

Mercury-Redstone 1 - The four inch flight - ColinWright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1

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mmcnickle
A great little documenary (0:15h long) about the MR-1 launch, with an emphasis
on the testing and preparation that went into the flight. Shows footage of the
failed launch and the subsequent successful launch:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJPy6FPWhmc>

If you're only interesting in footage of the failed launch:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4V7JfeTSU>

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ColinWright
It's not just the failure itself, but the follow through of the sequence of
everything else operating perfectly well in unexpected circumstances.

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arethuza
The Soviets had a similar disaster in 1960 that killed a lot of people
(probably well over a hundred) including the head of their Strategic Rocket
Forces:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe>

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jlgreco
For those interested, here is a neat video of a launch escape system working
as intended during Soyuz T-10-1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyFF4cpMVag>

It is the only time a launch escape system has actually been used.

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InclinedPlane
Back in the days when our manned launch vehicles were re-purposed ICBMs
(Restone, Atlas, Titan).

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cstross
Many unmanned launch vehicles still _are_ descended from re-purposes ICBMs.
Atlas-V and Titan-IV are probably best viewed as "trademark compatible" --
they're so far evolved from the originals that they bear little resemblance to
them -- but others such as the Soyuz launcher (descended from the SS-7 ICBM),
Dnepr (formerly SS-18 "Satan" ICBM) and Shtil' (formerly R-29RM SLBM -- still
launched from nuclear submarines!) all carry civilian payloads into orbit to
this day.

The Russians seem to be particularly hot on recycling Soviet era ICBMs for
commercial purposes. And Soyuz is indeed a man-rated launcher and currently
the _only_ crew carrying vehicle ferrying personnel to the ISS! Atop a core
stage and boosters descended directly from the USSR's first monster ICBM of
the 1950s.

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InclinedPlane
Yup. Also, the Proton rocket (Russia's other workhorse commercial launcher)
has ICBM heritage. It was an offshoot of a "super ICBM" program that never
became operational. It would have been capable of launching 100 Megaton (Tsar
Bomba) warheads. It ended up being obsoleted by MIRV technology and generally
just being too large to be effectively deployable as an ICBM.

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lifeisstillgood
Oohh, that's it - in the film The Right Stuff, there is a sequence of failed
launches, with an announcer counting down to ten and pulling a funny face each
time a rocket fails.

At the end of the montage a parachute comically deploys with a pop and the guy
mugs it up considerably.

I always wondered why they doctored the footage to produce a comic effect. -
but hey - it turns out it was genuine footage... From the four inch flight.

Stunning really

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SlipperySlope
I remember that scene from the book too.

Very dramatic with the Mercury Seven astronauts bravely considering the safety
of the rockets they were to ride on. Indeed they had the "right stuff".

