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SpaceX Moves Past Explosion With New Launch Plans (cnn.com)
SpaceX plans to resume launching rockets as soon as next week, after completing an investigation into a spectacular launch pad explosion that destroyed a rocket and a satellite in September. From a report on CNN: The news comes following an in-depth investigation into the explosion of a rocket from SpaceX's September mission. The company said in a statement Monday the botched launch was due to a failed pressure vessel in a liquid oxygen tank. The vessel buckled, causing liquid oxygen to accumulate. It believes this led to friction, sparks and the explosion. SpaceX conducted the investigation along with officials from NASA, the Federal Aviation Authority, the U.S. Air Force and the National Transportation Safety Board. The Federal Aviation Administration will have to sign off on the report and issue SpaceX a license to launch. SpaceX appears optimistic it will be launching rockets again soon.
I know I come across as somebody who knocks Mr. Musk, but we need more entrepreneurs like him pushing the barriers.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Launch schedules slipping have really caused a headache for my business these last few months. Still, I don't see SpX10 launching on schedule in late January. I'd expect mid Feb at the earliest.
So worried about someone else getting ahead, you will end up living in a mud hut complaining that no one is doing anything to make things better.
As Carrie Fisher said (yes, Princess Leya) "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." I'm sure she took it from someone else.
... to actually get to see a detailed breakdown of the cause of the last explosion, rather than having to piece it together from bits and pieces of what's been said so far.
So far, it seems that there was (expected) supercooled liquid oxygen seeped into the CF reinforcing fibers on the helium COPVs (as was expected), which was just above its freezing point. They then began loading cold helium. Had the oxygen stayed liquid, it would have squeezed out (expected behavior). Rather, the oxygen wasn't able to seep out fast enough, and the increasing pressure caused some of it to solidify, blocking the escape of oxygen from the CF. LOX is inherently unstable in contact with organics, including carbon fibre, and can detonate under high temperatures, high pressures, shocks, etc; it has to be handled gingerly. In this case, the pressure continued to rise as the COPVs filled, until the LOX reached a critical pressure and detonated - thus rupturing the COPV reinforcement, thus the COPVs, thus the second stage and destroying the vehicle.
That's what it sounds like happened. But it'd be nice to get that confirmed or corrected if inaccurate. If this is correct, there's a number of things they could do to remedy it; I'd think the most likely would be to fill the COPVs before loading LOX.
As a side note, I'm really uncomfortable with their plan to make IPS entirely out of carbon fibre. As they're finding out (and has others have found out in the past), it's really difficult to use LOX with composites. And perhaps most importantly, inconsistently difficult. And the failure modes can be catastrophic - instant explosive rupture at the point of failure. Aluminum is not only light, but (by pure coincidence) one of the easiest things to work with LOX, as the oxide layer does a good job protecting the metal (even still, aluminum can detonate in contact with LOX in the right temperature/pressure/shock conditions, but said explosions are only self-propagating under significantly elevated pressure conditions). Also coincidentally, aluminum-lithium is even more resistant to reaction with LOX than lithium-free aluminum alloys. Basically, rocket manufacturers have been "having it easy" working with LOX by virtue of making rockets out of aluminum. You give that up when you go to composites.
But.... it's their rocket company, I guess we'll see how it goes.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
A couple rockets exploded. Well, it's a pretty risky endeavor. Of course they are going to continue. No one expects them to say "Well, we failed a couple times, better stop trying."
Vandenberg AFB is forecast to have 50% chance of precipitation Saturday, 80% Sunday and 60% Monday.
I wish them luck, they're about the only company doing anything really interesting in the space access industry. And much of the other halfway interesting stuff being done (Vulcan, Adeline (Ariane 6 reusable ver), etc) as a direct result of their projects. They need worthy competitors to keep them honest, but they also deserve some leeway as they are doing what was thought by many in the industry to be impossible a decade ago (recovery of first stage of an orbital launcher).
Right, so the existing military industrial complex doesn't have politicians in their pocket or gain taxpayer money either. Got it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I do believe that the use of Russian engines dates from an ill-guided attempt to keep newly-unemployed Russian scientists and technicians from going into the WMD business. I find it difficult to accept that ULA, having charged the US Government $1 Billion per year just for a promise to stay in business, could not maintain a non-Russian engine capability.
There's also the issue of two competitors for Federal launch, Boeing and Lockheed, forming a Trust and not being blocked from doing so.
It's pretty clear they went hand in hand with legislators to ripping off the US taxpayer the way they did. This doesn't cause me to have more sympathy for them now.
Bruce Perens.
f you look at the history of the RD-180 engine you will realize that the engineers where already out of a job long before the Soviet Union fell. The original RD-180 engines tested in the US were pulled from an old warehouse and dusted off. The entire RD-180 program was built on desire of ULA to purchase the engines.
once more into the breach
This is no longer a good argument because Russia has its own commercial launch industry now that actually beats the shit out of America's (until Musk came along). Musk got the US back into the game of commercial launch. No thanks to ULA .
There's also the issue of two competitors for Federal launch, Boeing and Lockheed, forming a Trust and not being blocked from doing so.
While I applaud your anti-monopolistic inclination this wasn't a merger born out of anti competitive acquisitions or even a "we will lower prices by removing redundancy" this was a case where one Company won the contract and then it was found out that the other company had stolen designs through industrial sabotage.
The birth of ULA was the result of a very messed up and disastrous legal scandal. Effectively a shotgun wedding nobody really wanted to pave over the whole affair.
You mean industrial espionage. And it might be that was really the only reason for forming ULA, but the end result was that the taxpayer got screwed.
Bruce Perens.
Pretty sure it was these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... pulled from the warehouse to test.