Genesis Recovery Failure

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Even NASA has deployment problems... There was live coverage here in Colorado - it was designed and built here. Sad to see all that work go splat.


Edward
 
That's too bad :( But thanks for posting the link, I forgot to check on the results.
 
That is one dissapointing spack.

I just hope they find some of the 'cargo' in a state where they can get some useful data from it.
 
I saw the video. Ouch. That looks expensive. The way the capsule looked after it landed reminds me of the Andromeda strain. :p
 
Originally posted by Ozymandias
The way the capsule looked after it landed reminds me of the Andromeda strain. :p

YES! That's it! I was trying to grasp the connection in my feeble mind. Hey - has anybody checked on the residents of any nearby towns?...
 
It's pretty obvious to me what they did wrong!;)

When you build a saucer, you are supposed to put the three pieces of wire coming out of the top! That's what cushions the fall!

Read the instructions guys!
 
264 million dollars and 1.8 million miles travelled...
i thought going to Black Rock was expensive!
:eek:
 
Have you heard?? it was only going 100mph when it impacted!!! That's sissy rocketry!!! We can build stuff to easily survive that for less than 264 million!!!
 
mph...

for NASA...it was pretty lousy video, nothing for scale...i kept expecting someone to reach down and pick up the capsule between their thumb and forefinger....LOL!

i had to look at the pdf to find out the capsule was about 6 feet by 3 feet in size.
 
You're probably right! Yep, I heard it was about the size of a fridge. I didn't know at first that a probe was expected to return to Earth. When I first saw the video I thought Roswell!!!

Yeah the video is pretty lousy but it was tracked nicely through the sky.
 
Originally posted by GL-P
Yeah the video is pretty lousy but it was tracked nicely through the sky.

Lousy? Geez, they said on the audio portion that it was 10 miles downrange and at 200,000 feet. That's a pretty fair distance -- a lot better than I could do with my Sony :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by GL-P


Yeah the video is pretty lousy but it was tracked nicely through the sky.

That video was amazing!! It was framed and well over 1/2,000th of a second. If it was a 2 miles away it would have been impressive, but at 10 miles, that is amazing. Now we know what the old SR71 cameras are doing nowadays. ;-)
 
Originally posted by Rick James
Lousy? Geez, they said on the audio portion that it was 10 miles downrange and at 200,000 feet. That's a pretty fair distance -- a lot better than I could do with my Sony :rolleyes:

Have you seen the beasts they record this stuff with:eek: I have a pic of one around here somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.
 
Tracking portion was great. I hear they had visual at 400,000ft!!! The aftermath looks kinda weird though.

I wish I could use their tracking cams!!!
 
I did a little snooping and if Rick James wants to upgrade, here is an opportunity:

Now that would take a load off of the launch control officer at the next launch... shall we start a collection:D

such a deal at $100,000.00;)
 
Nobody's alive except an old wino and a crying baby!

Allright Sandman, are you calling me the wino or a baby! :mad:

No, we're all allright so far! They say the capsule came down EXACTLY where they expected it to - those floating point calculations are getting better (including the Mars Rovers, Cassini). I looked for it in the sky, but too many clouds in the way.

The science is not lost tho. The ions are still there in the capsule. They knew there would be some "dirt" in the science capsule. They just have more dirt/salt in there now! :D

it was useful for scientists studying near earth asteroids

Yeah, a "meteroid on que" they said. Haven't heard any data they collected for this tho?

NASA confirmed 193 MPH on impact.

We (not the media) weren't afraid of samples being returned from the sun to Utah, but in 2006 Utah gets to receive samples from comet Wilde 2. Now that might be cause for intrepidation! Utah will probably get some samples from Mars someday too!
:rolleyes:

Pat
 
Originally posted by teflonrocketry1
It looks like NASA made a big impression!


But the star of the show has suffered severe internal injuries. Did they have the bunny on board or were they using dollar store batteries?
 
Boooooooom! That was a spack and a half! That thing was S P I N I N G as it came in! And what a crator it left!
Karl
 
And if IIRC , a baddy out of one of the Home Alones once said :

'Boy , whada hole!'
 
Gives new meaning to having to file an "Environmental Impact Report!" I wonder if any eco-freaks are going to be out there complaining that the habitat of some poor animal was potentially endangered by the impact...

WW
 
Editorial from a British Newspaper called the Guardian

Space cowboys

John O'Farrell
Friday September 10, 2004
The Guardian

On Wednesday, Nasa scientists watched in shock as their Genesis solar project ended in disaster. "I can't believe it" they all said. "A space mission that went wrong? This is completely unprecedented. I mean, the last time a major space project ended in embarrassing failure was way, way back in January when our Mars rover broke down, and then before that the Beagle 2 project lost contact with its probe, oh and then there was last year's Columbia disaster, oh and the Hubble Telescope fiasco, but apart from that our record is very impressive." From now on Nasa is going to launch its rockets on the 4th of July, just so that everyone thinks they're meant to explode.
We had been promised a dramatic re-entry for the Genesis capsule, which was set to return its precious payload of atomic solar particles after a three-year mission. Stunt pilots hired from Hollywood for the occasion were on standby waiting to hook up with the capsule as it entered the Earth's atmosphere, but they failed to connect because they couldn't see out of their Jedi helmets. "Sorry, can we go for another take on that one?" "Er - no, actually."

After the parachutes failed to open the capsule crashed to earth and the scientists found their precious parcel smashed open and the contents scattered all over the ground; it couldn't have been worse if they had paid the extra for Royal Mail registered post. The whole point of this trip was to bring back pure uncontaminated atoms from the sun. Now they're going to have to gather up everything they find on that patch of ground in Utah and painstakingly analyse all of it. "It's amazing; solar explosions seem to be emitting old burger cartons, cigarette butts and Wal-Mart shopping bags."

The team did their best to remain positive: "There are a lot of things that had to happen in series and we got just about all of them done and we just did not get the last two or three done," said Genesis project manager Don Sweetnam. Oh well, that's all right then. Maybe I'm being a little picky, but if I was plummeting to the ground at 200mph, and one of those last details included the failure of my parachute to open, I'd struggle to be upbeat about all the other things that had gone so well.

How do they get the insurance for all these missions? Perhaps they just have to hope they get a particularly dim telesales rep when they ring the insurance company. "So, are there any additional drivers you would like listed on the policy?"

"Well there are no actual 'drivers' as such, it's a remote-control space explorer capsule costing $250m."

"Right, no additional drivers and will you be using it for business or leisure?"

"Well, mainly for catching atoms ejected in solar explosions."

"I'll click 'leisure' then, and can I have the postcode where the vehicle will be kept, please?"

"Well, for the next two years it will be in orbit at temperatures of thousands of degrees, trying to dodge solar explosions, meteorites and collisions with the planet Mercury."

"That's all right, sir, as long as it's not going to be parked in Hackney or Liverpool."

The so-called Genesis project received its massive funding before they realised that it had nothing to do with taking Phil Collins into deep space. In fact, the naming of the craft is not without an irony of its own, since the purpose of this trip was to inform us about the origins of our solar system. Yet the president who is paying for it all has passed an education bill allowing creationism to creep back into American schools. Why does he need to spend millions on the space probe, to find out what he says Americans can read in the Book of Genesis? Could it be that he's only claiming to take the Bible at face value in order to secure votes in America's bible belt? Or maybe they just told him that with all that fire coming off the sun there must be some oil in there somewhere?

With the tide of Christian fundamentalism that is increasingly directing scientific funding in America, soon Nasa won't be able to send out any more probes unless they are looking for a big bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud surrounded by angels. But though their latest mission has ended in disaster, maybe this week Nasa just settled the science versus religion debate for once and for all. A huge lump of metal comes flying out of the sky at 200mph, crash lands in the United States, but it completely misses President George W Bush. Clearly there is no God; what more proof does anyone need?
 
Back
Top