"the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission"... by blowing itself up?
How else would you terminate an active rocket flying through the air?
SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does matter. I doubt you'll load 300 willing passengers on a 747 if it was widely known it had a self destruct. I would guess each case has to weigh its pros and cons for inclusion of a system. There is such thing as acceptable risk to population. If FAA mandated them carte blanche, Michael Bay movies would become documentaries.
I guess, military personnel (that astronauts so far have basically been) are less skittish in that regard than civilians. Especially since it is understood that space travel is dangerous, while air travel is regarded as safe.
According to Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 only had a "50–50 chance" of landing safely on the Moon's surface. They're willing to take enormous risks.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if the reusable rockets from SpaceX could recover from a flipped position during re-entry?
No, they can't. Once you're supersonic, the aerodynamic stress will tear a rocket into shreds if there's even a few degrees of angle of attack.
But if you're high enough, the forces are not very high, so there's probably a Q limit, (that is, proportional to density * speed^2).
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#54>>The unmanned rocket was destroyed when its self-destruct system was triggered after an unexplained malfunction. It's interesting these rockets are equipped with self-destruct systems. What scenario would warrant a rocket purposely self-destruct?
Interestingly the Russian space program never used range safety systems, but then they had an empty part of Kazakhstan to launch in.
Great video of an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo
Then imagine if it was headed for somebody's house (or a city). You'd want to blow it up in the air before it reached the ground.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#55"the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission"... by blowing itself up?
Yes, "flight termination system" refers to a bunch of explosives and a widget to blow them up on command.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#56I hope there's a way to disable the self-destruct mechanism when they start doing manned flights!
The capsule sits on top of the rocket, and has the ability to quickly fly away if something goes wrong, whether it's the rocket exploding because it broke or because it's commanded to. There's nothing really incompatible with a manned rocket having a self-destruct system.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#57>>The unmanned rocket was destroyed when its self-destruct system was triggered after an unexplained malfunction. It's interesting these rockets are equipped with self-destruct systems. What scenario would warrant a rocket purposely self-destruct?
Interestingly the Russian space program never used range safety systems, but then they had an empty part of Kazakhstan to launch in.
On the other hand, they had a system on their unmanned spacecraft that blew them up with TNT if there was a chance of them coming down outside the USSR. It was regularly triggered during their heyday in the 60's. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth from the engineers when that prevented them from collecting data on failed missions.
I read about it in Boris Chertok's memoirs (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/feb/HQ_12-054_Chertok_R...), which are huge and sprawling, he was there from the beginning, from the mission to get V2 stuff from Germany after WW2, through the Soviet Union's fall.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#58Better video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qv2VEX9iyI SpaceX Statement: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/502976401729798144/photo/1
Is there any actual HD video? I find it really surprising I can't find any...
SpaceX will be in possession of some... Probably just not ready to release it yet.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#59"We've got to tunnel one of these vehicles into the ground by trying something really hard." - Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX
This puts "move fast and break things" into a whole new perspective. I'm glad I can joke about this because nobody was hurt. Saw the headline at the top of the frontage and it immediately brought back memories of seeing Challenger on the news when I was 9, which rather changed my perspective on space travel at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708
How NOT to do it. Not that China even bothered to check how many died, apparently.
Re: SpaceX rocket explodes during testing over Texas
#60Shit happens. Especially when you have a requirement for US citizenship for your employees...
Because nearly exclusively using US citizens has turned out so terribly for NASA the last 50 years.