A missile interceptor test was a failure today. It followed several previously successful tests. This is a little misleading, however.

"We do not have an intercept," said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

He said it was "frustrating and disappointing" that a glitch that had little to do with advanced missile technology had doomed the eighth, $100 million, flight test of a key part of a planned U.S. layered defense against ballistic missiles.

The problem was a failure of the payload to separate from the booster. This is a surprisingly common problem with space launch, and the failure means nothing with regard to the viability of missile defense per se. In a real situation, there would almost certainly be redundancy (multiple interceptors would be fired at a single target), and the failure of one to separate wouldn't affect the ability of the system to kill the oncoming missile.

It also highlights the continuing failure of not just NASA, but the Air Force and Pentagon, to adopt a new space-launch paradigm. One of the reasons that these tests are so expensive and unreliable is that they are performed with expendable launchers, which are intrinsically expensive and unreliable.

While it's unlikely that reusable launch platforms would be used for actual missile defense (the response time on them would probably be too slow), and the unreliability of expendables would be acceptable for the actual mission, for reasons stated above, it would be nice to have a cheaper, more reliable launcher for testing. At least one company is working on reusable suborbital systems that could do this, but they've received very little government support or encouragement.

But until we have a more reliable way of getting the interceptor to the target, it will continue to be difficult to separate out the real technical issues of missile defense from the more mundane ones of the reliability of expendable rockets. And many, intrinsically opposed to defending ourselves against missiles, will continue to point to such incidents as failures intrinsic to the concept itself, with the help of a scientifically-illiterate media.

There is much going on here that most people don't realize. Now i'm not an expert and shouldn't really point fingers but this is what I see. Boeing is the prime but couldn't figure out how to build the booster (all the old germans are dead now) they also lost out on the kill vehical so they really arn't much more then the integrator anymore. Lock-Mark has now been tasked with converting the old Minuteman missiles to guild thru second stage sep(the part that failed to let go of the KV). Now Lock-Mart has made it knowen that they feel they can make a better KV the Raytheon but hasn't been given that chance to prove it because the gov't likes the fact that Raytheons system seems to work. Raytheon builds a damn fine kv in spite of themself. It just seems that this is the second time that the LockMart booster has failed to let the Raytheon KV do its job. It also looks strange to me that every time that happens they seem to always have a full page add for Lock-Mart right next the headlines that Raytheon failed to hit the target. I think there might be some dots to start connecting here...

Sure, that'd teach 'em. Take a chance on locking themselves out of an entire market, just to make Raytheon look bad. Trust me, we all get our share of times to look bad without the need for covert activities. And there's always the possibility for the entire program to get cancelled instead of put up for recompete.

Can you imagine the consequences of being caught at (or even suspected of) such an action? Too many people would have to know. And, finally, the PLV people are nowhere near the people who designed the KVs. Just how could such a sabotage take place? Any ideas?

It's an interesting idea, but the covert shenanigans would only work if Raytheon technology were being blamed instead of Lockheed-Martin technology, which is not the case. Lockheed-Martin makes the launch vehicle. They would like to make the interceptor. Making the launch vehicle fail isn't likely to help them get good press.

I've heard right from the mouth from many Lockmart employees that their guiding mantra is that they are in the business of making money, bottom line. I've seen first hand that they are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get them in a position of making money.

I've heard right from the mouth from many Lockmart employees that their guiding mantra is that they are in the business of making money, bottom line. I've seen first hand that they are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get them in a position of making money.

This is true. And yet another argument against any tampering. After all, what better way to piss off the DoD than to pull some kind of boneheaded stunt that both wastes taxpayer dollars and sends bad PR not to just Raytheon but to the missile defense community as a whole. LockMart would be truly, literally screwing itself out of a big pile of money.

I can't speak for the PLV folks, but in my little corner of LockMart, making money requires a superior product, period. Every time we have a launch failure is just another opportunity for someone else to elbow themselves into that business. And, speaking for myself and everyone I know, none of us want make money by cheating. It's much more interesting and challenging making money by doing a better job than the competition.

I'm not management. I'm not a company cheerleader. I'm just another engineer.

What if cheating and doing a better job are perceived by some as doing the same thing? David's comment reminded me of a second hand comment I once heard from a former Hughes engineer with regard to the Phoenix missile. Apparently someone responsible for the circuit boards wanted to 'cheat/compete' on the design resulting in soldered wire jumpers instead of nice cleanly designed circuits which would have taken more time to design/produce.

End result... the military second sourced (which is a good thing anyway) but the supposed savings resulted in a loss overall.