[dissident]

SpaceX Falcon rocket destroyed shortly after liftoff from Florida
Rocket was carrying supplies to International Space Station
Thomson Reuters Posted: Jun 28, 2015

Welcome to the real world.

[PeakOiler]

Welcome to the real world.

No kidding. And those who think humanity will eventually live in space seem to forget about the tenuous "tether" the off-worlders depend upon. Dreamers.

When the ISS can be truly self-sustaining and produce all their own needs internally, then I might believe mankind can expand into space. But for now, it is entirely fantasy.

[Sixstrings]

SpaceX Falcon rocket destroyed shortly after liftoff from Florida
Rocket was carrying supplies to International Space Station
Thomson Reuters Posted: Jun 28, 2015

The station crew has about four months of food and supplies on board, so the accident would not pose an immediate problem. However, NASA's second cargo line, run by Orbital ATK, remains grounded following a launch accident in October. In April, a Russian Progress cargo ship also failed to reach the station.

Hm.. so they have 4 months of food left. Orbital is grounded, they had a supplies launch blow up.

Then Russia had one, too.

Now Spacex has one. Who will launch next? Has to be Russia, and if the next one fails.. getting a bit dicey for supplies up there.

Regarding space.. they were bound to have a failure eventually. I wonder how this will effect their future plans, though -- like carrying a CREWED dragon capsule. And making a falcon heavy, with two falcon9 boosters, etc.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . .

What is it two days now and no thread? . . . sheesh

A bloody shame . . . and it just highlights the crap that some folks go on with about space community's and such like.

Cheers.

[Peak_Yeast]

???

[dinopello]

It was mentioned in the rocket explosion thread. Musk may have to lower his proposed ticket price for a trip to Mars from $500 to something lower to entice people to get on one of his roman candle rides.

[SeaGypsy]

Or maybe coach up some borderline depressives with suicidal tendencies & convince them the tickets (which will need to be free of course) are a win win either way. Remake a New World in Our Image, or Going' Down in a Blaze of Glory.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y320-U151 using Tapatalk

[Sixstrings]

One thing to say for him, he's thorough and very open, for a CEO with so much on the line -- usually you wouldn't be hearing peep from a CEO in this situation, but he started tweeting out updates right after it happened.

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 23h23 hours ago
Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 22h22 hours ago
There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 22h22 hours ago
That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis.

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
Cause still unknown after several thousand engineering-hours of review. Now parsing data with a hex editor to recover final milliseconds.

[StarvingLion]

His cars explode
His rockets explode

Won't be long until...

"Explosion at the Gigafactory...."

Elon Musk Crematorium Corp

[radon1]

The man looks like a typical patrioid.

[ennui2]

His cars explode
His rockets explode

Won't be long until...

"Explosion at the Gigafactory...."

Elon Musk Crematorium Corp

Do you ever have anything positive to say about anybody?

[AgentR11]

Well, to be honest, I was giving Six the benefit of the doubt; I thought for sure he'd come on here and complain loudly that US space technology is failing horribly and we're all doomed to join the ludites or something. Russia blew up a rocket and you would have thought they'd lost the ability to continue space exploration.

So I guess that proves his rant on the previous Russian ISS resupply was simply anti-Russian trolling as opposed to anything rational.

Thus, I'll say again. Spaceflight is the hardest things humans try to do, bar none. Getting a bucket of water into LEO is an incredibly difficult, risky, and dangerous exercise; it takes the combined efforts of thousands of people, working without error, to make it happen. Every time you launch a rocket, build a rocket, fuel a rocket, climb the scaffolding of a rocket, move parts of a rocket, you have the potential to kill any number of people, poison large chunks of land, destroy buildings, burn fields... Seriously, spaceflight is hard.

Rockets will fail.
Payloads will be lost.
And people will die trying to make it happen.

And that will never stop being true.

[dinopello]

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
Cause still unknown after several thousand engineering-hours of review. Now parsing data with a hex editor to recover final milliseconds.

Perhaps he should try octal. Three bits good, four bits bad...

Whatever happens dollars to donuts he blames it on a supplier.

[Withnail]

Well, to be honest, I was giving Six the benefit of the doubt; I thought for sure he'd come on here and complain loudly that US space technology is failing horribly and we're all doomed to join the ludites or something. Russia blew up a rocket and you would have thought they'd lost the ability to continue space exploration.

I certainly seem to recall several pages of rants about how awful Russian rockets are in contrast to the wonderful American ones, this is true.

[Strummer]

Those tweets are embarrassing...

[Sixstrings]

Some updates:

Why SpaceX will sort out Sunday's snafu faster than NASA ever could
Second stage flaw fingered for fireworks

The accident itself was a disaster, and a very unfortunate birthday present for Elon Musk, who turned 44 that day. It had been hoped he'd celebrate by seeing the first-ever landing of a Falcon rocket on SpaceX's landing barge Of Course I Still Love You. Instead he got fireworks of a different persuasion.

...

The advantages of single-source suppliers
There are going to be a few sleepless nights at SpaceX in the coming days as engineers and designers go through the sensor data piece by piece. Musk is known for working his staff hard and this problem needs to be sorted out quickly.

And it will be, because unlike NASA, SpaceX has a huge advantage in dealing with problems. NASA rockets are put together using machinery from hodgepodge of private contractors, all with their own design and build teams – and their own internal politics, not to mention dealing with national politicians with an axe to grind.

...

The company is packed with highly motivated individuals and has a very flat management structure. Mistakes made are owned up to, and when the issue that caused the loss of the Falcon is identified, you can bet it will be dealt with quickly.

The current SpaceX resupply missions are on hold while this process is worked through. But you're not going to see the kind of dithering that left the Space Shuttles grounded for 32 long months. If I were a betting man I'd guess the next Falcon will fly in 32 weeks, and maybe sooner.

Getting into space is a tough business. There are few rocket systems that haven't had a failure at one time or another. While SpaceX is smarting from this first failure to deliver, the company is going to come back with a vengeance.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/30/why_spacex_will_sort_out_sundays_snafu_faster_than_nasa_ever_could/

The above article says the whole thing will get figured out much faster, because spacex makes all its own parts. But then, I'd say, the problem could be that they make all their own parts -- the failure could be one of those little parts where they decided "hey we can make this," rather than using a supplier. I'm just speculating, obviously.

Overall -- it's a darn shame it happened. Even if they do get back on track "within 32 weeks" -- that's still a massive setback. They had launches booked for years on out.

The company will survive, though. They've go the nasa contracts, they just got USAF approval before this thing happened. Google put in a billion dollars. They can't have more failures though, that's for sure..

National Security After the SpaceX Explosion
Congress’s demand to cease using Russian engines may leave the military dependent on unproven rockets.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB12367224787933994021304581062191281870326

Now that the government has already decided they want to use spacex engines / rockets, and the air force -- what they really ought to do is get nasa more involved and throw more money into it to fix whatever problems there are. Spacex came a long way, just on the super-cheap. The engines aren't all bad, and boosters.. just needs some more work, maybe more funding / less on the cheap, to get better quality / operational control.

They've had a lot of successful launches and deliveries back and forth.. air force does need these rocket engines.. can't just be dependent on Putin, better to figure out the problem, put the money in, fix it.

SpaceX Failure Doesn’t Mean We Should Turn To Russia For Rocket Engines, McCain Says
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/30/spacex-failure-doesnt-mean-we-should-turn-to-russia-for-rocket-engines-mccain-says/

SpaceX flameout hardly heralds failure

The latest flameout spoils that record but shouldn’t materially harm the firm’s prospects. About 5 percent of all rocket launches failed last year.
http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/06/29/spacex-flameout-hardly-heralds-failure/

[AgentR11]

Overall -- it's a darn shame it happened. Even if they do get back on track "within 32 weeks" -- that's still a massive setback. They had launches booked for years on out.

The company will survive, though. They've go the nasa contracts, they just got USAF approval before this thing happened. Google put in a billion dollars. They can't have more failures though, that's for sure..

You still don't get it.

They *WILL* have more failures. Russia will have more failures. NASA will have more failures. ULA will have more failures. EU,China, India, Japan; all are going to blow up more rockets and wreck more landers and screw up more satellites and probes....

Space flight is *hard*. Failure goes with the territory. You have to learn from each failure, and improve based upon that knowledge, just to stay in the game.

There's a reason all that data is recorded; its because they know some of those rockets will go boom, and they'd like to know why.

Maybe after another 10,000 launches of heavy lift rockets we'll know enough to make them about as safe as custom race cars. At a rate of at best 150 per year, I'd say we get to that level of safety a bit before the end of the century, if we're lucky and smart.

SpaceX losing this rocket, at this particular time is inconvenient for NASA and kinda bad for them as a company; but its something that is expected, and you have to be ready to deal with it and move forward.

They've had a lot of successful launches and deliveries back and forth.. air force does need these rocket engines.. can't just be dependent on Putin, better to figure out the problem, put the money in, fix it.

You always say "money". Its *TIME* that is the critical component; it takes a long time to design a new engine, test it, adapt it to its mission. You don't just walk down the street and say, "Hey, I needs me 500 guys and gals to come help build a rocket engine." If money could solve it, SpaceX would have been launching years ago.

Its a living ecosystem of technology; you have to grow and evolve it to a design, know that each engine you make is unique, each rocket you assemble is unique, and you've eliminated or accounted for as many of the variations between versions as you can. It takes years to grow, money's important, but the US Congress can't write a check big enough to cause a new engine to come into existence by the end of the year, or even next year really.

So yeah, both the US and the Russians have discovered that our cultural distaste for each other simply exceeds what we can be comfortable with. Thus, we'll go our separate ways; be largely independent of each other's capabilities; and with any luck, China will keep the waste and duplication from being just over the top stupid. With any luck, this sort of disharmony will also yield a certain degree of durability in technological capability. We'll get less in the long term, but the whole prospect of space exploration won't be so fragile.

[dinopello]

Space flight is *hard*.

It's really only hard because of gravity. If we could figure that out, there's a lot more time we cwould be spending in space.

[Sixstrings]

Space flight is *hard*.

It's really only hard because of gravity. If we could figure that out, there's a lot more time we cwould be spending in space.

Actually.. elon musk once said the hardest thing about rocket science, that he didn't realize before, was just how much of a "plumbing" thing it is.

From the little bit I know, there's a lot of issues with the fuel mixes and then when you get in zero g that effects that, etc.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Space flight is *hard*.

It's really only hard because of gravity. If we could figure that out, there's a lot more time we cwould be spending in space.

Given that:

1). We don't even understand the mechanism for gravity yet, although we do have a good model for its effects. (Witness the "graviton" particle debate -- Einstein said it was space-time curvature, yet we're arguing about particles -- not exactly a resolved issue).

2). Gravity (as far as we know) is totally non-local. We believe all mass exerts gravitational force over any measurable distance. (Which is why I have a BIG problem with the graviton -- not being a physicist, perhaps I am just stupid, but I have problems seeing a tiny (and thus far) indetectible particle corresponding to a force affected by every object with mass in the universe. (So OK, sue me)).

So I wouldn't be looking at an (for example) anti-gravity device to be making space flight "easy" any time soon. By comparison, the seemingly intractible problem of artificial hot fusion seems to be child's play, IMO.