First Australian-Made Rocket Crashes After 14 Seconds of Flight (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0178516402
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/30/1936241/first-australian-made-rocket-crashes-after-14-seconds-of-flight
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/rocket-crash-launch-australia-gilmour-space-5df36f956621db85c360157400b88c09
> The rocket Eris, launched by Gilmour Space Technologies, was the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital launch vehicle to lift off from the country and was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It launched Wednesday morning local time in a test flight from a spaceport near the small town of Bowen in the north of Queensland state. In videos published by Australian news outlets, the 23-meter (75-foot) rocket appeared to clear the launch tower and hovered in the air before falling out of sight. Plumes of smoke were seen rising above the site. No injuries were reported. The company hailed the launch as a success in a statement posted to Facebook. A spokesperson said all four hybrid-propelled engines ignited and the maiden flight included 23 seconds of engine burn time and 14 seconds of flight.
"Of course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this," wrote CEO Adam Gilmour [2]on LinkedIn . Gilmour said in February that it was "almost unheard of" for a private rocket company to successfully launch to orbit on its first attempt.
"This is an important first step towards the giant leap of a future commercial space industry right here in our region," added Mayor Ry Collins of the local Whitsunday Regional Council.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/rocket-crash-launch-australia-gilmour-space-5df36f956621db85c360157400b88c09
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adam-gilmour-03313489_got-off-the-pad-i-am-happy-of-course-activity-7356091809900478464-3Tdo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABVVmQABBXehqjStIT5u9Cj19eedFbQhzoE
Re: (Score:2)
"Move fast and break things" is just a wonderful approach for things that kill people when it goes sideways.
Re:declared mission success for igniting all engin (Score:5, Insightful)
This is pretty standard for rockets. That's why they have range restrictions and also have range-safety officers who send a self-destruct if the rocket fails to launch. Most rockets have failed to successfully launch on their first attempt, and that's been true for 80 years. One serious worry with the Space Shuttle initially was that there was no way to do any test launch without a crew.
Re: (Score:1)
> One serious worry with the Space Shuttle initially was that there was no way to do any test launch without a crew.
Good thing none of those blew up, can you imagine?
forgot to adjust for coriolis effect? (Score:1)
also they're all alcoholic criminals
As an American I think I see the mistake (Score:4, Funny)
The entire country is upside down but they didn't fire the rocket upside down so of course it crashed. That's just basic scinck.
Re: As an American I think I see the mistake (Score:2)
No no, you just need the software from Ariane V that thought the rocket was going backwards.
Honest question (Score:1, Troll)
NASA has been able to make rockets that don't blow up since the 1960's.
Why can't the Australians do it? Was that knowledge filed away in a locked cabinet somewhere, or has rocket science made no strides in the past half century? Why isn't rocket design a "trivial" problem in engineering?
If they took the same approach to computer science, the Australians would still be trying to refine silicon from sand.
Re:Honest question (Score:4, Informative)
NASA hasn't really designed many new rockets since the 60s, only refinements of older designs. New designs, like the Starliner capsule, that NASA has been involved in the design of, don't exactly have a stellar record, either.
They also have always spent a lot more time designing, testing, refining, and redesigning every component before actually building the first prototype, to eliminate every possible flaw they can (and when they were working on new designs, they still had a lot of them blow up), where the private companies use the "fail fast" philosophy, of "take your best shot, build it, and figure out why it blew up and fix it on the next version." They get a lot more failures, but it's a lot cheaper in the long run.
And rocket science/engineering is never a trivial task. Ever. Rockets are some of the most complex machines ever built, and very, very small failures can, and will, cause catastrophic failure. No amount of redundancy can protect it from a leaky fuel line in a simple piece of tubing.
Blowing up rockets (Score:2)
Is not a lot cheaper in the long run. It does however get investors excited because you can constantly be presenting a new rocket that's going to be a revolutionary success. And the idea is you've got more than enough investors that you can keep blowing up rockets and moving on to the next batch.
It's the difference between doing something right and doing something to bring cash in. The government didn't have the luxury of failure because people expected real success not a short-term stock bump that woul
Re: (Score:3)
> Was that knowledge filed away in a locked cabinet somewhere
Space rockets are the same thing as ICBM's so it's not going to be published in Popular Mechanics.
SpaceX is put under NatSec restrictions and ITAR even as a private company.
But getting a successful liftoff is a great achievement. Many first rockets detonate on the pad, even Starships.
Think (Score:2)
> NASA has been able to make rockets that don't blow up since the 1960's.
So why did the Space Shuttle Challenger explode in 1986 then? Nobody knows how to build a rocket that will always work and never explode.
How to speak Australian (Score:2)
Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff.
"Success!"
Re: (Score:2)
If they learned something useful from it, it was a success. It was, after all, a prototype test. That's simply how it's done.
If you require 100% success on even the first test, you'll never accomplish anything .
Re: (Score:3)
> by this tortured logic you can't learn anything from failure, because if you did you'd have to call it a success.
> Stop butchering language.
It depends on the nature of the launch. If the point of the launch was to get something to orbit it would be a failure. If the point was to test something and learn from it then even the failure is a success providing that data is recorded. That's not butchering the language, it's just you not understanding the scope of work.
Re: (Score:1)
9 1/2 seconds - greatest love story ever told
We do these things ... (Score:5, Funny)
... not because they are easy. But because we thought they were easy.
Re: (Score:2)
> ... not because they are easy. But because we thought they were easy.
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your multi-national corporation!
Well, (Score:2)
at least the front didn't fall off.
Re: (Score:2)
I just hope the team can salvage some of the cardboard and cardboard-derivatives from the crash zone. It would be a shame for it all to go to waste.
next time, a different name (Score:2)
You name your rocket after the goddess of discord and chaos, and then you're surprised when this happens?
Re: (Score:1)
Came here to post basically this. People need to stop naming things after Eris if they want them to work right.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll name their next rocket Murphy.
Not the first Australian rocket (Score:3)
The Royal Australian Navy had an anti-submarine guided missile in the 70's It was called Ikara (an Aboriginal name)
BTW the Aussie launch site is called Woomera after the Abo word for spear thrower which they invented independently umpteen thousand years ago.
Another thing New Zealand won (Score:2)
Our first rocket made it to space, years ago
That's no rocket (Score:5, Funny)
THIS is a rocket!
Re: (Score:3)
They're getting close technologically. How much longer before the Australian-American War starts? Does anybody have tips on how to dodge boomerang shrapnel?
Re: (Score:2)
And the clone army of kangaroos.
I would put that as a prompt into Midjourney and make a funny picture but what's the point
Re: clone army of kangaroos (Score:2)
Woah! Are you referring to Ice-T in the Tank Girl movie? [1]https://www.tribute.ca/news/wp... [tribute.ca]
[1] https://www.tribute.ca/news/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ice-T-Tank-Girl-900x600.jpg
Re: (Score:2)
Remember the [1]Great Emu War [wikipedia.org]? The emus won (they didn't kill anybody, they just refused to go away).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
Re: (Score:1)
Roo army? Check out the war against emus - that really happened. And the Aussie army lost!
Re: boomerang shrapnel (Score:2)
Crazy idea, and scary.
I think you are on to something!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they got the "boom" part right.