is 1800-2030 Alaska Daylight Savings Time on August 30th, 2020. If the launch does not occur on August 30th then it will be rescheduled for the following day during the same time window. Rescheduling could continue each day through September 3rd, 2020 (September 4th for UTC).

Offline Thunderscreech

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Re: Astra Rocket 3.1 - Kodiak - NET August 30, 2020
« Reply #99 on: 08/25/2020 05:57 pm »
Ben Hallert - @BocaRoad, @FCCSpace, @Spacecareers, @NASAProcurement, and @SpaceTFRs on Twitter

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