"Rockets crash, especially at the beginning of a project"

Agreed.

The very first Ariane V blew up shortly after launch and took a bunch of satellites with it ("Cluster").

Being good technical people here, any initial indication of the failure mode ?

- Insufficient fuel ?
- Premature shutdown ?
- Trajectory not as calculated ?
- Comms failure ?

The Atlantic Ocean?

Apparently the UK government ( or anyone in Blighty ) contributed a mere £11 million to the attempt.
I’m not sure if that was for this launch only & don’t know if there’s been previous funding to turn Newquay airport into a ‘Spaceport’ ( snigger ) but it’s far less than I expected.
As regards the TV interviews after the failure , the young Canadian lady running the show seemed to think it was all about her : ‘ I’m ok...’

I was watching the telemetry ( on the Virgin YouTube feed). When the first stage separated there was 2% fuel and O2 left in the tanks. During the second stage first burn the O2 was dropping a lot quicker than the fuel. I remember thinking that was a bit odd.

I assume close to Ireland and down within a few minutes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63895835

The drop point was south of the Irish coast but from there the trajectory went south south west and given we know that the vehicle got at least as far as staging the best guess is debris ended up a heck of long long way from Ireland.

Something was seen/imaged from the Canary Isles at about the right time which may well have been associated with the launch..

https://www.space.com/virgin-orbit-r...-reentry-video

Scott Manley on you tube has a couple of good theories, oxygen rich engine burnout on the second stage or an oxygen leak and premature shutdown.

Reliably informed that the Virgin could not get it up.

Before it went wacko the telemetry clearly showed the engine gimballing out of limits and then a very rapid drop in altitude so I'm guessing that the thing tumbled and then underwent an unscheduled disassembly.

While some costs would be unique to this launch, the majority of it was spent on the infrastructure, which of course can be reused again. Newquay is now home to a satellite integration facility, incorporating a clean room and enough hangar space to store a LauncherOne rocket comfortably. There's more bits to come, like a more permanent mission control facility. Downlink capability to the site was provided using a unit built and operated by Goonhilly Earth Station, which is just a bit further down the road. Virgin Orbit are a major partner in the Spaceport Cornwall project but there are plans in place for other providers to utilise the facilities, most notably Sierra Nevada who've signed up for Spaceport Cornwall to be one of the designated landing sites for their Dream Chaser space plane.

Brilliant euphemism for an in-flight break-up :)

I concur - the yellow dot in the blue circle depicting the thrust vector did a merry little dance indicating some instability. Any full scale thrust deflection also likely to put severe aero forces on the launch possibly beyond design limits.

From a few posts back where Ariane V is mentioned, that is what happened on the first launch I believe. Same guidance computer as Ariane IV but with greater acceleration the spacecraft exceeded the expected acceleration limits (reduced testing was the ultimate cause for not finding this prior to launch), computer assumes an "anomaly" so restarts. Part of the restart procedure is exercise full nozzle deflection, which didn't turn out too well at the speed it was going so launch control destroyed the vehicle. I am sure someone will correct me if this isn't what happened precisely.

I watched the whole thing live (to my regret) and when things started to go wrong I thought the gimbal signal and speed indicator were just not reading out, or the data weren't being received. The one consistent thing was the loss of altitude. Apart from a couple of obvious spurious readings, the loss of height was very consistent yet ignored by the narrators/commentators on the live stream. And even when the altitude bottomed out at around 240,000 ft, they kept on going on about what was going to happen next.

I was 99% certain the next event was the thing breaking up on re-entry and whatever remained and didn't burn up could be found at the bottom of the Atlantic. And I'm not a rocket scientist.

I believe that Elon Musk or one of his people originated the phrase, so I cannot take the credit :)

Found the problem …


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....616ad6b11.jpeg

satellite launch
 

May be they should have asked Orbital Science for a few tips !!

Going slightly off topic, I have just been reading about how NASA "Man rated" rockets at the start of the space age, that is made them safe enough to carry humans. ICBM launchers such as Atlas had a terrible record. We know about the Challenger disaster but I cannot think of a fatal accident to a Western austronaut from a launch from a conventional rocket (admittedly there have not been many, although Soyuz has been used quite a bit for the ISS). My questions are:

How expensive is getting this level of reliability?

Given the cost of satellites, would it be worthwhile "man rating" launchers? Presumambly someone such as an insurance underwriter, has done the sums and concluded that it isn't.

Obviously the rocket is still in development and you wouldn't expect it to be as reliable as Saturn or Soyuz became (and they certainly had problems - look at Apollo 6). Musk & Bezos have had their accidents. I wouldn't want to put a satellite on an untested rocket but perhaps they got a special rate.