On 8.4.2013 11:35, Brian Gaff wrote:
Maybe like me you were expecting it to all go wrong then. do people bet on
launch vehicles crashing I wonder. That ESA/Russian one back some years
where all the first stage engines stopped at about 2000 feet has to be one
of the classics in badly designed control software!

Brian


You must be thinking of Foton-1 which was a failure of Soyuz rocket.

It is standard Russian operating procedure to just shut down all engines
in case of a failure. No self destruct system. That also applies to the
ones launched from Kourou, according to some sources.

The posivitive is that the impact point will always be known and it will
be well contained.

--
Mika Takala