Fourth SARGE suborbital flight fails, crashes
Capitalism in space: The fourth flight of Exos Aerospace’s suborbital rocket failed yesterday when the rocket’s parachute apparently failed to deploy, sending the rocket crashing to the ground.
A good overview of the company and SARGE’s history can be found here. The live stream of today’s launch is embedded below the fold, cued to just before launch.
This failure appears at this moment to be far more serious than their previous failure, where the rocket shutdown prematurely but safely landed without damage using its chutes.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: The fourth flight of Exos Aerospace’s suborbital rocket failed yesterday when the rocket’s parachute apparently failed to deploy, sending the rocket crashing to the ground.
A good overview of the company and SARGE’s history can be found here. The live stream of today’s launch is embedded below the fold, cued to just before launch.
This failure appears at this moment to be far more serious than their previous failure, where the rocket shutdown prematurely but safely landed without damage using its chutes.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Mr. Z.:
It looks to me as same kind failure as several times (including last time) happened before: A lack of pitch control authority. The vehicle comes unstable in flight again, just about 15 or 20 seconds after launch. Afterwards the rocket broke apart, which included naturally a recovery system failure. I am sorry for the team. But if I would be the financier of this project, I would insist – as a minimum measure – on a replacement of the engineering lead in this company. Maybe it is the end of this company.
So this outfit is run by John Carmack, of Armadillo Aerospace? That explains the string of failures! John may be good at software but his rocket teams keep making simple, basic errors. Look at how underpowered these things are, lifting off so slowly you expect it to go wrong. I agree that this team needs a real rocket engineer to fill in the missing knowledge.
Swinging around “a little”? I would hate to see what “swinging around a lot” would look like
David M. Cook:
John Carmack has already ended his entrepreneurial involvement in rocket technology some time ago, because his wife had put some pressure on him. She feared that he is going to lose a significant portion of his fortune by this activity. He had invested already some millions of dollars in it without a significant return of money. Carmack is a wealthy man, but he has by no means the deep pockets as Bezos or Musk. Some of his former employees then overtook the simple pressure fed, low performance liquid rocket technology that his company’s had developed and transferred it to a new company.
I used to have the Armadillo page as my home page, so I could keep up with their progress. Then I read where he was using ”crazy money“, and when that ran out he stopped his rocket activities. This was very disappointing, as I had been expecting much more. I wish the ”new“ team well, and I hope they avoid the basic errors I saw before so many times.