Titan IV Explosion at Cape Canaveral 8-20-98 (High Definition)

[hdtvcamera1]

1.3 Billion Dollars. The rocket lost power to the guidance control and veered of course. A self destruct signal was sent to the rocket and it was successfully destroyed without injury to any personnel.

[hdtvcamera1]

@hdtvcamera1 Bad Data from me. I got this launch mixed up with another.  My bad.

[thearrowsfan]

I was born de day dis happened

[Ondelendo]

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[bebeheuy]

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[willamricard]

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[imegatrone]

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[bundawartini]

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[GTpanik]

Where was Jesus after all of this shit?

[venescas]

After all of the testing, all of the preparation, all of the expert guidance on this mission...

...they made one very expensive firework.

[Pentdad]

Bill Gates and other billionaires should finance a mission to Mars. That would really leave a legacy. Space travel is very worrying, beautiful and amazing. The film Contact really gets the essence of it, the feel, the build up.

[joshbulldog1661]

rockets have self district in them now?

[ti994apc]

Each Shuttle launch was 1.6 Billion dollars. So, each Shuttle loss was more expensive.

[decemberdazzle]

@ti994apc Actually, I believe it's 450 million, not 1.6 billion...

[ti994apc]

@decemberdazzle Shuttle cost per flight was between 1.5 and 1.7 Billion and cost $3-5 billion per year for production and operations. The Shuttle program cost $200 Billion for 135 launches which does not adjust for inflation.

[decemberdazzle]

@ti994apc the Shuttles cost 1.7 billion to BUILD. I don't think they would cost that much to launch every time... from NASA's official site (just google if you don't believe me) says: "Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?

A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission."

[ti994apc]

@decemberdazzle Launch is different than cost per flight. The Shuttle program was $200 billion and there were 135 flight which is 1.45 billion per flight.  However, adjust for inflation on early flights and you get a higher number. "The average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion from 1982 to 2010. But it rises to $1.5 billion per flight when factoring in lifetime program costs, according to the new analysis, which covered the 131 shuttle missions flown between 1982 and 2010." Space.com

[ti994apc]

@ti994 None of the Shuttles lost (Columbia and Challenger) were replaced. They started out with 5 Shuttles and ended up with 3. NASA promised each launch would only cost $10 million per launch and we would have 50 launches per year. After 5 flights, it was clear that Shuttle was never going to come close to the cost NASA promised.

[decemberdazzle]

@ti994apc Actually, Endeavour was built to replace Challenger. according to the official NASA site. "Their names, in the order they were built, are Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour...Challenger was built as a vibration-test vehicle and then upgraded to become the second operational Shuttle. The Challenger and its seven-member crew were lost in a launch accident...Endeavour, built to replace Challenger, made its debut in May 1992..."

[ti994apc]

@decemberdazzle True about Endeavor. I had forgotten about that.

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

Thus, the universal vehicle will contains: 1).-the body strenght frame; 2).-the thermonuclear controlled reactor; 3).-coolling devices; 4).-reactive electromagnetic motors for drive force and for orientation. At this vehicle, with the steering-wheel or separate commands aid, we direct motors' traction force on any displacement way. The possibilitiys of adaptation and using such vehicles are unlimited in any domain: transport, energy, mining, agriculture,building, dwellings..

[sandustanBrasov]

SandustanBrasov

The test for nuclear fusion realisation on Tokamak's installations and with LASER cannot bring anything new for the energetics' future. I bind the thermonuclear controlled reactor schedule by the Sun model , by the reactive electromagnetic motor schedule from Palenque stone's tombe. You see the my project for thermonuclear controlled reactor.

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

I had thinked a proposal of realisation to one universal vehicle, good on Earth but and in cosmos. The source of energy is a thermonuclear controlled reactor, and the traction is realized through a set of reactive electromagnetic motors. The realization of these, impose a revision and elucidation to some parts from the actual science, which is strangled of the theoretical physics with a series of metaphysical laws and principles.

[PwnerPwnz]

True ugowar, but they did send a selfdestruct 2 seconds afterwards to assure complete breakup.

A short circuit caused an outage of the guidance computer, which made it lose it's orientation relative to the earth. When it came back up it issued a pitch down command, which put it in an angle it wasn't built for. Causing an SRB to separate which caused the automatic self destruct.

source:

globalsecurity org/space/library/news/1999/n1­9990119_990066.htm

[runlassierun]

they could of used that money to house the poor!

[normanmj]

@runlassierun

Yeah, smart one. Spend more tax payers money on the lazy. Socialist.

[artwleb]

@runlassierun The poor could get a job and work like the rest of us. Bad environment? then move away. You only get one life to do something.

[Malfaxi]

Pretty explosion...?

[leavinghope1970]

Titan 4 was purposely blown up. There is video of the launch that shows an unidentified object apparently striking the Titan at an altitude of about 110,000 feet, shortly before the rocket blew up. They're Here.

[MacDragard]

@leavinghope1970 It was destroyed by a TIE Fighter.

[ApolloWasReal]

@leavinghope1970 Sorry, but this rocket only reached 17,000 feet before it exploded. You should check for at least the obvious contradictions when you make up conspiratorial UFO nonsense like this.

[lithiumdeuteride]

I hate these dramatizations. They use unrealistic 'Hollywood' sound that arrives instantaneously, despite having originated several miles away. Reality shouldn't need a Foley artist.

They play the same ten seconds of footage over and over to stretch a short story into a long one. And then there are the factual errors...

[Travellerdream]

@lithiumdeuteride I agree with you, it´s so made for improve like star wars fake ship sounds!!!Fgv-me for my bad english!!! ;=)

[ControlTheSkies]

@lithiumdeuteride i agree 100%. it gets really fucking annoying.

[KWalsh554]

@lithiumdeuteride Yes! I live near Cape Canaveral and I actually remember when this particular rocket exploded. I can tell you first hand that there was no big "Ka-Boom" sound. It was actually pretty quiet.

[predatortheme]

@lithiumdeuteride

fuck... your right :O

[BonesTheCat]

Expensive fireworks display

[ugowar]

"Air Force control" sent no command whatsoever. The Inadvertent Separation Destruct System onboard the rocket initiated a self destruct (as the name suggests) when the physical links between the solid rocket boosters and the core were severed due to aerodynamic forces ripping them apart.

It was a completeley automatic destruct, the range safety officer only got to watch the fireworks, not push the red button.

[ugowar]

I should add that exactly the same kind of destruct system also destroyed the first Ariane 5 rocket two years earlier which also suffered a guidance failure (but due to a software error), pitched down hard and air drag started ripping it apart.

[ap327145]

same thing

[BeebeCh1972]

Sometimes that's what they have to do to avoid loss of life. The rocket was unmanned I assume.

[colindhowell]

Yes, it was. However, an Air Force report on the proposed Ares I manned launch vehicle claims that this Titan IV explosion may show that the Ares I's escape system isn't safe. The Titan explosion produced an enormous cloud of hot debris, and the report argues that if an Ares I blew up in this way, the escape system could not carry the manned capsule far enough to prevent the heat of the debris from melting the parachute material.

[colindhowell]

Incidentally, I found this video from an article in the Orlando Sentinel about that report (which also happens to be linked from Slashdot). Unfortunately, Youtube's comment restrictions prevent me from posting the URL's.