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Comment by jwise0 | Hacker News Reader

There aren't many blogs covering this right now, but there are no personnel injured (according to the launch loop) -- just "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage".

Nobody has said much yet: https://twitter.com/OrbitalSciences/status/52722568241456742...

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Under Orbital's license for this launch, LLO 14-091, they were required to take out more than $110 million in insurance for liability and government property. The portion of the insurance specific to U.S. government property is $45 million.

So, that'll be paying out.

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast...

Rockets don't explode they experience "Anomalies"

the technical term seems to be 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'

actually the correct technical term to use here would be CATO - Catastrophe At Take Off

Only slightly less euphemistic than flying's CFIT - Controlled Flight Into Terrain. AKA "whoops, the ground".

And going the other direction, euphemistically-wise, the U.S. military's official designation for things* that fall off aircraft is TFOA: Things Falling Off Aircraft.

*Anything from loose nuts or fasteners up to improperly-attached fuel tanks or bombs.

Also known as lithobraking.

>> "significant property damage and significant vehicle damage"

This wasn't launched in a desert/uninhabited area?

Edit: Thanks for clarifying below.

I imagine that the "property" that was damaged is to the launch facility itself. The launch was on Wallops Island, VA which is largely (if not entirely) uninhabited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallops_Island

I'm guessing they mean the launch tower.

"Property" meaning, presumably, their infrastructure (e.g., the tower that holds the rocket up before it launches, etc.); and "vehicle" is the rocket itself... Don't worry, they didn't launch this and blow-up over suburbia!

The rocket's payload may also be considered property. Lots of expensive equipment inside.

And to be clear, the debris field is over the Atlantic Ocean. The launch was scheduled for last night but had to be scrubbed because a boater had entered the restricted area.

The debris field would have been over the Atlantic, had the rocket made it that far. However it failed while it was still over the launchpad, fell out of the sky, and exploded when it fell onto the launchpad.

The town of Chincoteague is a few miles away from the pad. I'm guessing the worst impact there was some windows got rattled by the shockwave from the destruction of the 2nd stage.

Well, that's good. Property damage is insurable - let's hope that's the only loss.

Listening to the audio feed for a few minutes, I always find it a bit sad how people resort to 'officialese' bullshit when they're embarrassed or stressed, eg 'we're going to triage the data'?!

I don't think that's just officialese. They are going to be under enormous pressure to find out what went wrong as quickly as possible. Orbital Science's future may be significantly affected by how well (and quickly) they deal with the aftermath.

Having been an engineer in control room environments for both rocket launches and fighter jet flight operations -- it's not really "officialese bullshit". Aerospace has a definite jargon and there are preferred ways of saying things on comms to reduce ambiguities. "Triage the data" is actually a good way of describing what you do in an anomaly investigation. You figure out what the most likely thing that went wrong is, then the next most likely thing, etc. and look at data regarding those things in order.

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