We've confirmed a clean release from the aircraft. However, the mission terminated shortly into the flight. Cosmic Girl and our flight crew are safe and returning to base.
However, that still doesn’t give a clue about what happened because they’d of course use an in-flight abort when things went awry.
They tweeted a list of milestones in the flight and It looks like they didn’t accomplish much today. This was a bad miss. And why was this so pressing that it couldn’t have waited a week? Making your people work a national holiday after being unconstitutionally couped up for two months?
On a semi-related note, Virgin Orbit has always been the most disgusting display of virtue signaling in New Space – examples being headsnake white knight Will Pomerantz and their pointless bag squeezing ventilators complete with Gavin Newsome photo op. Did you see the picture today of the ground crew wearing the disposable plastic butcher’s aprons?! Gimme a break.
From what I’ve read, they did get a clean release and first stage ignition. The anomaly happened soon afterwards, not no additional information is available as of now.
Commercially, it’s hard to see this as anything but a very long shot, especially with Branson in straitened circumstances. They may not have had the money to delay the launch for something as mundane as a holiday.
I have trouble believing the problems they avoid with an air launch come close to the problems and complexity it adds. SpaceX has had a couple of aborts after ignition that they recovered from. That’s not going to be an option here.
That’s an interesting point. However, with only 1 engine instead of 9, perhaps the chances of having an engine start issue on launch is less for VG than it is for SpaceX. But your point stands; if VG has an engine start issue, it’s after release and the rocket will be lost.
Falcon 9 has survived a couple of in-flight engine failures. The point being, VG is much more likely to suffer an engine failure than SpaceX is to suffer 9 simultaneous engine failures. One of the failures was the rupture of an oxygen dome, which blew off part of the engine bay fairing, but it continued on to orbit. The other was a flameout caused by an isopropyl alcohol fire in a sensor line. The rocket continued on to stage separation, but because it was a landing engine, the booster was lost (something expendable rockets don’t have to worry about, since they’re always lost). Remember when Falcon 1 suffered an engine failure, Like all single engine rockets it responded by crashing and exploding.
In general aviation, twin engine planes used to be very popular but they aren’t much any more. The twins produced back then (late 1940s through the late 1970s) had very marginal performance in an engine out situation, especially a failure shortly after take off when the demands for power are the highest. Getting a light twin cleaned up and climbing in that situation was demanding. Some people actually advocated chopping the other throttle and landing straight ahead, just like you do in a single engine plane engine out situation. In that case, having two engines just doubled your chances of losing one of them and, if your piloting skills weren’t up to the task, going down. As the comedian Ron White said, the remaining engine was good enough to get you to the scene of the crash.
Having 9 engines increases your chances of losing one of them. The Falcon 9 is so well engineered that it can survive the loss of an engine even at liftoff, and at certain points in the flight, can survive the loss of more than one engine. Single engine rockets – once mature – may have a lower probability of losing an engine but the results of doing so are the loss of the rocket, the same as for most other rockets with more than a single engine for the first stage. The Falcon 9 is the happy exception. I don’t know if the same applies to the Electron rocket with its 9 Rutherford engines.
A twin engine rocket is LOM if it loses one engine. This is an old argument, dating back to idiocy like “cluster’s last stand.” I still hear OldSpace types saying, “If you have engine-out capability, you have too many engines.” Dumb.
I think Electron has too little margin for meaningful engine out capability, considering they have to jetison spent batteries. The only multi-engine rocket with potential engine-out capacity would be Proton, with six engines, but it’s probably too fragile. There’s an interesting video of one disintegrating during launch.
Virgin has released a video. It appears the engine cut out after about 4 seconds. Fuel starvation, perhaps?
I can’t tell what the angle of attack was. It looks like the gimbal is hard over as it tried to get its nose up. It’s too soon for the fuel to slosh or centrifuge off the intake though. The tanks are full at that point.
Tweet with radar image of a probable break up.
However, that still doesn’t give a clue about what happened because they’d of course use an in-flight abort when things went awry.
They tweeted a list of milestones in the flight and It looks like they didn’t accomplish much today. This was a bad miss. And why was this so pressing that it couldn’t have waited a week? Making your people work a national holiday after being unconstitutionally couped up for two months?
On a semi-related note, Virgin Orbit has always been the most disgusting display of virtue signaling in New Space – examples being headsnake white knight Will Pomerantz and their pointless bag squeezing ventilators complete with Gavin Newsome photo op. Did you see the picture today of the ground crew wearing the disposable plastic butcher’s aprons?! Gimme a break.
From what I’ve read, they did get a clean release and first stage ignition. The anomaly happened soon afterwards, not no additional information is available as of now.
Commercially, it’s hard to see this as anything but a very long shot, especially with Branson in straitened circumstances. They may not have had the money to delay the launch for something as mundane as a holiday.
I have trouble believing the problems they avoid with an air launch come close to the problems and complexity it adds. SpaceX has had a couple of aborts after ignition that they recovered from. That’s not going to be an option here.
That’s an interesting point. However, with only 1 engine instead of 9, perhaps the chances of having an engine start issue on launch is less for VG than it is for SpaceX. But your point stands; if VG has an engine start issue, it’s after release and the rocket will be lost.
Falcon 9 has survived a couple of in-flight engine failures. The point being, VG is much more likely to suffer an engine failure than SpaceX is to suffer 9 simultaneous engine failures. One of the failures was the rupture of an oxygen dome, which blew off part of the engine bay fairing, but it continued on to orbit. The other was a flameout caused by an isopropyl alcohol fire in a sensor line. The rocket continued on to stage separation, but because it was a landing engine, the booster was lost (something expendable rockets don’t have to worry about, since they’re always lost). Remember when Falcon 1 suffered an engine failure, Like all single engine rockets it responded by crashing and exploding.
In general aviation, twin engine planes used to be very popular but they aren’t much any more. The twins produced back then (late 1940s through the late 1970s) had very marginal performance in an engine out situation, especially a failure shortly after take off when the demands for power are the highest. Getting a light twin cleaned up and climbing in that situation was demanding. Some people actually advocated chopping the other throttle and landing straight ahead, just like you do in a single engine plane engine out situation. In that case, having two engines just doubled your chances of losing one of them and, if your piloting skills weren’t up to the task, going down. As the comedian Ron White said, the remaining engine was good enough to get you to the scene of the crash.
Having 9 engines increases your chances of losing one of them. The Falcon 9 is so well engineered that it can survive the loss of an engine even at liftoff, and at certain points in the flight, can survive the loss of more than one engine. Single engine rockets – once mature – may have a lower probability of losing an engine but the results of doing so are the loss of the rocket, the same as for most other rockets with more than a single engine for the first stage. The Falcon 9 is the happy exception. I don’t know if the same applies to the Electron rocket with its 9 Rutherford engines.
A twin engine rocket is LOM if it loses one engine. This is an old argument, dating back to idiocy like “cluster’s last stand.” I still hear OldSpace types saying, “If you have engine-out capability, you have too many engines.” Dumb.
I think Electron has too little margin for meaningful engine out capability, considering they have to jetison spent batteries. The only multi-engine rocket with potential engine-out capacity would be Proton, with six engines, but it’s probably too fragile. There’s an interesting video of one disintegrating during launch.
Virgin has released a video. It appears the engine cut out after about 4 seconds. Fuel starvation, perhaps?
https://virginorbit.com/mission-recap-our-first-launch-demo/
I can’t tell what the angle of attack was. It looks like the gimbal is hard over as it tried to get its nose up. It’s too soon for the fuel to slosh or centrifuge off the intake though. The tanks are full at that point.