Nearly a disaster. Energia rocket first launch with Polyus.

First energiya rocket launch. This rocket was also used to launch the soviet space shuttle.

Video from http://www.buran-energia.com/

You can see very clearly it bents slightly just after lift-off (I bet some engineers suddenly remembered the N1). This was likely a bug in the guidance system, since this was the first launch and the second one (the one carrying the buran) went perfectly. Although that was a little scary, the system recovered very well and did a successful launch.

The polyus payload guidance system failed after it was separated from energia core causing it to not reach orbit.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=4913&post...
http://www.spacevideo.ru/movie/movie.html

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Energia
• rocket
• launch
• polyus
• buran
• soviet
• ussr
• ссср
• энергия
• полюс
• буран
• bug
• ariane

[r0ck3tsm0k3]

The soviets had, on the whole, some great rockets. Too bad they didnt seem to always have the money or time to do what they wanted, or the right motivations.

[gadinaaa]

It was just bad timing. This rocket came too late for the cold war (it was about to end and the military lost their interest), but too early for the market: even today commercial payloads for such a heavy launcher simply do not exist.

Its a pity because it was the most technically perfect heavy launcher. Depending on the core and count of strap-on boosters (modified Zenit) it could be configured in the range of 35-200 tonnes to LEO with fully automated launch preparations.

[malamagr]

Kudos to the flight safety officer for holding off on pushing the abort button. Guess he learned after reading the letters from Siberia from the guy who destroyed the N-1 when it could still have completed its flight.

[johnnyrocksable]

The bottom line is the vehicle corrected itself and continued on. But in reality it was very scary to watch it pitch and wondering what was next. Companies are not going to invest in a heavy payload and pay a bunch of money to TRY TO LAUNCH it. Unless it's part of the space station or a military payload there's probibly not too many companys that need to put a school bus into orbit. Today the big thing is communication satellites. You don't need a Saturn V to launch one.

[astrohardy]

I think that the launch was nominal. What we see here is very similar to the Saturn V yaw maneuver. I also disagree that there is no need for such a heavy launcher today. The ISS could have been put in orbit with 2 launches, instead they fiddle around and assemble modules instead of doing research up there for more than 10 years,

[14msviolet]

watcg

[artwleb]

Hey, guys, Rockets have an attitude control system so if the vehicle leans or yaws to one side the engines are gimbaled to bring it to a vertical attitude again Called gyroscopes in action.

[heound]

Talk About N1.

[LazyRanma]

Actually, the rocket has few seconds of free run before stabilization automaton is turned on, and is allowed to have much greater heel. Since it's asymmetric, Plyus "drew" rocket to the right, but heel was within allowed values, and automaton corrected it once enabled.

Later they changed program to turn stabilization automaton earlier.

[phadil]

Energia was design to carry a space shuttle piggyback on it. maybe the technicians forgot to modify the software and the rocket try to compensate for the nonexistence extra weight on it's back.

[camilleri63]

Whoa! I don't know if that 'correction' was programmed or not, but it looked scarey lol. Although the Saturn V made a similar maneouvre right after liftoff (to steer it away from the tower) it only tilted by about 1 degree if I remember right. And that was pretty scarey if you werent expecting it.