R-2 NEAR DISASTER

KSP - Day 5

Five days after the successful launch of the R-1 rocket, R-2 made it's way onto the launchpad. The aim of the mission was to test a method that offered more control over the launch of a vehicle.

Gene Kerman commented:

'We don't want to light the motors and have the vehicle power straight off of the launch pad. What if there was a malfunction after ignition? No, we want to be able to hold the thing in place until we're sure we're ready to let go.'

A device was constructed that not only supports the rocket, but also keeps it on the launchpad until Mission Control is confident that everything is working as it should. Sounds relatively simple in theory. But in practice it was a different story. The engineers fitted just one single support to R-2, which turned out to be a near-catastrophic mistake.

At launch, R-2 fired it's motor. The plan was to keep the vehicle on the launchpad for at least three seconds, which is enough time for the on-board systems to detect a fault. This went to plan. The problem occurred on the release of the rocket.

'The damned thing listed over due to the release mechanism only being attached on one side,' Gene huffed. 'Of course, after that the vehicle decided to go on it's own course. Which is not the one we had planned. In an attempt to have more control, we ended up losing out even more.'

R-2 went on an unrecoverable northerly heading instead of the planned easterly direction. The problem of not being able to shut-down solid-rocket boosters was made very apparent. Mission Control went frantic trying to re-stabilize the rocket. Thankfully, they regained enough control to impact R-2 into the ocean, albeit a few kilometers off the northern shores.

R-2 listing over much more than planned

Although the velocity of the rocket reached over 800m/s as before, the altitude only peaked at 13km. R-1 reached 29km as a comparison. The vehicle splashed down just two-minutes and thirty-two seconds after launch.

Jebediah stated: 'Being a test pilot I thrive on things going wrong. If they didn't I would be out of a job. Perhaps an abort button that makes the rocket explode would be a good idea. But I think the lesson here is 'symmetry and rockets go hand-in-hand'.'

After it's first major road-bump, the engineers are working hard to ensure this doesn't happen again.