Most Kerbal accidents in real life

[czokletmuss]

For me it's - among others - a failure during Morpheus test:

But it's a prototype. The Proton failure in 2013 was much more spectacular:

And there are of course the early days of the Space Race:

http://youtu.be/zVeFkakURXM

And my personal favorite, Mercury-Redstone 1:

[Tex_NL]

Very sad that people actually died when Space shuttles Challenger and Colombia exploded. But the reasons why they happened are pretty Kerbal.

[lajoswinkler]

Yes, Mercury-Redstone 1 was hilarious.

[rkman]

In the Apollo program there was a (unmanned) test launch to check the working of the escape tower. Unintended the launch vehicle exploded shorty after takeoff, making it a better for the escape tower, which worked perfectly. To me that's just very Kerbal.

[jwenting]

Add the N1 pad explosion. Pretty similar to most of my KSP launch failures, the thing just came apart at the seams...

[lajoswinkler]

In the Apollo program there was a (unmanned) test launch to check the working of the escape tower. Unintended the launch vehicle exploded shorty after takeoff, making it a better for the escape tower, which worked perfectly. To me that's just very Kerbal.

One of the Little Joe launches.

It didn't explode. It started rotating, and because rockets aren't designed to withstand centrifugal forces, it broke into burning pieces.

It's basically what I'd implement into KSP.

Edited January 17, 2014 by lajoswinkler

[Tex_NL]

In the Apollo program there was a (unmanned) test launch to check the working of the escape tower. Unintended the launch vehicle exploded shorty after takeoff, making it a better for the escape tower, which worked perfectly. To me that's just very Kerbal.

I've seen video's of that one. Along the length of the rocket where three wires. If two out of three were broken it would trigger the escape tower. But in the test it would be triggered by remote.

The rocket launched but entered an uncontrolled spin due to some gyro failure. Centrifugal forces ripped the rocket apart, breaking the wires and launching the tower.

Edit: Ninja'd

[TheDarkStar]

Definately that one, especially since you can see the launch tower being tossed to the side at about 0:35.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUsUwn5awkE

000:00:03 Structural failure between Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tank and Rockomax Mainsail Liquid Engine

[Themohawkninja]

That recent Russian one that you put up there practically mimics KSP. I've had quite a few rockets go that way.

[Themohawkninja]

The very last clip in this video (2:20).

[rdfox]

My personal favorite is the one I can't find the footage of right now, but where either a Thor with an upper stage or a Juno (and I can't identify it any more precisely than that) is launched and immediately starts turning hard left, getting about 135 degrees of rotation before the RSO sends the Destruct command.

Why? Because it had what strikes me as a very Kerbal cause--someone miswired the connection between the guidance system (which worked perfectly) and the thrust vectoring gimbal servoes (which worked perfectly), so when it started leaning a little to the left after liftoff, the guidance system said, "hey, turn right," and the gimbal heard "hey, turn left," so it did, and the guidance system started saying "right, right, RIGHT!" louder and louder, and the gimbal was hearing left all the way, and soon, it was hard over to the left because that's what the commands it received said.

The runner-up is a fairly famous clip of an Atlas in ICBM configuration being launched where it oozes off the pad slowly and sort of drunkenly wobbles its way into the sky for the first few seconds, before it has some speed built up and straightens up and flies right... and then one of the booster engines undergoes rapid unplanned disassembly, and it ever so slowly tips over to that side, finally ending up at about 90 degrees to the flightpath and completely enveloped in its own exhaust plume before they send the Destruct command. That one strikes me as Kerbal for three reasons. First, you wouldn't believe the number of boosters I've had seemingly fly just fine until they get to some point in the burn, the CG versus CP geometry changes, and it starts tumbling. Second, that drunken wobbly stagger off the pad just feels like something that Jeb would build.

But the third, and biggest, reason it feels Kerbal to me is the cause of the entire accident. One of the launch clamps released something like a quarter-second after it was supposed to--and after the other one did release. This caused the whole vehicle to rotate just enough that it partially crushed the booster engine on the OTHER side against its launch clamp, leaving it generating only about half thrust--hence the slow acceleration and drunken wobble off the pad, due to a low TWR and thrust asymmetry. (In the closeups of the aft end of the rocket at launch, you can see the verniers frantically correcting for the asymmetry.) The rocket managed to survive liftoff, and might have been able to compensate for the reduced thrust with a longer booster burn time, but when the damaged booster engine finally ruptured and destroyed itself, the thrust asymmetry was more than the verniers could handle (though they damned well TRIED to--notice how slowly it tipped over!) and it finally tumbled. (Side note: the guidance people were ECSTATIC at that flight's results, because not only was it not THEIR fault, for once, but they could prove that their system fought the good fight right up to the very end, nearly saving the mission and definitely saving the launch pad's support equipment by getting it up to about T+30 seconds before the tumble... and still fought the end even after the booster engine exploded and the mission was doomed. "Well, OUR part worked far BEYOND what it was supposed to! Hooray!")

So yeah, in that case, a multi-million dollar test missile was destroyed by a slightly sticky holddown clamp. That strikes me as immensely Kerbal...

[Nibb31]

I think the most Kerbal accident was last year's Proton crash. After take-off, the inverted polarity on the connector of an attitude control gyro caused the flight control computer to think that the rocket was upside down, which it promptly tried to correct by turning around.

The cause of the inverted polarity was Kerbalesque: A Russian technician had decided to fit the sensor by plugging the connector the wrong way round. Instead of thinking "hey this doesn't fit, I must be doing something wrong", his first thought was "hey this doesn't fit, where's my hammer?". The banged-up connector, which had been forced in the wrong way round, was found in the wreckage.

[Kryten]

It's actually worse than that; the guidance system had three of those sensors for redundancy. He managed to install all three upside down.

[Capt. Hunt]

that one with the Redstone firing it's escape tower reminds me of many KSP launches where I forgot to check the staging before liftoff.

[Skyrunner27]

Every time I see Mercury Redstone-1 I think of Gene Kranz description of the events. First he thought it wen up real fast. Then they relised what happened. Alarms blare around the complex to warn everyone while the German rocket scientist start yelling at each other. Finally they set down and figure out what to do with the rocket that is sitting on the coast with a parachute stuck out. With that description of the events it sounds even more kerbal like.

[Dunbaratu]

Why? Because it had what strikes me as a very Kerbal cause--someone miswired the connection between the guidance system (which worked perfectly) and the thrust vectoring gimbal servoes (which worked perfectly), so when it started leaning a little to the left after liftoff, the guidance system said, "hey, turn right," and the gimbal heard "hey, turn left," so it did, and the guidance system started saying "right, right, RIGHT!" louder and louder, and the gimbal was hearing left all the way, and soon, it was hard over to the left because that's what the commands it received said.

There was a problem in Boeing 737's for a while just like that. The problem caused 2 fatal crashes before the NTSB had enough cross-referenced information from all of them to work out the real cause of it. If the temperature in the tail oscillated between freezing and warming too quickly, as might happen when descending from high altitudes very fast to avoid bad weather or turbulence, a mechanical servo controlling the rudder could seize up, and then finally come free again, BUT when it came free, in some rare cases it could came free with inverted behavior. The effect was that when the pilot pushes right rudder, the plane actually gives left rudder, and visa versa. They'd correct a drift to one side, discover that it's drifting more to that side, so they'd try to correct harder, and it would be drifting more, then the plane would stall out and spin and they'd try to pull out of the spin using the standard textbook technique - give hard opposite rudder to stop the spin, while diving to get speed back. But the whole time their attempt to stop the spin was actually the cause of the spin because of the inverted rudder controls. The investigators had a hard time discovering the problem because all the electronic recorded data seemed to indicate that the pilots were deliberately causing their own accidents, and just flying very stupidly. (The black boxes were recording the actual position of the rudder, rather than the position of the pilot's controls, so the fact that the rudder was moving opposite of the rudder pedals wasn't discovered.) The NTSB, as usual, was quick to blame the pilots assuming they were just morons who don't know how to pull out of a stall spin. It wasn't until a third incident in which the problem happened at a higher altitude, and the problem righted itself again before the plane ran out of altitude so the pilot was able to pull out of it and land, that they found out what was happening (because now they had a live pilot to interview).

There was a recall and the faulty part was replaced on all 737's, but there had been a long window of time for several years when the problem existed and nobody knew about it.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Steven Mading

[Axder]

Well for me its space shutle made by Top Gear crew. It was basicaly car turned into space shutle, with real life boosters and everything and it even achived I belive one kilometr.

and here is whole video

[PakledHostage]

You have to ignore the cheesy voice-over, but this video has some good footage of the GPS IIR-1 satellite launch failure in 1997, and associated property damage. Fortunately nobody was hurt.

Edited January 19, 2014 by PakledHostage

[czokletmuss]

"Anomaly", huh? It's raining burning rocket fuel! And these stock sound effects.. where did you find this?

[Stargate525]

Well for me its space shutle made by Top Gear crew. It was basicaly car turned into space shutle, with real life boosters and everything and it even achived I belive one kilometr.

Over one kilometer. It's still the biggest rocket launched by Great Britain, I believe.

"How are you supposed to re-use THAT?!"

[Themohawkninja]

It's still the biggest rocket launched by Great Britain, I believe.

There's a kick to anyone's British patriotism.

[rpayne88]

Over one kilometer. It's still the biggest rocket launched by Great Britain, I believe.

"How are you supposed to re-use THAT?!"

Duct tape. Lots of duct tape.

[Duxwing]

Duct tape. Lots of duct tape.

Stiff uppah' lip, boyo! We'll 'ave i' rigged in time for a spo' o' tay!

-Duxwing

[MaverickSawyer]

You have to ignore the cheesy voice-over, but this video has some good footage of the GPS IIR-1 satellite launch failure in 1997, and associated property damage. Fortunately nobody was hurt.

The most bizzare part of that accident? They actually found the second stage mostly intact some ways away in the swamp. So, what'd they do with it? They shipped it back to Aerojet, who then fixed it up to flight standards, and it's still ready to fly today, because no one wants "The Swamp Engine".

THAT'S Kerbal.