Elon Musk Releases Supercut of SpaceX Rocket Explosions (hardocp.com)

Eloking shares a report from HardOCP: Elon Musk is demonstrating how one should not land an orbital rocket booster: the video, currently trending on YouTube, is essentially a blooper reel of SpaceX rocket tests that went explosive. While the company has more or less perfected launching Falcon 9 rockets, it is still working hard on recovering as much of the multi-million-dollar system as possible.

Comments

Onward and Upward, SpaceX!

[Machupo]

Gotta love free PR, especially when it is styled as a "look how far we've come" / "look at how much we have figured out" celebration.

Looking forward to FH later this year and the start of some proper accumulation of mass in usable orbits!

"unscheduled rapid disassembly"

[execthis]

"unscheduled rapid disassembly" love it.

seeing the final two successful landings is really poignant after seeing all the failures.

go team SpaceX!

It's about lowering expectations

[saibot834]

My take on the blooper reel, as funny as it is, is that it's supposed to lower expectations for Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to launch in 2013, but the date has been pushed back multiple times in the recent years. Part of the reason is that it never was the top priority -- the Falcon 9 upgrades meant that more payloads could be launched using a single booster instead of three. And SpaceX has to keep NASA happy and fulfill their Commercial Resupply Missions to the ISS & the upcoming Dragon flights (first manned flights).

But part of the reason why Falcon Heavy was delayed so much is because it is hugely complex. You can just stick two boosters to the side of a core booster and keep it together with some struts, like in Kerbal Space Program. The structural loads are all different and must be accounted for.

So, I think the timing of the video so close to the scheduled launch of Falcon Heavy in November of this year is supposed to carefully counter the high expectations that the public has, given SpaceX's recent successes. Rocket science is hard, and failures are to be expected. But if you work on the problem for long enough, you eventually get it right. That's the message of the video.

If you're to fail....

[Eloking]

If you're to fail, fail hard and with style!

Re:Liberty Bell March

[robbak]

All three, really. Great timing and unusual sounds to match with events, changes in feel to match to seams, and it was never a serious piece of music. And Monty Python references always make people smile.

Not rocket tests - landing tests

[Gavagai80]

There are failed landing attempts, not rocket tests. There's a big difference. All of the primary missions of these flights succeeded.

Re:Not rocket tests - landing tests

[ColdWetDog]

One interesting omission is the pad refueling incident with the earth shattering kaboom. Now, it wasn't supposed to even make a spark at that point but it was a failure.

But you have to give SpaceX some credit. I've not seen an official NASA, Russian or NK 'blooper' reel done in house. Somebody has a sense of humor and proportion.

Re:Not rocket tests - landing tests

[AlanObject]

There are failed landing attempts, not rocket tests. There's a big difference. All of the primary missions of these flights succeeded.

Came here to point this out.

I know some NASA sub-contractor types who are rabidly contemptuous of SpaceX, saying things like "he doesn't even have the mission success rate of North Korea!"

Oh really? True SpaceX has probably blown up a bigger percentage of its rockets than anyone, but I wasn't aware that anyone had a reusable self-landing booster.

Re:Never sure whether Elon Musk is a decent bloke

[cheesybagel]

Is it that surprising that he can be all of those things? No one's perfect.