A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

Post by krisoft » Thu, Sep 01, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #5

Wild-ass speculation in the absence of more information than a tweet and a photo of a pad fire: SpaceX test-fire the first stage motors before each launch. If this was a test firing that went spectacularly wrong, it's embarrassing -- but there won't have been any human beings within blast range and it's better to fail in test than to fail in flight with a payload on top. (If it was a catastrophic failure during fueli…

Post by wyldfire » Thu, Sep 01, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #11

verytrivial wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

404 for me.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-KY6bmYW5xXE/V8guijPQh7I/A... http://i.imgur.com/6b6MfNQr.jpg

Post by cstross » Thu, Sep 01, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #5

Wild-ass speculation in the absence of more information than a tweet and a photo of a pad fire: SpaceX test-fire the first stage motors before each launch. If this was a test firing that went spectacularly wrong, it's embarrassing -- but there won't have been any human beings within blast range and it's better to fail in test than to fail in flight with a payload on top. (If it was a catastrophic failure during fueli…

Post by corv » Thu, Sep 01, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

Post by Dimitris » Thu, Sep 01, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

blastofpast wrote: post #26

I am surprised that no one has mentioned whether or not this failure is related to SpaceX's first time reusing a rocket. If so, hopefully this isn't too much of a setback!