You're not going to space today - IRL version.

[Kryten]

actually, I do know a lot more about things than you do.

Then why are you saying things that are provably wrong? The A1 was developed at the military facility at Kummersdorf by a group headed by Generalmajor Walter Dornberger, after von Braun had left VfR. Find me one source that says otherwise.

[KASASpace]

actually, I do know a lot more about things than you do. As is clear from you having to resort to ad hominem attacks...

No, those were funded privately. There was some interest from the German postal services to use rockets for delivering mail to islands, which brought some money, but military funding didn't start until much later.

In fact the entire effort was shut down because the military didn't like civilians playing with rockets.

What year do you mean by "much later"?

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_(rocket_family)

Notice how it says from 1933 on, that's effectively when the Third Reich began.

Edited March 24, 2014 by KASASpace

[rdfox]

But Delta and Atlas, which both have their roots in among the first ICBMs in the world still fly today. They changed a lot more than Russian rockets, but they're still triumphs of evolutionary design.

I'll give you Delta (every single one of them is still a derivative of the old Thor IRBM), but Atlas, not so much. The Atlas III was the last one derived from the ICBM; Atlas IV and V are clean-sheet designs that retain only the name, not even the Atlas's two signature features, the stage-and-a-half launch stage, and the balloon tanks.

[Kryten]

Nobody else can see video either, given none was ever released, or quite possibly made in the first place.

[KASASpace]

I'll give you Delta (every single one of them is still a derivative of the old Thor IRBM), but Atlas, not so much. The Atlas III was the last one derived from the ICBM; Atlas IV and V are clean-sheet designs that retain only the name, not even the Atlas's two signature features, the stage-and-a-half launch stage, and the balloon tanks.

Umm, not to rain on your parade, but Altas IV didn't exist.

The only real major difference of the Atlas V and III is the balloon tanks were removed on the V and replaced with an isogrid structure.

Heck, even the III used the RD-180 just like the V.

Not to mention the usage of the Centaur on the Atlas V, just like III, and II, and Atlas-Centaur of the 1960s.

And the Centaur STILL uses balloon tanks. (I LOVE balloon tanks, light as ever, and still capable of holding fuel like that)

So, the V still uses similar stuff in the series, but the IV didn't exist........

Although III did look a lot like the V.........

[Rocketscience101]

Been there done that, in real life to.

[Javster]

Maybe they're putting "success" in terms of what I've seen written in a signature around the forums here... something along the lines of "don't worry about failures, you can learn from them. Only if you fail to learn anything, then you have truly failed". Maybe the fact that the engine mount was too weak was better learned now than during the maiden flight, no? They probably also had a few seconds worth of telemetry transmitted before it broke, which can be quite valuable.

This is incidentally how the Soviet Union used to build and test rockets: just bolt something together on the cheap, launch it, find out whatever broke and fix it. Rinse and repeat until nothing breaks anymore. And they were the first nation to put an object into Earth orbit, and the first nation to achieve manned spaceflight, so the approach is not entirely without merit.

If everything had worked right away it would have been a better outcome, of course.

Along with first space station, first Venus probe, etc.

[Rokker]

This is incidentally how the Soviet Union used to build and test rockets: just bolt something together on the cheap, launch it, find out whatever broke and fix it. Rinse and repeat until nothing breaks anymore. And they were the first nation to put an object into Earth orbit, and the first nation to achieve manned spaceflight, so the approach is not entirely without merit.

First man in space AND it got them the first cancelled manned lunar mission as well as millions if not billions of dollars in failed probes, satellites, rockets, etc. Whereas NASA has a much higher success rate. NASA's way of doing things has gotten us much farther than the Soviet Union. Also, you really oversimplified that explanation of how they did it.

[Rokker]

Along with first space station, first Venus probe, etc.

I assume you remembered to include the first (so far only) 3 deaths in space in that list? That method is dangerous when used for human lives.

[Kryten]

I assume you remembered to include the first (so far only) 3 deaths in space in that list? That method is dangerous when used for human lives.

The US has killed a total of fifteen astronauts while they were flying in earth's atmosphere, compared to zero for the soviets; obviously their own approach to safety is inferior.

[GJames]

The US has killed a total of fifteen astronauts while they were flying in earth's atmosphere, compared to zero for the soviets; obviously their own approach to safety is inferior.

I take it you have never heard of Vladimir Komarov?

[Kryten]

I take it you have never heard of Vladimir Komarov?

Died on landing, not in flight. But my point is it's a ridiculous statement; if you exclude all of the US fatalities arbitrarily, then the soviets come out best, and vice versa. It certainly didn't matter to the astronauts on Columbia that they weren't high enough up to have died 'in space'.

[cantab]

Back on topic, sounds a lot like the Vanguard launch failure the USA had early in the space race.

Argentina, though, is one nation I won't be disappointed in failing at their missile space rocket launches.

[rdfox]

For the record, the Soviet space program was actually MORE risk-averse, regarding manned flights, than was the US program. NASA had the concept of "acceptable risk level," where they treated the manned spacecraft as being experimental aircraft, and, as was so succinctly put in the Apollo 1 episode of "From the Earth to the Moon," "People die testing unproven aircraft. We all know it; it's not pretty, but it happens." So NASA's attitude towards safety was to try and find every possible failure mode and come up with a solution for it, but ultimately, there were certain failure modes where the answer to the question "What happens if...?" could only be, "Well, it's a pretty bad day, then." (Re-entry is a fine example; if the heat shield failed, then life was going to suck for the astronauts--albeit only for a very short time.) As a result, they were willing to accept risk, so long as it wasn't considered undue risk--after all, you never really know if something will work until you try it for real. This is why NASA was willing to rely on a single engine for Lunar Module ascent from the surface, for example, and another single one for the burn to return to Earth, with no backups--the engines in question were designed for 100% reliability (and, in the case of the LM, could even be operated manually by the crew with hand tools if all else failed), and it was felt that the risk of them failing was low enough that they didn't see a likely case for the crew not being able to get back unless there was a screwup on their part.

However, the in the Soviet program, risk to cosmonauts was politically unacceptable--whereas NASA felt that they could survive a certain number of crew losses due to the experimental nature of space flight, the Soviet space program knew that a crew loss would be fatal to the program, if it turned out to be due to a calculated risk. Therefore, whereas NASA was willing to accept a chance of crew loss, the Soviet program wouldn't fly a manned mission unless they were 100% certain that they'd get the crew back alive. Komarov was a special case; all the engineers on the Soyuz program had passed along word that they felt the vehicle was not ready to fly and wouldn't be ready for a manned flight any time soon, but Brezhnev (or his deputies--details are still vague) declared that this was not open to debate; the first manned Soyuz flight would occur early enough for the cosmonaut and spacecraft to be put on display as part of the parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, with predictable results.

The Soviets' only other crew loss accident, Soyuz 11, was not fatal to the program because of the nature of the accident--the cabin vent had been jarred open by the shock of the explosive bolts blowing to jettison the service module after deorbit; the bolts were designed and set up to fire sequentially to keep the shock down to acceptable levels, but due to a part (which functioned properly in ground testing) failing, they instead fired simultaneously. Since the part failure was not something that was within anyone's control, there weren't any reprisals; the assumption that there wasn't a need for pressure suits during routine flight was an "acceptable risk" that was politically motivated by high muckety-mucks demanding that Soviet spacecraft carry crews at least as large as American ones, and as such, it was seen as proof that the "acceptable risk" concept wasn't acceptable at all...

[m4v]

The second test of the VEx1 fared much better (was last week):

Edited August 23, 2014 by m4v

[Tech Support]

Its good to see other nations investing in space technology ! go Argentina !!