Glory lost on launch

[koputai]

It looks like the Glory satellite (Earth and atmospheric monitoring) has crashed in the South Pacific after the 4th stage failed to fire due to the payload fairing not separating.

The launch vehicle had the same failure the last time it was used for an Earth monitoring satellite two years ago. :question:

That's a hell of a lot of work down the drain......

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Glory/main/index.html

Cheers,
Jason.

[CraigS]

Ha …!! … I notice the NASA link doesn't mention the cost .. $424 mill according to the less kind Physorg article (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-nasa-earth-satellite-friday.html) …

(I doubt that all of the $424mill was wasted .. )

Its kind of unfortunate when they report the costs immediately after a failure .. I mean they almost never mention the costs of the missions which exceed their goals. And there are way more of those than launch failures !

Cheers

[astroron]

Hi Jason, the reliabilety of this launch vehicle is not very good:question:
9 Launches 3 failures,,not a good average :screwy:
Cheers

[koputai]

You've got to wonder why they used it again this time.

Cheers,
Jason.

[Kevnool]

What goes up must come down........sooner or later.

Cheers Kev.

[CarlJoseph]

Omar Baez (NASA Launch Director) looks like he's about to breakdown and cry in this press conference. What a tragedy for this program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_IKkGJzFDM

[jjjnettie]

Such a shame.

[Matt Wastell]

Sad!

We do not need these if future programmes are going to get maximum funding!

Surprising?

[gary]

A terrible loss.

When one considers the enormous number of person-years involved in
projects of this magnitude, when a failure such as this occurs, so went
with it sizable chunks of time from thousands of peoples lives.

Despite enormous advances in the past 60 years of rocketry, it is also a poignant
reminder that personally getting on-board a rocket is not without considerable risk.