The Anteres Rocket went Boom!
The 1970's, an era of music, mustaches, and disco. In the Soviet Union, however, it was
their shot at the moon. Four rockets. Same engine design, but when the engines all failed, they gave up with their design and moved on. The engines that the Soviets designed were decommissioned and stuck in a warehouse until 36 of them were purchased at 1.1 million U.S. dollars a piece by a company called "Aerojet Rocketdyne" in the mid-1990's. Coincidentally the 1990's was a time where disco was basically extinct, but, that's irrelevant back to the rocket. Orbital Sciences then bought the rockets and modified the design a bit. However, it went boom.
I suppose you're wondering how that happened. Well, all in due time. As in, the sentence
after this sentence. We lied. As we said before, the rockets engines were rather old. When we say old, we mean, the dinosaurs tried to use them to blow up the oncoming asteroid. That obviously failed. Which is why it is unsurprising that the Antares rocket went boom when it did. Which was somewhere around 15 seconds after launch. Then when the engine blew, it sent the rocket to the moon! We lied again, but that's why you're still reading this. No, Antares didn't go to the moon. Instead, it fell to the earth and it turned into a firework show. It went BOOM! But you knew that already didn't you? You should, we told you about twenty times.
Oh, by the way, the Orbital Sciences Corp. has a 1.9 billion dollar contract with NASA. Which is probably the reason that they're cutting corners, because 1.9 billion dollars couldn't buy you a cone of ice cream in this day and age. Stupid inflation... We'll never know why the rocket became a spectacular ball of flame for sure, but we think it has to do with the 1.9 billion the project was fueled with. Cause, you know, with 1.9 billion dollars on the table, you could hardly buy a scoop of ice cream. Hope you learned a thing or two or three or, maybe even ten, about the dangers of disco, if not don't go purchasing any Russian rockets for 1.9 billion dollars. Especially if the rockets were made 40 YEARS AGO. Unless you want to go boom yourself, which I strongly advise against.
Dominque Jensen, Mason Lyman, Joseph Dean
McCoy, Terrence. "Antares Rocket Explosion: The Question of Using Decades-old Soviet Engines." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/29/antares-rocket-explosion-the-question-of-using-decades-old-soviet-engines/>.