Delta 3000
This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2024) |
Vandenberg, SLC-2W | |
Total launches | 38 |
---|---|
Success(es) | 35 |
Failure(s) | 2 |
Partial failure(s) | 1 |
First flight | 13 December 1975 |
Last flight | 24 March 1989 |
] |
The Delta 3000 series was an American expendable launch system which was used to conduct 38 orbital launches between 1975 and 1989. It was a member of the Delta family of rockets. Several variants existed, which were differentiated by a four digit numerical code.
Configurations
The first stage was the
The Delta 3000 could put a payload of 954 kg (2,103 lb) to a Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).[1]
History
The Delta 3000 was launched from
The first, Vehicle 134 lifted from LC-17A at Cape Canaveral on 13 September 1977 with an Italian-built OTS communications satellite. Fifty-two seconds after liftoff, the Delta exploded. Booster and satellite debris were dredged from the sea bottom and it was ultimately discovered that a hairline crack in one SRB motor caused exhaust gas to escape and burn through the Delta's RP-1 tank, igniting the propellant. When the booster had been assembled on the pad in May 1977, a handling accident occurred with the SRB motors that apparently damaged one of them. The payload fairing disintegrated at vehicle breakup and the OTS satellite was ripped apart by aerodynamic loads. Parts of the solar panels, batteries, and hydrazine propellant tanks were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. There had been an upper stage failure of a Delta 2000 series in April and three weeks later, an Atlas-Centaur exploded 55 seconds after liftoff. NASA was particularly vexed by the string of accidents in 1977 because they had had a perfect run the year before (16 launches in 1976 without a failure). While this record (three failures out of 16 NASA launches during 1977) would have been acceptable in the 1960s, it was not welcomed at all in the late 1970s after the early "Wild West" days of the space program had passed and the hardware was supposed to be mature.
The second Delta 3000 failure, Vehicle 150, was launched on 7 December 1979, but its Satcom communications satellite remained trapped in low Earth orbit when the third stage failed to ignite.
The third, Vehicle 178, launched on 3 May 1986 with a
During the first half of the 1980s, the rate of Delta launches drastically declined due to the Space Shuttle taking a large part of its missions. Orders for the booster slowed to a trickle and McDonnell-Douglas came close to completely shutting down production. 1985 was the first year since the Delta family's introduction in 1960 that no launches took place, but the Challenger Disaster brought about a renewed need for disposable launch vehicles and orders soon picked up again. While only a handful of Delta launches took place in 1986–88, nine flew in 1989 and the 1990s would see a busy schedule most years except 1994-1995 (seven launches during those two years).
Delta 178 was largely the result of poor quality control due to plans for eventually phasing out ELVs in favor of the space shuttle - most of the engineers who worked on the program had left and one senior McDonnell-Douglass engineer remarked that 178 had "the worst quality control I ever saw on a Delta vehicle". Because it was assumed that the Delta would soon be retired from use, complaints about the poor assembly quality went unheard. After the accident, a thorough investigation of wiring systems in various ELV families was undertaken, which discovered that, among other things, the Delta had thinner wiring insulation than Titan, Atlas, and other launch vehicles. Moreover, Teflon insulation had the unique ability of melting and re-fusing when heated by electrical arcs. Eventually however, a short occurred that overpowered the Teflon's "self healing" ability.[2][3]
References
- ^ astronautix.com, dela3000 Archived 2003-09-04 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Wade, Mark. "Delta". Archived from the original on 24 July 2008.
- ^ Krebs, Gunter. "Thor Family". Gunter's Space Page. Archived from the original on 6 August 2007. Retrieved 21 December 2021.