Orbital Sciences Mission Explodes 6 Seconds Into Launch
No doubt you’ve seen the video below, showing the Orbital Sciences Corporation Cygnus cargo spacecraft expl0ding shortly after liftoff.
This is an unfortunate catastrophe for Orbital Sciences, but also for the many people (including a number of students) who had experiments and other instruments aboard. NASA, the FAA, and Orbital Sciences, in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Board, are investigating the problem. As of right now, from the press conference held after the accident, there are NO definitive answers about why this happened. There are teams already studying the data, and will be on the site in the morning. In addition, NASA and OSC are asking people who find remains of this rocket to please NOT touch them, and to report them to the launch team.
Let me say one thing again: there are NO definitive answers. Yet.
There WILL be answers, and they will serve to make the next flight safer. There is already a great deal of speculation online by many armchair enthusiasts and too few experts about what happened. That, too, is normal, but hardly helpful. Especially since most (if not all) of the speculation is by people who aren’t onsite, or on the teams. Bear that in mind if you start hearing or seeing weird stuff about this launch. It’s likely not true.
The name of this article is from a quote by Gus Grissom about the dangers of space flight. It’s never been truer than today: accidents happen. They are studied. And, space agencies and companies learn from them and move on.
Give the investigation some time, and pay attention when Orbital Sciences and NASA give information about this mishap. They are best places to find out what happened and the press conferences will be a good first step in finding out how this happened. Not from loony-toon conspiracy theorists (and yes, they’re oozing out from under the rocks and bridges of insanity, coming up with all kinds of fantastical ranting).
It’s a sad day for all involved and not too much of a setback I hope.
That phrase “Conquest of space” is so wrong, space isn’t there to be conquered, it’s there to be explored, & understood.
Conquer: to defeat, beat, triumph over, get the better of. “Conquest: the act or state of conquering or the state of being conquered”. None of these say what you think they say. They say what needed to be said.
I used the words I did to make a point. If you don’t know the history, please check out the life and sacrifice of Gus Grissom. It’s easily Google-able.
It is part of a quote from an astronaut at a time when space was still new territory for all of us. I will not sanitize it to make it politically correct. It is what Gus Grissom said and I honor his words in the spirit of the disastrous events at Wallops.
He understood, as all of us interested in space exploration do, that in going to space, we conquer a great many things, but the most important one is fear of the unknown. We pursue the conquest of space in the sense that we want to be part of it, to demonstrate that we CAN master our fear of the unknown to get there.
Words mean what we want them to mean, and if we are smart, we can use them wisely.
In that sense, Grissom’s words are absolutely correct. I suppose today, if he were around, he would say “Master your fear”. Or maybe not. But let’s not lose sight of what has been accomplished and will be accomplished in a semantic reinterpretation of a man who died nearly 50 years ago trying to give us the dream of space exploration.
Space doesn’t wait for the politically correct.
It’s not political correctness, it’s just how I feel and you overreacted.
Anyway, I have conquered my fear of being uninformed on space matters & removed you from my blogroll.
Ramble on.
I usually don’t remove someone from a blogroll simply because I don’t agree with them. I certainly don’t go onto someone else’s blog and rudely accuse them of “overreacting” because what they said didn’t agree with what I think. You’re in MY living room. I gave you information, which you didn’t like. Fair enough. Your response was rude. I expect people to act agreeably, even when their opinions don’t match mine or others’. You’re welcome to come back and act civilly, when you feel like it. Thanks for visiting when you did. And, please don’t drop little rude-bombs on other peoples’ blogs. Its bound to get you talked about.