Proton-M Failure Reaction and Discussion Thread - July 2, 2013

[Prober]

The point is that Proton-M's failure rate over the past few years has been closer to 86%, which puts it worse than every rocket with more than 10 launches other than Zenit 2.

It's not a problem of design, but quality control. Same reason the failure rate for all other Russian/Ukrainian rockets has jumped in the past few years. But higher quality control would mean higher prices, and low-cost is only thing the Russian really have going for themselves right now.

These low-costs might not be real if you take into account the toxic spill costs, cleanup...pad downtime and lost business.  Unless you toss those costs to "cost of doing business".

[clongton]

The point is that Proton-M's failure rate over the past few years has been closer to 86%, which puts it worse than every rocket with more than 10 launches other than Zenit 2.

It's not a problem of design, but quality control. Same reason the failure rate for all other Russian/Ukrainian rockets has jumped in the past few years. But higher quality control would mean higher prices, and low-cost is only thing the Russian really have going for themselves right now.

These low-costs might not be real if you take into account the toxic spill costs, cleanup...pad downtime and lost business.  Unless you toss those costs to "cost of doing business".

As Ed Kyle said up-thread, any similar accident of a kerosene-fueled launch vehicle would have cost nearly as much to clean up produce just as much contamination cleanup as the Proton caused. Contamination cleanup is not something unique to Proton. Had this been a Soyuz instead, the cleanup costs would have been largely similar. Different contamination, but costing nearly roughly the same to clean up. The only launch vehicles that would have produced very little contamination would be those powered by LH2.

Edit: Revised to more accurately reflect the post intent per Ed Kyle's comment both up and down thread.

[Remes]

R7, LouScheffer thanks, you are both right.

[Liryc]

How about examining the success rates of Russian Federal launches vs ILS launches?
Does ILS management have a positive impact on successful launch probabilities?

How about Proton fully Russian owned and operated vs Partnered with LM?

[...]Over the past five years, Proton has launched 53 times, with 66 percent of the launches being commercial missions managed by International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va. The remaining 34 percent were Russian Federal missions placing mainly Russian satellites into geostationary or other orbits.
But 80 percent of Proton’s failures — four of the five — were of Russian government missions. And the fifth failure — an underperforming Breeze-M upper stage that placed Gazprom Space Systems’ Yamal 402 telecommunications satellite into a bad orbit — was a mixed-breed contract that bore the stamp of a Russian government launch with an ILS imprimatur.

> Source

[Galactic Penguin SST]

[...]Over the past five years, Proton has launched 53 times, with 66 percent of the launches being commercial missions managed by International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va. The remaining 34 percent were Russian Federal missions placing mainly Russian satellites into geostationary or other orbits.
But 80 percent of Proton’s failures — four of the five — were of Russian government missions. And the fifth failure — an underperforming Breeze-M upper stage that placed Gazprom Space Systems’ Yamal 402 telecommunications satellite into a bad orbit — was a mixed-breed contract that bore the stamp of a Russian government launch with an ILS imprimatur.

> Source

I had wondered if there's something more than just by chance with that trend, but one must remember that the 4 Proton failures before these 5 were all ILS launches....

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Some food for thought: one Russian source is saying that the rocket may have been released half a second too early. What would happen if the rocket T/W is already >1 but with some of the engines still building up to full thrust (with some others already at full thrust)? Could it have caused an engine fire and eventual failure?

Well I now have some doubts with the "rocket released 0.4 seconds too early" being a problem, seeing that the exact launch time was reported as 02:38:21.585 UTC for a target of 02:38:22 - which usually is within normal errors for launchers around the world (IIRC even Space Shuttle launches can have errors of up to half a second for "contact liftoff time"). Still can anyone here help with this question?

[Liryc]

I had wondered if there's something more than just by chance with that trend, but one must remember that the 4 Proton failures before these 5 were all ILS launches....

I couldn't (didn't have tim to) find the numbers for the entire launch record but it could be a good thing to know.

Any thoughts on the crash location matter I detailed on p15 ?

[Kabloona]

Here is an ITAR/TASS graphic showing the impact location relative to Baikonur:

http://rbth.ru/multimedia/infographics/2013/07/03/proton_rocket_carrying_glonass_satellites_in_launch_f_27735.html

[owais.usmani]

How about examining the success rates of Russian Federal launches vs ILS launches?
Does ILS management have a positive impact on successful launch probabilities?

How about Proton fully Russian owned and operated vs Partnered with LM?

[...]Over the past five years, Proton has launched 53 times, with 66 percent of the launches being commercial missions managed by International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va. The remaining 34 percent were Russian Federal missions placing mainly Russian satellites into geostationary or other orbits.
But 80 percent of Proton’s failures — four of the five — were of Russian government missions. And the fifth failure — an underperforming Breeze-M upper stage that placed Gazprom Space Systems’ Yamal 402 telecommunications satellite into a bad orbit — was a mixed-breed contract that bore the stamp of a Russian government launch with an ILS imprimatur.

> Source

The last paragraph of that spacenews article says:

The global space insurance industry, which has reported a healthy profit for several years running and is now taking on risk that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, has looked at the same data and concluded, with Intelsat, that whatever Proton’s problems are, they are more likely to appear when the Russian government is paying the launch bill.

So does the LV QA, testing and validation for flight differs when there is an ILS mission from when there is a Russian federal mission? I'm struggling to believe this but it would be most shocking if true 

[Liryc]

Here is an ITAR/TASS graphic showing the impact location relative to Baikonur:
http://rbth.ru/multimedia/infographics/2013/07/03/proton_rocket_carrying_glonass_satellites_in_launch_f_27735.html

Thanks, interresting page. (I was trying to be a bit more specific concerning the place, the page is quite vague)

What about the idea of having the flipped video images?

Cheers,
Cyril

[Kabloona]

Here is an ITAR/TASS graphic showing the impact location relative to Baikonur:
http://rbth.ru/multimedia/infographics/2013/07/03/proton_rocket_carrying_glonass_satellites_in_launch_f_27735.html

Thanks, interresting page. (I was trying to be a bit more specific concerning the place, the page is quite vague)

What about the idea of having the flipped video images?

Cheers,
Cyril

If you watch this video, LC81 is on the right and LC200 is on the left, I believe. I'm guessing then that the video was shot near Yubileiny Airport looking west. The Proton flies to the right, or north of LC81. So I believe the report that the Proton landed to the north of LC81 and LC200 is correct.



Edit: notice windsock at the left of the video frame, which also suggests an airport location.

[Galactic Penguin SST]

If you watch this video, LC81 is on the right and LC200 is on the left, I believe. I'm guessing then that the video was shot near Yubileiny Airport looking west. The Proton flies to the right, or north of LC81. So I believe the report that the Proton landed to the north of LC81 and LC200 is correct.

Nope, the two are the 2 launch complexes of "area 81" - launch complex 23 on the left and 24 on the right (the one this rocket was launched from). "Area 200", with launch complexes 39 and 40, are I think out of frame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur.html

[baldusi]

I had wondered if there's something more than just by chance with that trend, but one must remember that the 4 Proton failures before these 5 were all ILS launches....

I've used the whole Proton history and I've reached a reliability:
Government Launched: 86.84%
Commercial Launched: 91.86%

But, then the realized reliability of the Proton-M/Briz-M is 90.91%. Thus, I've looked only into the Proton-M/Briz-M launches:
Govt Proton-M/Briz-M: 90 (9/10)
Com Proton-M/Briz-M: 91.07% (51/56)

That's too close to say, particularly since the government Proton-M/Briz-M combo has too little use to have a good statistic. Thus, I think it might have more to do with the multiplicity of versions that the government use, rather than if the missions are payed by Russian or a private entity. If I had to make a wild guess, I might suspect that the process is very rigid with relatively little initiative shown by the personnel. Since they launch a lot, after a few tens of launches they can have a nice and working process for cheap. But they are not very good at custom solutions.
Which, might I remind you, this rocket was. It was a Phase I Proton-M but had RD-176 engines, and the new Blok-DM03. A lot of "different" things that might have gone wrong. Well, the previous Blok-DM03 failure is a great example.

[Kabloona]

Nope, the two are the 2 launch complexes of "area 81" - launch complex 23 on the left and 24 on the right (the one this rocket was launched from). "Area 200", with launch complexes 39 and 40, are I think out of frame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur.html

Then can you tell from what direction the video was shot? I can't find the relative locations of pads 23 and 24 on any map.

[Liryc]

If you watch this video, LC81 is on the right and LC200 is on the left, I believe. I'm guessing then that the video was shot near Yubileiny Airport looking west. The Proton flies to the right, or north of LC81. So I believe the report that the Proton landed to the north of LC81 and LC200 is correct.

Nope, the two are the 2 launch complexes of "area 81" - launch complex 23 on the left and 24 on the right (the one this rocket was launched from). "Area 200", with launch complexes 39 and 40, are I think out of frame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur.html

Penguin is right I think, the 2 launch tower are the one of LC 81.
Plus, Yubileiny Airport is 18km away and this video has been recorded much closer (I'd say 4-5km max).

I'm not saying that the evaluation of ITAR is wrong, I believe the crash site is somewhere LC81 and LC200, I was mainly trying to understand where "exactly" (I know it crashed a bit everywhere..) but one of my stongest question concerns the apparent flipping of the video (the one of the guys 1 or 2km away from the pad)

Edit : An airport windsock (moreover for "big" airport such as Yubileiny) is on the runway, not on a car park such as here.
Therefore this windsock could have been anywhere else (at a launch sightseeing place for ex, to have an idea of toxic fumes in case of an incident ?)

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Nope, the two are the 2 launch complexes of "area 81" - launch complex 23 on the left and 24 on the right (the one this rocket was launched from). "Area 200", with launch complexes 39 and 40, are I think out of frame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur.html

Then can you tell from what direction the video was shot? I can't find the relative locations of pads 23 and 24 on any map.

See my Google Earth screenshot below. The yellow line is the approximate route the Proton went before hitting the ground.

[Liryc]

Nope, the two are the 2 launch complexes of "area 81" - launch complex 23 on the left and 24 on the right (the one this rocket was launched from). "Area 200", with launch complexes 39 and 40, are I think out of frame.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur.html

Then can you tell from what direction the video was shot? I can't find the relative locations of pads 23 and 24 on any map.

In fact, judging from the angle between the launch pad and its launch tower, I'd say South-South-West of LC81, close to the housing and support area (which is more likely to host viewers)

[Kabloona]

Thanks Galactic and cyril. So that video was probably shot from southwest, and the vehicle went southeast-ish towards LC200.

[hop]

As Ed Kyle said up-thread, any similar accident of a kerosene-fueled launch vehicle would produce just as much contamination cleanup as the Proton caused

^{[citation needed]}

[edkyle99]

As Ed Kyle said up-thread, any similar accident of a kerosene-fueled launch vehicle would produce just as much contamination cleanup as the Proton caused

^{[citation needed]}

I want to be clear that I did not say "just as much".  I did say that a proper cleanup of that much kerosene leaching into soil would cost a sizable percentage of the cost for doing a hydrazine cleanup. 

Kerosene cleanups are described in numerous places.  Here's an example.
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/128/1/147.abstract

 - Ed Kyle