Hello All,

Rocket Lab, after a long string of successes, finally lost one this evening, when their latest Electron launch, carrying seven satellites (atop their Curie kick stage [third stage]) failed to orbit. (Incidentally, here is an Electron scale model rocket website: https://bps.space/electron .) The failure occurred late in the ascent, during the second stage burn. But interestingly, late in the *first stage* burn (see: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/...-status-center/ [the launch and onboard video views are embedded here—liftoff occurred at the 16:28 point of the video]), the outer skin on what appears to have been the interstage section started to peel back, beginning at the 18:24 point in the video. (The foreshortened view makes it hard to tell; it might have been on the first stage propellant tankage section.) Also:

The onboard video froze and then continued many times during ascent (it finally froze permanently at T + 5 minutes, 41 seconds after liftoff), and at the same time the telemetry indicated that the vehicle apparently stopped accelerating, at which time it was traveling at 8,509 mph (almost 13,700 km/h). It coasted upward for approximately 26 more seconds, reaching a suborbital apogee of 121 miles (194.8 kilometers) before falling back to Earth (see: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/...reaching-orbit/ ). The launch commentator said that the video signal from the vehicle was weak. Another oddity—a visual one—was that during the first stage burn, especially its latter half, there was a cloud of bright, silvery-white, rapidly-moving (like a swarm), incandescent-appearing “fairy magic-like sparkles” around the vehicle. The foreshortened view made the “sparkle cloud’s” depth and position (with respect to the Electron vehicle—the location along its length) difficult to determine, but it appeared to be over and around the interstage section, although it could conceivably have extended back to the first stage’s engine bay, and:

Since statistically, rocket engines—if they’re going to fail—usually fail at, or shortly after, ignition (G. Harry Stine pointed this out in his 1996 SSTO book “Halfway to Anywhere: Achieving America’s Destiny in Space”), I wonder if this evening’s Electron launch failure had some other cause, as the first two stages’ engines ignited and ran normally (the Curie third [kick] stage never had a chance to perform, of course), and for quite some time. Stage 1 fired for its full duration, and Stage 2 wasn’t far from performing its “hot swap” (an Electron-unique flight event [see: https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf...&sclient=psy-ab ] which occurs quite late during ascent—Stage 2’s single Rutherford engine’s electric propellant pumps are switched over, while running, to a third, non-jettisonable battery pack [from its two jettisonable battery packs that supply power to the pumps for most of the Stage 2 burn; they can be seen falling away after they’re jettisoned]). Now:

Because the charged Li-Po (Lithium-Polymer) battery packs contain a great deal of energy, might an internal short have developed between cells (or perhaps an external short, caused by a loose conductor coming into contact with a battery pack’s connectors)? The battery packs—at least the two jettisonable ones that we see, mounted on either side of the second stage’s single Rutherford rocket engine—are wrapped in metallized plastic film (aluminized Mylar—or, more likely—aluminized Kapton film). Perhaps the aluminized plastic film on one of the battery packs came loose, made contact, and arced? (Perhaps the sparkles I saw around the first stage—and maybe they originated farther forward, as there isn’t [at least in the “open, onboard live public video downlink”] a forward camera view—were caused by arcing involving the plastic film?)

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR