Story at The Verge.
A decades-old Soviet engine is probably to blame for last week's rocket explosion. Last Tuesday, Orbital Science’s unmanned Antares rocket detonated 15 seconds into launch, injuring no one but destroying thousands of pounds of supplies meant for the International Space Station.
Speculation focused on to the refurbished Soviet rocket engines Orbital was using, and in a conference call today, Orbital CEO David Thompson confirmed that the speculation was probably right.
?!?!?!?!?!!?
Don't tell me, "we're out of money!" and can't afford new engines so we have to use REFURBED 40-YEAR OLD engines.
What a disgrace.
While ironically, this week we have the latest dystopian-loser movie coming out the escapist "Interstellar" with McConahey and Hathaway starring as futuristic space travelers.
Hey morons, if we keep using 40-year old technology because you think "we're out of money!" we're never even going to get out of the 20th century.
6 comments:
The Russians are disavowing responsibility for the engineering since the engine was modified by the purchaser. "Worked fine for us till you got ahold of it and started tinkering with it."
After market mods void the warranty Tom.... ;)
Just what I was thinking, Matt. :o
JFK is rolling over in his grave.
"By the end of this decade we will put a man on the moon...with rockets constructed from used, refurbished parts sold by junk dealers in the private sector."
Mike I thought I was joking the other day with the 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' reference but I guess not...
Probably Kruschev signed off on the design of these motors.... during the era of B&W TVs and VHF....
Pretty sad...
Privatization -results in trying to get the most profit. This results in increased risk taking. This leads to an increasing number of catastrophic failures.
This, as well as the Virgin explosion can be shown to be the responsibility of privatization, as well as cost cutting and ignoring warnings. This is one reason that high risk ventures have historically been undertaken with the backing of the Sovereign.
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