The Peculiar Case of Luna E-3 Nos. 1 and 2

[GigaG]

Back in the early days of the Space Race, a lot of rockets failed. Like, a LOT of rockets. Owing to the lack of complete coverage in the 1950-60s, many of these explosions went unfilmed, and even more recent explosions are hard to find (or hard to find certain angles of.)

Of course, the hardest launch failures to find are the old Soviet launch failures - it is difficult to find complete launch videos from the early Soviet space program, let alone a failure! I don't even know how so much footage from the N1 got out (and I still wish there was more!) Failures upon orbit were covered up as satellites, and rockets that failed on launch rarely received a designation at all (the US did this too, to some extent - I think Vanguard TV3 and Pioneer 0 were post-failure renames, although I'm not sure.) As for the Soviets, I think they destroyed much of the N1 footage that they had. I still wonder if, to this day, there are surviving tapes of old Soviet-era launches collecting dust in some government building that nobody has bothered to dig up.

Some of these failures were downright spectacular and detailed descriptions exist. One Soviet Luna mission launched in 1960 failed in a particularly unusual manner, more reminiscent of a KSP staging error-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_E-3_No.2

Wikipedia quote-

"Luna E-3 No.2 was launched at 16:07:41 UTC on 16 April 1960, atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Blok-B strap-on booster reached only 75% thrust and broke away from the booster almost immediately at liftoff. The launch vehicle then disintegrated, the strap-ons flying in random directions and exploding as they impacted the ground. Meanwhile, the core stage flew for some distance until crashing into a salt lake. Considerable damage to launch facilities resulted from this mishap. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted circumlunar imagery mission."

The background of this launch is interesting and rather hard to find. In an unusual schedule another identical Luna flight (Luna E-3 No.1) launched the day before from the same launch pad (according to Wikipedia.) That one failed at high altitude in another error that sounds like a tweakable catastrophe from KSP - the upper stage fuel tank was only partially filled! Wikipedia quote-

"Luna E-3 No.1 was launched at 15:06:45 UTC on 15 April 1960, atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Blok E upper stage cut off prematurely because pad crews had accidentally filled the RP-1 tank only halfway. As a result, the spacecraft failed to achieve orbit. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted circumlunar imagery mission."

Some places identify the launch date of No.2 as April 19 - the time is known to the second, however. No matter what day this flight launched on, it is still a fast turnaround time. I wonder if this was planned or sped up once the first probe failed.

Anyways, does anybody know any more information about these spacecraft? I really wish there was video of the latter incident due to its sheer unusual-ness, but alas, there is not AFAIK. (I also hope nobody was hurt at the site, of course.)

[magnemoe]

"Luna E-3 No.2 was launched at 16:07:41 UTC on 16 April 1960, atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Blok-B strap-on booster reached only 75% thrust and broke away from the booster almost immediately at liftoff. The launch vehicle then disintegrated, the strap-ons flying in random directions and exploding as they impacted the ground. Meanwhile, the core stage flew for some distance until crashing into a salt lake. Considerable damage to launch facilities resulted from this mishap. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted circumlunar imagery mission."

This sounds like an very KSP event, rocket breaking up on launch and boosters flying everywhere.

[Ikaneko]

Now, cue the piano music frm Danny's video's!

anyone??

[xenomorph555]

Stuff like this happened all the time for the soviet rockets in early 60's.

Now what's more peculiar is if E-1 was the Luna 1 and 2 impactors and E-3 was the Luna 3 far side photography probe, then what was E-2!

EDIT: After looking I found out that Luna 3 was an E-2 and the two E-3's were similar probes but with higher resolution cameras and flew closer to the moon.

Edited November 23, 2014 by xenomorph555