They had an oopsie with Xaero-B. Hope it’s not too much of a setback.
[Update a while later]
@rocketrepreneur @spacecom It isn't a sad day. We gained valuable insight and data doing something very unique. Wasn't the first try and is exactly why we test.
— Masten Space Systems (@mastenspace) May 11, 2017
[Update a few more minutes later]
@rocketrepreneur @spacecom We have what will be our largest lander design to date currently under construction at MSFC. We are encouraged about what we are doing next.
— Masten Space Systems (@mastenspace) May 11, 2017
Rand,
I dunno. Claiming that losing a vehicle isn’t a sad event isn’t very convincing. Sure it might be like having a friend who’s lived a good life and died doing what he loved, but that’s still sad, even if it wasn’t a waste.
~Jon
Did they ever make the Xaero-A crash footage public? I agree with Jon that claiming losing a vehicle isn’t sad is unconvincing. Compared to Armadillo and the Breeds, Masten was pretty opaque during the NGLLC. Even more so now that they can hide behind their veil of secrecy for a customer. I doubt we’ll hear any more about this incident.
Does anybody have the scoop on why they’re building their next lander at MSFC? Is that the one that’s made out of a repurposed Centaur tank?
Doug Messier got an answer to my question. The lander being constructed at MSFC is a clean sheet design, different than the modded Centaur tank that they call Xeus. But apparently construction on Xeus is ramping up, too.
Masten builds cool hardware. I wish we got to see more of it 🙁
http://parabolicarc.com/2017/05/11/masten-lander-construction-nasa-marshall/
I say just turn Michoud over to Masten and call it even.
Ever onward! Any idea what rock (other than earth) and how soon we may see some landers? The number of flights of these vehicles is impressive.
As Zubrin correctly points out, the capability to travel from point to point on the surface of a body greatly increases mission effectiveness.
I just completely disagree with Jon, and in fact, find his concern to be the reason NASA is dysfunctional. You learn a lot more in failure than in success. And if you have a test, that’s the safest way to learn from a failure. Too many times, NASA leadership, in an effort to avoid sad days, would spend exorbitant amount of money to assure a test went off without failure.
Take PA-1, intended to test the zero-zero launch abort capability for Orion. First decision was not to test at KSC, because too many things an errant test could hit, so the test was moved to White Sands, which meets zero velocity, but not really zero altitude. So next the parachutes had to be made larger to compensate for the less dense air upon landing. This then required altering the interface between the vehicle and LAS to accommodate the larger parachutes. At this point, the zero-zero test is really zero velocity at an altitude of 4300 feet, and no longer testing the flight design landing system or the intended design interconnects between the vessel and the LAS. All that was being tested was the power of the LAS motor, and its motion control system.
Now the point of PA-1 was to conduct a test of the flight design to avoid the expensive costs of modelling analysis. But then NASA delayed PA-1 for nearly a year because of all the test design changes, and decided to conduct assurance through modelling analysis that the test design changes wouldn’t result in a catastrophic event during the test.
The good news, the test happened without any failures back on 6 May 2010. The bad news is NASA delayed the test by 2 years from the original plan to make all the changes (actually 1 year to make changes and another year to do assurance), the data collected didn’t match the flight design, and the delay and test redesign costs were 3 times the original budget of just building the boilerplate module and LAS system.
But hey, NASA didn’t have a Sad Day.
How’s the progress on Orion going these days?
(I apologize if this comment is a bit crude, but we really need to get over the emotions of failure and move on, otherwise we become risk adverse and end up doing nothing.)