Thursday, July 31, 2014

To Err Is Human; To Error Is...Well...Space Engineering


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


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