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Implication of Sabotage Adds Intrigue To SpaceX Investigation (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: The long-running feud between Elon Musk's space company and its fierce competitor United Launch Alliance took a bizarre twist this month when a SpaceX employee visited its facilities at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and asked for access to the roof of one of ULA's buildings. About two weeks earlier, one of SpaceX's rockets blew up on a launchpad while it was awaiting an engine test. As part of the investigation, SpaceX officials had come across something suspicious they wanted to check out, according to three industry officials with knowledge of the episode. SpaceX had still images from video that appeared to show an odd shadow, then a white spot on the roof of a nearby building belonging to ULA, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The SpaceX representative explained to the ULA officials on site that it was trying to run down all possible leads in what was a cordial, not accusatory, encounter, according to the industry sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The building, which had been used to refurbish rocket motors known as the SMARF, is just more than a mile away from the launchpad and has a clear line of sight to it. A representative from ULA ultimately denied the SpaceX employee access to the roof and instead called Air Force investigators, who inspected the roof and didn't find anything connecting it to the rocket explosion, the officials said. This week, ten members of Congress sent a four-page letter to several government agencies about the SpaceX explosion, raising the question as to whether or not SpaceX should be leading the investigation. Elon Musk said the investigation into what went wrong is the company's "absolute top priority." He added, "We've eliminated all of the obvious possibilities for what occurred there. So what remains are the less probable answers." SpaceX aims to resume flights in November.
The link to the SpaceX "evidence" is an alien conspiracy video. Anyway, I'm guessing SpaceX is implying ULA had a shooter on the building? A .50 anti-material rifle like a Barrett or a Tac-50 with a single HEIAP round could do the trick easily, space rockets are fragile little toys. Timed right it would look like a failure or the rocket and the chances of anyone finding any indication of what really happened after the resulting explosion would be pretty damn slim. Only things I could think of would be punctures opposite the force of the explosion and shell fragments (good luck finding those). Any residue from the shell would most likely be burned off (if you could find it to begin with).
But I don't think anyone with enough knowledge of rockets would be that stupid. If you didn't get it to explode immediately there's a good chance the damage would cause the rocket to veer off course. The range safety officer would initiate self-destruct or the rocket would finally explode at that point but either way you're putting other people and equipment at risk.
What is interesting is that SpaceX uses Pad 40 and ULA uses Pad 41 so taking out Pad 40 would not affect Pad 41 (insert ominous sound effect here).
Personally I'm now convinced it was aliens *cough*.
Given the amount of money at stake, I wouldn't put it past them to engage in a little bit of industrial sabotage.
We call those mysterious devices "guns", "rockets", and "drones". And if you think that a company wouldn't stoop to shooting a sniper rifle at a competitor's product when there are billions of dollars at stake, you are completely out of touch with reality.