Mercury-Redstone 1 Launch failure (MR-1)
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- Опубліковано 13 вер 2024
- The video shows the Mercury-Redstone rocket firing and then immediately shutting its engine off. Shortly after, the launch escape tower got the signal that the engine had shut down, so it detached itself. Then the drogue chute, followed by the main and reserve chutes, were ejected due to the rocket thinking it had finished its course.
From Wikipedia:
"Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone mission in the Mercury program and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle. Intended to be an unmanned sub-orbital flight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch failed in a peculiar fashion which has been referred to as the "four-inch flight"."
When you accidentally leave the engines, parachutes and the escape tower on the same stage...
*revert to assembly*
God f- damnit, here we go again. *Revert to assembly 11s 0m 0h ago*
Been there done that. lol.
dude you mean same time?
@@CarlTheAviator Do you know what ksp is?
Engines: Okay, get ready. Here it co-- Oh, sorry.
Escape tower: I'm in SPAAAAAACE!!!! *Whoosh.*
Main Parachute: Are- are we done? Is that- Oh, I guess I'd better deploy. Hmm, I'm not catching any wind.
Reserve Parachute: Don't worry, Main. I'll save you!
The Escape Tower clearly sounds like the Space Core from Portal 2 in my head.
the astronaut: what on earth is this vehicle even doing?!
@@Heyiya-if I thought it was a reference
@@sharkcraft8568 That's the problem!
astronaut: come back escape tower im gonna die without you
tower: NO i love space*runs outta fuel* *crashes*
And Jebediah Kerman is sitting in mission control thinking, "Well, that went perfectly."
HAHAHAHA Made my day!
Classic Mistake, forgetting to check staging before hitting the launch button.
I was present as an observer when the MR-1 Mercury Redstone failed to liftoff as scheduled. I had just been newly assigned to Cape Canaveral by McDonnell Air craft as a member of the Quality Assurance Mercury Spacecraft Launch and Support Team.
+Edward Reed Yeah, a real heart stopper, that one! MR-1? More like "2720-lb Heart Attack".
At least it didn't blow up on the launch pad like Vanguard TV3.
Beep beep processing
What do you remember about the reactions of the flight controllers when this happened?
@kevin Simala They don’t need to. Do you have a point here other than to be a waste of internet server storage space?
And the best thing is: all of this worked exactly as intended. Or rather, each individual machine responded properly to the situation. The situation was just poorly executed.
Argumemnon except the engine.
@@dubsy1026 the engine responded well, it shut off because an electrical problem cause by a wire separating late, the engine worked as intended but a wire is to blame
If it worked as intended the capsule would have gone along with its escape rocket system.
@@fredstevens2 Nope. The escape rocket system was jettisoned after launch because it was no longer needed. It received that signal that the engines cut off as if a normal launch had completed, and jettisoned itself from the capsule....
@@MrFFFTTTT Uh, no, it was an error. The capsule SHOULD have been detached. The computer misread the earth's gravity as thinking the booster was still moving forward as normal, and detached itself, but the booster was NOT firing, and hence the rocket could have been collapsing or falling over sideways or any other issue where the capsule should be immediately whisked away.
Pressed spacebar too many times
Jeb, what did you do this time?
0:02 - The main engines fire. The control cable that was designed to detach at launch detaches 29 milliseconds too late, causing an electrical transient across the booster’s electronics.
0:04 - The electrical transient causes the booster to shut down.
0:05 - The capsule reads the booster shutdown and assumes that it is the end of the flight and begins the next phase of flight by separating the capsule and escape tower. The escape tower separates but the accelerometer records the earths gravity and assumes that the booster is still moving forward under residual thrust, and doesn’t separate the capsule.
0:08 - Having separated, the altimeter notes that the capsule is below the altitude it was supposed to deploy the parachutes from, it then fires the main chute.
0:09 - Having fired the main chute, the sensor on the main chute’s line doesn’t have the pressure it was expected to have, meaning that the chute didn’t inflate and the capsule is falling to the ground. So it fires the reserve chute.
td;dr: rocket has a stroke and fucking dies
Just fucking amazing, such a perfect catastrophe! Almost like all that meticulously designed technology was just too smart for its own good- not to mention the good of everyone in close proximity to the launch pad!
@@briocherocketsLISTEN. That lil' rocket did its BEST. IT SHALL FOREVER BE A SYMBOL OF HOPE!
@@briocherockets Except it did not. It's still with us today, and can be viewed by anyone who can travel to where it is on display.
Forgot to arrange the staging, happens to me all the time.
same here
Note to new Kerbal Space Program players, this is exactly what's going to happen to you when you start off to. Don't worry, NASA didn't start out great either.
Staging...
Only difference is that in KSP we start with a tiny booster, a command pod and a parachute.
NASA cheated, they started with more science
@@johnt3606 damn cheaters
An electrical fault cut off the main engine; the capsule was sent a "we're in orbit, engine's off" signal so the escape system was jettisoned "into space." The capsule was waiting for a 0g acceleration reading to separate, but never went below 1g. The parachute system detected altitude
Right now I'm reading Eugene Kranz's 'Failure is Not an Option'. Pages 28-32, he recalls this launch, "The Four-Inch Flight."
I had to come watch to see if it looked every bit as absurd as it sounded.
Yep. XD Man, how embarrassing...
Thanks for posting. :)
Jan B. I've been reading it now and I find the footage insane.
At I'm reading it now and that's why I came to see the clip. Had never heard of this flight somehow. Reading it, he made it sound like it took a few hours for all this to happen lol
I am reading the same great book by Gene Krantz who is very descriptive and articulate. Just had to look this up, and was very happy to find it here on UA-cam. Unbelievable, and it makes me laugh every time.
Revert back to launch (0 min 19 sec ago).
back to assembly, more likely....
Actually the flight was 3 sec long
For some reason this is hilarious
Escape rocket decides to split, leaves the capsule behind, which forlornly shoots out both chutes as the 33-ton main rocket goes nowhere. Except the clamps have disengaged, so now it's like a school bus full of explosives propped up vertically on the world's tiniest kickstand, with everybody hoping and praying a breeze doesn't come up.
Oh yeah. It's pretty hilarious. Not if you work for NASA at the time, but still...
I'm trying to imagine Gene Kranz and Werner von Braun's faces as they stood in the bunker watching several million government dollars and untold thousands of man-hours produce THAT in the course of a few seconds. I'd probably want a drink.
Brandon Bennetzen Not at all. But it coined NASA Rule #1: "If you don't know what to do, don't do anything." While the rocket was perched up there, everybody was proposing various nutty ideas, ranging from holding it up with a helicopter to sending soldiers out to shoot holes in the propellant tanks so they'd vent. Eventually, leaving it alone proved to be the right idea, hence the rule.
***** watching the TV3 launch immediately reminded me of the thunderbirds. Could have been an episode :)
They shoulda checked their staging
It´s the most staggeredly anticlimactic thing ever. Like, thoroughly ruined.
To be honest, this video is one of my favorite videos of all time because I just think it's the funniest thing. I love how the rocket randomly deploys its drogue parachute, almost like it was trying to make up for the "perfect storm" of catastrophic failures, which caused probably the most dangerous situation in all of our history of launching (or attempting to launch) objects into space using terrifyingly dangerous explosive fuel. Then, like a symphony transitioning from one movement to the next, with this part being the part when the music picks up dramatically, we get some very panicked scientists learning a hard lesson about overconfidence whenever OUTER SPACE is involved ("When in doubt, do nothing" has to be the worst type of realization, when you're staring hard at a rocket that has betrayed your best designs, and now threatens hundreds of miles of countryside).
The next beautiful scene, with all of the best geniuses coming up with remarkably imaginative, almost whimsical solutions, like "Maybe we can get a sniper to shoot holes in the fuel tank so that the whole thing doesn't blow us the fuck up and end our careers. Damnit, I WENT TO UNIVERSITY!"
I cannot help but personify this rocket, it's surely the most adorable failure in the history of space travel, that parachute just makes me imagine the Mercury Redstone saying, "LOOK, I DID DO SOMETHING RIGHT- SEE MY PARACHUTE? I DID THAT ALL BY MYSELF! IT WAS AN EXECUTIVE DECISION ON MY BEHALF- JUST FOR SHITS N' GIGGLES! TEE HEE! SHOULD A BREEZE HAPPEN TO BLOW INTO MY LITTLE PARACHUTE, I MIGHT JUST TIP OVER AND GIVE ALL OF YOU A CHEAP THRILL AND A BADLY RUINED DAY- LIKE, WITH RUINATION ON AN ABSOLUTELY LEGENDARY SCALE! OH, SURE, YOU FLESH BAGS MAY BE REAL SMART, BUT I BET YOU NEVER SAW THIS DUMB SHIT COMING!"
I always laugh when I watch this video. I sometimes watch it when I'm sad, and then my boring problems don't seem all that bad anymore. Imagine needing to come up with a rapid solution to THIS MESS!
Or... Just imagine if the wind HAD picked up... WOW.
Escape tower: Try to catch me sucka.
Chute: Wait, I´m coming too !
Rocket: Launchpad is kinda comfy.
*****
Escape tower: Screw this, I'm going to space. Later suckers.
lol...this is what happens to me in kerbal space program.
u gota keep track of that staging while building... auto doesnt always get it right lol.
i know thanks for telling me anyways.
Correct staging is vital. lol
It's pretty amazing that the rocket landed on its feet and stayed intact. It could have easily fallen over and exploded. I'd call that a pretty successful failure.
Absolutely. The hardware worked flawlessly. Only the wetware came up with some confusing socket configurations and a mismatch of plugs.....don´t we all know this....USB....
yes nostalgia apollo thirteen
Apparently they had to leave the rocket like that overnight because it was full of fuel and its self-destruct mechanism was live and armed (and at this point they weren't really sure what it was going to do next).
To make matters worse, if there had been enough wind the parachutes could've knocked the whole thing over. Luckily no one was in the capsule, and they fixed the design flaws before the next launch.
Danny2462 is behind all of this.
they've set their staging wrong
Well, that escalated quickly
+Massimiliano Porcelli Ah, but it elevated very slowly. :P
+richfiles Lmao
*very* slowly
"All we did that day was to launch the escape tower"...
Details of the mission at: history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch9-7.htm
Check yo' staging
Perhaps the finest example of "epic fail" ever captured on film...
Most rocket failures have an explosion. This one sort of fizzled out in place.
I swear I could hear a cartoon sound effect when the parachute deployed.
I know. I keep waiting for a big flag on a pole to pop out the top that says "BANG" on it.
Doggeslife lol That's what I was expecting at the very last second of the video. A flag to unfurl and say bang or OOPS!
@@Bluenose352 Or literally just "ROFL"
This was always the funniest of NASA's early "baby steps.: I have in my collection an electrical plug that was attached to the Redstone for MR1. Unfortunately it wasn't the one that caused the failure. Still a really good story behind it.
-Kerbal Space Program
Hey, don't knock struts, man. They give me more boosters!
need more SRBs
when you're in ksp and forget to set up staging
This looks like the footage used in _The Right Stuff_, except they only showed the parachute ejecting at the pad (and added a silly cork 'pop' sound!)
This fail was included in the 1983 movie “The Right Stuff” everyone in the cinema was laughing
I remember seeing this recreated in the "right stuff." That scene had me rolling!
Congratulations to the engineer who filed one prong of a plug that didn’t fit down too far, causing the computer to think there was a fault 2ft off the pad when one print disconnected before the other, causing the engine to shut down. Congratulations to the other engineer that programmed the computer to think that any engine shutdown was because the rocket was in space and the LES should jettison. Congratulations to the parachutes for following the LES.
When you finished building your KSP rocket but forget to configure staging
Not only do the main engines fail to lift the rocket off the pad. but at the same moment the escape rockets fire and the escape tower jettisons, leaving the spacecraft behind (in flight, this tower is designed to lift the capsule free of any malfunctioning booster-- why it took off on its own here, leaving the capsule behind, is a mystery to me). Then, the recovery parachutes pop out of the top of the capsule, and flop toward the ground. Fortunately, this was only a test flight, and there was nobody aboard.
The tower took off because the system falsely assumed launch had occurred normally, and since it was showing 0g acceleration that meant it was in space, and it was time to pop off the (now useless) escape tower.
The main chute deployed because the capsule detected the emergency tower going off, then the reserve chute deployed because it didn't detect any strain on the first chute (because the capsule was still sitting on top of the rocket).
Whole sequence of screw-ups going on there...
This is actually how it's designed to operate. Once the main engines shut down, the launch escape tower is jettisoned as you don't want that with you once it's no longer needed. After the tower is jettisoned, the spacecraft then waits for 1g of deceleration, and deploys the parachutes, which is precisely what it did. Unfortunately it never left the launch pad.
Hans Johnson Actually, it lifted 4 inches. yes, the Mercury-Redstone 1 unmanned flight had an apogee of 4 inches.
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/ch9-7.htm
That was actually quite comical! The comedic timing was perfect!! lololol
Fun fact: after this, the fully-fueled rocket was obviously left sitting on the pad, with its emergency self-destruct system armed, representing a serious safety hazard. Several 'solutions' to making it less dangerous were proposed, including SHOOTING THE FUEL TANKS WITH A RIFLE to help depressurize them (this was in the USA so I presume they always had several loaded rifles on hand). In the end, the decision was made to simply wait for the batteries to drain and the oxidizer to boil off.
did you er ....leave the parking break on?
It thought that the engine had successfully put it into orbit, where the escape tower would be useless at best.
better than the whole rocket exploding
The Mercury spacecraft did not have a computer. Computers were large, heavy, power hungy things that took up whole rooms back in 1960. Electric relays and timers are what ran Mercury. The single engine shut down because two cables disconnected in the wrong sequence at the second of launch. Everything worked perfectly after that, just at the wrong times, because they all acted based on the rocket climbing to space and sensors such as acceleration, and air pressure. Needless to say, they made minor corrections and this didn't happen again. The same capsule made its flight on a new booster with a new escape tower...MR-1A. By about 1965, Gemini had a guidance computer. Technology was progressing rapidly. By 1967, Apollo had its famous AGC guidance computer. The computers made it easier to check many parameters, repeatedly in quick succession to determine status of the vehicle and what should or shouldn't be activated.
Why is it so funny to watch a rocket fail miserably
He, he! Sama wieża ucieczkowa poleciała i spadochron się otworzył!
Wschód był wtedy milowe kroki przed Wami.
Though this looks embarrassing, its all straightforward safety features. 1. Failure, grounding cable pulled before control cable, causing elec. surge that triggers engine shutdown. 2. upon reading shut-down, escape tower jettisons, per program. 3. Capsule doesn't sep because acceleration reads as 1 G (capsule's own weight) designed not to sep until acceleration ends, and reads 0 G. 4. Drogue chutes deploy, reading capsule under 10,000 feet. ... it does look silly though, doesn't it?
Alan B. Shepard must be the bravest man alive.
All seven original astronauts deserve that title. They ALL wanted to be on that flight. Says a lot about them.
Doggeslife Yes. And considering Grissom almost did drown on the second flight, missions were extremely risky.
youngThrashbarg TBF an astronaut wouldn't have been injured in this situation, much less killed.
This is personified innuendo.
Can you say... PARTY FAVOR?
Hey, we finally got it right! Failure leads to success.
Judging from my KSP experience , they did the staging wrong :P
I just read about this on Wikipedia, certainly one of the funniest failures I've ever seen of a rocket XD
This super funny but must've been unfathomably horrifying to watch in real time, knowing you now had a rocket that was fully fueled, armed, and fully capable of exploding just sitting on the pad with nothing holding it in place. One gust of wind and this would've been a very different story, but none arrived and it just kept sitting there. They were able to bring it back in the next morning once the liquid oxidizer boiled off.
Gene Kranz (one of the misson control guys) said that they had to figure out what to do to with the rocket since the engines fuel and O2 tanks were still pressurised and the chutes could tople the rocket over if the wind picked up. One guy actually suggested that they should shoot holes in the tanks to depressurise them.
Needless to say they probably smacked the shit out of him and decided to wait till the next day. When the batteries ran out the tanks depressurised.
This actually footage of the KSP 2 development process
Because the engine shut off, the LES received the cutoff command automatically, which detached it as if the rocket had already finished its primary burn.
Yes, you did. And it caused quite a bit of consternation- there was fear a wind might catch it and tip the rocket- with fuel still pressurized, over. Fortunately it was a calm day, giving the rocket time to depressurize overnight.
The Wile E. Coyote school of rocketry.
I also love space duct tape. It held together the smaller boosters on my bigger boosters on my even bigger booster.
"Well......the automatic staging seems to work as intended, so...half failure?" - The head NASA engineer seeing his job fly away with the tower
My mans forgot to fix his staging
This is brilliant. Definitely ksp worthy!
This has got to be the funniest looking faliure of a rocket
Well, this pretty much explains my first Kerbal Space Program launch.
the astronauts were expecting an exciting space and reentry, turns out they got willy wonka'd because of the stage seperations
Not a self destruct system (well, not intentionally), but the fuel was pressurized. There's a reason they wait until the last minute to fuel a liquid fuel rocket- it can be really dangerous. Apparently those rockets were designed where the fuel would force its way out of the engines over time, ignition or not, so they just waited overnight. And prayed there wasn't wind.
And there goes the LES (Launch Escape System)
I believe it's a radio antenna' that would transmitt signals to the rescue party.
I've read that a search aircraft set course at the launching pad when it recieved the signal...
love all the KSP references in the comments :)
in kerbal space program, you forgot to arange your paracute to the top of the rocket engine.
I swear babe this has never happened to me before.
This launch failure is often called the "Four Inch Flight." I, however, prefer to call it the "One Thrust Bust."
i honestly thought someone is gonna mention minecraft since the title includes redstone but im happy with ksp
Why didn't the escape rocket pull away the capsule?
The computer thought it was in space after the rocket shut down. It would normally jettison the les after engine shutdown.
What computer? There wasn't a computer on Mercury capsules. Gemini had the 1st computer. Mercury was mainly run by timers, time circuits and relays. Visit Wikipedia and search for Mercury-Redstone 1. It is all well explained there.
@Taylorh161 luckily, this was an unmanned launch.
Boy I love mercury rockets
Harris how old are you that way I know if you seen Apollo missions TD
Check yo stagin'!
Dope video!!!!
Ooops, I got my launch failures mixed up. This one (MR-1) was the "four inch flight". "Kaputnik" was the Vanguard VT3 satellite launch failure from 12/6/1957.
I think we might've missed a step...or five.
I am reading Chris Kraft biography and this movie accompanies perfect a passage in the book :-)
Read the book "Apollo" by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox to get the fascinating story as to what happened. It began with the two metal graspers that held the bottom of the rocket not releasing at the exact same moment, causing a chain reaction of events.
I bet mission control was laughing their head off
Who here also heard a cork pop when the chute came out?
0:14 Mercury Redstone 1 Rocket: Hey! Atleast I Didn’t Exploded.
4-inch flight
Wasnt the escape rocket meant to take the capsule with it?
Craig Doran The rocket got just far enough of the pad to activate its flight systems, so it assumed it was in space after the engine cutoff and the escape system was jettisoned as it should be in that situation.
Great that the launch escape system fired, but why didn't it lift the mercury? Was that a glitch or did the system unsuccessfully tried some other launch abort mode?
I guess the young rocket was a bit too excited....
Well, not as bad as the Vanguard TV3 launch. That one got up a few feet, then fell down and exploded on the launch pad.
no he`s alive. the parachute opened
I remember when that happened, I laughed then and it's still funny today...
Hold my beer while I light the fuse!
so al lof this happened because a cable was not clamped properly wow
That's not just a fail. It's an EPIC FAIL
I've had dates that finished like that.
I heard two stories about this incident. One was that this rocket actually rose about an inch and settled back on the pad, the other that the rocket shut down before it could lift off.
Which is the real story of Mercury-Redstone 1??
I might be a bit late, but the engines effectively ignited, pushing the craft 4 inches off the ground. You can actually see the rocket wobble a bit just at the moment the escape system is jettisoned)
No wonder Alan Shepard pissed in his pants.
I'm shocked that so many of you have never seen a troll in its wild habitat.
This is the funniest rocket malfunction ever, full-size or models.