Author Topic: Almost a bad day in 1962.  (Read 18491 times)

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #40 on: 02/28/2013 03:09 am »
V-4 is the lost Titan 1 off the elevator but it got momentarily airborne.

Almost. The elevator accident was Missile V-2 (December 1960).

The Astronautix page for the Titan I mentions only one other Titan I failure out of VAFB, which was V-4 in May 63 so that's why I suspected this was the launch I saw.

V-2 simply dropped back into the silo. This one falls over and impacts the ground (looks just like Atlas 45F). The cameras also show a closeup shot of the engines as this is happening.

Quote
64E suffered a B-2 shutdown apparently due to lube oil loss to the turbopump. That is an immediate slew and loss of mission.

Atlas failure sheet you'd posted before said it was a pressurization malfunction, but there's a couple mistakes in there so IDK.
On V-2 elevator hydraulics failed. The missile crib was blown out of the silo. Titan did not like to be upstaged by Atlas. V-4 as I recall lifted slightly but I need to see the poor quality video again.

64E lost pump speed which is a loss of fuel pressure and flow. Failure reports offer incomplete causes and effects and often do not report the effect on flight trajectory. Much care is needed when specifying failures and many reports are too simple.
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Davd

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #41 on: 02/28/2013 03:57 am »
On V-2 elevator hydraulics failed. The missile crib was blown out of the silo. Titan did not like to be upstaged by Atlas. V-4 as I recall lifted slightly but I need to see the poor quality video again.

I haven't seen the video for a while and I can't find it now. It doesn't look like there's any silo malfunction going on here, just the missile tipping over from (I would assume) a stuck engine valve.

Offline Davd

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #42 on: 02/28/2013 11:01 am »
Check out that nose cone. This was 115F (October 1966) launching an ABRES reentry vehicle. The booster disappeared behind cloud cover shortly after liftoff, and just as separation of the ABRES RV was to take place, a flash of light appeared in the sky followed by cessation of all telemetry.

Investigation revealed that the cork coating put on the RV to reduce ambient heating levels caused static electricity buildup which at the moment of staging produced a jolt of current that inadvertently tripped the Atlas's RSO destruct package.

This problem was corrected on future flights by rigging a length of copper wire between the RV and the Atlas adapter, thus keeping both at the same electrostatic level until separation.

Offline Jim

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #43 on: 02/28/2013 01:22 pm »
Check out that nose cone. This was 115F (October 1966) launching an ABRES reentry vehicle.

That was the BGV I believe

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #44 on: 02/28/2013 06:18 pm »
Check out that nose cone. This was 115F (October 1966) launching an ABRES reentry vehicle.

That was the BGV I believe
Yes
« Last Edit: 02/28/2013 06:19 pm by Art LeBrun »
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #45 on: 03/02/2013 08:18 pm »
Check out that nose cone. This was 115F (October 1966) launching an ABRES reentry vehicle. The booster disappeared behind cloud cover shortly after liftoff, and just as separation of the ABRES RV was to take place, a flash of light appeared in the sky followed by cessation of all telemetry.

Investigation revealed that the cork coating put on the RV to reduce ambient heating levels caused static electricity buildup which at the moment of staging produced a jolt of current that inadvertently tripped the Atlas's RSO destruct package.

This problem was corrected on future flights by rigging a length of copper wire between the RV and the Atlas adapter, thus keeping both at the same electrostatic level until separation.
Attached is a summary page of Atlas 115F flight which indicates a different cause of failure for the mission. The account above appears in William Yengst's book "Lightning Bolts". It might be the separation event belongs to Atlas 119F - the second flight in the Boost Glide Re-entry Vehicle program 1966-1967 as Yengst recounts an undefined failure at separation.
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Davd

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #46 on: 03/02/2013 11:30 pm »
Attached is a summary page of Atlas 115F flight which indicates a different cause of failure for the mission. The account above appears in William Yengst's book "Lightning Bolts". It might be the separation event belongs to Atlas 119F - the second flight in the Boost Glide Re-entry Vehicle program 1966-1967 as Yengst recounts an undefined failure at separation.

Okay...so it looks like what happened here is that the Atlas lost an engine, pitched down, and broke up from aerodynamic stress.

That may be the case because the failure as Yengst describes it seems to occur too early (implying that the reentry vehicle separation would have taken place less than a minute into the flight before the Atlas had even dropped its booster section)

I haven't found any other launch reports as of late, although I did find a doc describing the damage done to SLC-3W by Samos 3. It states that the wiring and plumbing on the pad were completely destroyed, the launcher arms "badly damaged and probably in need of replacement" and the umbilical tower "still standing, but structural integrity in doubt".

If you've seen the video of that, it was one hell of a blast. One thing I noticed is how the Agena starts to break up before the fireball actually reaches it (would guess the RSO charges automatically activated)

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #47 on: 03/03/2013 12:19 am »
Attached is a summary page of Atlas 115F flight which indicates a different cause of failure for the mission. The account above appears in William Yengst's book "Lightning Bolts". It might be the separation event belongs to Atlas 119F - the second flight in the Boost Glide Re-entry Vehicle program 1966-1967 as Yengst recounts an undefined failure at separation.

I haven't found any other launch reports as of late, although I did find a doc describing the damage done to SLC-3W by Samos 3. It states that the wiring and plumbing on the pad were completely destroyed, the launcher arms "badly damaged and probably in need of replacement" and the umbilical tower "still standing, but structural integrity in doubt".

If you've seen the video of that, it was one hell of a blast. One thing I noticed is how the Agena starts to break up before the fireball actually reaches it (would guess the RSO charges automatically activated)
Great damage recovery as SAMOS 4 was launched just 73 days later from the same pad. And the VAFB code name for SAMOS 3? First Motion.
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Davd

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #48 on: 03/03/2013 09:50 am »
Great damage recovery as SAMOS 4 was launched just 73 days later from the same pad.

That is true; they must have been working round the clock to repair the pad.

Returning to my earlier remark that the Agena on Samos 3 blew almost as soon as the Atlas impacted the pad, compare for example Vanguard where the upper stages and satellite were battered, but largely intact. One can assume there was no RSO destruct charge on those.

Oddly, the exact cause of this most famous of rocket failures is relatively obscure. Martin-Marietta thought that exhaust gas backed up through one of the injectors and detonated the RP-1 tank, but GE (the manufacturer of Vanguard's first stage engine) concluded that a pinhole leak caused fuel to drip onto the hot engine and start a fire.

Offline Jim

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #49 on: 03/03/2013 10:02 am »

Returning to my earlier remark that the Agena on Samos 3 blew almost as soon as the Atlas impacted the pad, compare for example Vanguard where the upper stages and satellite were battered, but largely intact. One can assume there was no RSO destruct charge on those.



No, they likely didn't go off because the accident was too quick

Offline Davd

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Re: Almost a bad day in 1962.
« Reply #50 on: 03/03/2013 12:11 pm »
they likely didn't go off because the accident was too quick

Don't know, although the Vanguard was a much smaller, lighter vehicle than Atlas so it's quite possible. For example, the explosion of AC-5 seemed to happen pretty slowly.

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