Rocket Lab vehicle lost during second stage burn on 13th mission
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It's a bit disappointing right because this hot-swap-and-then-ditch the battery maneuver is their key know-how, it helps to keep 2S engine simpler and cheaper.
Ridshare orbit depends on the primary orbit requirements, if the orbit is not favourable to your sat, correcting the orbit may not be feasible at all, given the small payload size you may not have the fuel for the correction burn
Also fitting your sat to a rideshare payload adapter could be lot more complex depending on the primary and other shares
Similarly while spaceX is cheap, there are plenty of workloads where ULA is the only option, vertical assembly , certain fairing sized , some orbits etc .
- Timing, perhaps you want to deliver sooner.
[1] https://spaceflight.com/pricing/
(Rocket Lab's first mission was also a failure, but it did not have a payload. That failure was with ground equipment, so this current failure is their first rocket failure).
The Minotaur is currently 11/11 (with a 12th launch planned later this year).
Space Shuttle had 24 consecutive launches before a failure
The standard Delta IV has also had 24 consecutive successes.
> Space Shuttle had 24 consecutive launches before a failure
The Space Shuttle system was not "a rocket", so possibly GP wasn't counting it?
> The standard Delta IV has also had 24 consecutive successes.
Were those consecutive successes from the first launch without a dummy payload?
I don't see why the space shuttle wouldn't be considered a rocket? It had 3 rocket engines coming out the back of it.
>Were those consecutive successes from the first launch without a dummy payload?
Yes, although I goofed the math and it was actually 29. If we're excluding launches with dummy payloads, you could actually add in the Delta IV Heavy, which brings the total up to 39.
Duh, you're right, of course - I somehow was thinking just of the boosters.
It’s possible it experiences zero-G for more than just a few milliseconds at its apogee. Hence the 0mph velocity.
The (approximately) zero-G period lasts for minutes, not milliseconds, and during that time, the velocity changes by 9.8 m/s (22 MPH) every second. The velocity should not pause at 0, or any other value.
Maybe we can compromise on 35 km/h per second though.
Not to mention that the speed freezes quite frequently at other points in the video...