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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

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Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#281

Post by fnj »

Klathmon wrote: post #82
yawz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first reaction. I thought they could create a dummy payload with the same dimensions and weight. But, then... unless the weight distribution of the payload is important.

Loading the payload isn't a quick thing, it takes time and a lot of careful work to do. So doing it before the tests can save a lot of time and I'm guessing money.

Understood that mating the payload is a lot of work, but it is one hell of a lot less work than building a complete new payload.

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#282

Post by lucretian »

daeken wrote: post #266
anigbrowl wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite a lens, assuming the sound is correctly synchronized with the image.

That's my thought. I counted about 12 seconds between initial explosion and the sound hitting the camera, which puts it at roughly 2.88km away. Edit: Helps if I multiply properly. 12 seconds * 340m/s == 4080m.

i think you mean 4.1 km?

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#283

Post by TheGuyWhoCodes »

trothamel wrote: post #228

Here's good video of the test/failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ#t=1m10s

There is something flying just above when the explosion starts, probably a bird, but how hard will it be to just fly a drone there with some kind of projectile?

[Edit] Pre and Post explosion: http://imgur.com/a/IIzg2

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#284

Post by groby_b »

skadamat wrote: post #146
joering2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you prove any of this? Knowing how smart and methodological Musk is, I wouldn't be surprised if the rule at the office is actually to leave your desk and go home at 5pm sharp. You are prone to make more mistakes when you tired and overworked and I cannot imagine more important place not to make mistakes, than building a rocket.

It's pretty well documented that people at SpaceX work 80+ hours a week consistently: https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-a-week-does-a-typical-S... http://spacenews.com/op-ed-3-things-to-know-if-you-want-to-w... https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/25ixxq/is_spacex_wo...

Not only that, it's also not really a secret that SpaceX attracts people who want to enter the space industry. You get experience there, you move on.

Yes, they have experienced people too, but overall, turnover is high for a reason: https://hackerlife.co/blog/tech-employees-turnover/Los-Angel...

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#285

Post by rlanday »

vkou wrote: post #173
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the $2b custom government bird refers to the space shuttle. Of which we have, in fact, lost more than one.

The shuttle was a vehicle with vastly different capabilities, and technical challenges to overcome, compared to a Falcon rocket. There have been 133 successful shuttle launches, and 2 failed ones. There have been 27 successful Falcon launches, and 2 failed ones.

And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#286

Post by daeken »

lucretian wrote: post #282
daeken wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my thought. I counted about 12 seconds between initial explosion and the sound hitting the camera, which puts it at roughly 2.88km away. Edit: Helps if I multiply properly. 12 seconds * 340m/s == 4080m.

i think you mean 4.1 km?

Yeah, I typoed the math -- used 240m/s rather than 340m/s for the speed of sound.

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#287

Post by zzleeper »

TheGuyWhoCodes wrote: post #283
trothamel wrote: post #228

Here's good video of the test/failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ#t=1m10s

There is something flying just above when the explosion starts, probably a bird, but how hard will it be to just fly a drone there with some kind of projectile? [Edit] Pre and Post explosion: http://imgur.com/a/IIzg2

Looks way too fast and round for a bird.. but yeah it's clearly there

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#288

Post by agildehaus »

dmix wrote: post #123
ygra wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason anyone else does tests: Find potential and actual issues earlier than in production. The static fire they were doing is sort of a short integration / smoke (pun not intended) test whether the rocket as a whole (whether the payload is attached already depends on the customer; it reduces time between test and launch, though) works properly. Other tests are part of sort of a pre-flight checklist directly bef…

Is launch pad designed to take a hit like this? Or do you think it would have caused a lot of damage to Cape Canaveral.

A rocket contains the energy of a mini-nuke. You could not design a launch pad to withstand an anomaly like this.

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#289

Post by manarth »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #212

This comes at a uniquely bad time. I was reading about the cash squeeze ( http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-faces-cash-squeeze-at-... ) and it struck me that any interruption at SpaceX would put further pressure on what Elon is trying to pull off. I really hope they can root cause this failure and get the flight schedule back up and running quickly.

I initially started this comment saying "I doubt that there's that much cash-flow between SpaceX and Tesla/Solar City", then thought I should at least google it first.

What do you know? Turns out SpaceX invested $165M in Solar City last year [1].

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/08/07/this-is-why-elon-musks-spacex-...

Re: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

rlanday wrote: post #285
vkou wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shuttle was a vehicle with vastly different capabilities, and technical challenges to overcome, compared to a Falcon rocket. There have been 133 successful shuttle launches, and 2 failed ones. There have been 27 successful Falcon launches, and 2 failed ones.

And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing

> And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing

Reentry, not landing.

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