UPDATE: Contingency press conference scheduled for 12:30pm EST- NASA TV said they wouldn't have much to update before then.
Who pays for the expense of these types of failures? Does SpaceX have some sort of 3rd party insurance from a private insurer or are they insured by NASA or another branch of the US gov?
How much is the equipment that got destroyed worth? If this happens multiple times in a short space of time as it seems to have recently does the cost of insurance go up for every launch? Does their analysis of data have any impact of the cost of insuring future launches?
I read that in high school, and it's part of the reason I became an engineer.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." --Teddy Roosevelt
"Because it's there. Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man's desire to conquer the universe." - George Mallory
> The device aboard [today's launch] was actually a backup of the original meteor camera that blew up along with Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket in 2014.
I get the impression looking back that he worked on so many projects he didn't have time to tell us about many.
"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause. That's all we can say with confidence right now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis."
Received telemetry from Dragon after the event - Gwynne (From Conference).
I imagine this was literally an overpressure event, where perhaps something occurred with the 2nd stage tank mixers. (The explosion occurred close to MECO.)
What does this sentence mean?
I wonder what the specs are for the systems they're using for telemetry... must be a gazillion channels at a high rate...
You're supposed to do the fault tree analysis before you build the rocket Elon. The safety critical systems on your car have these done. Or perhaps they never did one for over pressure because it seems implausible for the pressure to increase.
How can you do a fault tree analysis before things go wrong?
Maybe fault tree analysis means something different to you.
According to Wikipedia, it is "a top down, deductive failure analysis in which an undesired state of a system is analyzed using Boolean logic to combine a series of lower-level events."
There needs to be an undesirable (and presumably unforeseen) state to be analysed before you do the fault tree analysis.
Facepalm.
In the last few minutes, over a dozen K-Nex rockets have lifted off and exploded shortly after takeoff.
Sigh.
Not the best introduction to the second Space Age for them.... ah well, we'll try again later.
At least nobody was aboard.
On my 12th birthday, I watched the Challenger explosion happen right in front of my eyes. Me and the rest of the kids from Indian Harbour Beach watched the pieces of the shuttle slowly fall out of the sky. Some speculated that one of the pieces was an escape pod, but one of the kids whose dad worked on the shuttle said there wasn't an escape pod. We just couldn't believe it. It didn't seem possible that with all that focused attention on getting those 7 astronauts safely into space that such a thing could happen.
It was not the best experience for a kid who loved space and science.
However, it didn't turn me off from it, far from it. I ended up going to college for Aeronautical Engineering, before switching to Physics. I ended up as a nuclear physicist and doing a nuclear fusion startup. I still live within sight of the VAB.
If you want your kids to be interested in science, its more important that they be exposed to rockets, science, etc. than that they see it always be successful. Just showing them that it's cool goes a long way. But its much easier if you don't have to mix in questions about life and death, especially at such young ages.
"The crew cabin, made of reinforced aluminum, was a particularly robust section of the shuttle. During vehicle breakup, it detached in one piece and slowly tumbled into a ballistic arc. NASA estimated the load factor at separation to be between 12 and 20 g; within two seconds it had already dropped to below 4 g and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. The forces involved at this stage were likely insufficient to cause major injury."
So, in a way there was a pod...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
(Protip: Only put the humans in the safer rockets, and be sure that they are going to so something useful up there, and anyway explain them that this is dangerous.)
Probably in 20, 50 or 100 years this will be as safe as current planes, but today it's a dangerous task.
This does highlight the difficulty of manufacturing a complex system in small quantities without the opportunity to do an end to end test before use.
* United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin): 0 "outright failures" and 83 successful launches, ~$110 million/launch
* SpaceX: 1 failure and 18 successful launches, $60 million/launch
If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you choose?
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-destroyed...
* United Launch Alliance: $110 million
* SpaceX: $63.5 million ($60 million * 18 total / 17 successful)
So SpaceX saves you $46.5 million per successful launch. If we assume that 1/18 SpaceX launches fail, then in the long run SpaceX wins as long as your typical payload cost is less than $46.5 * 18 = $837 million.
If we assume that the cost to replace the payload for a failed launch is less than the original payload (R&D costs are amortized, so it's likely that building a second payload is much cheaper than designing and building the first payload), then the break-even payload cost can be even higher.
(Not trying to be snarky here, just thinking that the 1/18 vs 0/83 comparison seems moot when you have humans on board)
This is an impressive reliability record, no doubt about it. However, it is fair to note that this is the "current generation" Atlas and Delta. The first Atlas was used during the Mercury program, so they've had more than 50 years of design refinement to get to that point.
This perspective surprises me. From my perspective, I wonder why it matters to me how long SpaceX has had to design their rocket? Wouldn't I prefer the one with 50 years of refinements?
Someone else posted a similar comment. It implies a 'my team is better than yours' competition, rather than a competition over which rocket functions better.
Antares CRS-3 turbopump failure, vehicle FTS was activated and launch vehicle impacted very close to the launch pad. $200 million vehicle lost, approximately $30 million in damage to launch facility.
Loss of the $424 million Glory satellite due to payload fairing separation failure.
*Loss of the $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite due to payload fairing separation failure.
And I don't think the comparison between ULA and SpaceX is necessarily a fair one. ULA is the beneficiary of inheriting solid engineering teams and practices from very mature programs run by large defense corporations. SpaceX is comparatively very young (I feel this makes their overall record even more impressive).
Another commenter said something similar. If I am awarding merit badges, then I agree it's unfair. Otherwise, if I'm looking for someone to launch my satellite, the comparison is perfectly fair (not that 'fair' has anything to do with it).
It heavily depends on the cost of the asset. If a satellite costs close to 1bn, it worth to use $110/launch but more reliable rocket.
Many organizations don't have the spare time and capacity to afford all of that; they or their project may simply be done.
The first thing you do is be very glad that you have a choice. Then you can start price shopping. If there is only one domestic option, then you either pay what the sole-source wants, or you pursue international options if those are available to you, many times they will not be.
edit: If I had read down further, I would have seen a discussion about this very question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9793697
e: On the upside, happy birthday Elon, I hope you enjoyed your really awesome fireworks!
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3beu7w/rspacex_crs7...
Update: Looks like the explosion was triggered by Range Control in response to non nominal flight
23:44
23:52
Hopefully Musk is learning some humility.
[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russi...
Perhaps he's gained some humility since then; I'm still very inspired by him regardless...
I wish the best SpaceX and hope they will make space flight affordable for many commercial and consumer applications.
Growing up in the 80s, I became quite bitter about the pace of technological change. Sure, personal computers were nifty, but the heroic age of spaceflight was really what the future should've been about. That age had ended with Apollo 17, three years before I was born. Everything since then looked like a shambolic shuffle into a new dark age.
One insane coincidence in the late 80s gave me some remarkable perspective on this. I was taking the train down the coast of California, around the horn of Vandenberg Airforce Base. The train was the only place from which civilians could see the Vandenberg Launch Complex, including the SLC-6 Shuttle launch site[1]. Nasa had spent over $4 Billion preparing it for shuttle launches which would never come. The Challenger disaster had ended all hopes for that; the complex had been mothballed and was already starting to rust. Seeing this made my 13-year-old-self angry. I started ranting to the poor gentleman sitting next to me about how my grandmother hand grown up with horses and buggies yet got to see men walking on the moon; my generation, on the other hand, had seen nothing but decline.
As I ranted, the gentleman slumped in his seat. At the end of my rant, he gave a long sigh and said "tell me about it." Then he introduced himself. He was Deke Slayton, a Mercury and Apollo astronaut[2]. He'd retired from NASA in 1982, frustrated with its bureaucracy, and tried to start a private space-launch company. It hadn't gone well.[3] I wish I could say that our conversation gave me hope for the future, but it didn't.
Later, my hopes were raised by the DC-X[4], then dashed by the subsequent (insanely corrupt) X-33 fiasco, and the failure of Beal Aerospace[5]. Raised again when I stood on the flight line at Mojave and watched SpaceShipOne take its first space shot[6], then dashed again when that program seemed to fly into molasses. Throughout, there was the sense that the future was possible, but by no means inevitable. There was no guarantee that it would arrive in my lifetime.
But now here it is. This time it's real, this time it'll work, and nobody will have to get nailed to anything. I couldn't be happier!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Co...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deke_Slayton
3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevefrancis/sets/721576293246...
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
Dragon 2 would be able to escape just fine, though. Cargo dragon could _technically_ survive if didn't get blown up too much.
It appears to be intact after the explosion. You can see it detach and drift back in the video at about 2:35. https://twitter.com/nextlaunch/status/615191061636481024
Unfortunately, parachutes on the cargo version aren't armed during launch (would be bad if they accidentally deployed) so it'll have smashed into the ocean and broken up.
I hope they get everything figured out and get back on track soon. Best wished.
Just saw this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24cZYMsdrq0) video. It looks like trouble started near the top of the rocket. Also, heard the Air Force Terminated the flight.
Anyway, we will see.
So that's the second in a row ISS resupply mission that failed, isn't it? First was with the Progress in late April. How does this affect the ISS plans, does anyone now?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-destroyed...
Will their customers agree for them to add landing legs to their future missions? Will their manned flights be delayed? How about their certification to launch for the USAF.
Also I'm not sure but, did I see the Dragon spacecraft eject?
2) The legs have nothing to do with it, based on what we know (and it's very unlikely, too). Manned flight certification could be impacted, e.g. assessment period will be extended, but insignificantly (assuming they find a cause and the next launches go well). USAF certification will probably not be impacted since they reached the minimum amount of successful flights (assuming there are no other rules like "no launch failure in last X flights").
3) No, the rocket was probably terminated, i.e. explosives fired to break up the malfunctioning rocket. So you probably saw the debris.
http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3b27hk/rspacex_crs7_...
that reminds me that Elon Musk said that Antares rockets are junk, so now his own spacecrafts are exploding. Space tech has its problems. Maybe that will teach him to be a bit more humble.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/10/iss-bound-gear-...
When a failure does happen, nobody goes around celebrating it, whether they're competitors or not, and honestly I believe that includes Elon Musk. I believe that on a human level, but even on a business level it's bad, because it reduces public faith in space transportation generally. Nobody likes to see this happen.
:(
My only pessimistic thought in all this is that companies like Space X simply do not have the funds necessary to keep absorbing catastrophic loss and will just give up.
Point being, if Sony had kept going with that incredibly sophisticated robotics tech (for the time) they would be an industry leader right now at a time when robotics is about to explode. Did Sony run out of funds? No. They abandoned the project because of fear for stockholder repercussions. That's what I meant by that comment. Sometimes stockholder flash back is enough to abandon a really great idea.
And the NasaTV stream is still going with updates: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
Several interesting questions came to mind though, especially given the successful test of the Dragon 2's thrusters, which is whether or not an inflight abort could have saved the cargo. I understand that isn't practical in the general case but in the specific case of a Dragon cargo capsule, I'm wondering if they can fly one with the super draco thrusters. And have that one do the in flight abort sequence at some point in the future.
And given a rocket at mach 1+ what is the velocity of the explosion wavefront? In particular if you know that the back end of the rocket has just exploded, how many milliseconds do you have before the shockwave catches up to the front of the rocket? Could you perform a disconnect and burn of the super draco package to put the Dragon capsule far enough ahead of the shock wave to survive it?
I'm very much pro-space exploration, and I thought it was funny. It's just a tongue-in-cheek joking reference as if this was a huge game of lawn-darts.
Lighten up, and stop 'guessing' about what 'camp' people are a part of as part of public discourse. It makes you look rude, presumptive, and (possibly worst of all) wrong.
Are they looking to relight and land today? They usually do for geo or ISS missions.
https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t51.28...
Edit: Go it...
Post-Launch Booster Recovery
Okay, that's the routine stuff dealt with. I know we're all here
to see what happens to the first stage! Following stage separation
approximately 3 minutes into the launch, the first stage
will manoeuvre and orient itself to conduct a post-mission
landing test attempt on an autonomous drone ship named
"Of Course I Still Love You".
Initial thoughts are that the main difference is now we have HD video and for some reason the controllers remain silent after the explosion... Why the silence? There used to be at least some reaction from the controllers. From an "oh no" to "obviously a major malfunction"... no sh*t Sherlock...
When something like this happens, all the conversations about what happened are being held on comm nets that aren't broadcast. Believe me, the controllers are talking to each other, gathering and sequestering data, etc. But they aren't doing it on the net that's broadcast to the public.
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s Thanks xur17!
But nevertheless its just guessing from me and im no expert.
Edit: They just called it, they had an "anomaly."
There are several ways of supplying the ISS, though the very reliable Russian Progress (which also did have a failure recently – not a good year for cargo shipments to the ISS) is certainly the workhorse in terms of cargo shipments. (Though there is also the Japanese HTV and the – also recently failed – Cygnus.)
Any one or even couple failures of cargo vehicles in a row can’t do much to the supply situation. There are multiple redundancies built into the process. However, since really no one wants to abandon the ISS (just deserting it and coming back a couple months later is always risky with something as complex as the ISS that does require constant upkeep) that better be the case.
There will probably be quite some rescheduling and changing of plans happening. (I know that after the last cargo failure three people actually got to stay up in space a couple days longer, for whatever complicated scheduling related changes in plans.)
Space really is hard.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk had already started thinking seriously about that phase of the colonization project.
Might want to check out the SpaceX stream next time.
Edit: the SpaceX website doesn't appear to have a recording of their live stream available.
We had a blast!
Edit: Here's a Titan 1, which was fueled with RP-1 and LOX exploding on the pad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzigaTSPZY
