NASA Fails on another Mission....Wastes $424 Million Dollars in the Process!

money in their eyes is expendable.

Originally posted by Phage
If you have to blame someone, blame Orbital Sciences Corporation.
It was their rocket, not NASA's.

Phage beat me to it, but I thought it would be worth repeating since it seems to have gone on, unnoticed.

The Taurus XL rocket is made and operated by a company called Orbital Sciences Corp. They are responsible for the rocket not NASA. NASA's satellite along with three other satellites were just on for the ride.

But with that said, high costs and the occasional failures are just the nature of this industry. Rocket science isn't easy!

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Media Briefed on Glory Mission Failure

In case you don't have 15 minutes to spare.

TRANSLATION: We all feel real bad but don't have a freaking clue what went wrong.

ETA: For the record, I am an avid supporter of space exploration by the US or any other country. This is complex stuff and risk is an inherent part of the process. Thank heavens our manned space flight touts a more successful record. Rather than any single country dominating the arena, perhaps international cooperation makes most sense in these dire economic times. My .02¢

Chemical rockets fail. Its not a highly reliable technology in the same way that an airliner is.

This data is old but its instructive:

Rocket success rates by country.

USSR - 2589 successful, 181 failed, 93.5% success rate
USA - 1152 successful, 164 failed, 87.5% success rate
EU - 117 sucessful, 12 failed, 90.7% success rate
China - 56 successful, 11 failed, 83.6% success rate
Japan - 52 successful, 9 failed, 85.2% success rate
India - 7 successful, 6 failed, 53.8% success rate

With the current technology there is a good chance your satellite will end up in the drink. Countries and companies take the risk as there is no alternative that delivers the same capability.

If you want to get angry get angry at the mis-direction of NASA by successive administrations over 40 years that means we have less launch ability in 2011 than we had in 1970.

Next time... send the satellite up aboard a TR-3B anti-gravity triangle ship. When in orbit... just push the satellite out of the ship's airlock, and move on. Simple!

The reason for the two taurus vehicle failures is that the panels connecting 2 of the stages failed to seperate from the vehicle, thus not allowing the stages to seperate.
Has nothing to due with NASA like was said earlier