[X] My Assistant

[mhoward]

My own favorite launch blooper concerns a cruise missile, SM-62, # 53-8172. This was the first long-range trial of the supposedly operational Snark D in December 1956.
It was supposed to fly from the Cape to Puerto Rico, then turn back and land at Cape Canaveral, all by its own INS. However after a while it started diverging towards the south and no commands from the tracking stations had any effect. Neither had the self-destruct orders. Fighters were scrambled from Puerto Rico, but too late to catch up.
53-8172 was last heard of crossing the coast of Venezuela and presumably still rests somewhere in the amazonian jungle.

An epitaph from a Florida newspaper:

They shot a Snark into the air
It fell to ground, they know not where
tty

Wow - it's uncannily like the plot of the movie Lost Continent, which was made only 5 years earlier!

I guess those old B-movies were more realistic than I thought.

[lyford]

This one was almost fireworks - got a nice "Blackened Cajun Coating" to it by the time it left the pad:
Delta IV Heavy BBQ
RocketCam Version! Scroll Down!
APOD gif version

hmmm - mhoward - that's the second MST3K reference in a week - are you hoping Santa reads UMSF? Have you been a good boy this year?

[dvandorn]

I lost the link to this when my machine kept going down a couple of years ago, but in keeping with this thread, there was a small group of engineers who wanted to know what would happen if you ladled a nice big spoonful of LOX onto, say, a charcoal grill.

The guy did it right -- he attached a big scoop to a 3-meter pole. His confederates managed to fill the scoop with liquid oxygen, and the guy maneuvered the scoop over the charcoal grill, and dumped.

The flash was rather brighter than the camera could handle, but as the flash abated, you could see the charcoal grill's legs collapse. The entire metal pan that held the charcoal had literally melted through...

-the other Doug

[ljk4-1]

Ever wonder what a cluster of 747 engines would do to a car that got behind it while the jetliner was getting ready for takeoff?

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/47116/747_jet_blast/

[deglr6328]

I lost the link to this when my machine kept going down a couple of years ago, but in keeping with this thread, there was a small group of engineers who wanted to know what would happen if you ladled a nice big spoonful of LOX onto, say, a charcoal grill.
-the other Doug

I think that particular video is now gone from the interweb but this one is a very simillar re-enactment done by some (obviously drunk) undergrad chemistry fun group (VERY non dialup-friendly). For a group of chemistry students, some of the demos are done with a surprisingly stupid lack of regard for safety. In one part, the guy actually manually directs the stream of liquid O2 on to the grill standing mere inches away. Also they do another one where they drop thermite into a beaker of water, where, if you ask me, they got away extremely lucky. If that configuration is just so it will explode with EXTREME violence blowing liquid metal everywhere because the metal is hot enough to lyse the water into O2 and H2. Nonetheless highly amusing. I particularly like the last one where they set off a huge amount of thermite, the massive gush/splash of liquid Fe is spectacular.

[edstrick]

Then, though it's about as far as you can get from OUTER space, the internet geek's #1 all time favorite explosion:

http://www.theexplodingwhale.com/

[ljk4-1]

Then, though it's about as far as you can get from OUTER space, the internet geek's #1 all time favorite explosion:

http://www.theexplodingwhale.com/

Is it just me, or can you tell that this forum is dominated by guys.

[lyford]

I lost the link to this when my machine kept going down a couple of years ago, but in keeping with this thread, there was a small group of engineers who wanted to know what would happen if you ladled a nice big spoonful of LOX onto, say, a charcoal grill.

I think you mean George Goble. His official Purdue page was removed, for some reason

9 MB MPEG here
Has more on his site -

And not that I have anything against exploding whales, to be on topic they should be doing so upon launch or reentry, and perhaps with a bowl of petunias?

EDITED to fix movie link

[jrdahlman]

For a hilarious story on WHY a rocket could go off in the wrong direction, read "The Missile that Couldn't Fly Straight" by Hal Hardenbergh. It can be found in the September 1983 issue of his "DTACK Grounded" newsletter, writing under the pen name of "Feldercarb N. Eloi." (It was supposed to be about 68000 programming, but he usually wrote about whatever he felt like writing.)

Though it claims to be a "fictional story," it's strongly hinted to be based on real problems with the guidance system for a missle he calls "a Secondperson" (Hmmm, any relation to the Minuteman?) with the names changed.

The short version:

Finally, enough missiles were in place that one could be safely expended for test purposes. It was pulled from its hole, trucked to Vandenberg AFB, and aimed due west. That's north of Hawaii and south of the Great Circle trade routes to Japan. When they launched the Secondperson the engines performed flawlessly as the missile flew on a straight line for Kansas City. The launch officer had to destroy it, of course. Regrettably, Kansas City is east, not west, of Vandenberg AFB. Oh, well, you can't expect missiles to perform perfectly every time.

General Rattlesword decided that the next random test would be with two missiles, and would be performed as soon as practicable....

Two new test-firings of production Secondperson missiles occurred on consecutive days at Vandenberg AFO under the personal supervision of General Rattlesword and a coterie of lesser officers, including Colonel Crudcutter. Although both were aimed west, one flew north and the other north-west. The engines of both missiles were performing flawlessly when the launch officer destroyed them.

A private conversation took place shortly after the second (third in all) test-firing. It was between General Rattlesword, seated, and Colonel Crudcutter, standing at attention. We do not know the details of this conversation but it is possible that Rattlesword called Crudcutter's attention to the fact that he was the resposible officer in charge of the inertial guidance portion of the Secondperson missile program.

It was decided to test additional missiles. In all, twelve production Secondperson missiles were pulled from the ground and test-fired. All twelve engines performed perfectly. The direction the missiles flew was random, one missile heading almost in the direction it was pointed....

[Obviously the problem is with the guidance gyroscopes, built by a company here called "Almalgametics."]

Ten days into the investigation, a young Lieutenant knocked on Crudcutter's ofice. "Colonel," he said, "here are two sets of test data which I took, personally, on the same gyro. The first one here is well within our requirements. But this second set shows that the same gyro is a piece of garbage!"

"This first set," the Lieutenant continued, "were taken using the standard test setup Amalgametics has been using. This second set shows the same gyro and the same power supply except that I changed the wheel supply to operate at a constant frequency."

"What do you mean, changed to operate at a constant frequency?" snapped Crudcutter.

"Well, the standard Amalgametics test setup uses something called a phase-locked loop," the Lieutenant explained patiently to his (very) superior officer. "What that does is keep the gyro spinning at a constant frequency. But it also means that the output frequency of the wheel supply is not constant, but rather changing continuously to accommodate the gyro."

Now, the fact is that Colonel Crudcutter had no education in electronics and did not understand the explanation. He annoyedly snapped back, "So?"

"So the power supply in the missile flight package runs at a constant frequency," replied the Lieutenant."

For the whole hilarious story (including why the Almagametics manager responsible couldn't be punished and was even rewarded), the whole (long) newsletter is in the "DTACK Grounded Archive" at:

http://linux.monroeccc.edu/~paulrsm/dg/dg23.htm

and scroll over halfway down to the "Page 17, Column 1" heading.

John D.

[ljk4-1]

For a hilarious story on WHY a rocket could go off in the wrong direction, read "The Missile that Couldn't Fly Straight" by Hal Hardenbergh. It can be found in the September 1983 issue of his "DTACK Grounded" newsletter, writing under the pen name of "Feldercarb N. Eloi." (It was supposed to be about 68000 programming, but he usually wrote about whatever he felt like writing.)

Though it claims to be a "fictional story," it's strongly hinted to be based on real problems with the guidance system for a missle he calls "a Secondperson" (Hmmm, any relation to the Minuteman?) with the names changed.

The short version:
[Obviously the problem is with the guidance gyroscopes, built by a company here called "Almalgametics."]
For the whole hilarious story (including why the Almagametics manager responsible couldn't be punished and was even rewarded), the whole (long) newsletter is in the "DTACK Grounded Archive" at:

http://linux.monroeccc.edu/~paulrsm/dg/dg23.htm

and scroll over halfway down to the "Page 17, Column 1" heading.

John D.

No doubt this was the same kind of "logic" that had those Thiokol engineers who blew the whistle on the Shuttle SRB O-rings back in 1986 treated as pariahs rather than heroes for trying to do the right thing.

No good deed goes unpunished.

[edstrick]

lyford: "And not that I have anything against exploding whales, to be on topic they should be doing so upon launch or reentry"

Wellllllll....... As Controlled Demolictions Inc. says of their competetion when they use too much explosive: "They Launched the building".... They certainly put quite a bit of the whale on 1/4 mile suborbital trajectories!

[lyford]

Found that Mercury pic....
from Arizona High Power Rocketry Assoc.
Now there are some folks with toys....

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Well I guess that the MER scientists were very happy about the launchvehicles, as the one used right after MER B ... blew up!

[djellison]

I've not read that any Delta II's have blown up recently. iirc, the Delta II after MerB was SIRTF, and that was fine.

Are you thinking of a Delta II back in '97 I think, the one after the MPF launch?

Doug

[ilbasso]

Slightly OT but marginally related: Have you guys heard of Punkin Chunkin? It's an annual event to (1) drink a lot of beer and (2) test devices that can throw/shoot pumpkins horrendously long distances. This year's winner lobbed a pumpkin over 4,300 feet (that's more than 1.3 km to you dimensionally-challenged Europeans).

Check out Punkin Chunkin. There are free videos from the 2004 competition at the bottom of the Gallery page.