This must be a conspiracy of those deluded global warming/climate change/whatever-we-can-scare-and-extort-you-with-this-week deniers to stop the truth from coming out.
They must have sabotaged the rocket to prevent the truth revealing satellite, the minion of Gore from revealing the fact that we are all doomed! It must be the only explanation for this. Rockets simply do not fail unless acted upon by those who are afraid of what those missions will reveal. Those global warming deniers will go to any length necessary and they have!
Sorry, had to get it out there. Because I know within a week that some wingnut will be trumpeting that the launch was deliberately sabotaged by AGW deniers to prevent the truth from getting out.
The more rational among us know that launching anything into space is risky. Malfunctions happen and when you're dealing with what are essentially controlled, long duration explosions and hypersonic velocities, small malfunctions can become serious indeed.
In this case, the payload fairing (the cone on top of the rocket that protects the satellite within) failed come off when it was supposed to. As a result, the rocket wasn't able to maintain enough velocity to reach orbit. And even if it had, it would have still been a failure since the satellite would have been trapped within and unable to function.
A lot of things have to go right with a satellite launch to ensure success. Only one thing has to go wrong to guarantee failure.
Not a good day for the JPL team and Orbital Sciences who makes the Taurus XL booster. This has raised their failure rate to 1 in 4 and that's not a good place to be in the small launch vehicle world. I'm sure the launch insurer isn't happy either. Hopefully future launches will improve the vehicle's overall record.
Others seem to think the 63 inch fairing might be a issue. Although the other blogger states that Pegasus (which Taurus XL is derived from) is rocket meant to doom missions, its failure rate of 1 in 8 seems better than the current Taurus XL rate.
Or maybe those pesky global warming deniers are making it happen. You be the judge.
They must have sabotaged the rocket to prevent the truth revealing satellite, the minion of Gore from revealing the fact that we are all doomed! It must be the only explanation for this. Rockets simply do not fail unless acted upon by those who are afraid of what those missions will reveal. Those global warming deniers will go to any length necessary and they have!
Sorry, had to get it out there. Because I know within a week that some wingnut will be trumpeting that the launch was deliberately sabotaged by AGW deniers to prevent the truth from getting out.
The more rational among us know that launching anything into space is risky. Malfunctions happen and when you're dealing with what are essentially controlled, long duration explosions and hypersonic velocities, small malfunctions can become serious indeed.
In this case, the payload fairing (the cone on top of the rocket that protects the satellite within) failed come off when it was supposed to. As a result, the rocket wasn't able to maintain enough velocity to reach orbit. And even if it had, it would have still been a failure since the satellite would have been trapped within and unable to function.
A lot of things have to go right with a satellite launch to ensure success. Only one thing has to go wrong to guarantee failure.
Not a good day for the JPL team and Orbital Sciences who makes the Taurus XL booster. This has raised their failure rate to 1 in 4 and that's not a good place to be in the small launch vehicle world. I'm sure the launch insurer isn't happy either. Hopefully future launches will improve the vehicle's overall record.
Others seem to think the 63 inch fairing might be a issue. Although the other blogger states that Pegasus (which Taurus XL is derived from) is rocket meant to doom missions, its failure rate of 1 in 8 seems better than the current Taurus XL rate.
Or maybe those pesky global warming deniers are making it happen. You be the judge.
2 comments:
I believe you mean "failure rate" of 1 in 8, not "success rate".
Nobody'd put a payload on it if it had an 87.5% failure rate.
But three total failure and two low orbits out of 40 launches isn't too terrible to risk. (Obviously, given that it's still used.)
Ah, but how do you know it wasn't a GW-proponent sabotage to protect their religion: They connot risk the question being answered one way or another. If proven wrong, poof, there goes the religion. If proven right, there is no faith, with no faith there is god (AlGore)...
The Glo-bull warming faithful lose either way. :) They had to stop it!
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