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.
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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.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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.