This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Russian Unmanned Rocket Explodes Moments After Launch
If Russia was hoping to punctuate its foreign policy victory over the US in hosting Edward Snowden and being on the list of his asylum applicants with the overnight launch of a unmanned Proton-M rocket, carrying some $200 million worth of navigation satellites, those hopes literally went up in flames when 17 seconds into the take off, an emergency switch-off of the engines led to a spectacular explosion, and sent the rocket plummeting to earth. End result: a massive blow up caught on live TV, hundreds of millions in equipment lost and 172 metric tons of highly toxic heptyl propellant raining on the ground for miles around the crash.
From Reuters:
A Russian rocket carrying three navigation satellites worth around $200 million crashed shortly after lift-off from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan on Tuesday after its engines suddenly switched off. The accident led to a large spill of heptyl, a highly toxic rocket propellant, but there were no reports of casualties or of any immediate threat to nearby settlements.
State-run Rossiya-24 television showed footage of the Proton-M booster rocket veering off course seconds after lift-off. It fell apart in flames in the air and crashed in a ball of fire near the launch pad.
Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying launch-pad personnel were in bunkers when the rocket lifted off.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos said the accident had been caused by the emergency switch-off of the rocket's engines 17 seconds into the flight. Russia's state-run RIA news agency said the switch-off could have been caused by a problem with the engine or the guidance system.
The rocket contained 172 metric tons (1 metric ton = 1.1023 tons) of highly toxic heptyl propellant, Kazakh Emergencies Minister Vladimir Bozhko told an emergency government meeting.
Talgat Musabayev, head of Kazakhstan's space agency Kazcosmos, said nitric oxide - a product of burning heptyl - was much less toxic for humans. He said it was raining in the area, so toxic clouds would probably not reach the town of Baikonur some 60 km (38 miles) away.
However, the authorities instructed locals to stay at home and not to open windows, and ordered to close shops and public catering, said Kazakh Interior Minister Kalmukhambet Kasymov.
The estimated loss from the three satellites, meant for Russia's troubled Glonass satellite navigation system, was about $200 million, Rossiya-24 reported.
Footage of the dramatic crash below:
»
- 16736 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
OK.....nobody laugh.
Rocket.Fail.
Stuxnet Redux?
Putin on the Fritz...
Female reporter is DRUNK.
Putin should have given Snowden a little more help...
Lookit all the countries Snowman has applied to....
Now, either they are all Afraid of the USSA or
They are all Complicit in the World Spy Program.....
(or one of the two options above).
Scary, huh?
The only freedom in the USSA today is where you stand and the number of square feet under the range of your rifle.
Global Fascism. It's what's for lunch.
Complicit....
Thinking about this this a.m. as I was waking.
Everybody is part of the system (well, reasonably developed, on line, etc.) The info is hoovered up wholesale, shared with all the biggies, allies, etc. So why not have the data base be of the whole world?
Turrderists live all over (excuse) have no borders, and need to be watched by their local gendarmes, and best of all, its the NWO in reality.
Go E Verify!
Its a global Leviathan.
To think less is naive.
Russian women speaking english makes me cringe.
They're beautiful on a pole, but just can't get over that they're just after the money.
snark
That rocket reminds me of Beelzebub Barack trying to articulate a coherent thought without reading it off his teleprompter.
It's gonna be ugly.
Crash & Burn.
So, let me get this straight. Russia can put a 600 tonne rocket into space costing USD 200 million with payload and the Fed can create USD 85 billion and more in new money every MONTH, thats 425 rocket launches a month but the US can't send 'another' man to the moon 'cos it's too expensive.
Yeah, right, and you expect me to believe that Neil Armstrong isn't a lying fuck.
Yeah, I believe you honest.
To the Moon, Bit-Chez!
I have one of them as the "finale" for my 4th of July fireworks display. Everyone's invited, free parking, plenty of beer and dogs. Fireworks display to start as soon as it gets dark out.
and bring your own hard hat and medical cover...
and factor 4 billion sun block...
You wouldn't even need a barbeque, just stand there with a suasage on a fork and it will toast quite nicely, along with the rest of your house...
It IS rocket science...
there is a difference between Energia and Proton rockets. Energia is pure russian made and used for manned modules launches to ISS. Proton is in cooperation with ukrain and is a part of old nuclear rockets conversion program utilizing old engines
That is just plain BS. Russian women are not only beautiful on a pole, many (like mine) are highly educated, great wives and mothers, making awesome children, and every once in a while if you ask nicely and playfully, they will say "Moose and squirrel" for you.
Soviet society was the most educated and well-read on the planet. Just sayin'.
They're ALL just after the money you fool. It knows no geography bounds.
Right on, Knux.
**************
I think maybe the best bet for the spook is Caracas. True, it is heavily penetrated by the USSA, but there is a chance the Venezuelan secret service can protect him.
What bothers me about the spook is that he has not revealed any truly damaging information. I can think of a number of items he could reveal if he had the access he claims to have. Any of these items could bring down the illegal USSA and start the process of rebuilding a true Constitutional framework to proceed from.
Perhaps we will have to wait and see. He has already done yeoman's work revealing the extent of illegal surveillance on USSA citizenisms. Perhaps the best item is that the USSA no longer obeys the US Constitution in any way, shape or form. By implication, it also reveals the NAZI Reichstag rubber-stamp reality of the "US Congress."
Si. We'z on the very same page, paragraph and sentence, bro.
Do you remember the scene in Watership Down where the rabbits find all the free food with a bunch of snares? The apathy was just so incredibly creepy. It was the destiny of rabbits to get fattened up for the slaughter. Anyway, back on topic, the information looks pretty damaging to me. The fact that it has been brushed off is actually what bothers me.
This ought to bother people too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsxj9TeJSfo&feature=share&list=UUi-f_2EPh...
You have no idea what kind of info he has given the Russians. Do you really believe they would release the best of it to the press? It doesn't work that way, best to keep them {USA} guessing as to what the Russians really know.
LMAO SD! At least she looks like she was ridden hard and put away wet. WTF is with that outfit she is wearing? She has quite the syntax doesn't she? I hear something like that every day around home and often wonder to myself, "What the fuck did she just say?".
It's bad enough the resident two year old has graduated from calling "you bullshit" to loudly and proudly exclaiming "FUCK!" with a bunch of Russian words mixed in. See what a good parent I am?
Hey Man, It's a White Russian hangover. At least she put a coat on, over her pajamas, I like her style!
A scorecard of global space launches is available at http://www.spacelaunchreport.com and information specific to the Proton launch vehicle can be found at the link below:
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/proton.html
What is the MEANING OF THIS!?!?! Posting useful, accurate, topically relevant information!? FOR SHAME!! /s
Out of interest, anyone test the S300 system?
Yeah, I can imagine Assad watching this, and thinking: is it too late to get my initial down-payment back?
wow that was funny.
That was my first thought...
Rocknet
What's is all this crap about heptyl? Proton rocket fuel is hydrazine and the oxidizer is nitrogen tetroxide.
If they filled it full of heptyl (whatever that is) then that's probably why it exploded.
It has two less yls than nonyl.
You can see the colorful N2O4 in the exhaust just as it goes all wobbly. So, a failure in the hydrazine pump for one of the engines, perhaps? Or a break in the N2O4 plumbing -- it's coming out of the side of the engine instead of through the nozzle.
Apparently the Russians don't bother to include a range safety system into their launch vehicles?
Pah! Damage to the environment from heptyl schmeptyl. You want pollution? Try Lake Karachay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
Zero Hedge...it IS rocket science after all.
The launch pad is in the middle of an area that is outgasing Methane and Hydrogen sulfide with the unlocked CO in the permafrost slowly filling the atmosphere. It wouldn't take much to blow up anything in those conditions. The airline industry is having a hard time right now because of it. Hard to determine where an explosive fog bank or cloud patch is until it's a bit too late. If it was the safety systems it would have gone up in smoke well before launch during the tests they run prior to launch. The US btw hasn't got a better 'safety' record either if counting the amount of launches and failures.
Space flight is dangerous on a good day to begin with. Plus rocket fuel is infamously unstable even with proper procedures and containment, but it's the cost of doing that business.
Crappy thing about that launch is it was going to be part of the new real time weather monitoring system to monitor exactly that, the Methane/Hydrogen Sulfate outgassing because it'll be going on for the next decade and it's something we really need to be keeping an eye on and planning around. It's going to take years to make more systems to fire into orbit. I was looking forward to the extra sensors going online and checking things out, it's been cloudy and my telescope hasn't been getting much use. Sigh.
FWIW, this was slated to be one of the last Heptyl fueled launches since they are not only moving to a new platform, but also moving away from Baikonur as a primary launch site to Plesetsk and Vostochny. The Angara line is already though years of testing and will be fueled by an oxygen/kerosene mix. Of course, there have been the requisite promises and the inevitable delays. Look for International Launch Services, which is the US division of GKNPTs Khrunichev company to lead the way for the new launches with the potential for US customers to move payloads there.
Heptyl the common name for the fuel consisting of 1,1-dimethylhydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide.
US spying and hacking the rocket?
It was SRARP. Soviet Rocket Advanced Raining Propellent program at work...
heptyl nitrite...
Wasn't that destined for the first two married gays on the space station?
Oh the horror of non diversity
I wanna be Spartacus
The space station right now is empty because of the Solar minimum problem that is undiscussed right now except in a handful of science journals. The Space Station was supposed to be abandoned after the Soyuz incident in 2011. But with our Sun acting strangely for the past couple of years, all the men and women that were launched were up there from the purpose of gathering more information at the cost to their now shortened life spans (radiation kills eventually). Otherwise Earth has been losing satellites faster than we can launch them and performing any repairs that are needed. However it's come down to the point there are few options left except to abandon the station.
http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/IswaSystemWebApp/iSWACygnetStreamer?timestamp=2038-01-23+00%3A44%3A00&window=-1&cygnetId=261
See that dark ring of black, it's dense and fast. And it's going to clobber us tommorrow around 0600 UTC, then we'll probably lose more of the HAARP array and a couple more satellites. Everyone noticing the internet is a little slow lately? The satellites are part of the infrastructure that run it and other things. I wish there was better news to share, but our Sun is very large and influencial and has been very busy knocking infrastructure offline one piece at a time steadily over the past eight years.
You'll all know when it hits. It'll feel like a buzzing sound in the back of your skull and deep in the ears, sort of like tinnus but with a pressure headache. That would be the massive EM pulse provided by the sun on the past Saturday/Sunday. If you are prone to headaches, short of hiding in a faraday cage for a day there is always weed.
Oh boy this is getting good, "honey grab the popcorn". Check to you Mr. Putin...
This video is proof that breaking up is not hard to do.
Uh-oh
Flying Chernobyl?
Talk about blowing it way out of proportion. I thought RT was a Russian station? What happened to simply reporting the news? This was 1% news 99% buullshit! but this bullshit wasnt even entertaining.
I have done that many times in Kerbal Space Program.
there goes some more silver.
Nah, the Russians don't worry about all that "hazardous substance" crap. They just use old fashioned 60/40 solder.
"there goes some more tin" -- fify
Happy 4th of July...
Sincerely, ~ Vlad
Wondering if they suspect sabotage
Putin: "Get Moose And Squirrel !"
Yes. They already have suspects. Apparently it was two US special forces guys by the name of Woods and Mason.
<Black Ops Video Game>
Was it an attempt to put Ed Snowden on the moon?
Steve Austin... Astronaut... A man barely alive...
Highly toxic propellent raining back to earth? Cue the environmentalist wacko movement rushing to the microphones to demand a ban on rockets -
Oh wait, it's not the US so it doesn't matter.
A thousand polar bears in Alaska just fell down dead. Clearly a global warming glitch.
The horror.......the horror.
"Highly toxic propellent raining back to earth?"
The hypergolic (ignite with each other on contact) propellants used in that particular missile are incredibly toxic, deadly if inhaled in gas or vapor form. Any unprotected person downwind of that explosion would have been at great risk.
probably deadly if 'inhaled' in liquid form too!
...just sayin'
It would not come as a surprise if the malfunction was brought on by the USA remotely tampering with the satellite.
If it happens a second time, I can see poor old Snowden being shipped back to the USA.
They prolly did it themselves, nobody wants to be king of the hill all the time.
USSA hackers strike again!
nsa!
nsa!
nsa!
Sieg Heil!
rocketing is hard
That's why they call it rocket science.
Huh.....never made the connection.
I just wish she would have brushed her hair before going on camera.
Oh yeah, Zer0head's cops shooting the dog youtube video is gone. Wiped off the interwebs as though it never happened. I was going to send it over to Becky Akers at LRC.
This one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2353347/Police-shoot-kill-Rottweiler-street-dog-runs-owner-arrested-obstruction-justice.html
Pass that along.
Make that fucker viral
And that its gone is proof positive of censorship in the fascist police state, no?
And why are we finding out everything from British newspapers?
Huh?
I ask you that?
Oh, the US Media is an arm of the Government, no?
Aaaaragh
200 years, and its all gone.
Here, try this one on for size: http://bcove.me/2sbzmnxd
Official States That Unfounded Complaints Could Be Labeled 'Terrorism'
I saw that one, Krisp... It's ever so disheartening.
+1 Absolutely make that fucking thing go viral. That man did absolutely nothing wrong and didn't even resist when the pigs arrested him. The dog clearly was not being aggressive sniffing around and all. I normally don't get so emotional over this stuff but that has made me teary. All I can think of is just how FUCKING WRONG it is!!!! God I'm sooooo fucking angry right now!
You are angry? I am too! I called the police station to complain~! She hung up on me. (Hawthrowne. Calif). It was clear to me the cops knew this situation had the potential to unfold and end exactly as it did and they were okay with that.
Can some one Please remind me, What "they" hate us for?
For our freedom to check out big rack asian chicks on ZH banner ads.
Hawthorne P.D.
(not cop on scene)
Lieutenant Scott Swain
Desk:(310) 349-2835
Cell: (310) 345-2348
email: kswain@cityofhawthorne.org
Funny, ain't it? All that "freedom" we have?
yuck yuck
see officer, I can smile and am very happy
yuck yuck
High quality version of dog shooting video. Action starts @ 3:20ish.
No need to manufacture dissent when reality does it better. Remember, you're the dogs. [M E T A - deal with it, or just get out of the way if you don't understand it]
Bonus round:
"ROOG!" Boris screamed, and he came toward them, dancing with fury and dismay. Reluctantly, the Roogs turned away from the window. They went out through the gate, closing it behind them.
"Look at him," the last Roog said with contempt, pulling his comer of the blanket up on his shoulder. Boris strained against the fence, his mouth open, snapping wildly. The biggest Roog began to wave his anus furiously and Boris retreated. He settled down at the bottom of the porch steps, his mouth still open, and from the depths of him an unhappy, terrible moan issued forth, a wail of misery and despair.
"Come on," the other Roog said to the lingering Roog at the fence.
They walked up the path.
"Well, except for these little places around the Guardians, this area is well cleared," the biggest Roog said. "I'll be glad when this particular Guardian is done. He certainly causes us a lot of trouble." [PK Dick The Preserving Machine]
Fun facts: dogs and cats are the earliest examples of bioweapons, and have tens of thousands' of years interactions with homo sapiens, and have developed along side them.
Recent evidence suggests that preverbal infants' gaze following can be triggered only if an actor's head turn is preceded by the expression of communicative intent [1]. Such connectedness between ostensive and referential signals may be uniquely human, enabling infants to effectively respond to referential communication directed to them. In the light of increasing evidence of dogs' social communicative skills [2], an intriguing question is whether dogs' responsiveness to human directional gestures [3] is associated with the situational context in an infant-like manner. Borrowing a method used in infant studies [1], dogs watched video presentations of a human actor turning toward one of two objects, and their eye-gaze patterns were recorded with an eye tracker. Results show a higher tendency of gaze following in dogs when the human's head turning was preceded by the expression of communicative intent (direct gaze, addressing). This is the first evidence to show that (1) eye-tracking techniques can be used for studying dogs' social skills and (2) the exploitation of human gaze cues depends on the communicatively relevant pattern of ostensive and referential signals in dogs. Our findings give further support to the existence of a functionally infant-analog social competence in this species. [Current Biology]
Bonus Bonus round: Policeman pepper sprays baby squirrel - "could have been rabid". [Note - there are no cases in which squirrels have ever spread rabies to homo sapiens]
Was it built by North Korea?
Wow. A harbinger of the stock markets crashing??
In the past the rocket engineers may have been pushing up daisies in short order, but now they get an opportunity to work their craft on Wall Street.
nice rocket loop - expensive though
Da, kaput.
Snowden says "USA did it through NSA project Tentacle". Putin says <make up your own> while ordering his mediterranean fleet...
Always a navigation satellite, never a spy satellite.
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm Rocket Vlad
Rocket Vlad, burning out his fuse
Up there alone
One of those "Beautiful people"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypkv0HeUvTc (marilyn manson)
Prosthetics, top shelf cosmetics, a nice car, jeweley, a crib with a few of the trees, on your knees? (jk) There's no time to discriminate, hate every MF who comes your way.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
Neither's Chicago. Even after all the community organizing.
It's amazing how much organizing a community needs
"New Job Openings at the Russian Space Center."
"We're from the gubermint...."
PULL IT!
Kerosene rockets were so reliable, too ! I hear more MSM reporter empathy .... for a stupid rocket .... than I heard on 9/11 ! "Un-manned Rocket" .... can't quite say DRONE ? LOL
My little ol' opinion: there was nothing wrong with the rocket. If you see the fire started because it had stalled out and the exhaust was washing over the fuel compartment. So the fire started because the thing had stalled.
It was a "software problem."
Software .... as in .... soft as a Summer breeze .... in Chechnya ? Rocket propellants .... by Kursk Marine Technologies ! I had a wet dream last night about that Syrian Army Russian T-72 tank being hit by an RPG and "cookin' off" .... now this .... better change the bed sheets ! LOL
LOL, you mean this one?? If you look closely you can see one of the crew members cartwheeling out of the turret hatch when it starts cooking off, then the fucker gets up and runs away...he's clearly a zombie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0HuGxYkRVQ
Thanks for that .... he gave me the impression .... he was in pain ? LOL
That is quite an interesting comment feed to the video.
Was it hit by a rocket?
Was it a bad round?
Who cares, the dude that runs off is clearly a zombie. Looks like his shoulder fused with his arm in the air.
There was a malfunction in one of the 6 external engiines causing the rocket to yaw and rotate. I'm no rocket scientist, but it looks like the one engine went out, and dumped massive amounts of fuel and oxidizer into the exhaust plume.
Can Clinton send them that technical team .... he sent to China .... so they could finally get a rocket in orbit .... about the time he was sending fuel rods to the Norkos ?
Nobody does big industrial accidents like Russia.
In mother Russia the big industrial accidents you!
It's Bush, er, The NSAs Fault!
China. You just never hear about them.
Very true .... but China is #1 in coal mine deaths .... by far .... world class ! LOL
I hope they're not emulating the current US KGB-LIKE Media.
Were those flared skirt fins on the old Russian kerosene rockets for extra lift, somehow .... or were they just copied from a Flash Gordon comic book ?
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/ (permission granted)
05/28/13, 20:31 UTC, Soyuz FG with Soyuz TMA-09M from TB 1/5 to LEO/ISS
06/03/13, 09:18 UTC, Proton M/Briz M with SES 6 from TB 200/39 to GTO+
06/05/13, 21:52 UTC, Ariane 5ES with ATV-4 from KO 3 to LEO/ISS
06/07/13, 18:37 UTC, Soyuz 2-1b with Persona from PL 43/4 to LEO
06/11/13, 19:38 UTC, CZ-2F with Shenzhou 10 from JQ 4R to LEO
06/25/13, 17:28 UTC, Soyuz 2-1b with Resurs P1 from TB 31/6 to LEO
06/25/13, 19:27 UTC, Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat with O3b F1 KO ELS to MEO
06/27/13, 17:53 UTC, Strela with Kondor from TB 175/59 to LEO
06/28/13, 02:27 UTC, Pegasus with IRIS from VA L1011 to LEO/S
07/01/13, 18:11 UTC, PSLV-XL with IRNSS-1A from SR FLP to GTO
07/02/13, 02:38 UTC, Proton M/DM-03 with 3xGlonass M from TB 81/24 [FTO]
First Michael Hastings Mercedes computer control system goes into uncontrolled acceleration before the vehicle erupts into a fireball. Now the Russian Proton rocket goes into an uncontrolled shutdown before the rocket erupts into a fireball. In the Simpsons episode, "Marge Vs. The Monorail," Homer comments: "Donuts - is there anything they can't do." Like donuts and Nazi murderers, there is no limitation on what the NSA can do. FSB agents are probably now at the Kazakhstan launch facility to check out what went wrong, if someone remotely jammed the rocket's guidance system. Remember, Obama, don't get Putin angry. Russian gulags are filled with Russians who got Putin angry, as well as some Russians who wound up dead and planted. Putin is a very bad man.
FWIW, something happened to an engine first. You can see it in the video-an area of discoloration in the exhaust.
Let's see, how are people getting to the space station these days? Oh yeah.
Briz-M block again ?
btw they do not use Briz-M on manned missions to ISS
Wow, look at her outfit. She looks like an extra from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. "Medication. Medication time."
As a kid I actually was hot for Nurse Ratchet... (boing, pitches tent)
But her hot young little assistant, oh man, major chub.
I'd rather watch Russian traffic accidents .... can't get enough !
Russia in many ways is like the United States decades ago--remember the Challenger? The only difference is, Putin and the Russian government are not actively trying to destroy their own country and their own people's quality of life by flooding the country with third worlders, hyperinflating the currency, public destruction of morals through homosexuality and sexualization of children, etc.
Laugh all you want at growing pains like this, but in two or three decades at the rate they're going, Russia will be a preferable place to live over the US in almost every way.
Agreed. At the very least, we need a balance of power among various nations, and a stronger Russia (or other country) goes a long way to ensuring that the US's own sociopaths don't go "all the way" in bringing fascism and genocide to US soil. Especially with US surveillance of the entire planet, I am saddened to see that 3 Russian satellites blew up with this rocket. We need a balance of communications power too.
you are wrong. Russia is after the economic decline and trying to rebuild. That is why they fail so often now.
US is still on its way down
Many Americans will welcome Russia's arrival on Amerikan soil.
I'll take the USSA with her zits and flab to Russia. Not a good bug-out place.
In current terms, of course. After the Trayvon Riots, third world amnesty explosion (they're expanding the definition of "close relative"--i.e., anyone can be brought over), and USD crash, however, you will probably be singing a different tune about Mother Russia.
Leave Putin alone and he'll work to give you a good life.
Leave Obummer and his handlers alone and they'll do everything in their power to destroy you and your grandchildren's future.
Seems pretty clear where it's all headed.
Snoden was on this rocket. The moon finally agreed to take him - poor bastard! I hear the NSA took him out - I'm sure another whisteblower will come forth with the deatils on this any day. Happy 4rth of July (early) - nice show!
lol
At least it was unmanned. Proton M rockets are being replaced by the Angara scalable rockets. It doesn't bode well that the South Koreans also had some trouble with them when they used them for first stage lift. Hopefully they'll iron out the problems for their eventual SinoRus Mars mission. Sorry, was I supposed to laugh at this article like some slack jawed moron at a monster car rally?
yes.
you were supposed to make multiple posts about the appearance of the reporter, her hair, nails, clothes, and tie that to "Russian women" in general, and your various body reactions to same.
then tweet, FB, reddit, etc. about same, ad nauseam.
Aaaaaaaand, it's gone!
Thirty years ago the USSR would have declared that a successful launch.
Is that chick drunk? Did she just get out of bed? Was she in such a rush to get to work she left her housecoat on? Is this the best they can do in the post Lauren Lyster era??
Summer intern time ... and she is trying to speak American not British, English. A for effort ... C for style .. what's with those sneakers?
I do agree with the Ham Fisted Idiot, that we need a balance of power-- as we've had since 264 AD or thereabouts-- but I don't see it lasting too much longer. I have said before that the US is not in Bible prophecy, which wasn't too well received. But it could be this is the case just bec she becomes the OWG, not bec her economy fails.
Where the hell is Boris?
We need a SITREP.
Comrade, what does this button do? Ohhhh, shitski........
Russians have figured out it's more lucrative to hack US financial sites and commit fraud rather than to build rockets.
Obviously Russian talent has left the space program for hacking.
russian talent retired during Gorbatchev perestroika. Those who still were working left during Yeltsin era. Now Putin is looking hard to grow young generation of specialists
Equality is an important part of the culture. Russian companies pay $200 to $300 per month regardless of qualifications. My wife did data-entry and spoke no foreign languages, and I met an older lady on the plane who traveled the world selling millions of dollars worth of Russian titanium. They earned the same, $200/month. The latter said that if she quit her job, she could teach English for $100/month. My father-in-law hates this "maximum wage" system -- he said that specialists emigrate if they can, otherwise they drink themselves to death.
Bullard, Lacker, and Kocherlakota were immediately dispatched to various locales to give speeches claiming that the rocket, in fact, had not exploded and had, indeed, achieved orbit as indicated by various Fed models.
In addition to her novel interpretation of the english language, her clothes look like a mixture between a used firemans suit and my garbage bag.
Must have been designed by Northrop Grumman's Missile Defense division.
Perhaps they were attempting to re-enact the shootdown of TWA Flight 800 during AEGIS testing in Long Island Sound - but without the passenger airliner.
These types of things would stop happening if they would just adopt a democratic form of government.
Was this rocket, by any chance, actually secretly carrying satellites for their close partners, the U.S.A.? This obvious guidance system issue (which is not a common failure mode for launch systems as far as I know. After all, don't they use at least double, or more likely triple or even quadruple redundancy for such critical systems?) eerily reminds me of that incident when the Chinese were contracted to launch Intelsat 708 - a communications satellite containing highly sensitive technologies, subject to export control (which was part of the Cox Report controversy). The Long March 3B rocket carrying it too experienced uncanny guidance system issues (check this video).
The Chinese didn't allow anybody to see, let alone recover what was left of the payload for some time. Eventually it transpired that a militarily sensitive encryption board went "missing".
So I see a nice plan (just speculating whether it might have been used for this particular launch).
1. Lure customers who want to launch satellites containing sensitive technology or intelligence secrets by offering them cheap space launch services;
2. See to it that a "software bug" finds its way in the guidance computers that guides the rocket wrongly, preferably somewhere out of view of the customers;
3. Separate the payload at a relatively low altitude, so as not to damage it to a point that it can't be reverse engineered;
4. Create a massive disaster out of the booster (ecological/human loss) so as to have a good pretext to close the area and allow for the secret recovery or investigation of the payload;
5. ???
6. Profit.
Perhaps vodka was involved. For comic levity, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-l4w-DIiXk