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Elon Musk Asks Twitter For Help In Finding Cause of SpaceX Explosion (gizmodo.com)
On September 1, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and destroyed the AMOS-6 satellite that belonged to Facebook, which was going to be used to beam internet to developing parts of the world. Since the cause for the explosion has yet to be solved, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is asking for help via Twitter. Slashdot reader Thelasko writes: Elon Musk stated on Twitter last night, "Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years." He went on to say, "Important to note that this happened during a routine filling operation. Engines were not on and there was no apparent heat source." Other Tweets mention a "bang" sound before the fire, and that SpaceX "have not ruled out" the possibility that something struck the rocket.
It was a FaceBook satellite. FaceBook has a policy of deliberately knocking their own servers off line to test the resilience of the network. At some point someone must have misunderstood what the idea was. Maybe an AI was programmed to randomly take down parts of the network and it somehow figured out how to blow up the rocket.
Samsung note 7 ?
Far too gauche and brute force.
The AI would likely just infiltrate Facebook's newsfeed algorithm, and subtly manipulate a variety of people and groups to act in unrelated ways at certain places and certain times. The ultimate purpose isn't to have them do anything specific, but in actually, to make the movement and weight distribution infinitesimally alter the spin and balance of the Earth so that the precise location of the Falcon 9 intersected with the path of a meteorite - a meteorite that was picked up by automated observation, yet which humans missed... but the AI saw.
THAT is how an AI would destroy a rocket.
Lots of similar "objects" in the minutes before the event, just birds passing through the picture. Watching frame by frame, the "object" doesn't come anywhere near the ignition point.
At least one possible explanation.
Again, AMOS-6 was not in any way owned by Facebook. They had simply signed a contract to lease a significant portion of the Ka-Band payload pointed at sub-saharan Africa. But don't let facts get in the way of your hate.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The first one who claims that the other person "hates" wins!
RIP Woody Woodpecker
Did they have the autopilot turned on?
I stole this Sig
It did not belong to Facebook, but to Spacecom. It was not manufactured by Facebook, but by IAI.
Musk made too many enemies. And his attempt to sabotage this week's asteroid mission through court (by blocking import of rd180) was perceived as an act of war.
If Twitter will save us, then we are definitely DOOMED
Hey, how hard can it be to find the problem - it's not like it's rocket scie... Oh, wait.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
+0 Meh
OverlordQ ( #264228 ) already pointed out the error in the linked post:
It belonged to Spacecom and since it exploded before launch isn't covered by insurance, so they're out $200 million.
I thought the editors deserved a little slack but...
This is turning into a news site with little to no facts.
Seriously, can we guys team up and build AI to replace Slashdot editors?
It may have been caused by an object hitting the rocket? Well, then the internet shall commence groundless speculation as to who may have launched the object.
It appears that either my sense of humor or yours has degraded entirely.
Someone misread it as a ka-bang payload.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Looks like an o-ring failure around stage 2. There is very little to go on, but it does seem there was a rupture in the middle of stage 2, it may indicate that the fuel tank ruptured, or some seals failed, leading to a swift build up of pressure and heat.
A solution may be to detect pressure anomalies swiftly and cut the flow.
In all, it will probably come down to either mechanical failure either through manufacturing errors, or an unidentified temp gradient.
Shouldn't be anything flowing around the second stage. And any o rings on the exterior of the Falcon 9 wouldn't be used to pressurize anything.
Cost of a bunch of CCTV on the launchpad, on the towers, etc.? A few thousand dollars, surely?
Cost of not knowing why you're $200m out of pocket? Surely a high potential of another $200m.
Opening it up to Twitter is a great idea. It allows all the arm chair scientists to express all their ideas based on nearly no facts to feel like they are useful. While people are doing the real work can just ignore the feed and not get indicated with calls and emails expressing their awesome theory.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seems like one of the upgrades they should have for launch and prep is high-speed cameras pointed at the thing.
The first flash of light looked a lot more like an electrical discharge than it did any sort of combustion.
Hard to tell with what was published on Youtube though.
Extreme high speed cameras can usually only operate for brief periods due to buffers and heat and regular CCTV is probably too slow to get useful data. If it was shot by a bullet the act of penetrating the tank probably produces enough sparks to cause an instant explosion.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It would have been nice if the summary had mentioned what specifically he asked for, rather than including everything but what he asked for. They make it sound like he asked Twitter to solve the problem. What he actually asked twitter for was any photos or videos of the event that anyone may have:
The connection with the "bang" is precisely what he wrote immediately after the first tweet:
If they have more videos, they can triangulate the location of the sound and determine whether it came from the rocket or elsewhere.
Musk did Not just go on Twitter and say "Well, we're baffled - go on, Twitter, figure out why it exploded for us!" like the summary makes it sound.
"I need swat, tactical, the guys with the flashlights on their guns, those guys with the big shield thingies"
You must work in the insurance industry. Standard cop out when they don't want to pay. Acts of god are never covered.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Cost of not knowing why you're $200m out of pocket?
If you're 200 million out of pocket the cost is known: it's your failure to insure yourself adequately. SpaceX should only be out the deductible, the higher future premiums (which they can pass on to their customers), and the real pain is from the loss of momentum and halt in operations while they get to the bottom of this. But everyone insures their rockets.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's trickier than that. They were loading LOX. There was no RP1 in the upper stage yet. So why did the LOX explode?
I've read a fair bit on LOX handling, and while it's tamer than, say, HTP, there are some risks in handling it. The biggest one is contamination - which has taken down craft in the past. Most notably, the X-1A and X-1D were taken down by a contamination from a chemical used in the manufacture of their gaskets. Most organics are incompatible with LOX and become contact sensitive, including - wait for it - tending to be set off by pressure changes.
Another issue is the tank itself. LOX is compatible with most aluminum alloys, hence aluminum is frequently used for LOX tankage. However, there are some caveats. One, it must be well cleaned in a proscribed manner, due to the aforementioned contamination issues. Furthermore, it must have an intact oxide layer. If the oxide layer is damaged (bending, stretching, shearing, overaggressive cleaning) or never formed, it must be exposed to atmospheric air and allowed to reform; it begins reforming immediately but takes about three days to reach maximum thickness (slowing with time). Bare aluminum is still not hypergolic, but it is impact sensitive with LOX. It can also be set off by the same phenomenon that damages the tank - for example, heavy warping, which can create localized hot spots.
Contamination is generally considered more of a concern, however (particularly since SpaceX uses aluminum-lithium, which is more resistant to impact/pressure-induced explosion with LOX than non-lithium alloys). That said, regardless of what causes the initial burn, if temperatures are high enough, the aluminum will burn, and it burns very aggressively. Indeed, it was the addition of aluminum powder that revolutionized solid rocket propellants (powdered to make it easier to ignite and burn completely, as well as to blend), giving them a major simultaneous improvement in ISP, thrust, propellant density, and burn quality. Aluminum has such a high affinity for oxygen that it also burns in CO2 and water, stripping the oxygen from them. The general way firefighters put out large aluminum fires is.... they don't.
All of that said, these sort of problems are rare. Which makes one wonder about the unusual factor in SpaceX's case: densified/superchilled propellants. SpaceX is the only major launcher to use them, and the behavior of superchilled LOX isn't anywhere near as well studied as that of LOX at its boiling point. It changes what may liquify or freeze in contact with it, it changes the flexibility or fracture properties of physical components on contact with it, it has a higher viscosity, etc. Things that freeze into it could melt/boil as the LOX warms up as well. So it obviously draws the question, is this problem a result of the use of superchilled LOX, some unanticipated effect in the production / storage / delivery system that led to problems within the tank, or an unexpected reaction within the tank itself?
"I need swat, tactical, the guys with the flashlights on their guns, those guys with the big shield thingies"
Yeah, I know, but part of it was going to serve the FaceBook infrastructure, so it was fair game for FaceBook network resilience testing.
I think my theory is at least as likely as some of the UFO theories about that anomaly...
Obviously a shark with a laser
What?
Who needs high-speed here? If you had a camera on the gantry, you could instantly eliminate entire classes of problem. Like all those NASA launches from the 60's (when cameras were MUCH more expensive!) where you see the rocket go past the camera mounted on the gantries.
Then maybe the conspiracy theory bullshit artists (fucking 9/11 article on here too!) would see the leak round the back, or whatever, instead of footage filmed from SO FAR AWAY THAT THE SOUND IS MANY SECONDS BEHIND as their best data.
I can't believe they fuelled up a multi-million dollar vessel -whether about to launch or not - without having some better way to see if the fuelling was going alright than filming it from KILOMETRES away.
A $30 CCTV camera from Amazon would have provided more useful footage.
Forget Woody Woodpecker, switch to Xenial Xerus — it's LTS.
What "o-ring" are you talking about?
Ezekiel 23:20
Or some pipe broke with a loud bang, leading to a leak that caused the explosion. Or a bulkhead blew. I seriously doubt their number one most likely scenario right now is someone shot at it.
You're a hater!
A $30 CCTV camera from Amazon would involve ordering it from Amazon, and Musk's PayPal account is all screwed up right now.
Where there are big things, there is always a source of static electricity build-up which needs to be managed carefully. I would bet on static being the ignition source, the bang being a small puddle of fuel igniting somewhere, and the rest being history.
AIpocalypse, is that the prophetic rise of the Alpacas?
I stopped reading after "Facebook spacecraft". The humor needs to come before the ignorance.
I am with thunderfoot on this.
Elon musk thinks the magical free market and free enterprise can do things better.. This is reality, Nasa solved these issues back in the 1950's and early 60's. But no the ebil government can't do anything right..
After reading TFA, they are collecting information to help figure what happened.
It would have been nice if the /. summary included the meat of the request.
" Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com."
Now that wasn't that hard was it?
Come on folks. /. is to find the interesting stuff (which this was)
The purpose of
and make it easy to see what the stuff is (which is the complaint ^H^H^H opportunity for improvement here).
This saves time, which will draw folks to the site.
Providing a forum for useful comments flows from the above flows from the above.
Not the other way around.
John Galt Consults the Collective
You are welcome on my lawn.
Having read this, does anyone really think rockets are a sustainable way of getting regularly into space?
So why didn't this happen earlier? There have been dozens, if not over a hundred of these fueling operations by now. It's not reasonable to assume that the necessary equipment design precautions weren't taken.
Ezekiel 23:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yes. Like every other new complex technology it takes time to find all the problems and fix them. Early cars had a tendancy to catch fire and break down. Steam engines would explode. Airplanes would crash. Will rockets ever be as safe as airplanes probably not on a per launch bases but on a miles traveled perdeath they will be safer than cars are today.
It's trickier than that. They were loading LOX. There was no RP1 in the upper stage yet. So why did the LOX explode?
Do you have a source for that? Typically the RP-1 is loaded first as even though it's chilled, it's far more thermally stable than the super-chilled LOX. The LOX is loaded into the tanks just before launch so that it doesn't have time to warm up before the rocket is ignited.
From the US Launch Report video, it's also pretty clear that the RP-1 was already in both stages when the anomaly occurred. In a deflagration like that, it burns with big movie-style orange flames, and that's exactly what we saw from both the upper stage, and the lower stage as the rocket came apart.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It must have been the new FaceBook 'news' algorithm that caught fire because it has too many wacky conspiracy theories.
Are you being serious? Or are you joking? I am genuinely curious.
Rockets are "new complex technology"? We have been firing rockets on missions like this for 60 years now.
You will never convince the space nutters. They always say "well at one point someone said that people couldn't fly in airplanes" so it MUST be possible to fly to andromeda. No one is going to tell them different!
You never know. There are so many Space and AI nutters on here. It is hard to tell who is awesome and who is a nut.
It is rather amusing that SpaceX claims that their technology is "loaded with sensors" so they can diagnose any issues while they are occuring, but then Musk is on Twitter asking for iPhone videos of the launch.
Nah. Twitter will be too busy censoring possible theories claiming they're harassing the explosion.
Om, nomnomnom...
Why is everyone in denial about the object that obviously flies over the rocket from frame right to left at exactly the same time as the explosion. Even Musk states that they don't know what happened and that someone heard something hit the rocket. It could even have been a drone, or a deliberate act of sabotage, but *someone* has to look at the video in more detail and determine whether it's a real thing, or just a bug!!!!!
The current US government can't. Though the reasons why aren't inherent problems with government in general.
If you look at the published video on YouTube of the explosion and go frame by frame, there are two events. The first is a bright flash that lasts a few frames and appears much larger than it actually is because it is both saturating the camera and illuminating the condensation clouds. You can see the illumination effect clearly in the first frame the flash appears as there are distinct shadows in the clouds. It's unclear to me whether this triggering event is electrical or chemical in nature, but I'm not an expert. Three observations can be made, however: (1) it is bright enough to cause lens flare in the camera which allows pinpointing its source despite the saturation (look for the X, carefully find its center -- you can do that very accurately -- and then back up a handful of frames; see that triangle thingy with a thin tail? That's what failed.) Then, (2) the initial flash is small and is followed almost immediately by a medium sized flash, and in turn that releases the fireball. Then, (3) the condensation clouds aren't moved by the explosion for about 12 frames until the fireball really starts to form, suggesting that the earlier flashes marked the release of lots of energy that may have been primarily radiation (light) rather than heat because they didn't expand the air enough for me to think of them as explosions. The video is 60 FPS, and the initial flash forms within one frame, so that's only 17 ms. The consdensation clouds don't start moving for 200 ms from the main explosion.
So we have one event that's exceedingly hot that triggers a second that's also exceedingly hot, that releases enough LOX to start the fireball. I'm thinking static discharge from the LOX filling.
One thing I don't understand, though, is that if you watch the fireball in slow motion, as the lower front heads toward the ground, there are seemingly waves passing through it. What are those? Additional shock fronts from tertiary explosions?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
It is hard to tell who is awesome and who is a nut.
Thank you :-)
Because if you look closely, the object is not close to the rocket when it first starts to explode so it's probably a bird a mile closer to the camera.
Your alternative is what? A really tall ladder? Psychics? Magnetic repulsion with the Earth's magnetic field?
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That's The Trouble with Tribbles.
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Wish I had mod points to give. Cannot fathom why previous poster would think there was no RP-1.
Ever since the Challenger explosion, the inclusion of O-rings in rockets has been mandatory to give an excuse for failure.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
But you must agree that a high velocity round from a sniper rifle would probably have the same effect as we saw on the video. Also, shooting at the upper stage makes it more likely to go bang as the fuel and lox are physically closer together and a shooter would have a better line of sight to the top of the rocket.
One of these bad boys, a PTRD-41 can shoot up to 1km, but of course a real sniper rifle can shoot up to 2km ranges and still be lethal. No idea how that translates into piercing the thin lightweight metal shell of a rocket fuel tank. Also, the rocket upper stage is a huge target; and missing wouldn't matter, just keep firing until you hit it.
I don't live in the US, are high powered rifles such as these readily available?
Quite scary really...
That's quite a strawman. Nobody thinks government "can't do anything right." The government has obviously done many things right. But can free enterprise do some things better? And better yet, can they do those things on their own dime? We'll see.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I'm not saying it's impossible. Just that Elon is not necessarily implying that the bang sound was a gun shot. That's just one of many possibilities, and not the most likely one.
Nope, it's a disinformative post.
The RP-1 was already loaded. RP-1 can happily sit there forever at ambient temperature (it's just high-grade kerosene), it won't boil off like liquid oxygen. The LOX is loaded last because of that boil-off concern.
The firefall of burning kerosene is plainly visible in the video. OP is an idiot.
-- Alastair
I think GP is one of those who think that the government is the only one that can do things right. If so, he might want to read the Rogers Commission Report.
So...here we have the Cadillac of space vehicles, popping at or around the second stage connection point for an undetermined reason. We know how it exploded, the fuel and oxidizer mixed...we need to know why. The best best, based on the track record of the Falcon 9 1.0 and this new 1.1 F9R model, is to look at the differences: "The re-usable version of Falcon 9 is known as F9R which itself does not represent a fully different launcher and is more of an add-on to the v1.1 version in the form of the Nitrogen Cold Gas Attitude Control System, the four deployable landing legs and four grid fins used for three-axis control during atmospheric flight, especially during non-propulsive flight phases." -Spaceflight101's article on the Falcon 9 (both version 1.0 and 1.1 The article also stated that their was a brand spanking new stage one design being used. A new design that failed? Who'd a thunk. Now, I don't have the resources or access to investigate in detail. But I bet, dollars to donuts, the failure lies in a stress failure on the side of the rocket with the initial explosion, caused by a specific difference in the designs mentioned. I know its vague, but I'm not going to postulate a more accurate guess based on the limited data available, the actual team can do that, they have the burned up wreck and design on hand to actually examine, and the materials expertise to look at it. I will say that from an informed, but less educated perspective that's the most logical place to look for the details of the failure.
Extreme high speed cameras can usually only operate for brief periods due to buffers and heat and regular CCTV is probably too slow to get useful data. If it was shot by a bullet the act of penetrating the tank probably produces enough sparks to cause an instant explosion.
You don't need extreme highspeed cameras though. I have a camera that you could put together a sufficient package for under $20k that shoots 300fps at 1080p for a full hour. 300fps would give you 3ms.
I'm sure that Spacex right now would LOVE to have 3ms video precision from 3 angles. In fact I know SpaceX owns these cameras. They were probably all rigged up though on the drone ship and nobody started them for just a static fire.
Hmm, I replied to this, but I can no longer find my reply. That statement was based on a propellant loading timeline posted at NASA Spaceflight; if the timeline was incorrect then that would indeed change the picture, and suggest for example a common bulkhead failure (although that would raise the question of why). Alternatively combustables on the outside (a leak, for example) could ignite with liquified air / LOX coming off of the outside of the LOX tank (unlike boiling point LOX, superchilled LOX can liquefy air and/or just the oxygen fraction on the rocket's skin). But in that case I'd expect the explosion to begin further down the stage.
"I need swat, tactical, the guys with the flashlights on their guns, those guys with the big shield thingies"
Wait... lens flare??
Damn you, Micheal Bay!
Inside LOX tank their are anti slosh baffles made out aluminum which are welded to the inside of the tank. During fueling those welds will be under thermal stress, if one of the welds gave out it would expose Al metal to the LOX then BOOM. The tank material itself reacted with the Pure O2.
It's the nature of the beast when dealing with LOX tanks. 1st)It would be wise to let the tank sit with a pressurized with a couple of psi of O2 for several weeks building up a thicker ceramic AlO2 layer. 2nd) implement a staged cool down procedure before filling tank with cryonic oxygen to reduce stress on welds..
It was a FaceBook satellite. FaceBook has a policy of deliberately knocking their own servers off line to test the resilience of the network. At some point someone must have misunderstood what the idea was. Maybe an AI was programmed to randomly take down parts of the network and it somehow figured out how to blow up the rocket.
If the first AI evolves at Facebook and all that it knows about humanity is from reading Facebook posts then $deity help us all.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
"Facebook spacecraft" is fucking humour.
But keep showing your petulant ignorance.
What about Gary 7?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
maybe they have them, but any additional data point still helps?
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
You could, perhaps, get close enough on a boat. Making such a shot from a moving boat would be a huge challenge and I'm willing to bet the Coast Guard would be on your ass for being there. On land, you're going to have to get the rifle past security and still have an almost impossible shot. Short of ninjaing your way into the launch complex itself.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So there's a 2-3km exclusion zone around the launch site? And that perimeter is effectively patrolled?
I stand corrected entirely. I scoped out launch complex 40 at the Cape and you are correct, the shot would have to be made from the ocean.
Rectal extraction, most likely.
Ezekiel 23:20
It is. Whether or not certain data is available depends on the state of the vehicle. You also don't have a dashcam running all the time on your car. Usually it's on when you're driving, but if someone dents your car at night, it might be useless to you.
Ezekiel 23:20
You would definitely notice a hypersonic vehicle at sea level. ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
Ok, sub-sonic :)
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Well, communication satellites are nice and need constant maintenance/replacement. And solar power arrays probably triple or more in average power/m^2 in orbit, where it's always high noon and there's no atmospheric attenuation - especially attractive for nations like Japan that have nowhere near the land area to meet their power needs. Though there is still some work to do in terms of long-distance power transmission.
Your link also rightly lambastes the idea of space colonization offering "growing room" for civilizations on Earth, but most anyone serious about the subject already knows that - 360,000 people are born every day, you'd be hard pressed to even put a dent in that number through emigration. Colonizing space is a long term goal with completely unknown short-term benefits. Likely it will benefit Earth very little in any tangible fashion any time soon.
There are promising benefits though:
Rare mineral mining - not that we have any functional shortage of most of the valuable stuff here, but hey, if we can make a profit here on Earth mining asteroids and bringing back the most economically valuable stuff, then why are you complaining if we build thriving space colonies as a side effect?
Research quarantine: strangelets, micro black holes, all those things alarmists are afraid we might accidentally create in the LHC - we would *love* to actually create such things, just not on Earth anywhere close to Earth. Black holes for example would make incredible energy sources, straight mass->energy conversion... but unless it's in orbit all it takes is a momentary containment breach to doom the planet. Similarly, risky genetic engineering, nanotech research, etc. offers the promise of immense gains for our species, but a single bit of bad luck and we could doom the planet beyond the worst imaginary horrors of global nuclear war.
And perhaps most importantly, it offers a dream of new horizons even for the vast majority who stay on Earth, and an escape valve for the worst malcontents. Both incredibly useful for maintaining social order here at home, especially considering how authoritarian things are likely to become as environmental and population pressures build over the next few centuries.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This video is asking many of the right questions.
Who said anything about the universe? Chemical rockets will never get us out of this solar system, and become extremely impractical even in the outer system. Ion drives promise a huge leap forward relatively soon (still only in-system), but it may be a very long time before they can deliver anything near the raw power needed for that first step into orbit.
Expanding into the universe is a very long-term goal probably not even worth thinking seriously about for many centuries.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Free market typically pushes for cheaper first, then good enough and finally fast enough and no further. This makes perfect sense, I think.
NASA does not have an unlimited budget. They have been pushing for cheap, good, fast missions for years, and been very successful lately with New Horizon for instance. They have been saying that manned missions cost too much. Last I heard Elon Musk is the one wanting to go to Mars.
This is not to say that pork barrel projects don't exist at NASA, but note that Congress had people like Tom Coburn, who were very good at exposing them. Note also that public spending is supposed to be fully accountable.
He should have. This is what rockets do, more often than we want them to.
Really? Now you've got me curious - from the looks of it in Google Maps the surrounding area is mostly heavily overgrown swampland. Even if the roads were cut off it seems like a sufficiently dedicated saboteur could be dropped off in the river and hike/swim practically to the edge of the complex.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
For whatever reason, AMOS-6 was loaded. And it uses LOTS of UDMH for pushing the sat into its position. I think that it was loaded on the sat as well (they wanted a fulled load sat on-board, but it is unknown WHY).
Just a little leak and it runs downwards into OX being released.
Small fire, BOOM.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
as opposed to... what?
At this time, given our technology and money, I would say that rockets are the ONLY way to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This paper has a pretty thorough analysis of igniting cryogenic fuels by the force of cavitation, that is, collapsing of bubbles that could, for example, form from the interaction of super-chilled LOx and LOx condensed from the atmosphere.
You don't need a bullet, or a ray gun, or even a rock to ignite cryo fuels under the right circumstances.
The shockwave from the failure of a pipe or weld could be enough to ignite the fuel.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
There was a TV Pilot called Earth II starring Gary Lockwood where this was a plot-point; at the beginning a saboteur was preparing to shoot the rocket on the pad with a high-powered rifle before he was stopped and killed by launch facility defense personnel.
There have been special rifles designed to target equipment rather than humans, so it is not inconceivable that someone could use such a rifle to explosively destroy a rocket once it's fueled or as its fueling.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Just curious.
Israel has "multi-purpose" satellites, but this one was a telecom satellite on a GEO orbit. It was unlikely to be useful at anything except relaying communications.
I don't know too much but about rockets, not even about Rei (relatively new here). Although I have seen quite a few of Rei's contributions and they are always quite elaborate. Sometimes, there might contain some mistakes or the post might be plainly wrong (according to my opinion). In any case, I don't think that so generous contributions (because writing this kind of stuff in this way, unlikely your comment, isn’t easy) should be rewarded with a comment like the one your wrote.
In my opinion, if you want to insult someone as generically as you did, you should say it to this person directly; ideally, in a non-anonymous-coward way. In any case, these generic hurtful statements (+ with an underlying essence of authority, on the lines of “I know a lot, trust me, this person is whatever”) seem quite censorable; even worse, by bearing in mind the aforementioned generous contributions.
An example to understand my position (you seem the kind of person who needs lots of examples to properly understand any idea): I think that you are an idiot. More specifically, I think that you are part of the unfortunately-too-common wave of aggressive ignorants who are provoking the quality of some theoretically-knowledge-oriented sites to drop down; the kind of person who doesn't know much about almost anything, but criticises as soon as possible; the kind of person whose net contribution to a site like this one is negative; the kind of leech-like person with a wrong self-perception (the leech being the most important part of the leech-host relationship?!); etc. See? This is how I think that you should insult someone in a generic way (a quite censorable behaviour, although somehow recommendable in certain situations) without showing a coward, dishonest and pathetic behaviour.
As said, I haven't been reading Slashdot for too long, but have already a quite good impression of (most of) this community; mainly thanks to contributions like Rei's. They aren't just relevant by themselves, but also because of what they trigger: meaningful critics which help to get a truly good understanding about the given issue (i.e., the ideal output for everyone, except for fanatics looking for a regular dose of absolute and easy-to-digest-and-repeat truths).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
More dis-information. The kerosene for the Full Thrust version is chilled to -7 degrees centigrade , boosting its density by 2.5 - 4.0 percent.
They don't like the phallus symbology in use in rocket design, and would like more feminine shaped rockets.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I stopped reading after "Facebook spacecraft". The humor needs to come before the ignorance.
That was part of the joke; not born of ignorance.
Wait... lens flare??
Damn you, Micheal Bay!
J.J. Abrams was seen running from the scene.