Something happened just before the fuel pump battery hot-swap on the second stage. Here's some visualisation of the acceleration drop-off scraped from the web stream: https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1279583677890965504
I am not a rocket scientist, but this looks like the hot swap never happened. Lower power on a pump, then it completely drained battery and just stopped, engine is off, end of story.
It's a bit disappointing right because this hot-swap-and-then-ditch the battery maneuver is their key know-how, it helps to keep 2S engine simpler and cheaper.
For negative acceleration the body needs a force applied in opposite direction. Atmosphere density @ 190 km is nine orders of magnitude less than at sea level, so the drag is negligible.
Gravity vector was at the moment directed about 70-75 degrees relativе to speed. You may see the speed decreasing slightly while altitude still increasing, meaning vehicle gone ballistic.
Can someone comment on the economics of this? Rocket Lab is charging $5m for 150kg to SSO. SpaceX offers 150kg to SSO on the smallsat rideshare for $1m. What sorts of payloads would not be suitable for rideshare or would be worth 5x the cost for better scheduling or a better orbit?
Ridshare orbit depends on the primary orbit requirements, if the orbit is not favourable to your sat, correcting the orbit may not be feasible at all, given the small payload size you may not have the fuel for the correction burn
Also fitting your sat to a rideshare payload adapter could be lot more complex depending on the primary and other shares
Similarly while spaceX is cheap, there are plenty of workloads where ULA is the only option, vertical assembly , certain fairing sized , some orbits etc .
There are a few companies such as Spaceflight[1] that partner with launch providers such as ISRO[2][3] to offer rideshare and dedicated launches at much cheaper prices.
They are cheaper only for nano satellites. From your first link it costs 295k$ for 10kg to LEO. With spaceX you can send up to 200 kg to LEO for 1M$. It’s 20 times the payload for ~3 times the price.
IIRC, this breaks a record that no other rocket has achieved. Prior to this mission, every single Rocket Lab flight with a paying customer has been a success. Many other rockets have had 11 successes in a row, but no other rocket has had their first 11 launches with payloads be a success.
(Rocket Lab's first mission was also a failure, but it did not have a payload. That failure was with ground equipment, so this current failure is their first rocket failure).
>The Space Shuttle system was not "a rocket", so possibly GP wasn't counting it?
I don't see why the space shuttle wouldn't be considered a rocket? It had 3 rocket engines coming out the back of it.
>Were those consecutive successes from the first launch without a dummy payload?
Yes, although I goofed the math and it was actually 29. If we're excluding launches with dummy payloads, you could actually add in the Delta IV Heavy, which brings the total up to 39.
Launches with payload numbers 5 through 40: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV#Delta_IV_launches_in_... I wonder if the trick is something like "launches in the same configuration" because that would really penalize older rockets that used to undergo upgrades once in a while.
I don't know if there's an official definition, but I'd consider the Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy to be separate launch vehicles in the same family, akin to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Whereas with the single-stick Delta IV Medium, the variations like 4m vs 5m fairings are just different configurations.
At least we know Rocket Lab's webcast uses real telemetry, unlike Blue Origin, where they break the laws of Physics by pausing at 0 MPH: https://youtu.be/sUEj4dxPMbI?t=2658
I like how a 1 second pause in telemetry makes you so certain that Blue Origin is fraudulent. Anyway, what is the point of your comment on this thread anyway?
I don't think Blue Origin as a whole is fraudulent, just that they're not showing real telemetry data. By way of comparison, I think it's commendable that Rocket Lab's stream was accurate enough for viewers to see the failure occurring live.
It shows that they're not showing unfiltered telemetry data, but it absolutely does not prove it's not real at all. Interpolation, rounding, sampling frequency in combination would easily explain this.
Not to mention that the speed freezes quite frequently at other points in the video...
Re-watching the numbers during the Blue Origin launch, it would've been tedious to fake the jumpiness using a pre-rendered animation, so perhaps the number fudging is limited to a "pause at zero" hack. Still, the presence of a "marketing telemetry" algorithm makes it seem less trustworthy for determining whether a failure occurred.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders: conflating velocity with its derivative.
The (approximately) zero-G period lasts for minutes, not milliseconds, and during that time, the velocity changes by 9.8 m/s (22 MPH) every second. The velocity should not pause at 0, or any other value.
22 mph per second is an abomination of a mixed unit I'd never heard before, but it's actually much more intuitive to me than the standard 9.8 metres per second per second.
Maybe we can compromise on 35 km/h per second though.
New Shepard is not traveling perfectly vertical, there's always a horizontal component so the velocity will never be zero. Even if you fly up in a perfectly vertical line, you'll gain horizontal velocity as you climb as the Earth's surface moves away from you from it's rotation.
It's a bit disappointing right because this hot-swap-and-then-ditch the battery maneuver is their key know-how, it helps to keep 2S engine simpler and cheaper.
Ridshare orbit depends on the primary orbit requirements, if the orbit is not favourable to your sat, correcting the orbit may not be feasible at all, given the small payload size you may not have the fuel for the correction burn
Also fitting your sat to a rideshare payload adapter could be lot more complex depending on the primary and other shares
Similarly while spaceX is cheap, there are plenty of workloads where ULA is the only option, vertical assembly , certain fairing sized , some orbits etc .
- Timing, perhaps you want to deliver sooner.
[1] https://spaceflight.com/pricing/
[2] https://www.isro.gov.in/launchers
[3] https://www.nsilindia.co.in/launch-services
(Rocket Lab's first mission was also a failure, but it did not have a payload. That failure was with ground equipment, so this current failure is their first rocket failure).
The Minotaur is currently 11/11 (with a 12th launch planned later this year).
Space Shuttle had 24 consecutive launches before a failure
The standard Delta IV has also had 24 consecutive successes.
> Space Shuttle had 24 consecutive launches before a failure
The Space Shuttle system was not "a rocket", so possibly GP wasn't counting it?
> The standard Delta IV has also had 24 consecutive successes.
Were those consecutive successes from the first launch without a dummy payload?
I don't see why the space shuttle wouldn't be considered a rocket? It had 3 rocket engines coming out the back of it.
>Were those consecutive successes from the first launch without a dummy payload?
Yes, although I goofed the math and it was actually 29. If we're excluding launches with dummy payloads, you could actually add in the Delta IV Heavy, which brings the total up to 39.
Duh, you're right, of course - I somehow was thinking just of the boosters.
Not to mention that the speed freezes quite frequently at other points in the video...
It’s possible it experiences zero-G for more than just a few milliseconds at its apogee. Hence the 0mph velocity.
The (approximately) zero-G period lasts for minutes, not milliseconds, and during that time, the velocity changes by 9.8 m/s (22 MPH) every second. The velocity should not pause at 0, or any other value.
Maybe we can compromise on 35 km/h per second though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayYgPdk0VVc