Biggest facepalms in spaceflight

[CHEEKYMONKEY6]

astra 3.3, firefly alpha, vanguard tv3 and many others.....

Put pictures of big oofs but no pictures of oofs with humans or animals as we commemorate them in how far we come from them 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by CHEEKYMONKEY6

[wumpus]

Compilation by Scott Manley (music by Skye)

 

[tater]

Quote from 2014.

[Bej Kerman]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

Quote from 2014.

Let's be very honest here. We do have a commercially available  heavy-lift vehicle. The Falcon 9 Heavy has come about. The SLS is still sucking up taxpayer money while collecting dust in the VAB, but it's ours and we don't want to outsource our efforts to agencies that have designed, built and repeatedly used way better rockets.

[DDE]

Let's avoid having that argument for the (number of Soyuz launches +1)th time, shall we?

Anyway, minor oofs:

https://thespacereview.com/article/3525/1

Big oofs:

https://thespacereview.com/article/2884/1

https://thespacereview.com/article/4025/1

[tater]

Yes, the actual facepalm was the quote.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Biggest facepalm in space flight ever: Black Arrow.

• Be Britain, late 50s/early 60s.
• Work with other European countries on the Europa launch rocket.
• Get tired of France making dud second stages when your first stage (Blue Streak) works every time.
• Make your own second stage, also doubles as the first stage for a smaller rocket.
• Run turbo pumps on steam- no really: run HTP over a catalyst to produce oxygen (oxidiser) and lots of hot steam which turns the turbines, no need for any fancy stuff like most other rockets.
• Turn down offer from USA to launch payloads for free.
• Build working launch rocket (Black Arrow).
• Cancel project because it’s too expensive.
• ”But we have the final rocket at the launch site already, can we launch it, pleeeeeease?”
• Launch it successfully into orbit (Prospero- the Shakespearean wizard who gave up his powers). AFTER IT WAS CANCELLED.
• USA be like “Nope, we never said we’d launch your stuff for free.”
• Pay much money to USA to launch stuff instead.
• Be only nation IN HISTORY to develop an indigenous orbital launch rocket- that works- and then abandon that capability.
• Oh, and those pesky slow French? They went on and developed Europa into something called Ariane…

Black Arrow was built to the same diameter as the Europa second stage it could have been stuck on top of a Blue Streak first stage to put much larger payloads into orbit as Black Knight. But no, they killed it off after one launch failure due to leaky plumbing and another great British idea died due to shoestring budgets.

/rant 

 

[grawl]

The Ariane 5 maiden flight.

[StrandedonEarth]

A certain Proton flight comes to mind…

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Quote from 2014.

LOL, I only thought of technical stuff and there my favorite is to only launch the launch abort tower and then pop the parachute on the capsule some seconds later during an early US test. 
Its something like an KSP joke video, no you can not deploy the parachute then stationary in KSP but still. 
Now the Russians laughing Elon Musk out of the conference room was an historic event level facepalm. it was nice having most of the launch marked until someone took it. 
On the other hand its nice making history  

[tater]

Just now, magnemoe said:

LOL, I only thought of technical stuff and there my favorite is to only launch the launch abort tower and then pop the parachute on the capsule some seconds later during an early US test. 

My number 1 staging failure in KSP, lol.

Sorta fits the idea of a facepalm which I think requires something going wrong that should have been addressed or researched beforehand.

[mikegarrison]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

My number 1 staging failure in KSP, lol.

It's pretty obvious that KSP intentionally suckers people into launching their first rocket while popping the chute out at launch. I'm not sure if that is intended to teach them a lesson about staging, or whether it's just something they found funny and so decided to never change.

They basically give you three pieces (chute, SRB, and capsule), teach you how to snap them together, and then tell you to launch. They don't automatically do staging for you until after you get access to decouplers.

Edited September 4, 2021 by mikegarrison

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Biggest facepalm in space flight ever: Black Arrow.

• Be Britain, late 50s/early 60s.
• Work with other European countries on the Europa launch rocket.
• Get tired of France making dud second stages when your first stage (Blue Streak) works every time.
• Make your own second stage, also doubles as the first stage for a smaller rocket.
• Run turbo pumps on steam- no really: run HTP over a catalyst to produce oxygen (oxidiser) and lots of hot steam which turns the turbines, no need for any fancy stuff like most other rockets.
• Turn down offer from USA to launch payloads for free.
• Build working launch rocket (Black Arrow).
• Cancel project because it’s too expensive.
• ”But we have the final rocket at the launch site already, can we launch it, pleeeeeease?”
• Launch it successfully into orbit (Prospero- the Shakespearean wizard who gave up his powers). AFTER IT WAS CANCELLED.
• USA be like “Nope, we never said we’d launch your stuff for free.”
• Pay much money to USA to launch stuff instead.
• Be only nation IN HISTORY to develop an indigenous orbital launch rocket- that works- and then abandon that capability.
• Oh, and those pesky slow French? They went on and developed Europa into something called Ariane…

Black Arrow was built to the same diameter as the Europa second stage it could have been stuck on top of a Blue Streak first stage to put much larger payloads into orbit as Black Knight. But no, they killed it off after one launch failure due to leaky plumbing and another great British idea died due to shoestring budgets.

/rant 

 

Run turbo pumps on steam- no really: run HTP over a catalyst to produce oxygen (oxidiser) and lots of hot steam which turns the turbines, no need for any fancy stuff like most other rockets.
This sounds a lot like the Soyuz turbo pumps. Its V2 level tech, its weird Russia never updated the engines on Soyuz to an more modern one as they had the best rocket engines in the world for an long time. 
 

[DDE]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

This sounds a lot like the Soyuz turbo pumps. Its V2 level tech, its weird Russia never updated the engines on Soyuz to an more modern one as they had the best rocket engines in the world for an long time

It absolutely is. You have Glushko to thank for a major lag in Soviet GG development: the mid-1930s saw a focus on aircraft booster engines, which could be satisfactorily fed by a turbopump spun by the main engine.

Even attempts to add hypergolic ignition were cancelled. Only a radical upgrade program (e.g. Soyuz-2.1v with NK-33 or RD-193, and RD-0110R vernier) would justify almost completely reengineering an established design. There were proposals like the Soyuz-3 with RD-120s in the boosters (of which there could be two) and a Soyuz-2.1v core, but they went nowhere.

Ultimately, the Soyuz was supposed to be gradually phased out in favor of the Zenit, and now, "fat Zenit" the Soyuz-5. There was no need in a major overhaul when such an overhaul was far more plausible.

Additionally, it seems that the R-7 derivatives have long since approached the limits of their upgrade capacity. Even the 2.1v has required some sort of pad modification.

Edited September 5, 2021 by DDE

[DeadJohn]

There's no video of one of the most interesting space mishaps because it happened at Mars. Guidance software did calculations in English Imperial units, then sent the results to engine software that expected input in metric units. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/mars-climate-orbiter/in-depth/

It's fascinating how teams of smart people, led by other smart people, can make very dumb mistakes.

 

 

 

[CHEEKYMONKEY6]

15 hours ago, tater said:

My number 1 staging failure in KSP, lol.

Sorta fits the idea of a facepalm which I think requires something going wrong that should have been addressed or researched beforehand.

yes it does

 

IM NOW ALLOWING EXPLOSIONS ASWELL NOW!!!    WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[TheSaint]

Sorry, nobody did  it better than The Right Stuff.

 

[Minmus Taster]

James Webb if it fails.

[StrandedonEarth]

41 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:

James Webb if it fails.

Hopefully after it sees first light. It’ll be a nailbiter until then for sure 

[CHEEKYMONKEY6]

On 9/5/2021 at 6:33 PM, Minmus Taster said:

James Webb if it fails.

but it didnt you see

 

[Superluminal Gremlin]

Artemis 1.