Mercury-Redstone 1 Launch failure (MR-1)

The video shows the Mercury-Redstone rocket firing and then immediately shutting its engine off. Shortly after, the launch escape tower got the signal that the engine had shut down, so it detached itself. Then the drogue chute, followed by the main and reserve chutes, were ejected due to the rocket thinking it had finished its course.

From Wikipedia:

"Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone mission in the Mercury program and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle. Intended to be an unmanned sub-orbital flight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch failed in a peculiar fashion which has been referred to as the "four-inch flight"."

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[Slam23045]

Well, this pretty much explains my first Kerbal Space Program launch.

[vogonford]

I don't think there's enough explosions for it to be KSP.

[Slam23045]

Yeah, probably.

And the rocket is not being holded up by thousands of struts, or, as we call them, space duct tape.

[vogonford]

Hey, don't knock struts, man. They give me more boosters!

[soberek]

Great that the launch escape system fired, but why didn't it lift the mercury? Was that a glitch or did the system unsuccessfully tried some other launch abort mode?

[vogonford]

Because the engine shut off, the LES received the cutoff command automatically, which detached it as if the rocket had already finished its primary burn.

[marinekillab]

Gene Kranz (one of the misson control guys) said that they had to figure out what to do to with the rocket since the engines fuel and O2 tanks were still pressurised and the chutes could tople the rocket over if the wind picked up. One guy actually suggested that they should shoot holes in the tanks to depressurise them.

Needless to say they probably smacked the shit out of him and decided to wait till the next day. When the batteries ran out the tanks depressurised.

[Yseulte]

Someone should add the sound effect from the Millenium Falcon's broken hyperdrive.

[makthnife]

are you 12?

[fuckyorutube]

Astronaut catapulted but parachute won't open ?

[yassin lamine]

IT`S A PENIS COMING LOL

[AlexanderVulpes]

Apparently they had to leave the rocket like that overnight because it was full of fuel and its self-destruct mechanism was live and armed (and at this point they weren't really sure what it was going to do next).

To make matters worse, if there had been enough wind the parachutes could've knocked the whole thing over. Luckily no one was in the capsule, and they fixed the design flaws before the next launch.

[Albert Einstein]

And parachutes deployed because atmosphere pressure was above a certain threshold.

[TomottoSoup]

It thought that the engine had successfully put it into orbit, where the escape tower would be useless at best.

[Gredarki Kerman]

"Space space space space" Y U NO LAUNCH? Oh, throttle is at 0.

[Mathew Gardiner]

This is brilliant. Definitely ksp worthy!

[Slam23045]

I also love space duct tape. It held together the smaller boosters on my bigger boosters on my even bigger booster.