Comment Another rocket exploded at the weekend and described the test flight of the CEO as a “great success”. This raises the following question: the in the world called “new field”, which is now important as failure-VC-FUELED and risk-friendly special rocket industry?
The entrance of the Lofoten Islands, Norway – Andøya Space Center region is decorated with a rocket puppet (click to enlarge) – PIC: Uhryn Larysa / Shutterstock.com
The rocket was the spectrum of Isar Aerospace, the first test launch of Andøya SpacePort, an island on the northern coast of Norway on 30 March. The launch was invoiced by a continental European -based commercial company as the first orbit attempt and experienced multiple delays due to weather conditions during the previous week.
The two-stage spectrum has become increasingly more and more important for European operators in the light of the last uncertainty surrounding EU-US relations, which can carry a burden up to 1,000 kg to low soil orbit (Leo).
Unfortunately, the first launch failed. As he said, “Space is hard.”
About 20 seconds later, the rocket lost control and began to fall in the middle of the flight. Video footage shows that the rocket is turned upside down, its engines are closed and the launching ramp falls into the sea and the blow explodes.
The exact cause of anomaly is not confirmed, but the vehicle’s flight termination system – rockets are triggered as designed when the bandit goes.
Despite the failure, Isar Aerospace CEO and founding partner Daniel Metzler in question“Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieved a great success. We had a clean departure, 30 seconds of flight and even we had to verify our flight termination system.”
Following the launch, in a later briefing with journalists, Rocket continued to insist that Biz was successful. Launchpad was intact, abundant data were collected and the flight termination system did the business. I mean, then is it good?
Not exactly. In the world of commercial rockets, a trend in which a failure is declared to be successful is being seen. Isar in a good company – SpaceX boss Elon Musk regularly insists that the stars ship explosions are valuable learning Experiences, even when these “achievements” become a high altitude confetti.
Isar Aerospace’s purpose of the spectrum test flight was to clean the launch ramp, to close itself in the air and then the vehicle falls into a nearby water mass.
Rocket, to be clear, is to reach the orbit and is not a diver. Reg Isar wonders whether Aerospace will still claim that the “success” will return to the launch ramp of the spectrum.
Rockets are undoubtedly difficult. Fuel tends to be explosives and numerous parts must work together to provide a successful task. The success of releasing something from Launchpad will not be ignored and congratulations regularly.
However, it is an ambitious turn to brand a task that resulted in a fire ball on the sea as a “great success”.
Isar Aerospace managed to remove the rocket from the launch ramp in the first attempt, collected some telemetry and did not cause serious damage to the infrastructure when the flight ended after the rocket was out of control. This is good. However, this was not a success. ®
