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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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad about it? They have insurance, it's just hardware. Nobody died or was even injured, so it's merely an invoncenience.

Apparently one of the satellites was meant for internet connectivity in the developing world. Zuckerburg is very mad right now. Lost time is lost opportunity.

Everything about Internet.org went in a way contrary to what Mr Zuckerberg wanted.

The bourgeoisie of the developing world he wanted to help protested, the political class looked into constraining it by law, the first world hated it for misrepresenting the ideals of the Internet and going against hard-earned net neutrality laws, local Internet service providers backed off because of the negative publicity...

And the satellites he wanted to use to circumvent that went up in flames.

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

#382
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will also likely increase the cost of insuring SpaceX launches. I'm sure it's like car insurance. Of course SpaceX is so much cheaper than their competition that it may not matter, and reuse is about to make them cheaper still. Short term setback, but probably not so awful long term. Also glad nobody got hurt. It's just money.

> Of course SpaceX is so much cheaper than their competition that it may not matter, and reuse is about to make them cheaper still. They’re 2 million USD more expensive per launch for a mid-size satellite than the Ariane 5 is, so I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

No they aren't; SpaceX is charging around $62m and Arianespace charges $100-$130m for the same launch.

The first few Falcon 9 launches were a lot cheaper, around $40m I think. I'm sure SpaceX would still be massively profitable at that price, but they're already over-booked so might as well raise prices to generate more capital since building rockets is an ahem capital intensive business.

If SpaceX can re-use rocket engines for 10 launches that will change everything yet again. Let's be extremely generous and say $5 million for fuel, personnel, range rental, etc. Amortize the vehicle across 10 launches and you're talking $10m.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact is, the original was very racist. Just cleverly(obviously?) hidden. Why would a country blow up it's own stuff when it's obvious there are better ways. (Undertone they are culturally/genetically stupid) I find this worse, I thought the reply was kinda tempered.

How was it racist?

Short answer: If this was a french payload no one would be talking about this, even tho the french intelligence services have considerably more resources and a longer operational history than the Israeli ones.

Long Answer: How was that not racist?

Anyone who cannot see the quite blatant racism (and just to be clear, racism does not universally entail malice) in this "idea" does not understand what racism, cultural bias are and more specifically what is anti semitism.

Anti semitism and the overall cultural bias towards the Jewish people isn't distilled into saying "Jews are greedy".

The level of attention that the state of Israel receives today is rooted heavily in the cultural bias or European origin that surrounded the Jewish people for centuries especially since the 15th Century onwards.

A good parallel would be to explore the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; regardless of what was the original intent of the author (there is quite strong evidence today that it was intended to be a parody) you can't ignore the fact that it was mostly accepted as "true even if they are fake", even the most liberal intellectuals at the time could not dismiss them offhand as utter hogwash.

And that is because they were based on centuries of subtle but ever more growing cultural attribution that made the Jews easy to portray as a cabal of scheming, greedy, backstabbing individuals that are not only aiming for world domination but have already attained it and got their hands in every government and enterprise.

These "Protocols" were so powerful that they were accepted by many as a historical fact, in Japan they were so sure they were a true historical document that senior Japanese officers were saving European Jews during the holocaust both out of respect and to gain their assistance in the war effort against the Americans.

The "Protocols" today and their more modern updates are still circulated in very large numbers in Latin America, Africa, the Arab world and Asia, and they are mostly accepted as "real even if fake" and even taught at schools. In the near East and N. and W. Africa they are so sure that Israel is all capable that they attribute it almost magical powers, the catching birds and various other animals with Israeli trackers or identification implants as Israeli spies isn't an uncommon occurrence even in more "modern" countries like Egypt and Lebanon.

Since these animals are usually executed as spies for public display the Israeli Nature Authority actually stopped marking the country on the more rare species that are tracked by it and by the Israeli chapters of the WWF in order to prevent further degradation in their numbers.

Overall the idea of the all powerful, greedy backstabbing Jewish Cabal is still very much alive and kicking, today it's just the all powerful, greedy, backstabbing Zionist Entity, but the root of much of it is the same. Now this isn't to say that every legitimate criticism of Israel like every other nation is due to anti semitism but a lot of it is, the disproportionate level of attention that Israel receives in regards to ever action and event is simply cannot be explained by any other reasoning.

Even if we only isolate the conflict in the large scheme of things it's meaningless the amount of casualties is laughably low, lower than every other conflict that has been going on since it was founded by multiple orders of magnitude (70 years of the Israeli Arab conflict at large have seen less casualties than one year of the Syrian civil war, and as far as civil wars go the Syrian one isn't very bloody).

Every event and incident involving Israel somehow turns into a conspiracy theory in a heartbeat even tho the Israeli intelligence services are not remarkable in any real way, have considerably less resources than most western agencies, and compared to the comblock/eastern ones are considerably less "aggressive".

The funny thing is that if you do look at this from a conspiratorial point of view the only country that had the reason and the ability to both sabotage the rocket and get away with it is the United States. The US always goes out of it's way to block every potential technology transfer from Israel to China [0], while Israel was building the relationship with China for decades.

The US has the ability to do w/e it wants with the rocket while Israel not only loses close to half a billion of dollars in the event but actually risks of starting a war with the US if discovered, I'm pretty sure the US invaded countries for less than blowing up a US made rocket on a US military base after infiltrating it with operatives and sabotaging it. But as I've said if this was a French satellite no one would have even be thinking about all of this.

[0]http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp473.htm

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

#384
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were no personal injuries, so I can't really be sad about a piece of electronics.

I think it's unfair that you are getting downvotes for this statement. All you said was that it is good to have some perspective. Yes, it sucks to lose the rocket and the satellite. But to put it into perspective, the husband of the lady sitting next to me as I type this (and a friend of mine) is currently sitting in the shelter at the launchpad. He texted her to let her know he was alive. He can't give out any more…

I could have formulated that better.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it racist?

Short answer: If this was a french payload no one would be talking about this, even tho the french intelligence services have considerably more resources and a longer operational history than the Israeli ones. Long Answer: How was that not racist? Anyone who cannot see the quite blatant racism (and just to be clear, racism does not universally entail malice) in this "idea" does not understand what racism, cultural bi…

> Long Answer: How was that not racist?

Belief that the Israeli intelligence services are, in the modern era, more likely to engage in certain types of action against particular targets than, say, their French counterparts need not be based in any anti-Jewish sentiment.

It can be based, e.g., on the degree to which Israeli intelligence services have been found to be doing certain things (e.g., carrying out operations targeting the US) compared to others.

While I think in this particular case, from the available evidence with which I am familiar, that would probably be flawed analysis, I can certainly see it being made without any racism.

One can have an especial distrust of the Israeli government -- on reasonable or unreasonable grounds -- without being anti-Semitic, just as one can have an especial distrust of the US government without that being grounded in antipathy against the dominant racial group in the US.

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

#386
post #123
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.

This is a good question. There could be substantial damage. The Antares failure at Wallops knocked the pad out for months and took $15 million to repair.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/10/06/workers-complete-15-mi...

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

#387
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sign of a fire extinguishing or pad deluge system, such as NASA had for the shuttle. Maybe Space-X needs that. Fire crews can't approach until the fire burns itself out - too toxic.

> Fire crews can't approach until the fire burns itself out - too toxic. You're thinking of hypergolic propellants like hydrazine and nitric acid. This is kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen. Not particularly toxic, just hot as hell. The deluge system in shuttle launches was for the flame trench and sound dampening to avoid the air pressure from the noise damaging the vehicle, not fire extinguishing. You can see the la…

Oh, right; the Falcon second stage is just a smaller version of the first stage.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "venting" you usually see isn't LOX, it's condensed water vapor, there are small bleeder valves in the LOX tanks and the fuel line but they are not designed or used for emergency pressure relief.

The cloud is water vapor. But it's not like water vapor is onboard the Falcon and being vented. Boiled-off oxygen is vented, and it's cold enough to cause the water vapor in the surrounding air to condense.

Yes like i said through the bleeder valves in the tanks and the fuel line, but this isn't an emergency release valve, you cannot use it to drain the tanks.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes years to build a satellite, the bus, and every component is purposely built each component and the satellite itself goes through months of testing and even if they could build one within 6 months all of the contracts would expire by then which will require Spacecom to open the bids again. All of the contracts were based on AMOS-6 being operational by a given date, AMOS-6 has been "under construction" for pro…

Why does every satellite have to be custom made like this? Without knowing anything about it, it seems as though most communications satellites do pretty much the same thing?

> Without knowing anything about it

Sometimes it's wise to stop, read what you just wrote, then hit "back" rather than post a comment.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "venting" you usually see isn't LOX, it's condensed water vapor, there are small bleeder valves in the LOX tanks and the fuel line but they are not designed or used for emergency pressure relief.

They definitely do vent LOX boiloff.

Yes through the bleeder valves but a bleeder valve isn't an emergency pressure release valve.

Bleeder valves are designed to bleed gas from a system which contains a liquid. They aren't designed to be used to relieve pressure in an emergency situation, infact under high enough pressure they stop working all together.

In a more common setting you see these types of valves on breaks and on heating systems that use hot water, while they do bleed steam they bleed it in order to prevent the accumulation of gas and air bubbles within the system not to control the pressure.

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