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

[baldusi]

The only launch vehicles that would have produced very little contamination would be those powered by LH2.

Or by CH4.

[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".

 Had this been a Soyuz instead, the cleanup costs would have been largely similar. Different contamination, but costing roughly the same to clean up. The only launch vehicles that would have produced very little contamination would be those powered by LH2.

where are your cost for cleanup coming from? Citation ?
 
With a very wide brush your brushing off the "Different contamination"
 
Your info on Soyuz is unproven.   You failed to bring up that the Progress and Soyuz use H202 for thrusters and turbines.  What would effect would H202 have on the ground?  RP1-1 and Lox are considered "clean" and advertised by Russia as such for their new rockets.
 

[hop]

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. 

That makes a lot more sense than saying they would be the same.

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

A rather different situation than a few hundred tons of Kerosene/lox hitting the ground at speed. Also, the limits for acceptable levels contamination are quite different.

The Russian standard for "proper" cleanup likely diverges from what would happen in the west. Russia has certainly had a number of failures like this involving both types of vehicles, so there should be some historical data. smoliarm's post ( http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32282.105 ) specifically mentions documented cleanup for past incidents with hypergols. Was any similar cleanup performed for Foton-M1 or the pad destroyed by Zenit?

[hop]

You failed to bring up that the Progress and Soyuz use H202 for thrusters and turbines.

This is fairly irrelevant, but Progress doesn't use H2O2. The Soyuz LV uses it to drive first stage turbopumps, the Soyuz spacecraft uses it for descent module ACS. In both cases, the quantities are small compared to the main LV propellants.

What would effect would H202 have on the ground?

H2O2 by itself is not a long term concern at all. It decomposes to O2 and water, most of it would likely do that very quickly in the crash.

RP1-1 and Lox are considered "clean" and advertised by Russia as such for their new rockets.

The fact that RP1 is considered "clean" doesn't mean you want tons of it floating around in the environment. A spill of hundreds of tons would certainly be considered a serious environmental incident in the west.

[Galactic Penguin SST]

There has been some vigorous discussion on the preliminary look of the telemetry data from the launch in here over the past hours, and it seems that there's one hypothesis that may turn out to be what happened (some parts of which were already mentioned here). Here's the details, or at least what I understood of it:

1. Everything through engine ignition at T-1.75 seconds were nominal.

a. What would have happened in normal flight is that the engines would continue to throttle up till T-zero ("contact liftoff time"), which the "contact liftoff command" would be issued by the control system to open up the last valves for the engines to reach 107% thrust and (maybe) to disconnect the last connections from the launch table to the rocket. Actual "sensor data loss" time would be at T+0.5 seconds.

2. It seems that on the flight, for some reason, the "contact liftoff command" was issued 0.4 seconds earlier than normal (as explained to me by our veteran Russian source Anik, most Proton launches aimed at a certain 1 second liftoff time target would have actual T-zero times varying by just +-0.1 seconds). At that time the rocket has already passed the T/W=1 point and is rising up; however some engines are still not at full thrust level and the connectors have not been released yet.

3. Sensing the erroneous "contact liftoff command", the rocket's guidance system checks the main rocket parameters (engine thrust chamber pressure, vertical velocity/acceleration through the inertial guidance components etc.), and yet founds that the state is not right. The guidance system immediately switched to emergency mode.

4. For some reason the initialization of the emergency mode caused the system to command the launch table to release the rocket even when the rocket has not yet reached its nominal thrust level. (not sure if I got this right - couldn't it have ordered the rocket to force the shutdown of all the engines instead? Maybe that have to do with the rocket already rising up and that the forced shutting of fuel and oxidizer valves at this point would only blew up the rocket?) Apparently this premature action caused the launch table to "sink" further than what it should have - 11 mm instead of the usual 5 mm.

5. The rocket lifted off, apparently with 15-20% less thrust than normal. It seems that at the same time the engine compartment went on fire (temperature of 1200 deg. Celsius was recorded) and at least one of the engine's gimbals were damaged, possibly because of the less than usual liftoff thrust. Within a few seconds the rocket lost roll control and at least 1 (some say 2) of the engines. By then, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the rocket was doomed to loss all controls and eventually plunge back on ground.

Of course this is only a working hypothesis - the information source cautioned that work is still on going with acquiring the data from the decoded telemetry and analyzing them - however it might serve as a scenario for discussion. The most interesting points are the source of the premature liftoff command (software bug? voltage spike or some other electrical issues? guidance control channels in dispute causing unexpected results?) and what happened after the system went into emergency mode.

Any comments from Jim et al.? 

[Lars_J]

Within a few seconds the rocket lost roll control and at least 1 (some say 2) of the engines.

Gimbal control may have been lost on one or more engines, but they were all running until shortly before crash, when the Proton was upside down. Several images show this.

[Liryc]

There has been some vigorous discussion on the preliminary look of the telemetry data from the launch in here over the past hours, and it seems that there's one hypothesis that may turn out to be what happened (some parts of which were already mentioned here). Here's the details, or at least what I understood of it:
[...]

Where did you get all this data ? Has the telemetry data been released ??

EDIT : Sorry didn't see your link just above.. I don't understand russian, but was the data given by some users of the novosti-kosmonavtiki forum ? I tried google translate but there are 67pages :/

[Stan Black]

http://coopi.khrunichev.ru/

Standard sequence of events

SE1 ignition	-1.750
Engine thrust control permission	-1.740
Breach of 1F diaphragm	-1.730
Breach of 1O diaphragm	-1.720
Main thrust stage 1	-0.150
Lift-off contact	0.000

[Mighty-T]

Hi Penguin, thanks for your summary! Very interesting.

But is it really obvious that the "contact liftoff command" was itself triggering the chain of problems? Maybe the early command was given as a consequence of issues with the ignition sequence (the off nominal heat in the engine compartment could indicate something like this). Much seem to depend on Proton's strategy of how to handle off nominal ignition sequences. In case of an off-nominal ignition, could a shut down of the engines be ordered - and until when? Or would the rocket be released to clear the pad and crash off-site. Was there ever a Proton with an emergency shut down of engines before lift-off?

Liquid engines are known to exhibit strong transients in the ignition sequence and inducing violent side loads in the nozzles. Normally the actuators are blocked during the ignition phase in order to not being exposed to these side loads. Maybe by the early switch to flight mode these transients damaged one of the actuators and put it out of service, and by that initiating the guidance problems?

What is meant by:

Apparently this premature action caused the launch table to "sink" further than what it should have - 11 mm instead of the usual 5 mm.

Could the launch vehicle or the engines be damaged by this?

cheers

[Stan Black]

I know there are some issues with Encyclopedia Astronautica, but did an abort happen in 1979?

Gunter, you also have it listed?

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau_det/proton-k.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/tksva.htm#chrono

[Skyrocket]

I know there are some issues with Encyclopedia Astronautica, but did an abort happen in 1979?

Gunter, you also have it listed?

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau_det/proton-k.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/tksva.htm#chrono

It is one of the entries in my list, which are debateable, if they should be listed as a launch attempt.

The Proton rocket ignited on the pad, but did not lift off. This would have not justified an entry in my list, if it had not triggered the escape system of the upper TKS-VA capsule, which was then destroyed, as the parachute failed to deploy.

Therefore it was not a real Proton failure.

[Stan Black]

I know there are some issues with Encyclopedia Astronautica, but did an abort happen in 1979?

Gunter, you also have it listed?

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau_det/proton-k.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/tksva.htm#chrono

It is one of the entries in my list, which are debateable, if they should be listed as a launch attempt.

The Proton rocket ignited on the pad, but did not lift off. This would have not justified an entry in my list, if it had not triggered the escape system of the upper TKS-VA capsule, which was then destroyed, as the parachute failed to deploy.

Therefore it was not a real Proton failure.

But it does show that an abort after ignition is possible?

[kevin-rf]

Once the diaphragm has been breached is it possible to shutdown?

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Anatoly Zak has a bit more on the "rocket prematurely released" hypothesis based on discussions at NK: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#reconstruction

And now Roscosmos chief Popovkin has confirmed that the rocket did launch 0.4 seconds too early, while the rocket has yet to reach full thrust (the pressure in the combustion chamber of one or all 1st stage engines was only at 90 atm. instead of the usual 150 atm.). He also confirmed that something did went wrong when the engines should throttle up to full thrust, i.e. right when the "contact liftoff command" should have been issued.

Source: http://www.interfax.ru/news.asp?id=316788

[clongton]

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

Thanks Ed. My post was intended to reflect the "costs" of the cleanup rather than the "amount" of cleanup, per your original post, but in my haste I got that wrong. I went back to  my post and corrected it, leaving my original wording in-place in strikeout mode.

Your attached link to kerosene cleanup at Heathrow International in 1998 serves to illustrate how costly contamination cleanup is for any contaminate. Prober's wild-eyed statements about the cost of cleanup negating the low cost of a Proton launch without even considering other contaminates from other vehicles is a thinly veiled anti-Proton stance. The intent of my post was to bring a little balance to that position. 

Mind you I am not suggesting that it may not yet be time to consider replacing the vehicle; I happen to think that it may well be. But that's beside the point. I cannot abide one-sided arm-waving that deliberately excludes all other potential vehicles that might have cost a similar amount to clean up after.

[kevin-rf]

You also have small amounts of Hypers from the payload (up to a couple thousand pounds for GEO bound birds) mixed in. So on Soyuz and other Kero based vehicles it is not a straight kero only cleanup.   

Of course with LH you have the problem of the cleanup crews talking like Mickey Mouse the entire cleanup

[Stan Black]

According to Khrunichev website Echostar-15 started early by 0·401 seconds

http://coopi.khrunichev.ru/download/2010/es15/email/rus/es15_e11.htm
http://coopi.khrunichev.ru/main.php?id=506

However Anik later amended his information, from 35·599 to 35·999?

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=1133.msg617242#msg617242
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=1133.msg625780#msg625780

[Nickolai]

Thanks to Galactic Penguin for your summary!

[Kabloona]

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

Thanks Ed. My post was intended to reflect the "costs" of the cleanup rather than the "amount" of cleanup, per your original post, but in my haste I got that wrong. I went back to  my post and corrected it, leaving my original wording in-place in strikeout mode.

Your attached link to kerosene cleanup at Heathrow International in 1998 serves to illustrate how costly contamination cleanup is for any contaminate. Prober's wild-eyed statements about the cost of cleanup negating the low cost of a Proton launch without even considering other contaminates from other vehicles is a thinly veiled anti-Proton stance. The intent of my post was to bring a little balance to that position. 

I don't have an axe to grind, but I would add that the local Kazakhs don't appreciate being rained upon with toxins, and I sympathize with their viewpoint, especially when vast areas of the country are apparenly unfarmable due to contamination:

http://en.tengrinews.kz/environment/Kazakhstan-protests-Russian-rocket-launches-from-Baikonur-20742/

There's also a longstanding belief, founded or not, among locals that many cases of cancer, birth defects, and cattle deaths are due to toxic fuels:

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/02files/Space_Debris_04.html

If I lived there, I'd much rather be rained on by kerosene than NTO/UDMH, and it sounds like the locals there would make the same choice, regardless of the relative costs of cleanups.

[R7]

Once the diaphragm has been breached is it possible to shutdown?

Obviously because after nominal flight the engines shut down anyway. But quick restart after shutdown probably not, need to change out new diaphragms.


But here's a potential silly question: is the Proton held down at all with clamps or is it just supported from below, free to lift up whenever T/W hits >1? Somehow I got the impression that the lift-off signal just results when Proton pulls some final plug off on the way up.