Orbital to inspect Antares’ Russian engines.

To read this post please scroll down.

Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five 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. Takes about a 10% cut.

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it 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.

June 24, 2014 4:58 pm Robert Zimmerman

It appears that yesterday’s delay in the next Cygnus/Antares launch was to allow engineers time to inspect the rocket’s Russian engines.

They want to make sure that these engines do not have the same problem that caused another Russian engine to blow up on a test stand in May.

3 comments

Pzatchok
June 25, 2014 at 11:04 am
Not to just bang away on Orbital but once they had their trouble with the exploding engine that they would have investigated the very next engines slated for launch first? I.E. the ones one the next rocket to go to space like this one.

Or are they just now getting around to inspecting the engines and this is the first one inspected?

Maybe they finally found the real problem and just want to second check this set for the problem now that they know what to look for.

Scrubbing a launch to do something that should have been done before is not good.
Robert Zimmerman
June 25, 2014 at 11:12 am
You are making incorrect assumptions about what Orbital has been doing in connection with these Russian engines.

All these Russian engines were inspected and refurbished prior to their installation in Antares. Thus, the engines that are in the Antares rocket scheduled for launch in July have already undergone the exact same tests that caused the engine in May to explode.

What has happened is that when they were testing that engine in May, something happened that caused it to blow up that had not occurred in any previous tests for identical engines. It appears that the investigation has figured out what went wrong, and they are simply being prudent by reinspecting the engines installed in Antares to make sure they don’t have this same problem.

What is not happening is Orbital doing “something that should have been done before.” It seems to me that this is an unfair criticism.
Pzatchok
June 25, 2014 at 1:13 pm
I know the engines have been refurbished and refitted.
Inspected and tested.

I am questioning if this is the first set of engines rechecked after the explosion or are they the last.

They should have been the first because there are the very next ones to be used. Unless they just found out what caused the explosion in the test and now want to check this set again for that problem.

The delay for this inspection should also have been set the day the explosion took place.
They did delay the early June launch already. At the time of the explosion they should have just said no more flights until each engine has been inspected and or tested.
This announcement this week would then not have been made.
Pretty much all they said this time was we are going to inspect this set of engines. And we are setting the next launch date for July. Unless…….

I;m questioning why this inspection wasn’t automatically done and why they waited until now to do it.
Did they find the reason for the first explosion(if so what was it)or are they just going through the motions to look good.

Orbital to inspect Antares’ Russian engines.

3 comments

Leave a Reply