Another Proton rocket failure - May 15, 2014

[Woopert]

Yep, another Proton rocket has failed. This one had a third stage failure, and one report said it crashed back down (which it probably did, what goes up *must* come back down ).

Anyways, thoughts on this rocket? It seems like it's had way to many failures. Nothing beats the good old Atlas V or Delta II, or Delta IV...

Edit: yes, I'm aware of the Falcon 9 and Ariane 5. I was just mentioning the ULA rockets that came to mind.

Source: http://spaceflightnow.com/

Edited May 16, 2014 by Woopert

[sojourner]

Well, that's a little embarrassing after all the dust up about ISS this week.

[goldenpeach]

What happened to the proton?

Did it explode(with the self-destruc system)?

Is there any video of the failure?

[Kryten]

What happened to the proton?

Third stage flight ended about twenty seconds too early, probably engine problem of some sort.

Did it explode(with the self-destruc system)?

Proton doesn't have a self-destruct system.

Is there any video of the failure?

First parts of flight were streamed, and were nominal. This third stage is too high and faint for practical coverage.

EDIT: Here's the video, but as I said there's nothing to really see. Rocket leaves sight, announcer repeats 'xxx seconds - pitch, yaw, roll are nominal', then 'off-nominal situation has occurred on the rocket, end of coverage'.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Kryten

[Shuttle]

http://ria.ru/spravka/20140516/1007977522.html

According to this link, rocket fell outside of Kazakhstan, maybe in Altai or Pacific Ocean.

[Streetwind]

Derp! Krunichev needs to step up their game considerably. They've been letting the Proton's good reputation slip severely throughout the last four years.

[Idobox]

Nothing beats the good old Atlas V or Delta II, or Delta IV...

Soyouz and Arianne 5 do.

source : http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2012.html

[NASAFanboy]

Soyouz and Arianne 5 do.

source : http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2012.html

And SpaceX soon will join their ranks, hopefully.

As for the Russians, I have they won't mind if I make a gif out of it

[xenomorph555]

Nothing beats the good old Atlas V

Cough russian engines cough

As for the proton, it reminds me of the early r-7 flights, 3 out of 5 chance of blowing up XD

[Kryten]

Roscosmos is now reporting that it burned up over China, and that 'one can confidently say that nothing has reached the Earth'. The Chinese might have something to say about that...

Compare to the fuel tank from the sat. For this to happen, it must have already been badly off course by the time the reported failure happened.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Kryten

[Woopert]

Soyouz and Arianne 5 do.

source : http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2012.html

Yep, I'm aware of the other rockets. I was just mentioning ULA's rockets since they have such a good track record. Though, the Ariane 5 and Soyuz both have pretty darn good track records as well. Falcon 9 is good too but hasn't flown enough flights yet, IMO.

Cough russian engines cough

As for the proton, it reminds me of the early r-7 flights, 3 out of 5 chance of blowing up XD

Yep, I know about the RD-180 engine. I follow spaceflight.

It still takes a lot of engineering prowess to design a rocket, even if the Russians designed the RD-180.

[NASAFanboy]

Cough russian engines cough

As for the proton, it reminds me of the early r-7 flights, 3 out of 5 chance of blowing up XD

If the Americans can design a more reliable rocket with Russians engine that hey didn't design or build while the Russians can't construct a more reliable rocket with engines they designed and built, that doesn't make a compliment to Russian engineering

[sjwt]

I dont get the quotes they use to describe such things.. 'The rocket and satellite are lost'..

Surely that should be either

"The Rocket and satellite have been randomly located over an unexpectedly large area"

"The rocket and satellite have met with an expedited entropic conversion"

[Kerbart]

"The Rocket and satellite have been randomly located over an unexpectedly large area"

"The rocket and satellite have met with an expedited entropic conversion"

"Rocket and satellite were successfully inserted into sub-orbital trajectory at x:xx"

[Kryten]

If the Americans can design a more reliable rocket with Russians engine that hey didn't design or build while the Russians can't construct a more reliable rocket with engines they designed and built, that doesn't make a compliment to Russian engineering

Proton is actually highly reliable-as long as the right person is paying for it. All six of the failures in the past five years were on federal launches, despite the other launches (commercial through ILS) using the same crew and equipment. Federal space agency pays less, and it's thought they're just getting what they pay for in terms of quality control.

[Synthesis]

Bummer, but, it happens.

From what I understand, Russia carried out 32 out of the 82 space launches in 2013 (more than a third), and for the cargo launches, Proton-M is a major cornerstone of that, with one failure (I could be wrong though). Not perfect by a long shot, but it could be worse. This is getting the front page on a lot of Russian news media, so hopefully everyone learns their lessons, right?

[The Destroyer]

From a book, I remember hearing early in the space races Russia had tons of failures- but it was shielded by the Iron Kurtain that russia has, making Russia seem so sucessful.

[xenomorph555]

From a book, I remember hearing early in the space races Russia had tons of failures- but it was shielded by the Iron Kurtain that russia has, making Russia seem so sucessful.

Yeah, when the r-7 (soyuz) came out in 1957 they had 6 explosions before it worked, clustering was completely new back then.

[Cosmos3110]

The rocket itself is a pretty reliable rocket. Most failures are problems with the different attachable upper stages, like the Briz- M. Im no engineer, but with all the failures with the Proton recently I think that Roscosmos needs to take more time after this failure, and pound out as many problems as they can, but like I said, Im no engineer and there could be other factors involved that would make scrubbing all the launches for the next year pointless.

[astropapi1]

The rocket itself is a pretty reliable rocket. Most failures are problems with the different attachable upper stages, like the Briz- M. Im no engineer, but with all the failures with the Proton recently I think that Roscosmos needs to take more time after this failure, and pound out as many problems as they can, but like I said, Im no engineer and there could be other factors involved that would make scrubbing all the launches for the next year pointless.

I'd suggest accelerating the development of the Angara family and the PPTS, so they can stop using old rocket designs.

Even though it might work alright, would you ride a Ford TT across the country?

[Cosmos3110]

I'd suggest accelerating the development of the Angara family and the PPTS, so they can stop using old rocket designs.

Even though it might work alright, would you ride a Ford TT across the country?

I would agree with that and I wish that would happen, but i just dont think that Roscosmos has enough funding to move any faster with Angara.

[CluelessModeler]

I read something somewhere that after they lost a Proton due to improper installation of several gyroscopes they finally had enough and installed cameras to watch the construction of the rockets a lot more closely. They really had some awful times with shoddy workmanship in that program.

I hope that this isn't a recurrence of the same issue, they really need Proton to be performing well in order to not lose contracts to the west.

However, on the inside, I hope Rogozin feels like an idiot.

[Cosmos3110]

I read something somewhere that after they lost a Proton due to improper installation of several gyroscopes they finally had enough and installed cameras to watch the construction of the rockets a lot more closely. They really had some awful times with shoddy workmanship in that program.

I hope that this isn't a recurrence of the same issue, they really need Proton to be performing well in order to not lose contracts to the west.

However, on the inside, I hope Rogozin feels like an idiot.

No, as far anyone can tell so far, it appears to be a faulty vernier rocket in the third stage, which caused the rocket to loose control. Maybe Russia could start sending their satellites into orbit with trampolines?

[Kryten]

I'd suggest accelerating the development of the Angara family and the PPTS, so they can stop using old rocket designs.

Given Angara's track record (2/3 launches failed), that might not be the best of ideas.

[regex]

According to http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/index.html

Its Express AM4R payload was an Astrium Eurostar 3000 series satellite that weighed 5.775 tonnes at liftoff. It was built as a replacement for Express AM4, which was stranded in a useless orbit by a Briz M upper stage failure during a 2011 Proton flight.

So it sounds like the Briz is more at fault here? Or maybe the irony...