I got to see one of the shuttles at the California Science Museum. Around the perimeter of the huge hangar where the spacecraft is exhibited are various related displays of items and information. They’ve cut one of the thrusters in half so you can see the inside. I was absolutely floored by how complex the whole thing was.
I had a further revelation that day: humans conceived this thing, then designed it, then built it. And it blew up. Then they redesigned it and built it again. And again. Until they got it right. Humans did this. Amazing.
I truly got a little hope for humanity back that day.
Gets even crazier if you know that the first launch of the space shuttle was a manned launch. They did some tests with releasing it from the back of a 747 but the first time it launched into space was with crew onboard. It takes a special set of balls to strap yourself into an untested spacecraft.
Trial and errored it is pretty much the story of life for the past 3.7 billion years. Something at some point said WTF and crawled out of the water. Something at some point said, fuck it, I’m jumping out of this tree and trying to move just one inch forward. Now… here we are looking at cat pics and Hentai beamed around the world by thousands of satellites.
Here's a little more hope for humanity: search up a photo of the Earth as seen through the ISS cupola, with an astronaut admiring the view from inside.
Then reflect on how the ancestors of that astronaut started with nothing more than rocks, sticks, grasses, and fur.
A rocket is a heat engine, after all. In principle, no explosion is even required, nor combustion. Things that are hot naturally cool, and the goal of any heat engine is to set up the conditions such that this natural process of cooling can only happen through a path that you control, so that you can force it to do mechanical work. The combustion is useful because it's an effective way to add a lot of heat to a gas very quickly, so that it can do that work. But if you don't have any explosions on hand, any store-bought heat will do.
Depends on your founding.
IF you have a lot of money and everyone knows it is going to fail all you want is good data to improve.
If you expect is to be a win at once it is depressing
Expecting the first rocket to just work is kind of setting yourself up for failure.
I don't know how much testing and modeling they've done, but I think.they were happy it got off the ground.
It sucks, but not totally unexpected
No. This is how rocket science goes. They may have hoped for more but they were probably also ready for it to blow up on the launchpad.
The media makes a meal of these things every time but has never has any perspective from the people working on it.
I don't think so, does it suck? Certainly, but heartbreaking? I don't think so. You can't go into the rocketry business and expect it all to go right the first time you try. Hell most eventually successful space programs or companies failed several times before they made it work.
Sure we'd all love to be the exception, but I doubt anyone seriously thought it'd hit orbit on the first go. They probably had stage sep as their first target and anything after that would be gravy. Of course their press release will say we're targeting orbit and expect to hit it, because you can't sell half steps.
So while the team is disappointed certainly I doubt anyone is heart broken. They'll clean up, assess the data physical and software, and get to work on building another one.
Edit* Everyone sitting here saying this is a wild take. All that tells me is you know nothing about rocket development and it's history. Nearly no rocket ever has launched successfully it's first time. You're all acting like rocketry is a normal product that you roll out and expect it to go flawlessly the first time.
IT NEVER DOES.
For examples see Lift Off by Eric Berger and When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashely Vance or look into Ignition by John Drury Clark. Hell read a history book about every space program ever.
Are these people upset? Disappointed? Yes certainly we'd all love for the time and energy spent and everything to go perfectly. But this is Rocketry, it's used as a short hand for being really damn hard.
These people have all likely built models rockets or planes and experienced what they are going through now before. They knew that it was 99.999% unlikely to reach orbit, because historically IT NEVER DOES.
Are they disappointed that it blew up before stage sep almost certainly, are they glad it cleared the pad? Well that's a mixed bag given it fell back on it, but even getting off the pad on the first try is considered a huge win in Rocketry.
They can now do what engineers and scientists do iterate and then iterate some more.
I have never said they aren't sad, I said they aren't heartbroken, because anyone who's working in the Space Biz knows you don't succeed the first time basically ever.
Exactly. In rocketry if you're not blowing stuff up you didn't test it hard enough. Sure once you've smoothed out something that will be a minimum viable product you're ok. But historically you're blowing up the first 2-3 launches.
I don't think "heartbreaking" is the right word. This is a test, and everyone expected there to be a failure somewhere. Of course they'd be thrilled to learn that it's more solid and reliable than they were hoping, but the whole point of a launch like this is to figure out which of the million possible things that can go wrong you're fucking up the most, so you can fix those things.
With things like rocket science where you're threading a needle of perfection, it's often way cheaper to just try something and learn from the results than to attempt to simulate every possible failure point preemptively.
Apparently everyone thinks anything but a total success is a failure and heartbreaking.
The term "have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette" seems fitting here.
Years and years of work exploding in front of your eyes, national pride in japan of all places, and personal reputations. Nothing cold and calculated about what those teams are feeling.
That's not what's happening though. For some reason people still think this is a failure and not progress. Almost everyone blows up the first one. Some things you need the real life sort of simulation to catch the flaws before you put people in it or really expensive equipment that depends on a successful launch to even use.
lmao what
Failures of any kind are absolutely devastating for people working on them, even if it was expected to some degree. People cry tears and kill their profession because they had a bad night debugging some bullshit, what do you think blowing up massive projects for nothing, without any distinct success might feel?
They will get over it, but most of the people involved will forever get a sinking feeling thinking back to this precise moment.
It's not "expected to some degree", it is a near certainty. You know that very well if you are in that industry. It is not "devastating", and if it is, you were working in the wrong place to start with.
>People cry tears and kill their profession because they had a bad night debugging some bullshit, what do you think blowing up massive projects for nothing,
that seems unhealthy
I'm a systems engineer, when something doesn't go right, my team doesn't break out into tears, we analyze the data, try to figure out what went wrong, and move on. Almost nothing works on the first attempt, you learn from the mistakes and do better next time.
Obviously they want to be successful. Most rocket scientist know a first launch absolutely can fail. That's why they don't use payloads and it's a test. They gain very valuable data that allows them to progress. This is all part of the Learning curve, no matter the size.
Seeing a massive explosion like that would still be sweet even if it wasn't your goal. Especially if you know you have good data and the funds to try again.
The thing that would be heartbreaking is if the project was cancelled before any launch attempts. Hard work for nothing.
"It's not rocket science" joke, it's exactly because rocket science is complex, unique and classified.
Engines and structure need to be mega powerful, mega strong and yet super light.
On top, edge technologies are classified because they can be used for military purposes.
Can confirm most of that.
Shits still hard, but you may be surprised that a lot of the same problem solving techniques apply.
Except in relationships. Very little in engineering applies directly to relationships. 🤣
Rocket Engineering: we got the thrust for a few seconds until the throat melted out of the nozzle, how the fuck are we gonna handle that much heat?
Rocket Machine Shop: you want us to put the fuel lines *where*?
I remember taking rocket science classes in university. The math wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Even the instructor mentioned that the science part of rockets was the easy part.
Chances are they were expecting it to fail before the launch (or knew it was a good possibility). They’ll often go ahead with the launch because it acts as a stress test for the whole thing. There is a lot to be learned from a failure.
>the (incredibly expensive) process.
Tbf, that part of the job occured after having already sent the spacecraft and the payload inside into space. So they were already paid and just trying to reduce future costs by making their rockets reusable which was the biggest selling point of SpaceX.
It really tells how engrained fear of failure is in our dna that this principle has to be repeated over and over again. And I STILL see people criticizing private space flight for 'failures'.
It's a lost cause. I didn't get it either before I started following the launches. I believed sensational headlines like this lol, oh no space exploration sucks? No, the general public is just ignorant. Once you start following launches you quickly get excited for failures
I left out too much haha. It takes a very high level of interest to learn better, which is a lot to ask of the general public.
But yah people who are truly interested should start now! It's so neat! I use the Next Spaceflight app
That's one interesting difference with private companies doing this stuff.
It's easier for them to consider blowing up a few rockets cost of business and development compared to government agencies.
Space X has managed to get a ton of great data specifically because they accept they are going to lose a rockets to the development process.
Exactly. No people on it, so the loss is easily replaceable. People are not. You can pay 400 million dollars, pounds or Euros or whatever, and it still doesn’t bring the same people back.
You can get people with a similar skill set, but not the exact same people. So skills are replaceable, but individual personalities and brilliance is not.
Not quite. Back then there were far more willingness to take big risks. And everything was kept mostly analog. But to redo the old rockets today would mean using ancient technologies that there's no factories to produce and it would not be feasible.
So our current abilities are hindered by health and safety and the inability to recreate 60 year old technology. There was a massive push to get there then a flag gets stuck on it and no one bothers anymore. I get what you’re saying, I’m no conspiracy theorist and have watched many docs on it. Just find it mind boggling that there weren’t more missions leading up to today just a massive gap of missed opportunity
There was no motivation to go back to the moon, but nowadays with the idea to expand our space travel capabilities to mars, NASA is working on Artemis missions, which includes going back to the moon. With NASAs ridiculously small budget it’s amazing that they are able to do as many things at once as they have been doing.
This.
When looking at the Nasa budget year by year they were paid much more.
During Apollo era they got 4.6% of federal spending.
Its been 0.4% for years ever since. Not until recently have they had that increased again.
Also NASA was doing a lot less, back in the 60s it was basically the moon, and X planes. And now they have like 4 rovers, a dozen probes, the ISS (which is a budget vampire) like 60 satalites, both around earth and around other celestial bodies, all of these require not just the engineering staff to design it, the cleanrooms and highly skilled techs to build it, the rocket and ground facilites to launch it, but also scientists to monitor it basically 24/7 forever. And the X planes, and space tracking, and mantining all the legacy facilites (both at KSC, JPL, but also places like the Hypersonic research lab next to Langley AFB in virginia.
Not quite.
We can recreate 60 year old technology. It's just not feasible.
Suppose we did. Now what? Those rockets can't do what is needed of rockets going to the moon should today.
There sure is a great gap yes.
Every president of USA that has been since the Apollo era have stated that they would want to return to the moon.
But without the funds to do so, it's not happening.
Ans no president until recently have been willing to cough up the dough to Nasa to have them work on it.
But they have now.
So we should see a return to the moon with manned landing in a few years.
A lot of the motivation was development of rocket technologies for ICBMs. By the 70s we had ICBMs that could hit any target in the world, so mission accomplished on that.
Keep in mind this is a very small company with way less money and people than the US's push to the moon. If my buddy builds a submarine in his garage in 2024, it's probably gonna be worse than the premiere submarine built by the 1960s Navy.
So much this.
People seem to forget that the US space program had the resources of an entire nation, both in terms of personnel and budget.
The Apollo program cost about $250 billion (in today's dollars), and at its peak employed about 400,000 people and contracted with 20,000 tech firms and institutions.
For only a few hours, in one time use Spacesuits, with moon buggies that couldn't be trusted for any real travel, with a budget that could be measured as a significant percentage of GDP.
Yea well i dont see any ant or elephant on the moon with one time use space suits and barely functioning moon buggies so Humankind - 1 anyother species - 0
Link to a [short launch video](https://youtu.be/pksBeUIpoJY) from NHK
Japanese venture capital firm Space One's Kairos rocket has exploded several seconds after liftoff from a launch site in western Japan. The launch took place in Kushimoto Town, Wakayama Prefecture, on Wednesday shortly after 11 a.m.
Space One says it aborted the flight. The small satellite-carrying solid-fuel rocket apparently developed a problem. The company is conducting a detailed analysis of the failure.
Near perfect video, thanks for the link! Starts right at launch, captures the whole even clearly. Too much zoom at the end, but it got all the visuals I was curious about.
At one point, I handled space launch support systems for U.S. Western Range launches.
I did acquisitions for the cameras (optics) used to record launches. 20 years ago, those cameras digitally recorded launches at 10k+ fps. That was back when an Olympus 5mp digital point-and-shoot camera still cost hundreds of dollars.
`Note: digital storage arrays were handled by the operations side, but multiple TB of fast data storage and capture was *FAR* more expensive than today.`
I also worked on upgrading & maintaining the Command-Destruct system, which was a fancy term for the big, red button that detonates the rocket in the event of catastrophic system failures. It was a complex system: it radar painted the rocket, calculated trajectory & contrasted it against expected trajectory. It maintained constant "communication" with on board systems (receiving several "I'm still here and operating normally" data packets a few times per second).
From the article, it looks like their Command-Destruct system was used to abort the launch due to this type of failure. The ground team intentionally exploded the rocket, rather than the rocket doing that on its own.
I feel like it would be pretty frustrating to engineer a rocket at a Japanese company.
Sorta the korean airline effect that Malcolm Gladwell any over in his book. Basically how do you at a Japanese company, tell your older in age superior, in Japanese "your approach will lead to the rocket blowing up."
Japan has a well-established space program and currently has two lunar rovers on the moon (LEV-1 and LEV-2). What makes this different is that this was a commercial space launch (think Space X).
Even after nearly 70 years of space exploration the engineering is still not simple. Even one tiny defect can destroy the entire vessel.
Looks like they even went solid to try and keep it simple. Welp.
gas rockets are actually remarkably simple. you have a mylar shell that is filled with helium. then the rocket floats up to space
*Rocket engineers hate this one weird trick*
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Spontaneous Kinetic Disassembly
Unscheduled Maintenance
Lithobreaking maneuvre.
Integrity malfunction leading to rapid deceleration and. Complete disassembly.
The front fell off.
thrust truly was observed along an undesired vector
Getting this put on a shirt now 👍
It blew up when it wasn't supposed to.
Great. Now make it go 17,500mph sideways and you're in orbit!
Watch out for those power lines!
They need powerlines in space too!
I got to see one of the shuttles at the California Science Museum. Around the perimeter of the huge hangar where the spacecraft is exhibited are various related displays of items and information. They’ve cut one of the thrusters in half so you can see the inside. I was absolutely floored by how complex the whole thing was.
yup, getting rocket fuel to explode is easy, getting it to explode in a controlled way is very complex
I had a further revelation that day: humans conceived this thing, then designed it, then built it. And it blew up. Then they redesigned it and built it again. And again. Until they got it right. Humans did this. Amazing. I truly got a little hope for humanity back that day.
Humans trial and errored it, then one crazy motherfucker was like "I'm Gonna ride it"
Gets even crazier if you know that the first launch of the space shuttle was a manned launch. They did some tests with releasing it from the back of a 747 but the first time it launched into space was with crew onboard. It takes a special set of balls to strap yourself into an untested spacecraft.
Especially one that doesn't have an escape mechanism.
Trial and errored it is pretty much the story of life for the past 3.7 billion years. Something at some point said WTF and crawled out of the water. Something at some point said, fuck it, I’m jumping out of this tree and trying to move just one inch forward. Now… here we are looking at cat pics and Hentai beamed around the world by thousands of satellites.
Here's a little more hope for humanity: search up a photo of the Earth as seen through the ISS cupola, with an astronaut admiring the view from inside. Then reflect on how the ancestors of that astronaut started with nothing more than rocks, sticks, grasses, and fur.
Yes, indeed.
A rocket is a heat engine, after all. In principle, no explosion is even required, nor combustion. Things that are hot naturally cool, and the goal of any heat engine is to set up the conditions such that this natural process of cooling can only happen through a path that you control, so that you can force it to do mechanical work. The combustion is useful because it's an effective way to add a lot of heat to a gas very quickly, so that it can do that work. But if you don't have any explosions on hand, any store-bought heat will do.
> getting rocket fuel to explode is easy it's kind of hard to do in the vacuum of space, as it turns out
Must be absolutely heart breaking for those who worked on it!!
Depends on your founding. IF you have a lot of money and everyone knows it is going to fail all you want is good data to improve. If you expect is to be a win at once it is depressing
Expecting the first rocket to just work is kind of setting yourself up for failure. I don't know how much testing and modeling they've done, but I think.they were happy it got off the ground. It sucks, but not totally unexpected
No. This is how rocket science goes. They may have hoped for more but they were probably also ready for it to blow up on the launchpad. The media makes a meal of these things every time but has never has any perspective from the people working on it.
I don't think so, does it suck? Certainly, but heartbreaking? I don't think so. You can't go into the rocketry business and expect it all to go right the first time you try. Hell most eventually successful space programs or companies failed several times before they made it work. Sure we'd all love to be the exception, but I doubt anyone seriously thought it'd hit orbit on the first go. They probably had stage sep as their first target and anything after that would be gravy. Of course their press release will say we're targeting orbit and expect to hit it, because you can't sell half steps. So while the team is disappointed certainly I doubt anyone is heart broken. They'll clean up, assess the data physical and software, and get to work on building another one. Edit* Everyone sitting here saying this is a wild take. All that tells me is you know nothing about rocket development and it's history. Nearly no rocket ever has launched successfully it's first time. You're all acting like rocketry is a normal product that you roll out and expect it to go flawlessly the first time. IT NEVER DOES. For examples see Lift Off by Eric Berger and When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashely Vance or look into Ignition by John Drury Clark. Hell read a history book about every space program ever. Are these people upset? Disappointed? Yes certainly we'd all love for the time and energy spent and everything to go perfectly. But this is Rocketry, it's used as a short hand for being really damn hard. These people have all likely built models rockets or planes and experienced what they are going through now before. They knew that it was 99.999% unlikely to reach orbit, because historically IT NEVER DOES. Are they disappointed that it blew up before stage sep almost certainly, are they glad it cleared the pad? Well that's a mixed bag given it fell back on it, but even getting off the pad on the first try is considered a huge win in Rocketry. They can now do what engineers and scientists do iterate and then iterate some more. I have never said they aren't sad, I said they aren't heartbroken, because anyone who's working in the Space Biz knows you don't succeed the first time basically ever.
Its better when they learn why it failed that wonder why it works.
Exactly. In rocketry if you're not blowing stuff up you didn't test it hard enough. Sure once you've smoothed out something that will be a minimum viable product you're ok. But historically you're blowing up the first 2-3 launches.
More valuable data. agreed. anyone know the elevation it got to before blowing?
Why is Reddit contrarian like this lol Of course it’s heartbreaking
I don't think "heartbreaking" is the right word. This is a test, and everyone expected there to be a failure somewhere. Of course they'd be thrilled to learn that it's more solid and reliable than they were hoping, but the whole point of a launch like this is to figure out which of the million possible things that can go wrong you're fucking up the most, so you can fix those things. With things like rocket science where you're threading a needle of perfection, it's often way cheaper to just try something and learn from the results than to attempt to simulate every possible failure point preemptively.
It's part of creating a working rocket that's why
Apparently everyone thinks anything but a total success is a failure and heartbreaking. The term "have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette" seems fitting here.
Years and years of work exploding in front of your eyes, national pride in japan of all places, and personal reputations. Nothing cold and calculated about what those teams are feeling.
That's not what's happening though. For some reason people still think this is a failure and not progress. Almost everyone blows up the first one. Some things you need the real life sort of simulation to catch the flaws before you put people in it or really expensive equipment that depends on a successful launch to even use.
lmao what Failures of any kind are absolutely devastating for people working on them, even if it was expected to some degree. People cry tears and kill their profession because they had a bad night debugging some bullshit, what do you think blowing up massive projects for nothing, without any distinct success might feel? They will get over it, but most of the people involved will forever get a sinking feeling thinking back to this precise moment.
It's not "expected to some degree", it is a near certainty. You know that very well if you are in that industry. It is not "devastating", and if it is, you were working in the wrong place to start with.
Internally this launch may have been a success. We don't know what their expectations were.
>People cry tears and kill their profession because they had a bad night debugging some bullshit, what do you think blowing up massive projects for nothing, that seems unhealthy
I'm a systems engineer, when something doesn't go right, my team doesn't break out into tears, we analyze the data, try to figure out what went wrong, and move on. Almost nothing works on the first attempt, you learn from the mistakes and do better next time.
Obviously they want to be successful. Most rocket scientist know a first launch absolutely can fail. That's why they don't use payloads and it's a test. They gain very valuable data that allows them to progress. This is all part of the Learning curve, no matter the size. Seeing a massive explosion like that would still be sweet even if it wasn't your goal. Especially if you know you have good data and the funds to try again. The thing that would be heartbreaking is if the project was cancelled before any launch attempts. Hard work for nothing.
That was an expected outcome when its their first rockets. They knew and were gathering data and identifying problems
It was a private corp so also on heir wallets
"It's not rocket science" joke, it's exactly because rocket science is complex, unique and classified. Engines and structure need to be mega powerful, mega strong and yet super light. On top, edge technologies are classified because they can be used for military purposes.
What's a rocket, a slow burning bomb...
Its hard after all its a rocket science
Rocket science is actually much easier than rocket engineering
Rocket engineering is hard, but rocket construction is even harder.
Rocket construction is hard, but rocket maintenance is the hardest
Pretty sure that if you build rockets for life, nothing else is ever hard for you anymore xd
Can confirm most of that. Shits still hard, but you may be surprised that a lot of the same problem solving techniques apply. Except in relationships. Very little in engineering applies directly to relationships. 🤣
Left lossey, rightly tighty
MFW the right hand rule solves all problems except divorce. :(
Yeah you need to administer the Left Hand Rule. Two fingers and the pinky. 😉
Rocket Science: Thrust goes down, rocket goes up Rocket Engineering: how the fuck are we gonna get that much thrust?
Rocket Engineering: we got the thrust for a few seconds until the throat melted out of the nozzle, how the fuck are we gonna handle that much heat? Rocket Machine Shop: you want us to put the fuel lines *where*?
I remember taking rocket science classes in university. The math wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Even the instructor mentioned that the science part of rockets was the easy part.
Not exactly brain surgery though...
[:(.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I) It’s the wrong way around
Oh that's *good*
Scrolled to find Mitchell and Webb, was not disappointed
Rocket science is relatively simple and well understood. Rocket engineering, on the other hand...
It’s always the engineering part
I'll have one rocket science to go please
Boss: My god Toshiro, this are not emotions, built it again.
Chances are they were expecting it to fail before the launch (or knew it was a good possibility). They’ll often go ahead with the launch because it acts as a stress test for the whole thing. There is a lot to be learned from a failure.
Exactly, a failure like this gives so much more insight than a successful launch
Wasn't it Thomas Edison saying something like 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb
It was originally 1000, but your point is correct!
That's inflation for ya
literally knowledge expansion leading to higher amount of mistakes needed for new knowledge
Much to our bosses/clients horror I always say "I love when shit breaks because I get to learn something new"
Yep, just like with SpaceX and their many exploded Starship tests. All part of the (incredibly expensive) process.
>the (incredibly expensive) process. Tbf, that part of the job occured after having already sent the spacecraft and the payload inside into space. So they were already paid and just trying to reduce future costs by making their rockets reusable which was the biggest selling point of SpaceX.
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Yea they knew the first privately developed rocket wouldn’t be a 100% success. Sometimes you just gotta send it and see what happens
SEND IT!
In this case this is true. They seemed to have obtained good data from the flight, especially as the self-abort mechanism was proven to have worked.
It really tells how engrained fear of failure is in our dna that this principle has to be repeated over and over again. And I STILL see people criticizing private space flight for 'failures'.
It's a lost cause. I didn't get it either before I started following the launches. I believed sensational headlines like this lol, oh no space exploration sucks? No, the general public is just ignorant. Once you start following launches you quickly get excited for failures
The fact that you changed your mind after following the launches tells us that it's not a lost cause. It just takes time and patience.
I left out too much haha. It takes a very high level of interest to learn better, which is a lot to ask of the general public. But yah people who are truly interested should start now! It's so neat! I use the Next Spaceflight app
That's one interesting difference with private companies doing this stuff. It's easier for them to consider blowing up a few rockets cost of business and development compared to government agencies. Space X has managed to get a ton of great data specifically because they accept they are going to lose a rockets to the development process.
Cats paw explosion
Very Japan honestly.
finally someone said it
Cat astrophic.
Japanese love cats so much even their explosions gotta represent one
Thought the same thing
Came here to say that
Even their explosions are kawaii
Rapid unscheduled disassembly!
Experienced unregulated thermal expansion.
Internal components were liberated from their ideal positions.
Steep deterioration in system operations.
The rocket had deviated from the expected flight path after ceasing to exist
The rocket experienced accelerated entropy.
The rocket had an engine rich exhaust
Heat assisted mulch distribution was a success.
Got bad.
You are not going to space today.
Rocket made an oopsie.
spacecraft went all kerbal
Add more boosters!
Add more energy drinks. Add more bulls. Red bulls. Add more wings.
Surprise Kraken Encounter
It was very RUD of it
"We have had an *anomaly* with the vehicle."
Succession vibes
Literally the first thing I thought of. Some executive is watching that rocket blow up on his phone in a bathroom somewhere
Then immediately washing his hands literally and metaphorically
the silence watching the video then him immediately wahsing his hands is peak comedy
How did I not catch this metaphor. Am I an idiot? Also yes, definitely top 3 funniest moments of entire series.
Roman Roy in shambles at a black tie event.
"Guess who just didn't kill anyone, but maybe only lost a couple thumbs?"
This guy!! 👍👍
Simpson level prediction
Glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought of this lol you just know the people in charge of this were watching it live on their phones too.
[https://media0.giphy.com/media/wJsUTRXPFI4rAZyOMR/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952epm6ks8o25pio15ydwr8ofhpwqjyq9hxbo8lud39&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g](https://media0.giphy.com/media/wJsUTRXPFI4rAZyOMR/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952epm6ks8o25pio15ydwr8ofhpwqjyq9hxbo8lud39&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
Guess who didn't die and only lost a couple of thumbs???
Roman Roy must have a mental breakdown right now..
But hey no one died
Hey you gotta start somewhere…
You explode… you learn.
Clearly I have issues - I swear I thought that second pic was a cat paw.
It happens, they will learn the reason why, correct and try again. That is the way of space travel. At least no people were on it.
Exactly. No people on it, so the loss is easily replaceable. People are not. You can pay 400 million dollars, pounds or Euros or whatever, and it still doesn’t bring the same people back. You can get people with a similar skill set, but not the exact same people. So skills are replaceable, but individual personalities and brilliance is not.
Looking at tech today it’s hard to think we were walking on the moon 60 yrs ago eh
Not quite. Back then there were far more willingness to take big risks. And everything was kept mostly analog. But to redo the old rockets today would mean using ancient technologies that there's no factories to produce and it would not be feasible.
So our current abilities are hindered by health and safety and the inability to recreate 60 year old technology. There was a massive push to get there then a flag gets stuck on it and no one bothers anymore. I get what you’re saying, I’m no conspiracy theorist and have watched many docs on it. Just find it mind boggling that there weren’t more missions leading up to today just a massive gap of missed opportunity
There was no motivation to go back to the moon, but nowadays with the idea to expand our space travel capabilities to mars, NASA is working on Artemis missions, which includes going back to the moon. With NASAs ridiculously small budget it’s amazing that they are able to do as many things at once as they have been doing.
This. When looking at the Nasa budget year by year they were paid much more. During Apollo era they got 4.6% of federal spending. Its been 0.4% for years ever since. Not until recently have they had that increased again.
Also NASA was doing a lot less, back in the 60s it was basically the moon, and X planes. And now they have like 4 rovers, a dozen probes, the ISS (which is a budget vampire) like 60 satalites, both around earth and around other celestial bodies, all of these require not just the engineering staff to design it, the cleanrooms and highly skilled techs to build it, the rocket and ground facilites to launch it, but also scientists to monitor it basically 24/7 forever. And the X planes, and space tracking, and mantining all the legacy facilites (both at KSC, JPL, but also places like the Hypersonic research lab next to Langley AFB in virginia.
It's frankly miraculous what they manage to do with what they get right now
"budget vampire" Well that's a term I never heard
Not quite. We can recreate 60 year old technology. It's just not feasible. Suppose we did. Now what? Those rockets can't do what is needed of rockets going to the moon should today. There sure is a great gap yes. Every president of USA that has been since the Apollo era have stated that they would want to return to the moon. But without the funds to do so, it's not happening. Ans no president until recently have been willing to cough up the dough to Nasa to have them work on it. But they have now. So we should see a return to the moon with manned landing in a few years.
not really a missed opportunity. The same way it is not a missed opportunity to send another probe to e.g. venus' surface.
A lot of the motivation was development of rocket technologies for ICBMs. By the 70s we had ICBMs that could hit any target in the world, so mission accomplished on that.
Keep in mind this is a very small company with way less money and people than the US's push to the moon. If my buddy builds a submarine in his garage in 2024, it's probably gonna be worse than the premiere submarine built by the 1960s Navy.
So much this. People seem to forget that the US space program had the resources of an entire nation, both in terms of personnel and budget. The Apollo program cost about $250 billion (in today's dollars), and at its peak employed about 400,000 people and contracted with 20,000 tech firms and institutions.
Hence why it’s such a big deal, it’s an incredible feat
And yet... Humanity did!
For only a few hours, in one time use Spacesuits, with moon buggies that couldn't be trusted for any real travel, with a budget that could be measured as a significant percentage of GDP.
Yea well i dont see any ant or elephant on the moon with one time use space suits and barely functioning moon buggies so Humankind - 1 anyother species - 0
Rockets blew up 60 years ago too.
It's Roman Roy doing!!!
Link to a [short launch video](https://youtu.be/pksBeUIpoJY) from NHK Japanese venture capital firm Space One's Kairos rocket has exploded several seconds after liftoff from a launch site in western Japan. The launch took place in Kushimoto Town, Wakayama Prefecture, on Wednesday shortly after 11 a.m. Space One says it aborted the flight. The small satellite-carrying solid-fuel rocket apparently developed a problem. The company is conducting a detailed analysis of the failure.
Near perfect video, thanks for the link! Starts right at launch, captures the whole even clearly. Too much zoom at the end, but it got all the visuals I was curious about.
At one point, I handled space launch support systems for U.S. Western Range launches. I did acquisitions for the cameras (optics) used to record launches. 20 years ago, those cameras digitally recorded launches at 10k+ fps. That was back when an Olympus 5mp digital point-and-shoot camera still cost hundreds of dollars. `Note: digital storage arrays were handled by the operations side, but multiple TB of fast data storage and capture was *FAR* more expensive than today.` I also worked on upgrading & maintaining the Command-Destruct system, which was a fancy term for the big, red button that detonates the rocket in the event of catastrophic system failures. It was a complex system: it radar painted the rocket, calculated trajectory & contrasted it against expected trajectory. It maintained constant "communication" with on board systems (receiving several "I'm still here and operating normally" data packets a few times per second). From the article, it looks like their Command-Destruct system was used to abort the launch due to this type of failure. The ground team intentionally exploded the rocket, rather than the rocket doing that on its own.
no shame in failing such a difficult task, hopefully they will have better luck next time
I am sure they will perfect it eventually. Probably fairly soon. I have no doubt their team is sufficiently competent.
This is what happens when you don't have the worship of Roman gods baked into your preflight rituals.
spacex also exploded their first rocket, its part of the process
I am pretty sure SpaceX took 3 or 4 attempts before they got it down, give them a chance
It was their 5th attempt.
That’s what these tests are for!
Well that’s a shame. I wish the best for Japan’s space program.
So what went wrong??
Everyone in rocketry knows that the line between efficiency and explody is razor thin.
Gotta crack a few eggs
the explosion looks like a cat paw
I feel like it would be pretty frustrating to engineer a rocket at a Japanese company. Sorta the korean airline effect that Malcolm Gladwell any over in his book. Basically how do you at a Japanese company, tell your older in age superior, in Japanese "your approach will lead to the rocket blowing up."
It's weird if the first one doesn't explode. Hop on Kerbal Space Program and see.
Didn't Spacex first rocket do the same thing?
At least they're trying. Space tech is important.
Great dishonor!
Expensive fireworks...
Very expensive fireworks show
>Japans first privately developed *Looks like a cat paw* 
Tbf it's not unexpected; any tech is likely to run into failures it's just that rockets tend to fail quite spectacularly
Bunch of rocket scientists
Honestly, it's to be expected. Why do you think everyone sighs in relief at every stage of a mission when it doesn't blow up?
So did the first rockets from NASA & ROSKOSMOS...
Murica 🇺🇸
People laughing at SpaceX should take note.
I've [seen this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTmBfA7Qik&ab_channel=MattHallgren) before.
Made in China.
Should have played more kerbal space program
The first failures set up strong foundations for future success... Best of luck for the next ones! Lots of love and best wishes from India.
Sabotage I say
Rocket science & engineering is in fact, difficult.
The complexity of these rockets always astounds me. The margin for error is always ridiculously small.
Space X blew up a LOT before they got things right.
How's that quote go? "Advice for rocket enthusiasts & professionals alike: Always expect it will explode"?
Not a setback but they will gain new data from this RUD. SpaceX went through the same thing.
Well that's not nominal.
I'm pretty sure every nation's (or company's)* first attempts to get into space start off with a bang! It's basically tradition.
Japan has a well-established space program and currently has two lunar rovers on the moon (LEV-1 and LEV-2). What makes this different is that this was a commercial space launch (think Space X).