Reply to post: Re: Depressing @Mark 85

Ex-Soviet engines fingered after Antares ROCKET launch BLAST

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Depressing @Mark 85

"The second was that the designer was killed on the Launchpad when a rocket being fueled blew up."

That is not the case. You probably mistaken it for the Nedelin accident - that was an ICBM being tested on the pad, fully fueled when the 2nd stage motors ignited because of a fault in the sequencer electronics. That thing had totally different engines, operating on hypergolic fuel.

Now, N1-L3 (with NK-15 engines - the precursors to NK-33/AJ-26 on Antares) did blow up on the pad during one test, producing one of the largest non-nuke explosions in the history of humanity, but that was when the engines were unnecessarily cut off by on-board automatics after it detected a problem with one (of 30!) turbopump. Basically, the rocket took off then fell back down on the pad - similar to Antares. No one was killed or injured in the accident.

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