Space Launches and Failures

Today, I'm reminded of the Simpson's episode "Homer the Astronaut", in which NASA panics when they realize that the public has lost all interest in space launches. In an attempt to regain public interest, the decide they need to send up someone that will truly captivate the public's attention, and they realize that person is: The Common Slob.

I guess I'm somewhat typical of what the Simpson's writers thought the public to be: Without making any claims to be a rocket scientist, or considering space launches to be easy, I still find myself scratching my head over the fact that at this point in time, space launches should be a somewhat mature field of endeavor, and that getting a ship into space seems like it should be fairly routine. (Note: Let me stress, here, that I am speaking strictly of the act of getting a rocket off the planet and outside of the atmosphere. I still appreciate the complexities of going beyond that point.)

The reason I mention this has to do with two worrisome headlines from the last day or so, both pertaining to Russian space launches. These are:

1.) The highly-anticipated launch of the solar sail vehicle was confirmed to have failed. This was to have been the first test of a controlled flight via a solar sail-powered vehicle, and was quite an exciting venture. Solar Sails offer the possibility of high-speed, long-distance spaceflight without the requirements of carrying massive amounts of chemical propellant...a spacecraft that uses effectively free propulsion. After fretting for the better part of a day, it was definitively determined that "the Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch." A high-profile and highly-disappointing failure.

2.) Hot on the heels of failure item number one above, we learn of a rocket which crashed while attempting to deliver a communications satellite into orbit. In this case, we are told that:"rocket launched properly, but experienced a malfunction as it switched between stages."

Now, unless something has changed in the last few weeks, if things keep on the same course we've been anticipating, we're going to be relying on the Russians for service to the International Space Station for a few years after the Space Shuttles are discontinued until the new replacement vehicle is ready for service. I'm not trying to slam the Russians specifically, but there are clearly some issues to be worked out in the reliability aspect of their launch capabilities.

It certainly seems like a wrong-headed idea to completely eliminate a working program, while counting on a program with its own obvious kinks, all in the hopes that some new as-yet-undetermined plan to pick up the slack several years later.

As a final word, in case it sounds like I'm singling out the Russian space program for criticism: I'm not. I'm trying to make a cautionary statement. I actually plan to write a post (or posts) about the planned Russian next-gen space platforms, which sound really freaking cool to me. I think a post about the seemingly yet-to-be-finalized US next-gen space launch platforms is in order, as well.