SciAm has a list of all the recent launch failures.
Note that for the past three and a half years, every single one (including last night’s) was built in Russia or the Ukraine. And the last two American ones (not counting last night’s) were both Orbital (separation problem on Taurus). Prior to that, the last American one was the Falcon 1 test program, which should really count, since it was in fact a test program. Orbital has no experience with liquid propulsion, which is why they outsourced it to Ukraine. That appears to have been a mistake.
[Update a while later]
Orbital’s stock is down 17% this morning.
[Update a while later, just before Atlas V launch]
Eric Berger’s thoughts on the implications. I agree that it’s not that big a deal, but I hope it accelerates and end to our reliance on Russian hardware.
If you consider missions that left the payloads in the wrong orbit (especially if they can’t be eventually moved into the correct orbit), then the list is much longer. They didn’t include the ESA Soyuz launch from this summer that left two Galileo satellites in the wrong orbit. Last week’s Proton launch carrying a commsat delivered it to the wrong orbit. They may be able to salvage the satellite at the expense of on-board propellant, shortening the operational life. ULA just missed doing the same when the Centaur on a Delta-IV didn’t perform properly back in 2012. They were able to get the GPS satellite to the correct orbit but it was a close call. SpaceX lost a secondary payload when an engine failed during a Falcon 9 launch to the ISS a year or so ago, so that counts as a partial failure.
If you were to cherry pick the “three and a half years” to make a point, it would make sense to contrast this to actual number of rockets launched as well. Considering that Russia/Ukraine were launching at about twice as the rate compared to US, the failure stats are not that odd at all. If you do more, you fail more as well.
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com – also files 2012 Falcon9 CRS-1 sa failure.
I was never all that thrilled about OSC’s capabilities, having watched them since the start. But I don’t want to be unfair, the real culprit in the long term has been never having developed a commercially competitive launch industry in the US because costs stayed so high and the Apollo central planning syndrome
In defense of Orbital they had four successful launches of Antares prior to this one. I think it is admirable they manage to pull this thing off as well so far considering the amount of totally disparate suppliers they use. Orbital has always had a knack for making these disparate component things work together even if they are refurbishing solid ICBMs. I do think they should try to make more things in-house but they probably lack the capital to do so. Remember they were funded with what was leftover from Rockplane Kistler who was initially the other winner of COTS so they got less money than SpaceX to develop Antares.
In my opinion they should bring the first stage manufacturing back to the US. The Ukraine does have a world class aerospace industry including companies like Antonov (An-124) and there are the former headquarters for Yangel’s bureau. If you remember Korolev and Chelomei had Ukrainian origins. Even today they still manufacture Zenit for Sea Launch and have several cooperation deals with e.g. Brazil. Still the best way to ensure good quality control for Orbital IMO is to control the entire supply chain and bringing it in-house would solve this.
That said I don’t know the issue was the stage of the engine. If it was the engine then it is Aerojet’s responsibility. The engines may be old and Russian but they were responsible for the re-qualification program.
Not to mention that Ukraine currently is having troubles with Russia and it may just so happen that the factory will fall into Russian hands some day. Hopefully not but who knows what will happen.
A curious thing, looking at the video here… Is it just me, or does the rocket seem to hesitate, almost stall, at about 10 sec into the video? Is that usual? Is it a trick of the light?
It’s a great time to buy Orbital stock. They’re insured against the business loss in the event of such an event, and against the maximum probable loss to buildings in the launch area. Plus they estimate this will only delay the next launch three months. A great time to make a quick 17%.
I’m sorry Rand, but your comments on reliance on Russian hardware do not follow from the failure.
First, if the failure was in the engine then this has little to do with outsourcing the liquid propulsion development to Ukraine, and everything to do with using 50 year old mothballed engines who aren’t even in development anymore, regardless of the source. How come the RD-180 (whose development is paid for pretty much by the US) are so reliable?
And what does the “reliance on Russian hardware” have to do with anything? More like reliance on the free market and buying cheap half a century old hardware, which happens to be from Russia. For a libertarian your insistence on “buy American!” is inconsistent.
There is a lot more to it than antique Russian engines. Orbital outsourced the stage itself to Ukraine. The vast majority of launch failures in the past few years were rockets built in Russia or Ukraine.
And sorry, I think that it’s a bad idea to be reliant for hardware to a country whose foreign policy is inimical to ours. There is nothing unlibertarian about that.
FWIW Orbital tried to buy the Merlin engine from SpaceX. SpaceX refused to sell. It was in their right. But its not like Orbital had a lot of choices here considering they had little time and no know how in liquid propulsion.
I blame Aerojet since they were supposed to qualify these engines prior to flying it the problem was in the engine. If the problem was in the stage then I blame the Ukrainians.
The vast majority of launch failures in the past few years were rockets built in Russia or Ukraine.
The vast majority of the rockets that got to the pads over the last few years were built in Russia or Ukraine, and often integrated and/or integrated by foreign crews.
The vast majority of launch failures in the past few years were rockets built in Russia or Ukraine.
Not quite. Go to and look at the yearly stats:
2014 to date: 71 launches, ~37 Russian/Ukrainian (R/U) (Counts Atlas V and Antares)
2013: 81 launches, ~45 R/U.
2012: 78 launches, ~34 R/U.
2011: 84 launches, ~40 R/U
2010: 74 launches, ~37 R/U
The above site goes back to 1998. Knock yourself out.
They do launch a lot but most of those years it wasn’t half of all launches per year, much less a vast majority. Now, if you could find the numbers from the 1980s and before, they were impressive. The old Soviet Union typically launched 60+ space boosters each year. Satellites last a lot longer now than they did back then.
I’m not sure how that disputes what I wrote. I said failures, not launches.
The vast majority of the rockets that got to the pads over the last few years were built in Russia or Ukraine, and often integrated and/or integrated by foreign crews.
My point wasn’t meant to be addressed to you but to his statement that a vast majority of rockets in the last few years were built in Russia or Ukraine. I copied the wrong line of text. It is impressive how many launches have Russian or Ukrainian origins but not a vast majority.