Cause of Catastrophic Proton Rocket Failure? Upside-down parts.
26 replies, posted
[url=http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/parts-installed-upside-down-caused-last-weeks-russian-rocket-to-explode/]Source[/url]
[QUOTE]Tuesday, Anatoly Zak reports on his own site, RussianSpaceWeb.com, that investigators have determined the culprit was the “critical angular velocity sensors, DUS, installed upside down.”
He writes:
Each of those sensors had [B]an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the vehicle[/B], however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead. As a result, the flight control system was receiving wrong information about the position of the rocket and tried to "correct" it, causing the vehicle to swing wildly and, ultimately, crash. The paper trail led to a[B] young technician responsible for the wrong assembly of the hardware,[/B] but also raised serious issues of quality control at the Proton's manufacturing plant, at the rocket's testing facility, and at the assembly building in Baikonur. It appeared that no visual control of the faulty installation had been conducted, while electrical checks had not detected the problem since all circuits had been working correctly.[/QUOTE]
Fuck, sucks to be that guy.
They must have attached the sensors in Australia.
Well down is where it's gonna fire right?
Same thing causes some of my rockets to crash in KSP. Damn, that game is pretty realistic.
Why the fuck didn't the guy double check with a more experienced technician? That is rule number one when doing stuff you're not experienced with, [I]especially[/I] on a god damn rocket. If he gets fired he deserves it.
Arguably not as embarrassing as the issue which killed a NASA mars orbiter:
Someone messed up and didn't convert from imperial to metric. It augured into the atmosphere and burnt up.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;41384354]Arguably not as embarrassing as the issue which killed a NASA mars orbiter:
Someone messed up and didn't convert from imperial to metric.[/QUOTE]
Or that one time we almost didn't land on the moon during Apollo 11 because Aldrin (albeit on purpose) left the docking radar on, which overloaded the computer. Had Mission Control not acted quickly enough, the mission would have been aborted.
Also, once on the moon, Eagle almost couldn't take off. Somehow, beit during landing or EVA, the "Get off the moon" switch (ignition for ascent stage for you nerds) broke off. Not wanting to be stranded on the moon and [url=http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html]having his obituary read aloud to millions of people around the world[/url] Aldrin jammed a pen into the socket, and that somehow worked. To this day, Aldrin still has that switch and the pen.
Basically, the infant space program was Kerbal Space Program and/or throwing shit at space and seeing what stays.
[QUOTE=Demolitions2;41383764]Well down is where it's gonna fire right?[/QUOTE]
the scary thing is that this would be exactly my logic
But I don't get why some censors were right-side-up and some weren't. If they were [i]all[/i] upside down, flight control may have been able to realize this and compensate
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41384671]the scary thing is that this would be exactly my logic
But I don't get why some censors were right-side-up and some weren't. If they were [i]all[/i] upside down, flight control may have been able to realize this and compensate[/QUOTE]
I guess different people were in charge of different sensors, and did their jobs right.
Also, this story makes me wonder how often people do this with "THIS SIDE UP" boxes.
[QUOTE=Dacheet;41384690]I guess different people were in charge of different sensors, and did their jobs right.
Also, this story makes me wonder how often people do this with "THIS SIDE UP" boxes.[/QUOTE]
I don't think I've ever seen a "this side up" arrow pointing up
Well I think we just found the cause of the upside-down flying problem.
Next time paint more arrows on the outside that point up.
[QUOTE=demoguy08;41384185]Why the fuck didn't the guy double check with a more experienced technician? That is rule number one when doing stuff you're not experienced with, [I]especially[/I] on a god damn rocket. If he gets fired he deserves it.[/QUOTE]
Maybe they only paid him in Vodka and bread?
What I want to know is how they found this out.
Are you telling me that there was enough left after that explosion to see which way the sensors were installed?
[QUOTE=st0rmforce;41389591]What I want to know is how they found this out.
Are you telling me that there was enough left after that explosion to see which way the sensors were installed?[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure they keep logs of every reading ever performed from the rocket.
At least it wasn't something more complicated. But that young technician is going to have trouble getting another job with "Proton-M demolition" on his resume.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;41384354]Arguably not as embarrassing as the issue which killed a NASA mars orbiter:
Someone messed up and didn't convert from imperial to metric. It augured into the atmosphere and burnt up.[/QUOTE]
NASA's $80 million Mariner 1 crashed because a programmer forgot to put a hyphen in an equation.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;41384354]Arguably not as embarrassing as the issue which killed a NASA mars orbiter:
Someone messed up and didn't convert from imperial to metric. It augured into the atmosphere and burnt up.[/QUOTE]
That was due to interaction between NASA and Lockheed-Martin IIRC, NASA (like everybody else who's sane) deals with Metric, while Lockheed was using Imperial internally. NASA assumed that they'd be using Metric since that's the norm for any scientific field, while Lockheed must have assumed Imperial since America.
[QUOTE=YCheez;41389722]NASA's $80 million Mariner 1 crashed because a programmer forgot to put a hyphen in an equation.[/QUOTE]
Didn't another Probe crash because they used Feet instead of Meters? :v:
[editline]10th July 2013[/editline]
clocks.
[QUOTE=demoguy08;41384185]Why the fuck didn't the guy double check with a more experienced technician? That is rule number one when doing stuff you're not experienced with, [I]especially[/I] on a god damn rocket. If he gets fired he deserves it.[/QUOTE]
If I was that guy and no one was supervising my work at the time I would have just assumed it wasn't possible to install the parts any other way. Someone will double-check it later anyway.
Though admittedly I'd be a shit technician.
Holy shit it actually was KSP.
Maybe he was drunk.
One time at a new years party my german neighbor was drunk and he put a bottle rocket in backwards and it exploded on the ground :v:
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41384671]But I don't get why some censors were right-side-up and some weren't. If they were [i]all[/i] upside down, [B]flight control may have been able to realize this and compensate[/B][/QUOTE]
that's what the control system did, and that's why the rocket crashed
[editline]10th July 2013[/editline]
normally there'd be no reason to design a closed loop control system for a rocket that is able to detect if its sensors are [I]upside down[/I] due to a manufacturing defect, because that shouldn't be an issue to begin with
Damn Australians.
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