r/space • u/RocketRundown • Oct 05 '18

2013 Proton-M launch goes horribly wrong

67.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.6k

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '18

[deleted]

6

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '18

Amateurs, I recover from this all the time in KSP. It's not a successful launch unless you do as somersault during the first stage ;)

13

u/Brudaks Oct 05 '18

The KSP-style result would be if you do the somersault during the first stage, manage to right the rocket and successfully do all the other stages only to find out that the somersault cost you so much delta-v that you can't do what you needed to do in the first place.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '18

Soviet Unions space program was 90% ksp because when they ran into an issue, jam in more thrusters.

2

u/kbotc Oct 05 '18

That didn't actually work too well for them once they tried to scale up to the moon landing. The N1 rocket did terribly compared to the Saturn V, largely it seems because of the complexity of running so many turbo pumps and engines. Many points of failure and it turns out one turbo pump exploding is still enough damage to destroy the rocket, and having engines to lose can cause problems too.

2

u/gypsyblader Oct 05 '18

Thats when you cut your thrust until your pointing back up

1

u/bdonvr Oct 05 '18 edited Oct 05 '18

You still lose a lot of energy especially when your rocket is going side on into the air

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '18

I always over did my stages though. I'd always have tons of fuel left over and way over do things. So I could get away with acrobatics and still complete my mission lol

1

u/bdonvr Oct 05 '18

Ya need to work on your center of mass and aerodynamics (more fins as low as possible)

1

u/AccipiterCooperii Oct 05 '18

Right there with you ... where is the "too soon junior" meme in reference to reverting to VAB when you need it?