Monday, August 25, 2014

BIG badaboom!


It seems a Russian Proton-M rocket carrying three Glonass navigation system satellites suffered a catastrophic failure immediately after launch last year in Kazakhstan.  The resulting explosion, shown below from several miles away, was . . . impressive, to say the least.





I hope all that flying glass didn't hurt anyone!

Here are two more views of the same explosion, from a nearby road and from launch pad cameras.








I'm glad I wasn't near that one . . . and very glad it missed the residential area in which the first video was filmed.  I'd imagine that explosion was big enough to wipe out most of a typical town.

(A tip o' the hat to Foxtrot Alpha for the links to the videos.)

Peter

8 comments:

drjim said...

Several of the accelerometers in that one were installed upside down, so the guidance system went all wonky trying to control it.

Rev. Paul said...

The missile test in Kodiak did the same thing, earlier today. BIG boomer.

Ed Skinner said...

I counted ten seconds from biggest flash to glass breaking. Anyone know how fast the shock wave was going?

drjim said...

Uhhhh.....Speed of Sound maybe?

Angus McThag said...

The decision to switch to Kerbal Engineering for guidance systems, in retrospect, was not as much of a cost saving measure as it first appeared.

FrankC said...

I'm surprised they didn't blow it as soon as it went seriously off course.

Steve said...

interesting... range safety asleep at the wheel on this one. I watched a T-IV do something similar when some wires shorted out and reset the navigation system to sea level.. problem is T-IV was a ways up there. So US Space Command put the satellite into a 'sub-sea level' orbit *grins*

drjim said...

Russian launch vehicles don't have a destruct package on them. Since all their launch facilities are located in isolated places, with even less "stuff" downrange, if there's a major problem with one of their vehicles, the "range safety" function is accomplished by simply shutting down the engine, and letting the launch vehicle fall back to Earth.