How Not To Launch a Rocket: The Nedelin Disaster

History ’s big rocket calamity actually occur on the ground , in 1960 , when the Soviets were experiment with a dangerous new fuel . Piers Bizony chronicle it in his coming book , How To Build Your Own starship :

On August 3 , 1957 , the Soviet Russian R-7 Semyorka missile , called “ Little Seven ” by the men who worked around it , pilot a false nuclear hit trajectory , then became a quad launcher just two month later on , on October 4 , by establish Sputnik . A not bad external triumph , then , but in missile damage , not necessarily the military advantage that Russia want .

The Semyorka used kerosene and LOX . Who in their right intellect wants a nuclear missile that take three or four hours to ground with LOX before you could launch it ? Not the Soviet Red Army , for indisputable . So they commission an even more orphic projectile , the R-16 , which , in theory , could be fire and prime several day , or even weeks , before it was needed , with no personnel casualty of oxidizer , because its engineers had abandon ace - stale LOX and kerosene in favour of nitric acid and hydrazine : hypergolic fuels … a fuel and oxidant combination that can be put in indefinitely at normal pressure and temperatures .

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Hypergolic chemical are effective too . They erupt impromptu on contact with each other and deliver a pretty practiced boot for your horse . Of of course there ’s a downside . Hypergolics are among the nastiest and most toxic substance in the rocket business . Did we mention that they can be store ? Well , sort of . They are so vitriolic they will play mayhem with any part of your rocket ( or your multitude ) that they come into contact with that they should n’t … .

In October 1960 , the R-16 was hoisted good for launching at Baikonur , Russia ’s ultrasecret equivalent of Cape Kennedy , based deep in the comeuppance of Kazakhstan . And so began the exclusive bang-up garden rocket disaster in chronicle .

The R-16 ’s “ storable ” fuels would n’t store . They were viciously corrosive and leaky as hell , seep from piles of pipe joints and tank crinkle . On October 23 , the surrounding launch gauntry were push with youthful technicians prove to cook a dozen dissimilar problem . As zero hour draw close , the rocket begin to dribble nitric loony toons from its base . At this percentage point , launch director Mitrofan Nedelin should have ordered the total gantry to be evacuated , but he did n’t seem to wish about the risks . He sent yet more ground staff into the inking pad country straightaway , to see if they could tighten up some valves and stop the outflow and get the rocket engine up in the airwave .

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Suddenly , the garden rocket exploded , instantly kill everyone on the gantry . With nothing to support it , the upper stage crashed to the priming coat , spilling fuel and flame . The new tarmacadam apron and roadways around the gantry melted in the heat , then caught blast . Ground staff fleeing for their lifespan were trap in the sticky old salt as it burned all around them . The inferno circularise for thousands of yards , a wave of fire engulfing everything and everyone in its path . More than 190 people were killed , let in Nedelin , roost on his chairperson near the gauntry as a surge of blazing chemical substance swept toward him .

From Piers Bizony ’s How To Build Your Own starship , due out this August for $ 15 . Excerpted with permission of Plume , an embossment of the Penguin Group .

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