Vocal Voices

To the international space station.

ESA crashes the second launch out of a series of 3.

Whilst we know that space launches are extremely difficult and fraught with danger, the more long standing space agencies (and now Spacex), make it look routine.

ESA has a problem though. They don't like to test things. I know, I worked there and one of the space operations managers (retired now), is a good friend.

When ESA created the Ariane 5, they didn't retest the navigation software and the over ground speed created a number larger than the software could cope with. All 3 computers crashed and they had to destroy it.

When Huygens landed on Titan they had not tested the comms software and they lost contact with it. Only the presence of an extremely slow and dumb backup link allowed them to upload corrected software so they could talk to it.

This time someone connected the rocket actuator cables the wrong way round. Yep, you guessed it, they didn't know because nobody tested it.

I must admit, in the face of so many private launch vehicles coming into service, you have to wonder how long ESA can sustain this.

In 2019 the payload was insured. This one had two satellites, one French and one Spanish worth €400m and they were not insured.

Suff wrote:This time someone connected the rocket actuator cables the wrong way round. Yep, you guessed it, they didn't know because nobody tested it.

Hell's bells!

I arrived at ESOC 2 months after Ariane 5 had been blown up and their Cluster payload had been lost.

At the time they had no idea what had gone wrong, they were still investigating.

If you are interested, here is the report on Ariane 5

Under testing and QA

Testing at equipment level was in the case of the SRI conducted rigorously with regard to all environmental factors and in fact beyond what was expected for Ariane 5. However, no test was performed to verify that the SRI would behave correctly when being subjected to the count-down and flight time sequence and the trajectory of Ariane 5.

It should be noted that for reasons of physical law, it is not feasible to test the SRI as a "black box" in the flight environment, unless one makes a completely realistic flight test, but it is possible to do ground testing by injecting simulated accelerometric signals in accordance with predicted flight parameters, while also using a turntable to simulate launcher angular movements. Had such a test been performed by the supplier or as part of the acceptance test, the failure mechanism would have been exposed.

Space, the FINAL frontier, if you don't test.

In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the ground reality turned out to be completely different, all because someone failed to use the right units, i.e., the metric units!

But it is only Europe, Europeans and ESA, well anything with EUrope in it who are total numpties.

I am sick and tired of all this anti Europe crap.

Anyone would think that NASA, Spacex, China, Russia, India, Japan and others had always been 100% perfect. FFS!

Oh this is not just because it's Europe. China has had it's fair share of cockups. But ESA presents itself as a prime organisation for doing this stuff but under the bonnet it is very much like Boeing.

I have strong links there so it strikes a chord. It's like setting a low standard and not being arsed to meet it.

And yet for such a useless space agency it gets involved in ever so many cutting edge collaborations with top universities, research establishments, astronomy facilities, and high-end engineering and technology groups, as well as other top space agencies. Strange.

Maybe you should inform these people that they should be looking elsewhere for partners other than the Zastava Motors of the space community.

Well when you pool the financial resources of the EU, you can create a very large organisation.

Whether it can reliably put its product into space though? Well that's supposed to be what its all about isn't it?

I just knew that there would be an EU angle for all the criticism, but get this from the ESA:

As can be seen from this list, not all member countries of the European Union are members of ESA and not all ESA Member States are members of the EU. ESA is an entirely independent organisation although it maintains close ties with the EU through an ESA/EC Framework Agreement.

It is an intergovernmental organisation and Canada and UK for example are not in the EU, and let's not forget the ECS countries Norway, Turkey, Israel and Ukraine - also non-EU.

It is funded by its members in two categories – ‘mandatory’ and ‘optional’ programmes. Mandatory funding is on a scale based on their Gross National Product.

ESA is a bit like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in that because they contain the word "European" in their titles (some) people automatically have them as part of the EU, and that's all the excuse needed for unwarranted criticism.

Unwarranted criticism? Two out of three rockets down, a history of not testing!

That is not unwarranted criticism and if it were the UK making these mistakes it would run in the press for Years.

It is all very well finding a document that says that The European Space Agency is not EU. But if you have worked there you will know that the ESA is an EU organisation in which allows other countries to collaborate with it and help to fund operations. ESOC (operations), is in Germany, ESRIN (Astrophysics), is in Italy and ESTEC (satellite manufacturing), is in the Netherlands. HQ is Paris and the launch platforms are in French territory.

It is like saying that NASA is not a US organisation because other countries collaborate with it and pay into projects.

ESA even gets 23% of its funding from the EU.



https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Funding

ESA’s activities fall into two categories – ‘mandatory’ and ‘optional’. Programmes carried out under the General Budget and the Space Science programme budget are ‘mandatory’; they include the agency’s basic activities (studies on future projects, technology research, shared technical investments, information systems and training programmes).


All Member States contribute to these programmes on a scale based on their Gross National Product (GNP). The other programmes, known as ‘optional’, are only of interest to some Member States, who are free to decide on their level of involvement.

Optional programmes cover areas such as Earth observation, telecommunications, satellite navigation and space transportation. Similarly, the International Space Station and microgravity research are financed by optional contributions.

That is not an Extra EU organisation.