Spectacular Video: Morpheus Crashes and Burns in Test Flight

Posted
by
Doug Messier
on August 9, 2012, at 11:33 am
in News
. Tags: , , , .
Comments: 5 responses
5 Comments

Video Caption: The first free flight of Nasa JSC’s Morpheus LOX-Methane vertical takeoff, vertical landing rocket vehicle. It appears to have had a guidance failure. The heat of the methane burning then burst a LOX tank. The flight was at KSC.

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  • Anthony Cook

    Could the crash be related to a launch at about T-7 seconds (propulsion rather than guidance?). In any case, I’m sure a lot will be learned and the next one will go better.

  • Anonymous

    That’s why they call it rocket science. It’s not easy. But I am confident they can engineer past whatever the problem was.

  • warshawski

    Incidents like this are normal during testing, and why testing is important and expensive. Unfortunately with the miniscule budget allocation for the project of only $7 million I am not sure how it can quickly rebuild an new lander and get back to testing.
    This is the type of leading edge work NASA should be doing rather than the ultra expensive $3,000 million per year SLS/Orion that are competing against comercial suppliers doing it faster cheaper and probably safer.

  • Marcus Zottl

    Here is a longer video showing Morpheus completely burning out including a second explosion (the other lox tank?), and the firefighters trying to put the fire out.

    Heartbreaking to see such a nice project go up in flames :(

    Regarding funding and setback because of this accident: Armadillo Aerospace could probably built them a few replacements for $7 million, but I fear all the ALHAT stuff costs a lot more than just the “naked” vehicle…

  • Marcus Zottl

    classic.. forgot to input the link…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvlG2JtMts