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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

#501

Post by reddog »

dredmorbius wrote: post #487
reddog wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree. Aside from Challenger (I know -- a pretty big aside), what catastrophic launch failures were there with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo program rockets? Or the Delta 2. And doesn't the old-fashion-can't-even-land-on-a barge Atlas 5 have a perfect launch and mission success record of 62 of 62? It seems like building and launching a rocket that doesn't explode every 14th time is possible but its…

Apollo had 17 missions and at least four failures or near failures that come to mind: * The Apollo 1 launch-pad fire, during a training session, using a 100% pressurised oxygen atomosphere. Three dead. Grissom, White, and Chaffee. I can list them from memory. * Apollo 11 suffered a lunar lander computer crash in the final seconds before landing, was programmed to land on what would have been unsurvivable terrain, and…

Right. Like I said, no catastrophic launch failures.

They did build things robustly back when the US still had a manned space program. I wonder how well a SpaceX rocket would do if it was struck by lightning as it left the pad.

Then again, Apollo 11 couldn't land on a barge. However it could land on the moon with two humans on board and then take off again and return then safely to earth. 47 years ago.

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

#502

Post by carbocation »

rbanffy wrote: post #466
tmptmp wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a slightly light-but-not-so-light note: A brain surgery can result in worse still: like, surgeon performs a surgery, makes some mistake, the patient is alive and gets up and goes home, but due to the surgical damage caused becomes a serial killer. So, strictly speaking a brain surgery can also result in a body count that is greater than 1. Respectfully submitted.

That's a good one. Thanks. I wonder if there is a surgeon who's that skilled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#Liston.27s_most_...

See "Liston's most famous case"...

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

#503

Post by ajarmst »

rbanffy wrote: post #410
GarrisonPrime wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As unforgiving as brain surgery. :)

On brain surgery, the worst case scenario is one dead person. Rockets tend to inflate the body count prodigiously.

Be careful with that assumption: the standards for reliability and safety for crew-rated vs. uncrewed vehicles are very different. I've heard figures at around 10% hull-loss accident rates as expected for uncrewed, vs. an order of magnitude less for crew-rated. There's a very good reason that the pad had been cleared of personnel, and no one was injured in this launch. While spectacular, this explosion didn't inflate any body counts, because the risks were understood and well-managed. Spaceflight is hard, and people die, but we need to make sure we are comparing the same categories when we assess risk, reliability and cost. Trimming that 10% hull-loss rate down to 1% can be done, but probably not at anything like a cost that would make it commercially viable. The only other way to ensure reliability is the way commercial aviation did it: break enough vehicles (and lose enough people) that you understand the failure modes so well you can very nearly eliminate them.

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

#504

Post by db48x »

300bps wrote: post #105
db48x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money didn't disappear, it paid the people working on the project all the way down to the miners who dug up the minerals and the fast-food workers who made the cheeseburger that engineer bought that one time. It did fail to earn a return, however.

You're advocating the Broken Window Fallacy. http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fal...

No, I said that the money was spent, not lost; it didn't just vanish. They didn't bury it in the back yard and then forget about it, or set it on fire. They've definitely lost future income though, even if they rebuild the satellite and launch it successfully a few years from now. (I know that you usually build a test version of your space hardware, for tests that might be destructive. I wonder if any of those have ever been launched insted?)

It was also spent on something they wanted to spend it on, rather than something they were forced to spend it on. It's still an interesting point though, because they spent it on something that carried significant risk. Does spending money on a glass window, which carries the risk of a broken window, work in the same way? I've not considered the broken-window fallacy from that perspective before. Perhaps it's not, for the same for the same reason that breaking a window is considered a crime and an exploding rocket generally is not.

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

#505

Post by reddog »

WalterBright wrote: post #483
reddog wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree. Aside from Challenger (I know -- a pretty big aside), what catastrophic launch failures were there with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo program rockets? Or the Delta 2. And doesn't the old-fashion-can't-even-land-on-a barge Atlas 5 have a perfect launch and mission success record of 62 of 62? It seems like building and launching a rocket that doesn't explode every 14th time is possible but its…

The Mercury rockets had a lot of catastrophic failures before the first manned launch.

Fair enough. According to Wikipedia of the 26 Mercury program missions there were 6 pre 1962 Mercury program launch failures before the 6 successful manned missions. 5 of the 6 failures were test flights without payload.

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

#506

Post by taneq »

nraynaud wrote: post #453
raverbashing wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's my guess as well. 200 million dollar firecracker

stupid question: is that the actual manufacturing price, or is there some one time R&D and tooling in it?

I wondered the same thing. I can't imagine more than a few million dollars of raw material goes into a satellite. I'd wager it's more like $150mil to design the satellite, then $20mil for parts and $20mil for labour to build it (since these things are so low-volume they've gotta be largely hand made).

It'd certainly suck to be one of the people who's slaved over the satellite for the last couple of years, to see your baby get blown to smithereens like this.

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

#507

Post by caycep »

Not to be paranoid or anything, but with the Russians in the news with hacking, could this be the equivalent of a Stuxnet industrial sabotage? It would seem to be in their foreign ministry's interest to reduce the one successful American domestic manufacturer of rocket motors...

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

#508

Post by flukus »

mikeash wrote: post #498
dredmorbius wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo had 17 missions and at least four failures or near failures that come to mind: * The Apollo 1 launch-pad fire, during a training session, using a 100% pressurised oxygen atomosphere. Three dead. Grissom, White, and Chaffee. I can list them from memory. * Apollo 11 suffered a lunar lander computer crash in the final seconds before landing, was programmed to land on what would have been unsurvivable terrain, and…

Apollo 13 also came a few seconds away from blowing up during launch. The second stage center engine began a pogo oscillation that at its peak was vibrating the engine at 16Hz with an amplitude of about three inches. By luck, the intense vibration tripped a fuel sensor and caused the computer to shut the engine down just before it would have ripped the whole thing to pieces.

But it was all smooth sailing for Apollo 13 after that, right?

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

#509

Post by rbanffy »

vel0city wrote: post #443
nixos wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's 2 for 29. But if you look at the FT version, it's 1 for 8. 1. What kind of insurance will be needed on a billion dollar NSA satellite? $100 million? $125 million? It's not so cheep anymore, and considering delays etc. It's not such a great deal anymore. 2. They probably should have a "stable" platform and a "beta" platform, with a discount offered for beta. Unfortunately, the "move fast and break…

Well, the moving fast part is pretty important in rockets. Breaking things on the other hand...

Since until now rockets have been of the throwaway kind, they are all broken by the time we finish using them.

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

#510

Post by disillusioned »

dredmorbius wrote: post #490
objclxt wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but how hard will it be to just fly a drone there with some kind of projectile? It's a massive long metal tube full of extremely flammable things...what seems more likely: drone with projectile entering a highly restricted piece of airspace, or as rockets are want to do, it blew up by itself.

NB: wont to do. Though you've given me a reason to look up the etymology. Now I now: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=wont&allowed_in_fra...

NB: Now I know

:-)

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