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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 18 2013 @ 03:48 PM EDT |
>> slight hydraulic movement of the transport erector launcher
that raises and supports the rocket, coupled with insufficient
slack in the cord to account the unplanned movement. <<
I did my apprenticeship many years ago in a dockyard, wiring
Her Majesty's battle fleet. Prior to that I had a hobby refurbishing
for friends WW2 avionics from octal to B7G valves (SWDX), and
I admired the loop of every wire to every termination point.
I had an uphill battle at my last day job convincing contractors
and fellow techs to leave enough slack on cables that might move,
even if not intended to move, especially in student labs.
I blame the loss of awareness on the demise of the reciprocating
piston engine, steam or gasoline. No vibration, no need to plan
for it? Well automotive electrics ain't rocket science either.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: kenryan on Wednesday, June 19 2013 @ 10:35 AM EDT |
Sorry, that article got under my skin a little bit - "idiots can't even
hook up an ethernet cable hur hur hur". Would they have batted an eye if
it was something they weren't immediately familiar with?
A launch vehicle is designed to be fail-safe. Far far better for a connector to
pull out prematurely on the pad and scrub the mission than to fail to pull out
at all - it won't exactly pull the vehicle over but flying supersonic with a
dangling wire is a really bad idea.
Rocket science is hard not because of complex math (there are a relative handful
of well-known equations) or thousands of complex components (there are), but
because for every one of those complex components there are hundreds of
perfectly mundane things that could go wrong with spectacularly disasterous
results. The science - and art - is all about how to limit the effect of one of
those mundane things going wrong, and rarely does anyone get it all the way
right. Even launches where you don't hear about anything going wrong usually
have multiple things that didn't go quite right. (The Antares maiden flight -
the vehicle in the article - did in fact have a nearly flawless flight. The
payload ended up in a slightly low orbit but still well within the target
parameters. See the Antares topics on nasaspaceforum.com).
Disclosure: While I have no special insight into the Antares, I am involved with
the Cygnus spacecraft that will be riding it.
---
ken
(speaking only for myself, IANAL)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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