Space

Scramspace flight ends in failure

Scramspace flight ends in failure
Scramspace crashed into the North Sea
Scramspace crashed into the North Sea
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Professor Russell Boyce and a scale model of Scramspace
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Professor Russell Boyce and a scale model of Scramspace
Scramspace crashed into the North Sea
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Scramspace crashed into the North Sea
The Andøya Rocket Range
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The Andøya Rocket Range
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The University of Queensland’s Scramspace hypersonic experiment ended in failure today as the unmanned spacecraft plummeted into the North Sea off the coast of Norway. After a successful launch atop a rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range at 3 p.m. CEDT, Scramspace failed to reach the required altitude to begin the hypersonic flight experiment.

Scramspace Director and University of Queensland Hypersonics Chair Professor Russell Boyce says that everyone is safe and that both rocket and payload landed in the sea. "The range has assured us that everyone is safe, no one has been hurt and no one is in danger, which is the most important thing. But the launch did not go as expected."

He went on to say that they were in contact with the craft during the entire flight. "The Scramspace payload, according to our data, was operating perfectly and performed extremely well before and during the launch, and we received telemetry data all the way into the water. Unfortunately the failed launch meant we could not carry out the experiment as planned."

The Andøya Rocket Range
The Andøya Rocket Range

Today's flight was intended to test a new hypersonic scramjet engine that could one day launch satellites into orbit or make possible passenger flights from London to Sydney in 2 hours. The plan was to use a rocket booster to launch Scramspace out of the atmosphere, after which it would dive straight down until it reached the speed of Mach 8, when it would fire its engine for 3 seconds before burning up. Instead, the experiment failed and the payload ended up in the sea.

The team is now working on what went wrong. "As with all launches, there is a risk that something will go wrong," says Boyce. "Unfortunately for the Scramspace team, something went wrong, and we are looking forward to hearing from the range on what happened."

Source: University of Queensland

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12 comments
12 comments
Simon Sammut
So was it a failure of the launch vehicle or the test vehicle?
Wombat56
Sounds like a launch vehicle failure.
Pity, Aussie Universities are strapped for cash at the best of times.
Darth Stig
Sounds like a launch vehicle failure given it didn't reach the required height and they are waiting for an explanation from the launch facility.
Bummer. A 2 hr flight Sydney to London would mean Hawaii was only 45 mins away :-)
Nairda
Oh well. Every kick in the bum is a step forward.
I believe in this technology, as do investors. It is the defining solution for how we economically expand LEO consumer/cargo transport.
So there will be another test, and then another. Until we get it right.
grtbluyonder
I am willing to bet that the KIWI's are feeling a bit sheepish about this failure. They shouldn't feel too bad, a lot of early US rockets blew up or failed too, just the cost of R&D.
dalroth5
That's a shame. Bad luck guys, but as others have said, this technology will work, so onward and upward!
Tom Swift
Did someone forget to top off the fuel tank in the launch vehicle? :)
randomray
Well this just stinks they didn't get to test their design , I hope they have the funds for another test flight . It would be great to see the Aussies steal a march on the super powers " and wannabes ". They're in the perfect place for a space port .
grtbluyonder : Kiwis are the folks from New Zealand .
Gregg Eshelman
This was a test, a test that failed. Someone's math on thrust to weight ratio or rocket engine efficiency or something was off.
Or as the Kerbals say "Moar boosters!" ;-)
Launching a cheap dummy payload of the same mass to actually see if the rocket can lift it to the desired height would've been a good idea, but would also cost more - yet would've revealed the flaws.
Then they could've gone back to a CAD software to alter the designs for rocket number two.
Chez
Gregg Eshelman, The scramjet experiment seems completely separate from the rocket system and the problem with the rocket system clearly had nothing to do with thrust to weight ratios - the statement from Andoya rocket range (http://www.rocketrange.no/?page_id=325) reads: "Apparently the cause was a fault in the first stage thruster that occurred in ignition during the first phase of the flight. This rocket configuration has been much used in sounding rockets, as by Sweden (at the Esrange at Kiruna), Norway, Germany and Brazil. In recent years there have been many launches of rockets with the configuration from Andøya. There have been no previous accidents or problems with the configuration."
and they go on to say: "The range can confirm that the SCRAMSPACE payload functioned as it should, and was in no way connected with the failure of the rocket."
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