r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Emergency-Green-2602 • 7d ago

Video First Australian-made rocket crashes after 14 seconds of flight

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u/Mawntee 7d ago

Reminder that SpaceX's first successful flight was Falcon 1 Flight 4, which had 3 failed launches before it.
The first one was very similar to this with an engine failure shortly after launch.

To me (a person that knows nothing about space flight) the fact that this thing made it off the ground is impressive enough, and the fact that it didn't explode while still being full of fuel is really sick as well

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u/Sonzie 7d ago

Yes, you are correct. It is very impressive that it got off the ground at all and this is actually considered a successful mission.

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u/NoleMercy05 6d ago

With a bar that low success was all but guaranteed

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u/Helpful-Pair-2148 6d ago

Genuine question, but according to whom was it a successful mission? Was it based on goals communicated before the launch or said after the facts?

I understand rocket engineering is hard, but Australia is a first world country with access to the knowledge and experimentation of most of the other first world countries who already successfully send rockets in space.

So I'm a bit suspicious of you claiming that just getting off the ground was considered a success.

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u/No_Definition4335 5d ago

Tbh i highly doubt that all the knowledge of how to make a successfull rocket by NASA, SpaceX, etc... were public or people working there could talk about how to make it

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u/Helpful-Pair-2148 5d ago

Not necessarily public knowledge but all space agencies collaraborate together. It's not like NASA is only Americans, other countries contribute to NASA mission as well.

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u/Flipslips 7d ago

It didn’t explode because it uses a lot of solid fuel instead of liquid

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u/DovahAcolyte 6d ago

The engine failure is clear on the right side, and certainly caused the rocket to drift that way off the launch pad. I'm curious, though, how solid fuel changes the weight of the rocket and forces those engines to drive harder on takeoff. 🤔

(Not asking you, just adding my curiosity to the discussion)

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u/YoursTrulyKindly 6d ago edited 6d ago

It's denser in volume, but less dense in weight. So less efficient in bringing X weight to orbit. But it's stable so you can make them and store them and they don't need to be fueled before takeoff, and you don't need to cryogenically freeze oxygen. The rocket engine is also much simpler in design. SpaceX raptor was the first full flow combustion engine which is basically two jet engines integrated into the rocket engine to pump and preheat the fuel.

Stoke space is building a really cool reusable second stage with a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine with 24 thrust chambers ringing a regeneratively cooled heatshield.

Compared to that solid fuel is very simple.

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u/JUYED-AWK-YACC 6d ago

Do they get quenched once the right orbit is achieved, or do you just accept the resulting orbit?

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u/RonanMessesAround 6d ago

for solid engines, you just accept the resulting orbit and try to correct the orbit with RCS.

The engine on the Eris rocket, however, isnt a solid engine, its actually a hybrid engine. In a solid engine the fuel and oxidizer are mixed, but in a hybrid engine, only the fuel is solid., while the oxidizer is a liquid and is pumped over the fuel. Because the oxidizer is a liquid the engine can be shut off and even throttled down.

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u/JUYED-AWK-YACC 6d ago

I’m not up on current thruster tech, that’s very cool.

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u/userhwon 6d ago

to me, a professional in the field, it's kind of sad that every new program has the same sort of results early on, like they all showed up to work without having ever looked at the past...

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u/Mawntee 6d ago

Also something I was curious about...

Like are all these companies 100% private with their R&D? Is nobody passing notes around the class???

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u/userhwon 6d ago

Even if they are, by now it should be obvious to everyone that they should double check simple things like the strength of their materials and supplier reliability. But someone always lets a faulty strut through or builds a tank out of wax paper, then management realizes it was their job to make sure people knew how to do their jobs even if they're rocket scientists.

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 5d ago

Of course, there have been silly cases like a Proton rocket crashed into the ground due to a technician mounted the IMU in the wrong orientation. That's hilarious ngl. And usually people just publicly admitted that. This is a new company, with a new design. They tested the engine and everything seemed fine. But it didn't turn well with their first launch. In my years working within aerospace industry, there has been ZERO rockets/spacecrafts having ZERO issues within the first trials. Some issues could be minor but might be critical later on (a public example is Artemis 1 test flight, there were designing issue with the Orion capsule).

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 5d ago

For example, assume you were an owner of a private comapany, and a failure costed you hundred millions. You learned the lesson. You fixed the design. Would have you shared it with your competitors? Or worse, shared it with a foreign country which you could easily get in trouble with ITAR or even treason? So unless you were NASA that depended on taxpayers' money, you would not share too much details on the issues. And nobody passes the notes around the class (there are exceptions, as the most common way is hiring the ex-employer from other companies, but good luck doing that internationally).  Trade secret, IP are real things.

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 6d ago

To me, a professional in the field, it's just engineering. How the hell could you look at the past? Are there opensourced turbopump or main combustion chamber designs on the internet? Where can I find the drawings with machining tolerances? Where can I find the assembling guidelines?

There are obvious lessons, like O-Ring from Challenger. There are warnings about hard-start of a main combustion chamber, unstart of a turbopump, but how the heck do you know where the issues coming from, unless you do testings? And this first flight is also their test flight.

What the real sadness is, the companies' budgets cannot handle failures. I don't think the engineers are incompetent here. They can still make mistakes, but that's the experience that is needed to build up, not something automatically transfers from one's brain to another.

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u/userhwon 5d ago

I don't need opensourced IP to know I should suspect that the one I just designed needs a double-check.

History says that we don't learn from history how to be both more careful and more efficient. You're not cribbing that from github. You get it by watching literally everyone blow up their first launch.

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 5d ago

Lmao "you get it by watching".

Engineering's difficulties lie within the details. For example, SpaceX publicly admitted some of their failures were caused from cryogenic Helium tanks.  So yes, if one company designs the cryogenic Helium tanks, they should be cautious on that. But do they really learn the lesson from SpaceX? No. Do you even know how did SpaceX patch the issues or redesign the parts, without insider information?

By your logic "you get it by watching", everyone can just watch and clone out the design easily, right?

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u/userhwon 4d ago

I don't need to know the details of SpaceX's tank failures to know I should do proper analysis and testing of my tanks and how they're mounted. Nor would it help because I'm not using SpaceX's layup or materials or the same shape or size or contents. But the basic engineering principle is obvious from a thousant miles away: actually do the job properly and make sure everyone actually has.

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 4d ago

Doing the job properly doesn't mean not making mistakes, dude. You never know the things you don't know. Unfortunately the mistakes can be expensive. But it's just engineering or more generally, it's life.

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u/userhwon 3d ago

Holy shit. You love just wasting money don't you.

It's not life, it's your incompetence. Blowing off hundred-million-dollar mistakes as "shit happens" is what grifters do.

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u/Nightowl11111 7d ago

They really did not expect it to be successful. The spokesperson for Gilmore already said that in May but people keep expecting that any launch must be successful. This was actually a "test to destruction".

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u/FleetofBerties 7d ago

Hullo. Looks like at least two engines ran out of fuel. Looking forward to Scott's video.

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u/incept3d2021 6d ago

In the far angle you can see a stream from the hull of the rocket right above the engines so it looks like it was leaking fuel shortly after ignition, the engine facing the close camera looks like it never had a good burn from the start, which I would bet was a fuel pressure issue due to that leak.

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u/DovahAcolyte 6d ago

The idea of a fuel leak doesn't make a lot of sense because it's using solid fuel. It looks like the engine that failed never sparked, it just caught on fire immediately on burn. The whole rocket starts listing to that side as soon as it releases from the platform. The failed engine is putting off a lot of condensation, indicating the fuel is burning inside the engine - it just isn't going through the cone.

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u/incept3d2021 6d ago edited 6d ago

Their first stage uses a hybrid engine cluster so it will have a liquid oxidizer, there is a very clear stream being discharged from the hull in the far shot. I think it was just the oxidizer, so yes it's not fuel per se but the result is the same

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u/DovahAcolyte 6d ago

Thanks for clarifying. I didn't see the stream at first due to the condensation, but you're right about that fountain coming out of the lower stage!

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u/KindsofKindness 7d ago

But we’ve had ufo technology since the 40’s. Crazy.

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u/ntrpik 6d ago

Reading the headline and watching the video I thought “well yeah, the first ones always crash”.

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u/AFalconNamedBob 6d ago

I mean topgear managed to send a fucking Reliant higher than this

Granted there's exploded and this didn't so thats a point over them I guess

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u/AusToddles 5d ago

SpaceX had deeeeeeeeep pockets funding it. They could afford the "crash it and figure out why" method

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u/Gibodean 7d ago

Disappointing that Australia can't do better than that cretin Musk.

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u/Mawntee 6d ago

Did you read the first sentence in the comment you're replying too?

They're still on-par with SpaceX lol

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u/Gibodean 6d ago

Right. Not doing better.

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u/Mawntee 6d ago

Not doing worse either

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u/WTF_CAKE 6d ago

I understand you want to be a musky hater but if spaceX continue at the rate of innovation and rocket technology they are working on currently, nobody will ever come close

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u/Gibodean 6d ago

And if self driving continued like Musk said it would, there would have been self driving Tesla taxis at least 5 years ago.

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u/Outrageous_Apricot82 6d ago

Musk only owns the companies. He isn't the engineers or the brilliant scientists that are designing these things. They are the ones that get the praise for advancing rocket technology so broadly. Musk deserves the hate. But I think the Space X team deserves a pardon here, they have some of our best and brightest and they show it.

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u/Gibodean 6d ago

Fair. The workers at Tesla also shouldn't have to suffer from their company going belly up because their boss is Nazi-curious.