My thoughts go out to the SpaceX team. Must be devastating to see your hard work blow up :-(
Well, it is rocket science, and even though SpaceX has a higher reliability target, accidents do happen
SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
141–150 of 347 posts
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#142What are the implications of this for SpaceX in monetary terms? Can they just shrug this failure off?
Failures are expected. This is not catastrophic, although it would have been nice if they had the opportunity to try a return to barge.
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#143gif of explosion: http://imgur.com/SYwUIbI
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#144So, the advantage of a weekend launch is that I could show my kids (boys 7 & 4), right? Facepalm . In the last few minutes, over a dozen K-Nex rockets have lifted off and exploded shortly after takeoff. Sigh. Not the best introduction to the second Space Age for them.... ah well, we'll try again later. At least nobody was aboard.
I had my 3 kids watching along with me. Afterwards we had a healthy talk on how to approach failure.
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#145Video of explosion, from 23:40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m40s
And a different angle from NASA TV: http://www.floridatoday.com/videos/tech/science/space/spacex...
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#146So, the advantage of a weekend launch is that I could show my kids (boys 7 & 4), right? Facepalm . In the last few minutes, over a dozen K-Nex rockets have lifted off and exploded shortly after takeoff. Sigh. Not the best introduction to the second Space Age for them.... ah well, we'll try again later. At least nobody was aboard.
An important lesson for the kids is that cutting edge technology is hard. Rocket science is hard. Like a 10% chance of explosions in an unmanned flight and a 2% chance of explosion in a manned flight chance hard.
(Protip: Only put the humans in the safer rockets, and be sure that they are going to so something useful up there, and anyway explain them that this is dangerous.)
Probably in 20, 50 or 100 years this will be as safe as current planes, but today it's a dangerous task.
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#147“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
The challenge will be convincing people like the ULA backers from this hearing: http://youtu.be/IWVZYKGTenE that this is not a sign of spacex being less reliable because it is significantly less cost. My hope is spacex can bounce back.
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#148Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#149So in a case like this, would it be possible to have the pad abort system kick in? It could potentially pull the cargo module away and make an attempt to parachute it back for recovery? I doubt it could overcome the speed of the rocket but it might have a chance to separate it from the debris cloud?
Cargo dragon doesn't have a pad abort system. Dragon 2 would be able to escape just fine, though. Cargo dragon could _technically_ survive if didn't get blown up too much.
From the PR (and early test) angle: Is it possible to add the escape mechanism the cargo version? Perhaps this has no economical sense, but after the explosion it's better to write: "The main rocket suffered a RUD, the mission is canceled, but Buster would have survived."
Re: SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure
#150So, the advantage of a weekend launch is that I could show my kids (boys 7 & 4), right? Facepalm . In the last few minutes, over a dozen K-Nex rockets have lifted off and exploded shortly after takeoff. Sigh. Not the best introduction to the second Space Age for them.... ah well, we'll try again later. At least nobody was aboard.
I had my 3 kids watching along with me. Afterwards we had a healthy talk on how to approach failure.
Yup, my two kids here watched with me. Afterwards we talked about how difficult it is to do some things in life, and how we should keep trying even when things don't go our way.