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

[PDCWolf]

Less than a month ago the "conaderp", actually called C.O.N.A.E. which means COmision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (National Committee of Space Activities) ran a test of the VEX1-A prototype. The VEX1-A Is supposed to be one of the stages of the "Tronador II" rocket (I think it's the second). Kerbally enough, the rocket lifted off to a totally astonishing height of 2 meters before falling back to the pad and exploding. The failure was caused by one of the engine mounts.

It sounds pretty normal for a new technology to fail, especially with rockets, but the most curious part is that the test somehow ended up being a "success". On top of that there is more weird stuff surrounding this little rocket:

•It was supposed to have its maiden flight somewhere this year, said flight has been delayed to 2015.

•VEX1-A Should have been flown at least 5 months ago.

•It also had a scheduled test back in January but it was cancelled due to a failure on the fuel feeding system.

•Another test was scheduled for February but it was cancelled too, nobody knows why.

•They (CONAE/government) didn't want to disclose test dates or any other info about the rocket.

Btw, the funding for the entire Tronador program is 2000 million pesos (251.5 million dollars) from which 55 million pesos (Around 7 million dollars) are destined exclusively to VEX1-A.

For those of you who don't know anything about this rocket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronador_%28rocket%29

All in all, a bad start for Argentina's Space Program, not only that but also filled with hypocrisy and sheer ignorance. Just though I would share. Here, have some pics and a good laugh.

[jwenting]

TBH, it looks more like a prototype short/intermediate range ballistic missile, which is no doubt where quite a bit of the funding comes from.

Doesn't look like an explosion either, more like a flameout.

[PDCWolf]

TBH, it looks more like a prototype short/intermediate range ballistic missile, which is no doubt where quite a bit of the funding comes from.

Doesn't look like an explosion either, more like a flameout.

There are no plans of using it as an ICBM or something of the sort nor does the CONAE have any relationship with the military or anything else that could indicate a possibility of it having some military use. It is, though, a prototype: It's supposed to be the second stage of the Tronador II rocket, with the other 2 stages' tests being divided between the remaining 6 flights before the maiden.

Witnesses said it was a "nice fireball" (Yes, literally what they said). I believe it was not fully fueled, as the planned downrange was only 300 meters. It was supposed to reach 16 km altitude and a downrange of 300 meters (It was practically just shooting the thing straight up) so that it would fall on a river nearby and then be recovered for test data.

At least it didn't get wet.

[Streetwind]

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.

[vger]

This entire launch was just done for the purpose of encouraging innuendos, right? ....right?

[PDCWolf]

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.

If we consider (But given the circumstances it is highly dubious) that the test was really about the ignition system then maybe, under the right set of parameters, we could call the test a success. On the other hand, if they were really testing the ignition system, why would they need a 16km apoapsis and 300m downrange?, more so, the rocket obviously didn't complete any of those achievements, it missed the mark by merely 15998 meters high and 300 meters downrange.

I have no qualms about doing stuff like the soviet union did, but I really dislike lies.

[Kryten]

On the other hand, if they were really testing the ignition system, why would they need a 16km apoapsis and 300m downrange?,

They wouldn't, which is why they didn't. You're givng specs for a fully fuelled VEX-1 vehicle, and this one wasn't anything close to fully fuelled. The plan for this specific test was 300m apogee and 800m downrange distance. Bear in mind this is a pressure-fed rocket, it's probably going to have a minimum fuel load required to actually ignite the engine. Pressurisation and ignition did both go well.

[Rakaydos]

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.

"Needs moar struts"

[Tex]

"Needs moar struts"

Proof that the Ruskies are as close to Kerbalkind as anyone on Earth is.

[jwenting]

There are no plans of using it as an ICBM or something of the sort nor does the CONAE have any relationship with the military or anything else that could indicate a possibility of it having some military use. It is, though, a prototype: It's supposed to be the second stage of the Tronador II rocket, with the other 2 stages' tests being divided between the remaining 6 flights before the maiden.

Werner von Braun had no connection with the military either when he designed and built the A1, A2, and A3, at which point the military became interested and funded him to develop the A4, which is better known as the V2.

CONAE is government funded, so is the military, so yes there is a connection.

Many things are dual purpose. Nothing wrong with that. Remember that Redstone, Atlas, and Centaur were all military rockets and without them there'd have been no US space program.

And on the Soviet side it's the same thing.

SeaLaunch uses Soviet ICBMs as launchers (with some modifications) too.

[Kryten]

Werner von Braun had no connection with the military either when he designed and built the A1, A2, and A3...

Please stop posting about things you know absolutely nothing about. The VfR was funded by the military, and the all of the aggregat series rockets were produced by a wehrmacht research group.

[sgt_flyer]

...

SeaLaunch uses Soviet ICBMs as launchers (with some modifications) too.

Huh ? Sea launch use a zenit-3sl rocket - the zenit family was designed as a space launcher from the start - it was never built to be an icbm...

Of all russian rockets still in service, zenit is the only one not derived /built upon ballistic missiles

Edited March 21, 2014 by sgt_flyer

[KASASpace]

If it was the upper stage than if the Argentinians knew anything they would either do all up tests or just statics.

Because upper stages don't have TWRs of 1 or greater. Generally much less.

[KASASpace]

Werner von Braun had no connection with the military either when he designed and built the A1, A2, and A3, at which point the military became interested and funded him to develop the A4, which is better known as the V2.

I am very knowledgeable about this subject as a matter of fact. (I know, Kryten, you don't believe me:rolleyes:)

Wernher von Braun actually had an extreme involvement with the military. You see, in **** Germany stuff like launching your own rockets wasn't legal.

But Wernher saw a way through that, he and a team of people, (yes, team) presented the idea of rockets as weapons. They got limited approval and built the A1. It messed up rather awesomely, although it was really just a bad placement of the gyro.

So the team goes on under Dornberger? I think it was him, I'm more than likely wrong, though. And they build the A2, essentially the same but with better Gyro placement. it works well. They build the A3, bigger, works extremely well. Then they come up on the A4, and it becomes the world's first ballistic missile.

Now, Wernher wanted to go to space, and the A9/A10 was magnificent....

So, think before you type.

[Camacha]

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.

Do you have any kind of substantiation of this? Besides the fact that both space programs were accelerated, meaning that bigs steps were made and some corners were cut.

[rdfox]

Do you have any kind of substantiation of this? Besides the fact that both space programs were accelerated, meaning that bigs steps were made and some corners were cut.

To some degree, that's kind of necessary in the early days. Nobody actually knows how to build a rocket until someone's built one that works. Until then, you just bolt something together that you *think* will work--the less expensive, the better, because you're gonna be doing this a LOT and you know it--and then you light the fuse, then go pick up the pieces to see what went wrong, so you can fix that for the next attempt.

For that matter, much of rocket design is STILL that sort of iterative process; it's just that we've A) got the experience to eliminate 90% of the blind alleys from the very start by knowing that we can't make THAT idea work, have now got the data needed to shake out a lot more of the blind alleys on the test stand, in the wind tunnel, and in the computer, and C) have reliable vehicles we can fall back on until/unless the new vehicle is working properly. (Witness how Orion OFT-1 will be launched on an old reliable Delta IV booster instead of a prototype SLS; rather than bolt together a very hastily-done SLS prototype and hoping it works, we can now give the SLS design time to mature and launch the Orion test article on a known-quantity booster instead.)

[Guest]

Do you have any kind of substantiation of this? Besides the fact that both space programs were accelerated, meaning that bigs steps were made and some corners were cut.

All the best rockets were results of evolutionary approach, and Soviets employed it all the time. Just take a look at the Soyuz. The world's first ICBM still flies, the first two stages are hardly changed from the original R7. But those changes that were made eliminated all the flaws the design had, resulting in an incredibly reliable vehicle. Notice that it's the only medium rocket Russia uses, they simply don't need anything else. Proton, though many small iterations, also went from an unreliable mess to a rocket that fails about once in 30 years. Those always formed the backbone of Soviet Space program, and continue in Russian one. Many other designs (including Zenit and small, ICBM-based launchers) were created via iterative design.

Oh, and US has some examples, too, namely Atlas, Delta and (to a lesser extent) Titan. Saturns didn't last, Shuttle only did because of politics/NASA being pot-committed to it. 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. The only really successful rocket that worked "from scratch" was the Falcon.

[sgt_flyer]

Well, the ariane series of rockets were quite sucessful from the start too i think a spaceX like company would not have performed so well if they started 30 years ago - today's computer modelizations and better materials understandings helps a lot - yet the falcon 1 was only sucessful on it's fourth launch.

Heck, Ariane's viking engines may be one of the most reliable rocket engines ever built - 2 engine failures out of 958 used (all versions of the viking included)

[thelegendaryblah]

they are using monomethyl hydrazine and dinitrogentetrioxide for its fuel

maybe they should use udmh/n2o4 instead, uudmh is slightly more stable than its monomethyl brethren and many major world powers with space faring capabilities used UDMH/N2O4 at first (the russians and the chinese, the americans do not count since they started off with alchohol in the V2 which they stole when they took von braun)

[Guest]

MMH is more efficient, actually. It's more unstable, but that's good thing. There's no reason to use UDMH unless you have a really big engine. There's only one rocket in the world that needs this, the Proton. US rockets were mostly Aerozine 50, which is a 50/50 mix or MMH and UDMH.

Ariane 1 was actually a moderately successful rocket. 4 failures is good, but not great. Only subsequent evolution made it into a rock-solid vehicle we know today.

[Idobox]

Ariane is a beautiful rocket, but it was not built from scratch.

It all started when UK realized their Blue Streak ballistic missile was crap, and tried to turn it into a rocket (Europa1) with the help of other European countries. The rocket was also pretty crappy, France wanted to put cryo 2nd and 3rd stages, and when UK pulled out, France built what they wanted and called it Ariane.

[jwenting]

Please stop posting about things you know absolutely nothing about. The VfR was funded by the military, and the all of the aggregat series rockets were produced by a wehrmacht research group.

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.

[mdatspace]

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Zucker

Tried to deliver mail by rocket.

A few people died.

[Javster]

"Argentina is closer to having its own launcher" (Come on guys gimme a round of applause I translated this myself )

Or not...

[sgt_flyer]

MMH is more efficient, actually. It's more unstable, but that's good thing. There's no reason to use UDMH unless you have a really big engine. There's only one rocket in the world that needs this, the Proton. US rockets were mostly Aerozine 50, which is a 50/50 mix or MMH and UDMH.

Ariane 1 was actually a moderately successful rocket. 4 failures is good, but not great. Only subsequent evolution made it into a rock-solid vehicle we know today.

Well, the falcon 1 rocket first 3 launches failed - spaceX didn't start directly with the falcon 9