Private sector designing spacecraft. Yeah, about that....Follow

The private sector designed Tarus XL is now 2 for 2 in destroying high profile climate observation satilites now (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory for the last one). And suprise suprise, it failed for the exact same reasons. Fairing seperation isn't a new concept, and of all the elements involved in launching a rocket it is probably one of the simplest. So, because of that failure, a single company has now cost NASA and the taxpayers of the united states upwards of $750 million dollars.

**** like this is the reason we need a strong, focused government run space program. One that can successfully pick a direction for advancing spaceflight that makes sense and isn't a complete backwards movement. We need a heavy lift rocket. We need a manouverable orbital platform (shuttle). The ISS should be twice the size it is by now.

Instead, we get stuck with sub-par homebuilt launchers and russian soyuz capsuls.

A revitalized space program would go a long way towards showing people the economy is recovering, but I fear that won't happen in my lifetime at this rate.

Someday, we'll tell our children that we were spacemen, once. But that those days are long gone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/04/taurus-rocket-glory-satellite-earth

Taurus rocket carrying Glory climate satellite falls back to EarthThe Glory Earth observation satellite was designed to help scientists understand how the sun and aerosols affect climate

An Earth observation satellite launched by Nasa on Friday morning has failed mid-flight because the nose cone of the rocket carrying it did not detach properly.

The loss of the satellite is the second failure in a row for the Taurus XL rocket, which has been plagued by technical glitches for some time.

The rocket blasted off from Vandenberg airforce base in California at 2.09am local time (10.09 GMT) but was declared a failure by Nasa's launch director, Omar Baez, five minutes later.

The rocket was carrying the Glory observation satellite, which was designed to help scientists understand how the sun and particles of matter in the atmosphere called aerosols affect the Earth's climate.

Also aboard were three smaller satellites called CubeSats designed and built by university and college students.

The rocket is thought to have come down in the ocean.

The US space agency and the rocket's manufacturer, Orbital Sciences, had spent the past two years fixing problems with onboard systems designed to blast the nose cone free of the rocket before it reaches orbit.

The rocket reached an altitude of 100 miles after the first stage separation before falling back to Earth with the nose cone still attached. Video: Nasa The rocket reached an altitude of more than 100 miles and a speed of 9,500 miles per hour before sensors revealed that the nose cone had failed to separate. With the cone still in place, the rocket was too heavy to reach orbit.

The Taurus rocket went into service in 1994 and has put 10 satellites into orbit. The failure today was the third in its history.

The private sector can't afford the failures that the Government can. Today, the government also cannot afford the failures either. Maybe the private sector will succeed and then the government might learn from them. I do think the private sector will be our future not the government. When you work for the government you realize that its just scary that your life depends upon the lowest bidder.

Edited, Mar 6th 2011 8:46am by Tailmon

Geico and a night at a Holiday Inn Express.

More than 70%? That's first class.

The problem isn't really that the separation failed. The problem is that we don't build equipment capable of overcoming these failures. I mean really, how much is a crossover cable?

But they have SUPER AWESOME GO FASTER STRIPES!!!!

Just out of curiosity (and laziness as I sure as sh:t won't be looking it up...) what was the failure rate of the Saturn V rocket in the early years of its development? How many people died in one? The space shuttle killed more than a dozen people after it was put in to production. The first 2 years of the Titan rocket they were 19-8.

There is no good reason not to have private companies take over for NASA. The taxpayers should have had their satellite insured.

Apollo one didn't get off the launch pad iirc. Hmmm nevermind, I was just informed that Saturn V began with apollo 4 not 1 carry on nothing to see here.

Edited, Mar 9th 2011 8:37am by rdmcandie

The Apollo 1 tragedy, while devistating and a huge loss to nasa and the country, was not due to the rocket in any part. It was the capsule, filled with pure oxygen that caught fire and doomed those three astronauts. I believe the capsule wasn't even mounted on the rocket at the time because it was a system test, not the actual all up launch but I'm not 100% sure.

So what you need to see is a commercial space industry with strong regulations. You should just apply to become a Canadian. While we won't do fuck all for the commercial space industry, we've got strong regulation of industry down quite well.

Depends on the style of regulation. Far too often you get regulatory capture situations where an artificial barrier to entry is created, as opposed to a situation where the regulation works as intended. If it were to end up heavily incentivising safe and efficient design and construction of spacecraft, that would be the ideal.

The space transportation industry should be private. It would be much more efficient and advance at a much greater pace. That being said I think governments should still have space programs. There are things that are just not commercially viable until they've been done once by a government entity willing to dump money into something just to advance human knowledge.

I'm not talking about developing TVs and Cars, I'm talking about sailing to North America. There would be no reason to build ocean crossing boats if nobody had sailed to North America in order to discover it first. You need government to do the initial exploration in order for business to have a reason to get there and do the more detailed work.

There's no money in going to Mars. It will never happen if business has to do it. If the government does it we gain a lot of knowledge, some of that knowledge will have commercial applications giving business a reason to go to Mars.

I'm talking about creating industries not products.