(FRENCH) Super rocket explodes on launch (OOPS ALERT)

BBC News ^ | December 12, 2002 | BBC News

[MadIvan]

Europe's new heavy-lift rocket has failed on its maiden flight.

The Ariane 5-ESCA blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 1921 (2221 GMT) local time and blew up three minutes later.

We have already known failures, we will know more

Jean-Yves Le Gall, Arianespace

No explanation for the loss has yet been given by officials from Arianespace, the rocket's operators, who have scheduled a media conference for Thursday.

It is not clear whether the vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure or controllers noticed something was wrong and took the painful decision to destroy the rocket.

Main stage

Wednesday's launch was the second attempt to get the Ariane 5-ESCA airborne. The first countdown on 28 November was halted because of a computer glitch.

The launcher was a beefed-up version of the vehicle that first went into full commercial service in 1999.

Wednesday's explosion was the fourth failure of an Ariane 5 rocket in its 14-mission history. The failure is likely to halt Ariane 5 flights indefinitely.

Early investigations are likely to centre on the new components of the rocket.

UK space scientist Dr Andrew Coates, who lost experiments on the first Ariane 5 failure in 1986, said: "This seemed to happen just after the solid fuel boosters would have been jettisoned but still while the main stage was burning so the most likely explanation is that something went wrong with the main stage."

Comet question

The setback will now put an enormous question mark over Europe's upcoming science mission Rosetta, designed to put a lander on Comet Wirtanen.

The Rosetta craft was due to launch on the next Ariane 5 flight on 12 January. Its eight-year journey to the comet requires the probe to be swung around Mars once and Earth twice to get it in the right position to catch the comet.

"It has quite a narrow launch window and if it doesn't go in January I don't know when it will go quite frankly," UK space technologist Dr Chris Welch said.

He speculated the mission might have to risk a flight rather than see years of research and millions of euros go to waste.

Cruel reminder

The Ariane 5 launcher lost on Wednesday was carrying a double payload: a Hotbird TM7 for the European telecoms consortium Eutelsat, and Stentor, an experimental communications satellite for the French space research institute CNES.

The debris would have fallen into the Atlantic Ocean. The satellites were likely to have been insured.

The boss of Arianespace, Jean-Yves Le Gall, immediately apologised to his two customers.

"At this stage it is too early to give precise reasons for this failure," he said.

"Our job is difficult. It's at moments like this we are cruelly reminded of it," he added. "We have already known failures, we will know more."

[reagan_fanatic]

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

For any orbit you want to launch near the equator towards the east to take advantage of the free energy available from the earth's rotation. (A big disadvantage for the Ruskies.) That's why another French innovator, Jules Verne started his race to the moon from Houston.

[VOA]

It blowed up REAL good!

Thanks for the graphic.
Actually, I'm disappointed in a lack of a graphic of the exploding/destroyed rocket.

At least when we have this sort of mess-up in the USA, we get some really cool photos/film
of stuff blowin' up REAL good!

Leave it to the French to not even capitalize on this sort of wonderous spectacle.
Oh, that's right, they wouldn't want to "capitalize", they are socialists.

[ArcLight]

Oh, get off it, guys. I'm a space buff, and I hate to see one of these go boom. Unless, of course, it belongs to our buddies in the Axis of Evil.

Indeed, I think the wrong rocket blew up. Those North Korean Scuds would have given off a lovely light...

[spetznaz]

Coming from an Englishman...I would watch the automobile slams. If Britannia rules the waves, why can't her cars cross a puddle?

LOL ...funniest thing i have read all day!

[crypt2k]

In heaven.... 
The French are the chefs....
The Germans are the engineers...
The British are the policemen...
The Italians are the lovers...
And the Swiss organize everything.

In hell... 
The British are the chefs...
The French are the engineers...
The Germans are the policemen...
The Swiss are the lovers...
And the Italians organize everything.

[Saturn_V]

I hate seeing this, since I'm peripherially involved in the commercial space industry. Nothing like taking a bird you put 3-4 years of your life into (most commercial spacecraft are built essentially by hand from scratch) and losing it to a launch vehicle failure. And before we all go sneering at the Ariane V, no one's immune to LV failure (the US included) - most rockets run a success rate of between ~80-90%. So, every 5 to 10 launches or so, you lose a quarter billion dollar satellite - that's a non-trivial risk. Factor in a brand new rocket, as in this case, and the insurance companies start getting worried. Of course, if it's reliability you're looking for, try a Soyuz or Proton (which, its last failure notwithstanding, has a pretty good commercial success rate). Granted, you'll be working with the Russians (who have some facinating ideas on safety - and Baikonur's not exactly the vacation spot that Kourou is), and the payload to GTO isn't quite up to the new Ariane 5ESC-A (10.5 tonnes, I think)...

-SV

[xJones]

.Well, the old saying goes, "You are what you eat!"

Need I say more?

LOL!

[Imal]

Hold muh wine bump.

[rogue yam]

Now, now, a true rocket scientist never says "any" unless he's really, really sure. Hmmm? How about.... a polar orbit? Still gonna launch due east? Still want to be near the equator?

[VaBthang4]

You know it makes you wonder...


How many of their friggin ICBM nukes wouldnt make it passed three minutes?

"Sacré bleu!! We just Nuked Paris!"

[VaBthang4]

"In a tersely worded press release, the French Government announced that the rocket had "surrendered to gravity"...

Yes, the new Vichy class rockets would in future be pointed downward, so as not to resist the force any longer, but rather go with it, in an acceptance of the natural order."

LOL!!

[PAR35]

I probably should have put the word in quotes.

[lavaroise]

Ten minutes after the blast the french army surrendered.

As an electrical engineer in French Guyanna my father was virtualy fired for pestering at a commi/union/Guyannean subordinate whose incompetence had lead to the shut down of electricity to the Kourou complex for a couple of days. Yes, in France, when you try to finish the job of those who are on starting problems, you get fired. No wonder their stuff is falling off. They have surrendered probably there too.

I believe one of the failures of the Ariane5 was because a worker "accidentaly" left a cleaning towel in the plumbing of the machine. He never got fired either...

[lavaroise]

There is a French engineer ego trip involved. They usualy prevent you from doing your job so they can get the info but then they never communicate the info they have. Hence when there is a safety problem the little guy notices, he does not mention it.

[BlueLancer]

Take a look at post #56 ...

Doesn't this read like our old friend Oxi-Nato is back?