ariane 5 explosion

[973fashion]

domage jaite o lesmain

[afgfdn]

Je pense très clairement qu'il l'ont fait sauter lorsqu'ils ont apercu quelle retombait sur la ville de kourou ou celle de Sinnamary,ils sont pas cons ces gaulois

[AdrienTaOn]

Faites demi-tour dés que possible !

[maidpretty]

Since it was due to a software error in inertial navigation, I imagine coders say:

"Ups, a minor bug, we'll fix in in the next patch".

[MAshmore111]

I was actually a single very simple software glitch from a segment of code lifted from the Ariane 4.

Lazy software engineer just used copy and paste.

[max2950]

@MAshmore111

I am a software engineer, and my boss keeps on saying me "The devil hides in details" ....

This is the perfect illustration !

[karliboe]

expensive firework

[ceeam]

Cause of the accident: software fault - integer overflow.

[ursuss100]

The most costly computer failure, according to the guinness book ^^

[13x1x20]

Real life Kerbal Space Program

[cjdrange47]

Didnt know Vauxhall did rockets

[Zach121k]

........ THUNK

[Aezlogez]

7 billion usd.

[Onyx33Mart20111]

non il y avait personne les fusée ariane servent que pour le transport de sattélitte

[TheMikachu117]

Et...PAF!!Sa fait des Chocapics!

[MrYesOow]

@TheMikachu117 c'est pas marrant.

[TheMikachu117]

@MrYesOow Moi sa m'a fait marrer! :D

[MrYesOow]

@TheMikachu117 x)

[TheMikachu117]

@MrYesOow Du moment que y'avais personne dedans,même si sa reste du gachi^^

[TheMikachu117]

Il y avait des gens dedans? :'(

[TheUnPlayable]

@TheMikachu117 non

[ursuss100]

@TheMikachu117 Il n'y a jamais d'astronautes à bord des Arianes 5. Ce sont uniquement des fusées de cargo non habitées.

[TheMikachu117]

@ursuss100 A cool^^

[g3org33r3]

Oops

[TheJohnylover]

cool



[gguru1]

Wow, the POP like explosion followed by the near total silence is almost cartoon-like.

[bingofioul]

-What is the red button?

-DON'T TOUCH !!! oooooohhh shiiiiittt !

[originalparis]

for a fucking floating point number 64 bit....

[mysterykcad]

I heard that this happened because of a logical error in the guidance system. If that's the case, you could call this a real-life case of:

DOES NOT COMPUTE *BOOM*

[Yurielkafa]

just use Soyuz or Proton rockets

[blablubb12345]

@Yurielkafa

Soyuz can't lift the really big comsats while Ariane launches two in the 4-5 ton class in one shot and Proton does not have the track record of Ariane.

Btw. Soyuz will be launched from Kourou beginning this year alongside Ariane 5 and Vega.

[TreijaMusic]

Just as reliable as the CItroen 2CV

[ContreJours]

This "useless French crap" is the global leader in satellite launch with 50% market share...

[TheMikachu117]

@ContreJours Stfu bastard -_-'

[TheMissingno]

Why did they add that sound when it exploded?

[SpectreMk2]

Un petit problème logiciel rien de plus...

[Kueppi70]

This was the first launch of a Ariane 5, but the second flight was half sussessfull and the first Ariane 5 ECA was not successful and all the other Ariane 5 was successfull

[Intelus]

One of the most expensive fireworks displays in history.

This is why, dear programmers, you QUADRUPLE CHECK YOUR UNSAFE TYPE-CASTING!

[davidlucasfer]

nooooooooooooooo

[Azarien]

I think the audio is out of sync. I mean, it *sounds* in sync, while it definitely shouldn't.

[StudebakerHawk57]

 "Zut alors!"

[kitt998]

0:15 - MERDE!!!

[cuteycharm0202]

I heard it exploded because if an human error uploading past info from ariane 4 , it was turning to early , so to prevent any diaster on land the computer sensed somthing was wrong and went on self destruct mode

[ryilmazz]

H0 -> H0+37s : nominal

H0 + 39s: auto-destruction

cost: 500M€

someone make a small mistake. wrote 9 instead of 7 in software...

[stalkingalizee]

@Scruceful And Germany, Italy and UK among other places. It is made by EADS Astrium,

[ahmedovahmed]

2 vertical_veloc_sensor: float; 3 horizontal_veloc_sensor: float; 4 vertical_veloc_bias: integer; 5 horizontal_veloc_bias: integer; 6 ... 7 begin 8 declare 9 pragma suppress(numeric_error, horizontal_veloc_bias); 10 begin 11 sensor_get(vertical_veloc_sens­or); 12 sensor_get(horizontal_veloc_se­nsor); 13 vertical_veloc_bias := integer(vertical_veloc_sensor)­; 14 horizontal_veloc_bias := integer(horizontal_veloc_senso­r); 15 ... 16 exception horizontal_veloc_bias:=integer­(horizontal_veloc_sensor)

[ahmedovahmed]

horizontal_veloc_bias := integer(horizontal_veloc_senso­r);

This was the software code that caused the crash...

[nonamedyet]

@ahmedovahmed you are right. They intended to re-use code of Ariane 4 and they did not complete all the needed modifications. :S

[abhodierna]

@Scruceful It really is made by a consortium of European countries ;-)

[Scruceful]

Launched from Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana

[Scruceful]

@leoleony1 LOL

[s0undActivist]

i was actually there that day, on the beach of Kourou, just near the spaceport, watching the rocket explodes from such a close distance was something really impressive.

[AFroese]

I believe the correct response is "merde!"

[jetaddicted]

@AFroese ooooh at this point; "nom de dieu de bordel à chiottes à cul de merde" seems more like it ;p

[MattTheSaiyan]

I have, on video tape, a longer video of this failure with footage of them finding the torn-apart remains of the rocket, but I don't know how to transfer it to my computer. Shame though....you should have seen the look on their faces after it blew up!

[macfanpro]

@TheMaxwell777 The Delta 2 3 and 4 have had no problems with one engine, and the Zenit has not either. Also, most second stages have one engine, for example, the Atlas V. The Falcon 1, despite some unrelated issues, also has performed well. In addition, the Peacekeeper (LGM-116) has only one motor. The Arianes, despite this completely unrelated incident have also performed beautifully.

[TheLaptopBreaker]

The Cause of the Explosion is a Bug on the software....The bug made the rocket Self-destruct in 37 seconds...

[FifaSessionTV]

EPIC FAIL

[rakgitarmen]

Le fail

[Zunga10]

FAIL!

[j00p1234]

@TheMaxwell777

The exact error was that one line of code tried to fit a 64-bit number in a 16-bit location.

[zauii89]

Software programming faults was what caused this mainly.

[manumanish]

@zauii89 ..i don think software fault will cause a rocket to explode at this early stage..when the rocket is still in its 1st stage...if it explodes during cut offs of stages or at the later stages it can b a software error..but after ignition exploding in juss with in 15--20 seconds of launch that means the problem in its boosters..it must b a hardware technical fault not the software error

[thedahuhunter]

@manumanish It *was* a software error. They took a piece of code for the gyroscopes from the A4 and didn't test it... That code converted a 64 bit float into a 16 bit integer. But due to higher speeds, the program overflowed and threw and exception, which was ignored for performance reasons. So the rocket still interpreted the info as flight information and it made it think it was going downwards.... It tried veering, started disintegrating because of the wind and then self-destructed.

[blablubb12345]

There are many rockets with just one engine in the first stage. Ariane V has three engines at liftoff, one main engine and two solid boosters. All three can be steered independently.

[LHWed]

nossa q conhecidencia nasci dia 5 e meu nome é ariane... quando minha disse eu não acreditei...

[laviesansame]

aaaaaand.... bam! 370 million dollars for nothing!! yeha! that's modern reality

[KaiserBrandon340]

haha, in my online notes for my computational physics class there is a link to this video right after a few sentences talking about why overflow in programming is an important concept. This is a pretty good way to emphasize the importance.

[ralbiruni]

Rare video as french does not likes show their own crashes. Its an computer error you say; very interresting! thanks to all !

[canuzzi]

@ralbiruni This is an european project not a french project. The company building this rocket ist EADS, which is a german/french company - the whole rocket is a ESA Project.

[ralbiruni]

Thanks for your good precisions

[wbaiv]

Check your history. The rate of change of angle, azimuth angle, in A5 was 4 times that of A4, but they re-used the guidance computer design (a pair of identical units) and software... software noticed angle rate, decided it made no sense and both units shut down. Range safety blew it up after it had gone ballistic- that is, unguided.

[TheHardWheels]

Due to uncaught exception.64 bit floating point to 16 bit integer,hence overflow.Ada has no handler to handle this.

[alkh3myst]

Those pesky catch blocks!

[arghtheawful]

Ada actually can handle this, but to enhance performance the compiler-generated runtime-checks were disabled.

Worked quite well with the Ariane 4, but they simply copy-and-pasted this part of the code without proper testing.

[BKofficer23]

What does that have to do with anything.

All I meant was that it sucked they worked so hard and then it blew up. :/

[charlieechovictor]

lol but actualy ARiane 5 is still in operation.

[PedroAlves]

16 bit hardware, overflow information about stability, the software was ok, but USA (yupikayei) have more errors than europeans, and with the help of one european (van braun...). hehe

[zythepsarian]

kaaa-bewmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! =D

[rickelmonoggin]

Can't help thinking of that 7 billion dollars, only a fraction of that would be the actual building of the rocket. If they knew what they did wrong, why not just build another one?

[derlordonesin]

They DID build another 47, actually. :D

[Damnblastify]

@derlordonesin 60 now! Last one flew 9 days ago :-)

[dosterian]

Ariane 5 is the world's first space launcher today... so they did another one...

[adamlinks]

... et explosion...

[z98908]

Because of the software overflow, The poor rocket got confused, thought it was pointing down and made a desperate attempt to do a supersonic U-turn.

Most expensive software bug ever!

[myfood123]

ahaha

[guiguipsp]

it's beautiful

[BKofficer23]

Wow, 11 years and 7 billin dollars...then this. What a kick in the balls.

[pashaahsj]

it was a "floating point binary overflow" according to my A2-Computing Textbook :D

awesome xD

[gewuerzwiesel123]

That is what i described down below :-)

[PhilippRB31]

wie kann man ne rakete Ariane 5 nennen?:D:D:D:D:D:D

[johg120]

ups

[rwboa22]

Every rocket has to explode sometimes. Hell, we blew up Atlases, Deltas, Titans, and two Space Shuttles. Even the Soviets/Russians had lost several R-7s, A-1s, A-2s, Protons, and even the N-1. The only difference is that the French will blame us Americans for causing their Ariane 5 rocket to blow up.

[RobertsDigital]

lol Americans will be giggling i bet...

[shoelessjohn]

Everyone seems to agree that this was caused by a software glitch, but if you watch that video carefully it looks like structural failure.

It looks as if the thrust power of the rocket against the mass of the cargo caused a kink in a weak point in the sidewall structure, and once it started it just kept going.

[artwleb]

it was structural failure but after the control/guidance system allowed it t to pitch or yaw against the airstream. Same effect can be seen in the video "Titan rocket crashes". All vehicles must fly directly into the trajectory. Another breakup can be seen in "Delta 178/GOES" video.

[gewuerzwiesel123]

The software of the stearing system was taken from the ariane 4, which was a bit slower then ariane 5. In the binary number system this caused a 0 at the first place to switch to a 1. The first bit in such a number describes the number to be positive or negative. So suddenly a measured value turned from positive to negative. This caused an incredible hard change of the heading by the navigation system. The hard turn made the body collapse. The the software error caused the fact you described.

[EEEL123]

@gewuerzwiesel123 Actually, it wasn't going off course that destroyed the rocket. The computer figured that it had made a big mistake and sent the rocket off course. Sensing disaster, it self-destructed.

[gewuerzwiesel123]

@EEEL123 Actually it was the going of course that made the body collapse, but this was noticed by the self destruct system which destroyed the rocket before it really broke apart caused by the g-forces it was exposed to.

[EEEL123]

@gewuerzwiesel123 Either way it looks pretty spectacular.

[borland08]

nice fireworks

[englishguy2005]

What a dreadful waste of cash haha

[lostinseganet]

7 billion to develop to that point and the cargo it carried was worth 500 million ...ouch ^u^

[Ignantredneck]

where's the rest of the video?

[Antilogix]

Someone got fired...

[ftutbs]

i bet that was an expensive bottle rocket

[TheTodd1977]

did anyone died?

[s00zster]

It was unmanned.

[Sygile]

Nop, only 4 probes on board.

[bestamerica]

the reason why this rocket explosion,,,

no 4 or 5 fins on the rear rocket

[axapclyps]

There was a glitch in the on-board computer software.

[kaffeetrichter]

I remember that accident. The rocket had four satellites aboard, to make it cheaper I guess and then it went out like this.

[DonPMitchell]

The next launch was a success, and one British paper printed the headline: "Ariane Launches. Doesn't Explode".

[Arkgamer]

Technically speaking, it didn't explode, the structural stress of tipping over at that speed was enough to smash it apart. That change in air resistance was basically like hitting a wall.

[lost4468yt]

@Arkgamer An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner

Sounds like an explosion to me

[blablubb12345]

@lost4468yt

Nooo, that was no explosion! That was something called a "rapid, unscheduled disassembly" (Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX) ;-)

[phonix032]

as a american civilian who loves big booms id still keep cheering lol

[modrobert67]

The muffled cheers and applause sort of stop there after a while... ;)

[OvershootTV]

Why the smiley in the video description?

[DidHeDied]

did he died?

[05roketa]

Noooooo my name ariane so now i am dead

[z1nk666]

my mothers name kickass

[deBoeldieu]

oopss :D

[CameraPrincipis]

Merde!!!

[darijo203]

What a primitive way to travel into a space.

[TheDoomkin]

Any other sugestion? :p

[monkeyman1140]

Funny how nobody gripes when a military missile blows up, but when a civilian one does the words "taxpayer dollars wasted" gets tossed around.

[Lemondud101]

military missiles are meant to blow up

[AGrandt]

Ariane is a civilian launcher.

[evensgrey]

@Lemondud101 Well, MOST of them are, anyway. It's just a matter of if they b low up where you want them to blow up.

[pcollenYT]

@monkeyman1140: Civilian rockets are not funded by tax-payer dollars. but with private, civilian investment.

[AGrandt]

"Useless" French material that have so far had a 29 successful launches in a row.

Btw, the Ariane 4 had 116 launches, only 3 failed. Its last 84 launches was successful.

So much for "useless French crap"?.

The Ariane 5 have so far had 4 failures, the first two flights, one in 2001, and the last failed launch was the maiden flight of the ECA model, with a new main engine that was 25% more powerful than the previous model. This new engine turned out to have a design flaw.

[alpacks]

useless is you ... god-machin ...

[mmbbz]

what a fine way to spend taxpayers money, beats the new years eve fireworks.....

[RetroMusicFan4]

This is onen of my favourite disasters of all time, such a lovely explosion.

[douboymk2]

nah the 1974 cape canaveral one. hundreds of big white hot chunks raining down for like ten minutes after the explosion

[bullcurr]

rockets are simply hazardous and there is NO way to keep them 100% safe!

get over it!

[ThjeshtLife]

actually the error was human, the projecters of the rocket didn't programmed it well, it was an overflow programmign error

[Blutarsky90]

i bet it would suck to pay 100 million dollars just to watch it explode after about 20 seconds...

[gherre]

it cost $7 billion

[TemplarX2]

@gherre Not the rocket. The rocket is fairly cheap. It's the development that cost $7 billion. If it costs 7 billion for each rocket then nobody would afford to luanch one.

[mistrmann]

that was an awesome idea!

[mistrmann]

what country was it launched in?

[attackangle]

I'm not 100% on this, but I think they launch from French Guyana. It is close to the equator, and the Earth's rotation emparts a significant boost to rockets launched from there. This means less power is needed to get to orbit.

[spambatt]

Correct, Kourou, French Guiana, South America. Not only does the earth move faster eastward there, but less of a plane change is required to get into an equatorial geostationary orbit. Plane changes are expensive in fuel. Only Sea Launch does better.

Kourou can also launch into both polar and equatorial orbits over water from a single site. The US needs two sites: Cape Canaveral FL for low inclination and Vandenberg CA for high inclination.

[spitfir3ace]

lol owned

[panthamster]

Well that was one of the most bizarre threads I ever followed. I think I'll copy it out and give it out to my students as an example of protoypical narcissistic personality disorder.

[buskinon]

Wow nice fire cracker.

[dromadaire69]

mmmdddrrrrrrrrrr  "decollage" BAM!! ah...

[Xzandon]

Good Sarcozi's missile :) ha ha

[dfdgfdgf0000]

oh la boulette ! me suis gouré de bouton...

[7Kronos]

Ariane 5 : 41 successfull launches, 2 loss, 2 delayed launches for a global success rate of 92.7%.

Add that Ariane conquered 60% of world market.

LOOOOOOOOOL

[Membrane556]

Better they blew it up then let it come down a town like the Chinese did once.

This also might be why they were uber cautious with the ATV.

[mathletesfoot]

INTEGER OVERFLOOOOOOOW!

[FREEs6]

normalerweise hat die ariane 5 zu 99% einen sicheren start

unfälle passieren immer in jedem gefährt...

[L324RT12]

money well spent!

[sideshow1974]

whoops.

[destroyerdragon2002]

Exspensive Firework!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[23MK07]

the cause of the failure was a software error in the inertial reference system. Specifically a 64 bit floating point number relating to the horizontal velocity of the rocket with respect to the platform was converted to a 16 bit signed integer. The number was larger than 32,767, the largest integer storeable in a 16 bit signed integer, and thus the conversion failed.

[spambatt]

Right. This same software had flown many times on earlier Arianes without a problem because the horizontal velocity didn't increase as rapidly.

When the investigators ran a test IMU through a simulated Ariane 5 trajectory, it also crashed. Every time. Nobody had done an all-up systems test before the launch.

[nottubee]

Setting the record straight, by a long-haired rock musician with an earring. A one and a two-- Mission V501 ended after 40 seconds of flight at an altitude of 4000 m. The 'vehicle' pitched over and then was destroyed by the range safety officer. Main stage or solid boosters could have been a player but they sure didn't know. I prefer the 'main stage' theory. And give me that good light okay man? Uh oh, the musician just kicked in. Chief Smoking String over and out.

[philkarn]

Say what? Read the investigative report. The sequence of events and their cause were firmly established.

[nottubee]

Maybe I should have said, MS or SBs were a player but we didn't know exactly which or to what degree at the time. This video is of the explosion itself. I commented on what we thought after seeing it for the first time, just like most people/experts that don't understand the walk-behind mower, but still, they comment on the rocket. Should add, not much is "firmly". Please understand that.

[philkarn]

I can't understand what you're saying.

This launch failed because of a software error in the inertial reference platform that told it where it was and how fast it was going. When that data became wrong, the autopilot tried to steer it back to the (incorrect) location. In so doing, it steered the engines (both on the solid and main stages) hard over. The launcher veered sideways and the strong air drag ripped it apart. This is very well established.

[nottubee]

You didn't notice the 'we' did you? I put it in simple terms for the masses. You were a part of this mission. You didn't work almost 3 years on any of it. That is well established and not much more.

[philkarn]

Sorry, you're just not making sense. Anyone who wants to know the story of Ariane V501, just google for ariane5accidentreport. Nuff said.

[ugowar]

I'm looking at the failure report just now and it states the vehicle actually *did* initiate a self-destruct which was "correctly triggered by rupture of the links between the solid boosters and the core stage".

It makes sense, in the video the solid boosters explode and they're typically very sturdy (Challenger SRBs didn't explode after breakup, but due to range safety destruct) and wouldn't simply fall apart.

In essence, it fell apart due to air drag and then destroyed itself.

[philkarn]

I read the report and I see what you mean. It doesn't detail the self destruct, but it's clear the launcher broke apart from aerodynamic forces first. Usually that's enough to rupture liquid fuel tanks to go boom.

It sounds like the range safety system was failsafe so that if the stack came apart, a wire was cut and the destruct charges were fired. That kind of makes sense in case the command receivers aren't working. SRBs are heavy and aero forces may not break them up.

[ugowar]

They haven't ran a simulated trajectory *before* the launch? How ironic (and expensive) is that? Then again, it makes sense they didn't - otherwise this thing wouldn't have happened.

[philkarn]

Well, the inertial platform in question had been flown many times on Ariane 4 without any problems. The program managers, being hardware people, didn't understand how software fails. So they had redundant hardware running identical code. Ironically, the use of an old, proven, slow CPU was what forced the programmers to not check those conversions; it's not that they didn't know about them. Had they used a modern yet less proven CPU...

[agentz999]

epic fail

[DeltaNC]

If Napier University Software Engineering department had its own advertisement, this would be it.