How ESA Lost A Rocket

I explain how ESA lost the propellant tanks for a still to be launched Vega Rocket!

#SpaceX #starship #elonmusk #starbase

Editing: John Young, Alex Potvin, Stefanie Schlang
Photography: John Cargile, John Winkopp & Stefanie Schlang
3D Animation: Voop3D
Script & Research: Eryk Gawron, Oskar Wrobel, Felix Schlang
Host: Felix Schlang
Production: Stefanie & Felix Schlang
Graphics & Media Processing: Jonathan Heuer, Felix Schlang

Credit:

⭐SpaceX
⭐NASA
⭐VirtualSpace_3D on X: @Lolomatico3d
⭐The Ring Watchers on X: @RingWatchers

📄Links for this Episode:

[johnferris]

These were the small round header tanks, not the main propellant tanks.

[famlrnamemssng]

thats gotta be one of the smoothest loops i have ever seen

[dadwog]

I believe it. All it takes is for someone to put the wrong transportation label on it.
I remember back in the early 1970s the rudder for the 727 was being manufactured in Spain. One day a Boeing buyer got a phone call from the local dump. They said that they had received a big box down there and that they wanted to make sure that it wasn’t a mistake before they started scraping it. The buyer ran down there and sure enough, it was a perfectly good rudder.

[nathanh]

Spacex is really proven its dominance in this field.

[jonny]

Shame on ESA and especially Avio. Both are not only incompetent, but also inflexible because they can't rebuild them. This can also be seen in not being able to build several Ariane 5 rockets to fill the time gap created by the delays of the Ariane 6 rocket. Compare that incompetence to the private company SpaceX which are close to reaching 100 rocket launches of a reusable rocket in 2023!

[michaelmcwhirter]

That was a pretty smart way to transition!

[halcon]

It was reused to transport milk in a trailer. It is important to recycle.

[AshishKumar-wktg]

EU and it's Organisation is all about bureaucracy
It's like employing 10 people to do a Single task and out of 10 people only one knows how to do a task others are there to formulate a blueprint and trying to figure out how to do it instead of asking the person who can do it

[rogerroth]

Thank you wai. We know your passion for rockets and space.

[jamesmancini]

It doesn't plunge it into total chaos. That is a little dramatic. They may just have to wait, until they can build what they need.

[david.e]

They didn't vanished. I ate them all

[adamabele]

The factory got restructured for new production lines. Nobody exactly knows what happened, but one tank ended up in the landfill. However this was not an irreplaceable part, just a small tank of the upper stage. It was inconvenient, it was embarrassing, but it was not an unsolvable problem. The rocket went to space without issues. They probably just used the slightly bigger tanks of the next generation or produced just one more of the old model.

[ThePhantomRocket]

it was small round tanks for rcs/hydraulic, etc.

[obi-ron]

Just goes to show there's nothing vaguer than a Vega stock controller 😅

[nikolaideianov]

How did they lose a hole propelent tank its not like you could leave it somewere at home .You could seen it from some of the orbital satelites

[remihanscotte]

Hey Felix, lost tanks are from 4th AVUM stage, 550kg propellant each.
No more drama, please 😉

[miguelurrutdarkorangefan]

If I was european, I would demand the end of Arianespace. Billions in euros, and very little to show for. I would demands the use SpaceX and use the commercial crew and transportation model for acquiring new rockets. But as Texan, the EU is welcome to keep their clumsy, corrupt, and wasteful ways. The only shame is all the brilliant european engineers being turned off by it.

[leapdrive]

Vega or Vegas. Sounds like they lost the gamble.

[fzproject]

That's nothing, here in my country you literally can lose 30 acres of land

[Shrmzu]

I bet Elon's search history will show searches for what local scrap metal prices are right before the competitions fuel tanks mysteriously disappear.