Slashdot Mirror
A Failure For SpaceX: Falcon 9 Explodes During Ascension
MouseR writes with bad news about this morning's SpaceX launch: About 2:19 into its flight, Falcon 9 exploded along stage 2 and the Dragon capsule, before even the stage 1 separation. Telemetry and videos are inconclusive, without further analysis as to what went wrong. Everything was green lights. This is a catastrophe for SpaceX, which enjoyed, until now, a perfect launch record.
TechCrunch has coverage of the failure, which of course also means that today's planned stage one return attempt has failed before it could start; watch this space for more links.
Update: 06/28 15:06 GMT by T : See also stories
at NBC News,
The Washington Post, and the Associated Press (via ABC News). According to the Washington Post, what was a catastrophe for this morning's launch is only a setback for the ISS and its crew, rather than a disaster:
A NASA slide from an April presentation said that with current food levels, the space station would reach what NASA calls “reserve level” on July 24 and run out by Sept. 5, according to SpaceNews.
[NASA spokeswoman Stephanie] Schierholz said, however, that the supplies would last until the fall, although she could not provide a precise date. Even if something were to go wrong with the SpaceX flight, she said, there are eight more scheduled this year, including several this summer, “so there are plenty of ways to ensure the station continues to be well-supplied.”
Of note: One bit of cargo that was aboard the SpaceX craft was a Microsoft Hololens; hopefully another will make it onto one of the upcoming supply runs instead.
Elon Musk has posted a note on the company's Twitter channel: "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."
Elon Musk has posted a note on the company's Twitter channel: "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."
SpaceX has been very forthcoming with their telemetry data and analysis, so hopefully we'll hear what happened soon.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Well, it is a bit like Musk's version of capitalism: nationalize the risks, privatize the rewards. What's the surprise?
Those private space insurance premiums should be skyrocketing....
/. will be a lot more forgiving than if this were a NASA failure.
I'm guessing
Funny how when Russian rockets fail it is because of those "no good drunken Russians", but when a US rocket fails, its because rocket science is complex and challenging.
Do we want a nation of Ayn Rands merely writing about technology, or do we want to actually implement the technology? If the latter, government spending is essential because the market is way too shortsighted and prefers to take risks on balance sheets, with derivative instruments, rather than push the envelope of technological development.
Leave it to LiveLeak for actual video:
"LiveLeak", the last couple of years, is just a YouTube clone... (actual videos from "YouTube": https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - and many other, added at the same time the video from "LiveLeak" was added)
Where are the current videos of Muslims beheading people? NOT on LiveLeak! Just a couple of days ago i watched Muslims drowning some people closed in a cage and submerged in a pool - NOT on LiveLeak of course, because "Redefining the Media" now means videos with cats! Having a policy of NOT showing videos with Muslims doing what Muslims do makes you one more YouTube clone.
Yes, i know, off-topic (no problem down modding me, it will be fair!), plus i am a hateful anti-Muslim Greek Nationalist , but this "Leave it to LiveLeak for actual video" of yours made me a bit angry (not with you, but with the "LiveLeak - Redefining the Media"... it reminds me "Slashdot - news for nerds, stuff that matters"... yes, a rant from a Greek Nationalist like this is off-topic my dear nerds, i understand!).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
That's an awesome list. It dramatically demonstrates that getting a booster into space is anything but easy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There are more than 500 billionaires (> $1,000,000,000 each) in the US alone. There are more than 1800 all over the world. Together they own more than $7,000,000,000,000. If that's not enough funny money to produce at least a bunch of rockets without government subsidies, then we should think about taking the money from them and giving it to more innovative people.
if you're gonna have a launch failure with total loss of all stages, at least this seems to be one of the better outcomes. First stage is very expensive and complex, fixing a major flaw there could take a long time and lots of money. But it looks like the first stage was working fine all the way to the (fiery) end, and it was a ruptured tank on the 2nd stage that caused the failure. Much better than the first stage exploding soon after liftoff.
would be interesting to find out if the root cause of the failure is something they left out to cut costs... probably why SpaceX refuse to talk about money (although, they're not above begging the Treasury for a cut of NASA's budget, citing State-backed competition from Russia for the crewed flight development)...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The problem is: the rocket they had (Falcon 1) sucked hard. It was only *after they got money from NASA (a lot of money) that they built a half decent rocket.
You made my point well. Great rationalization!
To be fair, all these were very long ago.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Indirectly, we did that.
We earned our income, and contributed our taxes to a big pool, and we elected legislators to decide if we should invest in SpaceX, industry bailouts, balancing budgets, military expansions, welfare programs, or any of the millions of other programs that all want a piece of the subsidy pie.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Oh hey, thanks for updating the one I posted in a past article. I was wondering why it seemed so familiar.
Maybe I don't understand your point? What's being "rationalized" here? Or are you unwilling to participate in honest discussion here? I rather suspect you're just trolling.
You seem to be saying that it's unfair that /.er's don't hold SpaceX to the same standards of NASA? Of course not, that was never the goal, never the point, and no reasonable person ever expected that. SpaceX is cheap - a goal of 10% of NASA's launch costs. There will of course be trade-offs. That's as expected, and it's still a good thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
SpaceX is the ONLY significant player in commercial launch vehicles that ISN'T using decades-old technology. They developed their launch vehicle (including engines) from scratch on their own. Orbital Sciences is launching forty year old technology with no potential for doing it better or cheaper than it was done in the past. SpaceX is on a trajectory to cut LEO insertion costs by a factor of 10. Don't hate Musk because he is a better engineer than you will ever be - try to learn from his innovative approach, drive, and business acumen. One failure out of nineteen launches for a new, from-scratch rocket design is pretty impressive, IMO.