It's too bad, really.
RELEASE 14-302
NASA Statement Regarding Oct. 28 Orbital Sciences Corp. Launch Mishap
The following statement is from William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, regarding the mishap that occurred at Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the attempted launch of Orbital Sciences Corp’s Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft at 6:22 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28.
“While NASA is disappointed that Orbital Sciences' third contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station was not successful today, we will continue to move forward toward the next attempt once we fully understand today's mishap. The crew of the International Space Station is in no danger of running out of food or other critical supplies.
“Orbital has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first two missions to the station earlier this year, and we know they can replicate that success. Launching rockets is an incredibly difficult undertaking, and we learn from each success and each setback. Today's launch attempt will not deter us from our work to expand our already successful capability to launch cargo from American shores to the International Space Station.”
Welllll.... Remember this? How a bunch of clever kids at Ames grabbed a '60s vintage rocket motor out of the warehouse and scanned it and rebuilt parts and examined blueprints and stuff to try and reverse-engineer what we've lost in documentation? Orbital is straight-up using Soviet surplus. This is the equivalent of taking an AH-56 out of mothballs because there's a shortage of S-72s to get your executives out to the oil rig. It's not going to end well. “Their rocket honestly sounds like the punchline to a joke,” said Elon Musk, founder of rival SpaceX, in an interview in 2012. “It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the 60s. I don’t mean their design is from the 60s — I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the 60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”
That SpaceX article didn't have anything to do with the serviceability of the rockets, though. Just legal wrangling. I'm skeptical -- firstly, Orbital has pulled off a couple previous resupplies, and NASA clearly trusts them to some extent. Secondly, SpaceX has every reason to bitch about a rival. Anyway, I stand by my comment. Given the several million things that can go wrong at each launch, it's amazing we've come to take these things for granted.
Look - rockets are pretty damn exciting. I watch them go up every chance I get. But the "ZOMG why don't they crash all the time" thing is uncalled for. They don't crash all the time because they're triple-and-quadruple checked. Every time someone says "it's amazing" you're denigrating the very people who earn their living making it mundane.