Isar’s first orbital rocket crashes into sea – CEO calls it a 'great success' Yet another rocket exploded over the weekend and – you guessed it – its CEO called the test flight "a great success." This raises the question: what even counts as failure anymore in the world of so-called "New Space" – the VC-fueled and risk-friendly private rocket sector? Andoya, Lofoten Islands, Norway - The entrance to …
I guess it is a "success" if the company can go on to try again. VC funds are very flaky and more so in the current environment.
Isar seems to have more in the build process which marks them a good step ahead of the now-defunct examples such as Virgin Orbital or ABL Space (the latter was supposed to provide the UK first launch with Lockheed Martin as "Pathfinder", with lots of UK gov money, and now no obvious outcome)
NASA had plenty of rapid unplanned disassemblies in the early days. In the movie "The Right Stuff", those clips of rockets exploding just seconds after lift-off are real NASA archive footage. The courage of the Mercury astronauts, especially Alan Shepard, cannot be overstated. Those guys watched rockets explode, then went ahead and sat atop one anyway.
I think they were just having fun watching things go bang! It has been claimed that they were making the atlas rockets so fast that when one went kaboom there would be a backlog of already built rockets likely with the very same issue waiting to launch and they just kept sending them up.
'Yes, it failed in the same way as the last 2, well now we have definitive proof of the fault'.
Those were very different times. And I'm very glad that we didn't have to rely on the Thor missiles for defence.
I don't have to watch the movie.
I was around for the real thing -- admittedly as a youngish kid -- I was barely 9 when Sputnik 11 flew and freaked everyone out -- and, yeah, a lot of things exploded on the pad.
And, yes, I remember nascent NASA saying that even in failure we learned things, so this is nothing new.
What they didn't do was make it into a joke.
It was serious business by serious people2. My partner's late father was an electrical engieer who designed components which flew on Apollo (in the Command Module, if I have the story correct) and every mission there was some intense nail-biting around their house from liftoff to splashdown.
RUD, my fat fanny.
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Rocket science is relatively easy. Rocket engineering is HARD. Rocket plumbing is extremely so.
A good rocket will, by design, operate all systems and components to the very limit of their capability. At these limits, mathematical modelling can only get you a certain amount of the way. Hardware testing becomes unavoidable. Failures will be unavoidable until you have enough data to verify or tweak your models. Padding is added to items that, were designed too marginally. Items that appear to have too large margins can be noted for future addition of lightness.
(One of my engineering profs once noted (tongue in cheek) that if you go to an aircraft crash site and find a component that is bigger than 30 cm, then this part was over engineered and in need for optimisation)
The alternative is the NASA-SSL-approach, where years and years are wasted optimizing and veryfying all mathematical models. And how are these models tested? By putting individual components into a lab and testing them. ..But is the lab test correct? Can the lab recreate the exact flight conditions? Sometimes the most sensible solution is to light the candle can collect as much data as is physically possible.
ISA (and SpaceX) is not NEW space. This is OLD space. Look into how many rockets exploded up to the point where Apollo could head for the moon. What it is not, is MIDDLE AGED space with a bit too much flab around the middle and a sneaking suspicion about it's own mortality.
EL REG likes to be snarky, but it is better if the snarkiness is applied correctly to things that the EL Reg hack understands.
As for now, Europe needs US-free space access, and having more options than Arianespace is a GOOD thing, even if getting there may kill some poor innocent codfish.
Edit: Würstfinger
'A good rocket will, by design, operate all systems and components to the very limit of their capability' – you might want to test to that level, but normal running at 'the very limit of their capability' is a recipe for repeated catastrophe.
It's important to know where the limits are, so that a sensible margin can be given to provide as near 100% reliability in your systems as physics and manufacturing processes allow.
And then there is the fact that human beings inevitably occasionally stuff up.
A crane is built with a safety factor of 10. The crane is expected to continue to operate safely even if maintenance is lacking.
An aircraft is built with a safety factor of 1.5. The aircraft is expected to be operated regularily, but by professionals and with constantz maintenance.
A rocket suffers under the rocket equation. m.payload/m.structure is very low.
I am not sure what the safety factor for a rocket is. I expect it to vary by mission/ hazard level. However, a rocket designed to 1.5 is, in theory lifting 50% too much structure.
IIRC it's 1.3 for non human rated, 1.5 for human rated.
Now AIUI the F9 was designed from day one at 1.5.
And boy did the critics (IE companies who already had USG contracts) scoff
"Madness", "Needless extravagance" etc.
But you buy that slim reduction in margin with a huge amount of testing, FEA and CFD simulation time. Of course since nearly all rockets built till then were governmentfunded that didn't matter as the govt picked up the bill.
Incidently the first 3 Falcon 1's all crashed and failed. but by flight 4 both the build team and the operations team had their act together, which went on to IIRC a fifth before scrapping the design and moving onto the F9.
So yes, this is what any rocket company could go through while it gains experience of the total package.
Trouble is it's yet another liquid fuelled VTO TSTO ELV. So what?
This isn't the future. It's just one more piece of reheated past.
is the lab test correct? Can the lab recreate the exact flight conditions?
One commercial transport aircraft test rig for the undercarriage stress on landing basically had a hydraulic ram that shoved the wheels 16" sideways (out of alignment with the 'rest' position). When a visitor questioned this displacement, the boffin in charge said that the rig was not strong enough, and deflections of 18" to 20" were recorded in real life.
Still, I don't think any of the 'planes crashed on landing due to undercarriage failure, so that's ok.
Don't panic - this was the 1970's they do not make (or fly) them any more.
The forces on landing gear in a traversed (sideways) landing are... considerable. And even if the landing is straight, landing gear shimmy is a real concern (just look at the cover photo on https://skybrary.aero/bookshelf/preventing-main-landing-gear-shimmy-events , or the photos in this accident report to get some idea on how violent landing gear shimmy can get
It was failing well before then - you can see the thrust vectoring starting to move the exhaust stream well before that. Round about when the FTS shut down the engines, it is also obvious that a significant roll had built up.
Failure could be something as simple as a sensor being wired back-to-front, as that would lead to an undamped oscillation along the lines of what appeared to happen. Will have to wait for an investigation to find out, of course.
The video's flight profile is reminiscent of the early Jupiter missile flights, where propellant sloshing and resonance were not yet fully understood. This issue causes the propellant to shift, forcing the guidance system to over correct. Initially, makeshift solutions like beer cans were used, later replaced by baffles within the tank.
I concur with The Reg that while learning from failures is crucial, much of this knowledge is already established. The challenge lies in implementation rather than reinventing rocket science, as substantial advancements in rocket engineering have been made. Additionally, a true flight termination system is designed to dismantle the vehicle, not just stop the engines. It's likely that the engines ceased due to propellant depletion as the rocket pitched over.
Clearly, this flight did not meet any standard of success per their published goals. To quote the great Murray Walker.. Spin, Spin, Spin..
BvB
That's almost exactly what Scott Manley said in his video yesterday. with yours and Kurgans post, that's three possible sources for same/similar causes. Looks good to me :-)
From the Wright brothers on the prime rule of aerospace design has been "Simplicate and add lightness", but if you're interested in finding out just how good the Wright brothers' development methods were, I'd recommend getting hold of a copy of Harry Combs book "Kill Devil Hill". Its the only book about them to be written by a man who has himself designed, developed, manufactured and flown aircraft.
Quite apart from being a good author, Harry Combs knew what he was talking about: he was founder of Combs Aviation and president of Gates Learjet Corporation. He was also a pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation." and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996. He was also pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation". He was also inducted into the US National Aviation Hall of Fame.
He was also a pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation." and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996. He was also pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation". He was also inducted into the US National Aviation Hall of Fame.
So good that you cut and pasted it from Wikipedia twice. Or perhaps cut once and pasted twice.
Considering the Miura 1 was launched from a Spanish launch site in Huelva in 2023 (and got nearly 50 km up), how can the launch of the Spectrum be the first attempt from continental Europe?
From the liked Wikipedia article, first sentence:
"Miura 1 (previously called Arion 1 is a >>>suborbital<<< recoverable launch vehicle"
The Spectrum is designed for orbital insertions.
On a side note: Andöya has been launching Nike-Orion sub-orbital sounding rockets for many decades
Sounding rockets are fairly normal. There are many different ones being launched all over the world, nobody finds them interesting.
UK launched 441 Skylark sounding rockets, some to over 500km altitude. Many of these launches were from British sites, until about 2005 after the later launches were taken over by commercial organisations.
"Director Prof Boyd (later Sir Robert Boyd) memorably said: 'If we are not suffering failures, we are not working at the edge, and if we are not working at the edge, we shouldn't be here'."
Cutting the livestream before impact may have been a precaution just in case someone was about to get injured or killed.
This would give them the option of handing over all footage to the investigating authorities if this was the case, or publish with a delay if all was well.
Livestreaming someone's death would result in serious backlash, and this was most likely discussed and decided upon beforehand.
I think the snark is a little harsh for an actual first launch. Simply getting nine engines lit and 30 seconds into flight is a great achievement - validating the launch structure and whatever mitigations have been designed against harmonic feedback and not having the thing tear itself apart on the pad.
Not going to orbit on your very first launch is no great disgrace.
I do appreciate the sentiment though. I was quite forgiving of SpaceX's early Starship failures - lighting up 33 engines (and bringing the first operational full-flow engine to service) - is quite something, the belly flop is mad, whilst things like hot-staging are new to SpaceX, so a few failures are nothing amiss.
However, repeatedly turning the Starship upper-stage into confetti after multiple successful sub-orbital tests now starts to look like "rush job" rather than "rapid iteration".
This is a tech website that as it oft used to have stated as it's mission statement "Biting the hand that feeds IT!"
I commend their efforts, celebrate their success & lament their failure, especially as a colleague recently left to move to NZ to take up a position with a rocket company - None of these means I cannot have a little giggle & source a new keyboard when I read things like "The rocket, to be clear, is meant to reach orbit and is not a submersible."
If you want a more po-faced altitude, there's other sites for that, after all if you can't stand the heat don't stand near the launch tower.
Oh no, I'm here for the cynical viewpoint. I've been here since it was a properly British site.
What I found a little jarring was that the article was less about Isar and leaned more into a subtext of "look at these grifters, calling failure a success as long as the money keeps coming", but framed around Isar's recent launch. Which struck me as very unfair and somewhat "punching down". And that's not snark. it's bullying, or at the very least... being a dick. Which is not really the heritage of El Reg - asking the awkward questions, but sometimes tongue-in-cheek and - yes - offering a giggle.
This raises the question: what even counts as failure anymore in the world of so-called "New Space" – the VC-fueled and risk-friendly private rocket sector?
....
A trend is starting to be seen in the commercial rocket world where a failure is declared a success. Isar is in good company – SpaceX boss Elon Musk regularly insists Starship explosions are valuable learning experiences, even when those "successes" turn into high-altitude confetti.
If the intent of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum test flight was to clear the launchpad, shut itself down mid-air, and then have the vehicle plummet into a nearby body of water, then the mission was an unqualified success.
The rocket, to be clear, is meant to reach orbit and is not a submersible. The Reg wonders if Isar Aerospace would still be claiming "success" had Spectrum crashed back onto the launchpad instead.
This isn't a fun jibe or some gentle ribbing of "ah well, they'll get there - there's some good boffinry going on". It's pushing across the line of just laying into Isar and calling them disingenuous for staying upbeat after not making it to orbit on their very first launch which - for the record - most rockets don't. To compare the failure of their very first launch with SpaceX's recent issues is entirely unfair and unwarranted.
Deriding SpaceX's recent spate of failures would be fair - because we've seen a mature, experienced company lose upper stages and Starship bodies in ways that ought to be "solved problems". They're landing the hard parts and screwing up the (not easy but) established parts, which points to school-boy manufacturing and assembly process issues. Similarly if RocketLab had a string of failures, then fair game, have at them.
SpaceX lost three Falcon 1s before they made orbit - and then became wildly successful. RocketLab lost their first Electron. Isar are allowed another go without being heckled too hard (and it's really quite offensive for Metzler to be compared with Musk - I'll leave it to readers to decide which way round they want to read that! I'm sure there's something in there to upset everybody. We're not here for a po-faced attitude are we).
"A trend is starting to be seen in the commercial rocket world where a failure is declared a success."
This is not a trend and it is not in the commercial rocket world only. It's the way it has always been and it is in every engineering discipline.
You build, you test (possibly (probably) to failure) while gathering data, you refine, you build again, you test (possibly (probably) to failure) while gathering data...repeat till the tests reach acceptable levels of performance. If you get good data from the test that advances your design, then the tests were a success. This is how engineering works.
The only difference here is that these companies are doing it out in the open, with the public watching, instead of on closed testing grounds or labs. The fact that many members of said public can't understand that the only measure of a test's success is whether or not it yields good data is neither here nor there.
There is nothing new, disingenuous, or unusual going on here. Suggestions to the contrary just make the suggester look ignorant.
You build, you test (possibly (probably) to failure) while gathering data, you refine, you build again, you test (possibly (probably) to failure) while gathering data...repeat till the tests reach acceptable levels of performance.
A principle well known in the design of bridges, where it's known as the "Calvin's Dad Method"-
It is also standard operating procedure in IT.
"Success" is anything difficult to verify that you can put on your resume for the next job.
"We outsourced our IT to another country that only thinks they speak English -- SUCCESS!"
"We moved all our systems to the cloud to save money -- SUCCESS!" (in spite of the savings having a big negative sign in front of it)
Etc.
The tone is somewhat ironic for an IT new source.
anon coward because I work for a low-grade outsourcing company that I'm sure a lot of managers in a lot of big companies refer to when they talk about successful outsourcing projects they supervised.
