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| Home / News / Proton-M rocket carrying Russia's most advanced satellite crashes |
| 2014-05-16 |
| The launch went abnormal on the 540th second of the flight, when an emergency engines shutdown kicked in in response to the rocket deviating from its intended trajectory, the Russian Federal Space Agency reported after the crash. The third stage, which is called Briz-M, was approximately 150km above the ground at that moment and had some 40 seconds to go before deploying its payload into the orbit. I know, let's follow ULA's lead and make our launch capability dependent on these guys. It's too bad we don't have any other space companies with heavy lift capacity who are willing to lift satellites for us. Oh wait... |
| Posted by:Thing From Snowy Mountain |
| #2 Iff this were still the Cold War, I would suspect this "accident" to be an intentional self-destruct or fake on the part of the Soviets meant as a PCorrect-Deniable warning to Russia's strategic partner, SCO-CSTO BFF, + South China Sea NAVEX partner the Chinese. Where "SPACE/SATELLITE CARRIER ROCKET" = STRATEGIC NUCLEAR ICBM = STAY OUT OF THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST + -STANS NO MATTER WHOM SHOOTS FIRST. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-05-16 23:35 |
| #1 I looked it up; SpaceX engines have a little less specific impulse, and their rocket has 90% of the payload to LEO of Zenit/Sea Launch... and I keep thinking, ok, so the engines aren't those Monster Staged-Combustion Liquid-Cooled engines, but maybe the best is the enemy of the Good Enough. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-05-16 22:26 |