Were these liquid or solid rockets? How in the hell could this sort of thing happen? I’ve never heard of a spacecraft rocket engine exploding days before a scheduled launch. On launch date, during launch, sure, but days before? I’m certain they will get to the bottom of this and all appropriate idiots will be fired unceremoniously, but can anyone with appropriate education here please provide us with and explaination as to how this could happen?
I doubt that you’ll have a reason before they can conduct an inquiry, but the specifications for the VLS (Veiculo Lancador de Satelites) are in theEncyclopedia Astronautica. (I can’t explain the discrepancy between four engines in the news stories and one engine on the information site.)
The last two rockets launched from there had to be self-destructed when there were problems shortly after launch. Aside from the tragedy of the loss of life this time, they must really be losing a lot of money (not to mention customers) in blown up rockets and their satellite payloads.
The rockets in question were solid fueled. Apparantly the two previous launches failed when upper-stage solid rocket motors failed to ignite. I suspect they redesigned the ignition system and were testing it, unfortunatly accidentally igniting a rocket before the launch
Two possibilities:
(a) They may be counting multiple stages/add-on boosters – the launch system for a specific flight is usually a stacked/clustered combination of a “core” vehicle plus whatever else is needed to carry the specific payload. e.g. the full stack pictured at Wade’s site has 3 stages + 4 boosters (7 engines)
(b) There is designation confusion, and the VLS-3 described in the news report is not the same thing as the VLS-3 stage described in the article
Sad, really. As the common quip goes, this IS rocket science, and that was good human talent that fell on the line of duty. (Brazil is a country with a grand old aerospace tradition, back to Alberto Santos Dumont, who was neck-and-neck with the Wrights and Langley for first flight. If anyone here has flown short-hop flights lately inthe USA there’s a good chance you have flown Embraer planes!)
As far as I could locate, the only photos were of aftermath.
I also noted in a couple of news stories that the solid-fuel Space Shuttle engines are touched off with mortars (!), which suggests they’re difficult to get going; it’s not like you could flip a cigarette onto the launch pad. (Though I’m sure that’s prohibited just in case.) So the question for the investigators is, how the heck did this engine get lit?
This makes me very sad. The only way we’re going to get into space in a big way is through international competition, and Brazil’s equatorial position makes it an ideal launch point. I was rooting for them to succeed; I would have been almost as sad at failure even if nobody had died.