We’ve all heard the adage. “To err is human”.
It means for one to go astray in a way of thinking, or morally. But to
error…that’s a different beast entirely. Sometimes it can be a case of poor judgment,
such as in the sanctioning of Russia’s lewd lizard love-fest which culminated
in the loss of contact with the gecko sex pod in orbital space. Sometimes it
can be a case of oversight, such as in the miscalculation of the difference
zero-gravity would make on the lens in the Hubble telescope.
Whether we’re missing out on “Game of Geckos”
porn in space due to transmission failure or watching incognito spy satellites
burn up spectacularly in sub-orbital space for all to see, there is one thing
that is prevalent.
Getting to space is freakin’ hard.
Today at TI&IT we’re going to explore the
deepest reaches of the true final frontier; spaceflights historical basement of
catastrophic failures. And it isn’t just Russia, NASA, and the ESA that are
prone to incredible mishaps.
Let’s talk about some of the light-hearted
“Whoopsies!” the international community has faced in the race to outer-space.
“So Uh…This is in
Inches Right?”
In November of 1999, the Scientific Community
turned a collective facepalm to the United States when NASA’s doomed
spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter, just vanished. Scientists knew what had
happened. It was gone, for good. Now the question remained, why had their $125 million Marvin the
Martian spy satellite exploded? (Maybe they should have added a Pu-36 Explosive
Space Modulator…)
Turns out, private contracting firm Lockheed
Martin made a slight boo-boo. That
boo-boo being they programmed the landing software to tell the craft to make
its calculations in terms of inches and pounds instead of meters and newtons.
Because of this the Weather Channel never got the chance to give us a report
from the red planet.
But the $125 million price tag was paltry in
comparison to what happened at NASA just three years ago…
For the Glory
of…Oh…You Exploded…
On March 4th 2011, NASA launched
their Taurus XL Booster rocket carrying the climate satellite “Glory” on board.
The Taurus is a four stage rocket, meaning it will separate pieces of itself as
it gets higher and higher into the atmosphere in order to gain more altitude.
The problem was that the nose cone didn’t separate, so when the rocket reached
a certain height it became too heavy versus the amount of fuel left and plunged
into the Pacific Ocean.
Turns out, this wasn’t even the first time a
Taurus Rocket pulled this on them. Two years prior to this launch in 2009 they
had a similar problem with another launch. The Glory mission cost them a
whopping $424 million. The mission in 2009 you ask? Around $275 million, totaling
NASA’s two year losses at $700 million dollars. That can’t feel good on the
wallet…
But not much can trump the Russian’s. No
matter how many rockets and ships we blow up, we’ll never reach the insanity
levels of the Iron Curtain…
Russia’s Cutting-Edge…Non-Existent
Technology…
What do most of you think of when someone says
“The Cutting-Edge”? Do you think of fancy new computers? Holographic projections?
Cloning? (Toe-pick?) Regardless of what you
think of, we’re going to talk about what the Russian’s thought. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong made
their famous literal moonwalk across the surface of our rocky little satellite,
and the Russian’s were, well, miffed, to say the least.
So they packed their iron balls into their
space suits and came up with a plan. Screw the moon, Russia was going to Mars
and Venus. Their scientists predicted it would take three years (yeah right…)
and they were going to not only fly to Mars, but land on it and claim it in the
name of Mother Russia as well…after building a pole to pole train system!
How were they going to keep their cosmonauts
alive during this arduous journey you ask? Why, by relying on technology that
didn’t even exist yet of course! They were going to grow their food in
greenhouses onboard the ship. And as far as their cosmonauts floating around in
space for three years? They were, “just hoping for the best when it comes to
periods of prolonged weightlessness since no one had gone longer than a few
days in space before.”
Obviously this never happened. Like most of
their rockets at that time, the plans never got off the ground. Several
missions were conducted between 69’ and 71’ but every time the rocket would
come back in pieces. Turns out, they weren’t very trusting of American
technology (even though the Americans had already done it proper…) and instead
of using liquid oxygen and hydrogen for fuel they decided it was smarter to use
Benzene and Kerosene. How you say…boom?
Kerosene and Benzene when mixed together are
highly explosive. But Russian’s have testicles made of titanium, so to hell
with basic chemistry! As it were, Russian men weren’t the only ones with
cahonies of steel. Turns out, Canine cahnoies were built Kremlin tough as well…
Space Puppies
Between 1951 and 1966 the Soviet’s sent Air
Bud into orbit about twenty times. Unfortunately it wasn’t Air Bud, it was a
different dog every time, because unlike Uncle Sam’s Orbital Chimpanzee’s the
Russian’s had no intention of bringing the dogs back home, like their cosmonaut
counterparts would soon come to realize, it seems their canine lives were
expendable for the glory of Russia!
Perhaps the most famous of these Moon-bound
mongrels was the Husky-Terrier mix Laika, immortalized forever above by Romania’s
1959 postage stamp. Laika, like all the space pups before her, was never
planned to return home, she was just meant to test the effects of space on life-forms.
Their official report of her demise, while tragic, was acceptable. A week or
less into her journey, she ate her poisoned food and died peacefully.
…except that is NOT what happened.
The Sputnik-2 (otherwise known as Laika’s
coffin) wasn’t designed to carry a passenger; it was much heavier than anything
the United States had even been contemplating sending into orbit. In 2002 it
was finally revealed how Laika died, overheating and stress. The temperature
inside the capsule rose to hundreds of degrees, humidity increased, and five to
seven hours into her flight, Laika stopped transmitting vital signs to mission
control.
Despite the heartrending nature of her demise
Laika taught us something invaluable about space, so her sacrifice was not in vain (as an animal lover it still
makes me sad though…). Laika proved that humans could withstand extended
periods of weightlessness and paved the way for human space flight.
But Russia and the U.S. aren’t the only
nations that have suffered “hiccups” in their space programs. In fact, it seems
every nation that enters the space race has the idea in their head that, “anything
you can do I can do better!” But as I said before, getting to space is hard,
and the next three nations and private contracting company had to discover that
the hard way.
Missed it by a “Naro”
Margin
In 2009, South Korea joined the game with its
rocket, initially named the KSLV (Korea Space Launch Vehicle) but later changed
due to copyright infringement to the Naro-1…(I’m just kidding… I have no idea
who owns what patents anymore…). Regardless of why the name was changed, Naro
had a few problems. Namely…it didn’t accomplish anything.
Just like our Glory mission, parts failed to
disengage, making the rocket too heavy to achieve orbit and sending it crashing
back down to the world below. (Too bad it couldn’t have landed on their
neighbors “Dear Leader” instead.) The mission, costing 500 billion won
(equivalent to about $450 million in United States) was a bust. So was the follow-up
in 2010. In fact, it wouldn't be until 2013 when they would achieve their plans
with the Naro-3.
Not so easy is it South Korea?
And what about our next contestant? Like the
United States they used a monkey but like Russia it seems they may not have had
Bozo the Bonobos best interests in their hearts. Let’s head on over to Iran for
a U.N. sanctioned silo visitation! (Just kidding Iranians, you know I love
you!)
“Iran’s Attempt to
Launch a Monkey into Space Fails”
That is a headline to a real article. No joke.
You can’t make this stuff up.
In 2011, Iran attempted to join the rest of
the astrologically accustomed world by launching a live Rhesus monkey into
space. The test was designed to prove whether or not their technology was where
it needed to be in order for human spaceflight to be achieved by their nation.
That being said however…
…It was not.
For reasons undisclosed it seems by the
country, the mission was a smashing failure. Pishgam Kavoshgar (which means “Explorer
Pioneer” in Farsi) was a doomed launch, and the Pishgam of the equation, the
Rhesus monkey, never got to see the moon up close.
Third Times a Charm…
…or not. In 2011, the third launch in a week
of the ShiJian series of Chinese rockets proved too much for them to handle.
The first two missions however had been successful, but the reasons for
launching them? They never told us. The Chinese were no strangers to failures
or success in the space race competition either. They’d been in the game since
the 1950s and continued building ballistics throughout the Cold War…just in
case.
They have mastered space flight though as
well as anyone else has. They recovered from the 2011 incident by turning
around and launching several successful unmanned missions to the moon,
including their first soft lunar landing. (We talked about that before, you can
read all about it here.)
And now for the final contestant on our list…the
moment you’ve all been waiting for!
“Prime” time…
Amazon.com: Now
Shipping To Space!
In 2011, (seems to be a theme here…), Jeff
Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com and mastermind behind Blue Origin,
suffered some setbacks to privatized space flight. In an apparent attempt to
deliver Katy Perry CDs and J.K. Rowling novels to the moon their first
sub-orbital craft had to email the customer and return their money.
An instrumentation failure caused the ground
team to have to terminate the thrust on the rocket. After a 25 mile journey it
came crashing back down... Just like Jeff Bezos’ dreams of building the first
corporation on the moon that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t own. To date there have
been several successful launches, but privatized space flight is still a ways
off from being accessible for the general consumer.
Soooo… Yeah…
So we can all agree that this last decade has
been one that saw many failures for the space bound world. Iran and South Korea
got to experience what it felt like when really expensive toys exploded, a
feeling the United States, Russia, and China were already well acquainted with.
Privatized flight saw some expensive setbacks, and Rhesus monkeys are not well
enough represented in the scientific community.
All of that aside, we can also all agree that
getting to space, is a lot harder than we seem to think, and you can thank the
brave Space Puppies of 1957 like Laika and the valiant heroes of 2011 like
Pishgam for making it possible for the lot us bipedal flesh bags.
Thanks for reading everyone!
-
Ryan
Thanks for reading
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and comment as well! If you want to know more about any of the topics discussed
above today feel free to follow any of the links below. Happy Learning everyone
and thank you for your continued support!
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