Explosion at SpaceX SLC-40 Pad (Update)
Video by uslaunchreport.com
Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2016
Marc’s update: Friday evening SpaceX provided an update on the explosion at their Cape Canaveral SLC-40 launch pad. My interpretation of the statement leads me to think that as long as the investigation reveals no issues related to the Falcon 9 itself, that SpaceX intends on going forward with launches from their two other pads at Vandenberg Air Force Base and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
SpaceX Anomaly Statement September 2, 6:45pm EDT
“As for the Launch Pad itself, our teams are now investigating the status of SLC-40. The pad clearly incurred damage, but the scope has yet to be fully determined. We will share more data as it becomes available. SpaceX currently operates 3 launch pads – 2 in Florida and 1 in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. SpaceX’s other launch sites were not affected by yesterday’s events. Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base is in the final stages of an operational upgrade and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center remains on schedule to be operational in November. Both pads are capable of supporting Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. We are confident the two launch pads can support our return to flight and fulfill our upcoming manifest needs.”
NASA Statement on SpaceX Incident, NASA
“We remain confident in our commercial partners and firmly stand behind the successful 21st century launch complex that NASA, other federal agencies, and U.S. commercial companies are building on Florida’s Space Coast. Today’s incident — while it was not a NASA launch — is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but our partners learn from each success and setback.”
Keith’s update: Official Statement from SpaceX: “SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today’s static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries.”
Marc’s note: The business repercussions for SpaceX and its clients are numerous, it’s a cascading effect.
The Amos-6 launch was critical to Spacecom who had been acquired by Beijing Xinwei Technology Group and the sale was contingent on a successful Amos-6 launch. Iridium next-generation constellation has already been delayed and will be delayed further. Spaceflight’s SHERPA with it’s payload of 89 small satellites will be delayed yet again. ISS cargo resupply schedules will now have to be modified. The list goes on.
One of the questions that immediately comes to mind, was this a pad issue or a rocket issue? If it’s not a rocket issue, that might ease people’s mind somewhat. If it’s a rocket issue, that would further complicate things. We won’t get answers today, but for SpaceX and its customers, we can only hope the investigation reveals an issue that can be easily identified and corrected so they can return to flight soon.
Keith’s update: If SpaceX stays grounded for a longer period i.e. months, it is likely that the first Falcon Heavy launch, mentioned as being planned for the end of 2016, will almost certainly slip into 2017. If that delay grows then there is a chance that the 2018 Dragon mission (on a Falcon Heavy) to Mars might be delayed to the next launch window in 2020. Then again SpaceX could find out what happened tomorrow afternoon and fix the problem.
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It’s at LC-40 so it was definitely the Falcon 9 that blew up during a static test firing. They were preparing to launch an Israeli communication satellite on Saturday.
DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This sounds really bad. Any explosion will take a long time to fix. Maybe they can switch to the new pad. Just when you think things are going smooth. Boom! I told you so that liquid fuel rockets should only be used as a last resort. Solid rockets are safer and more reliable. NASA start stacking those 12′ d. segments for a booster for Dragon or Cygnus.
This isn’t about switching pads. This is an existential catastrophe for SpaceX.
(and all know that I am amongst SpaceXs greatest boosters)
SpaceX has delt with a number of mishaps and Musk has been clear that more might occur. We will have to wait and see how they respond.
They have a human launch ahead (!) among other important launches. This will be a hand grenade in their operation, particularly after the loss last year.
Tesla and Solar City are in financial free-fall and this will be a hammer blow.
Let’s don’t over-react until we know what happened, Yale. If on the one hand a design issue is the cause then yes, existential could be correct, although still a reach.
On the other hand a rocket pad is an incredibly dangerous place with highly reactive materials in close proximity to one another. This could be an accident.
Let me be clear. SpaceX is (was?) scheduled to launch humans next year. TWO rockets have exploded. Customers have already sought rides on other launchers. SpaceX is burning cash. Musk is in desperation mode from the cash crunch at Tesla/Solarcity (including a $1/2 billion payment coming due). see:
https://www.google.com/?ion…
As Marc said above:
Marc’s note: The business repercussions for SpaceX and its clients are numerous, it’s a cascading effect.
The Amos-6 launch was critical to Spacecom who had been acquired by Beijing Xinwei Technology Group and the sale was contingent on a successful Amos-6 launch. Iridium next-generation constellation has already been delayed and will be delayed further. Spaceflight’s SHERPA with it’s payload of 89 small satellites will be delayed yet again. ISS cargo resupply schedules will now have to be modified. The list goes on.
This is VERY VERY bad for SpaceX. Remember the long knives are out from their competitors and enemies in government.
My bet is that it was caused by an accident with the late-fill supercold LOX, which they have faced criticism.
Two rockets have exploded, but the cause of this one going boom is most likely ground support equipment, until we hear otherwise, that seems like a fair assumption to make.
You are panicking and are jumping to conclusions.
Late-loading the cold LOX has been done without problems on the past six launches.
Not panicking, it is just that I track the business/financial/government sides of space enterprises and this is far more serious than the cargo flight explosion.
Why? We don’t even know the cause yet. Sure it affects the manifest, and that’s bad enough. But we just don’t know. And as to the future. Mr. Huntsman above is correct.
I think he means that many corporate executives and government officials have a tendency to base decisions on image and reputation, since they aren’t trained to follow the technical details. I don’t think that’s a good way to do business, but it happens. So the explosion makes SpaceX look bad, regardless of the cause or what they do to fix it. That isn’t good, but I don’t think it will have too severe an impact.
Looks like it might be the LOX loading – which has garnered attacks in the past.
Elon Musk ✔ @elonmusk
Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.
12:07 PM – 1 Sep 2016
1,611 1,611 Retweets 2,215 2,215 likes
Again, they have had six flights with no problems during LOX loading, which shut up most of the critics that sprouted up when the first two didn’t go smoothly. Until we know more about what happened there’s not much point in panicking. It says right there in the tweet, “Cause still unknown.”
I agree we shouldn’t jump to conclusions but the “six flights with no problems..” argument really doesn’t work if there is a root cause that has not been addressed.
Very true. Yes, it’s not good jumping to conclusions, we’ll know more when we know more.
By definition, everything has been done without problem for the previous X launches until one thing does become a problem. Just because cold LOX hasn’t been an issue before does not mean it couldn’t be the culprit this time.
Very true. My main point is that it’s not good jumping to conclusions, we’ll know more when we know more.
Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are panicking. You should tone it down a little. Personal attacks on people you disagree with do not build your credibility. Only the presentation of facts does.
[laughs] This is what HD was replying to:
“This is an existential catastrophe for SpaceX.”
“This will be a hand grenade in their operation”
“Tesla and Solar City are in financial free-fall and this will be a hammer blow.”
“Musk is in desperation mode”
Have you read Yale’s posts? He is predicting the demise of SpaceX’s future plans, which to me sounds very much like he is panicking. That’s an observation, not a personal attack. Yale is a long-time commenter here, I’m more surprised at his tone of imminent doom than anything else.
Err, I might be missing something, but isn’t the key phrase “late-loading”? When do they load the fuel? Is it super-cooled when it is pumped in or actively cooled later? Because, when you are talking about a 66 K cryogenic, sitting around for a couple of days, in August in Florida, does not strike me as a “late load”.
They weren’t loading fuel for the launch on Saturday. They were loading fuel for the test firing of the first stage engines that was planned to happen a few minutes after the explosion happened.
LOX and RP-1 loading starts about 35 minutes before launch. It is cooled prior to loading, and the primary reason for the late loading is to avoid it warming up while it’s in the rocket.
Was this payload insured, and if so, was the insurance policy in effect for this failure? If the boys from Lloyds had real skin in the game, SpaceX’s cost advantage might be at risk from insurance rate hikes. The CRS-7 failure didn’t have much impact since it was a non-insured government mission, but the financial implications may be more painful with this one.
According to the latest info, the insurance will not cover this.
launch insurance won’t. However the manufacturer likely had this insured. I believe the term is “Marine Cargo Insurance” even if it isn’t marine cargo at all. Basically it covers the manufacturer until the object, in this case a satellite, is actually bought.
Payload likely insured by manufacturer rather than operator as ownership usually passes on at time of launch.
I think insurance companies are smarter than that. Their premiums aren’t based on what they lost, but what the odds of a loss are. If the last launch failure had been commercial and insured, but not through Lloyds, do you think Lloyds would have ignored it? Just because it wasn’t their money involved? Somehow, I doubt that. Similarly, I’d expect them to pay attention to failures involving government (non-insured) payloads.
Complacent thought. Of course it is an accident. Are you thinking “accidents” cannot be prevented, or avoided?
Point taken.
But I would also point out that there remain probably hundreds of unknown failure points, places where the chance of disaster is quite low but not zero; as the industry matures each of these will be uncovered.
Moreover surely systemic issues remain unknown and unresolved. Who knew, for instance, that exposing passenger jet airplane to cycles of pressurization and release would result in materials fatigue? Nobody. Airplanes crashed.
More data is needed.
No it isn’t. They still have Vandenberg launch site and LC-39A will be pressed into service. They may lose a few launches that can find alternate LVs and that need to be put up ASAP, but they probably won’t lose too many.
If it’s a GSE problem, this is a couple month’s delay. If it was a rocket problem, more like 6 months but this isn’t a killer for SpaceX, not by a very long shot.
It isn’t the technical issues. SpaceX has been skating on very thin ice and this is a tremendous shock to their status (and their very stretched out pocketbook). This second failure will deeply reverberate. Will they close down, no. Will there be a disastrous impact on their plans, yes.
DAMMIT TO HELL.
I don’t think they / we can say “disaster” just yet.
LC-40 looks like it will need to be substantially repaired, but that’s going to be mitigated by LC-39A coming online, which it was planned to do soon anyway. LC-39A is where all the NASA crew launches are going to be from, so that portion of things is OK. Vandenberg pad is OK, 4 of the upcoming 10 launches on the manifest are to be from there.
Given that the explosion happend about 3 minutes prior to, and not during, the hot fire means -most likely- the issue is with GSE equipment or procedures. That’s a lot easier to fix than an issue with the rocket itself. If so, we could see a return to flight in November or December. A couple months won’t spell disaster for SpaceX’s plans. If the issue is with the rocket, we could see a ~6 month delay like we did after the CRS-7 failure. Half a year isn’t enough to spell disaster for SpaceX either.
You are looking at a rocket blowing the pad to pieces and ‘you cant say disaster just yet’ ?
Cognitive dissonance. Rockets blowing up when you are trying to establish a reliability track record is bad. One in roughly a year is bad bad. Russian level reliability or less.
My comment is in reply to Yale’s hysterics that all of SpaceX’s future plans have now fallen into disarray.
Cognitive dissonance has nothing at all to do with this, read the context before making an ill-informed comment.
And i think you are not seeing the forest between the trees. In the big picture, it does not matter if the kaboom was due to human error, GSE design fault or the rocket.
A failed launch is a failed launch, and it takes years .. no, decades, at current launch rates to absorb this in reliability record.
By just providing assurance to everyone that they are B player in reliability and blow stuff up on a regular cadence, their long term plans _will be_ in disarray.
And I think you are jumping to conclusions. More data needed.
Not hysterics. Their reliability in schedule and performance was already under stress, and they have a complex sequence of interrelated launches, severely time constrained, which is likely to derail, and feed the efforts of there enemies, just as musk is fighting a typhoon of chaos in his major efforts – Tesla and Solar City.
Prior to this, SpaceX had been launching smoothly. Average time between launches was 25.88 days.
prime incubator for complacency
I don’t know about that, seeing as they had just recovered from a launch failure, and they were ramping up their launch rate to prep for the end of the year.
The launch rate will likely be one of the major areas that will be looked at. Did launch fever contribute to this incident?
I dunno, man. While you’ve made several good points, it looks like your little Martian avatar is fogging up his bubble from hyperventilating. I think maybe you should switch from your usual triple espresso to, say, tea….. green…… decaf.
Look, I hope all goes well. I was mellow as a Barry White recording after the cargo flight explosion, Yeah, s… happens. You learn and move on. But another catastrophic failure a year later and just on the cusp of maximum pressure from scheduling for FH, Crew flights, massive delayed backlog, political pressure, financial strain, etc., make s this a real shock to their operation.
It’s going to take months, maybe a year to repair the pad. Pad 39A wasn’t going to be ready until January at the earliest, and SpaceX is saying that needing to work on two pads is going to make progress on 39A slower.
Vandenberg cannot be used for quite a number of their launches, including any to the ISS.
And all of that is true if they find the cause of problem and have a solution TODAY.
SpaceX won’t be launching anything for months AT BEST. Spacex’s future is now a question mark and will be until the problem is found, may still be AFTER the problem is found… and will be long delayed in even the best scenario.
This is the worst thing that has ever happened to them.
If that’s not having your plans be in disarray, what the heck IS?
Polar launches are done from Vandenberg, I know that ISS launches aren’t done from there.
I know SpaceX won’t be launching for several months, at best. I’ve said so in several posts.
Their plans have been delayed, but it’s not an “existential crisis” as Yale claims.
Hmm. I would say loss of the Falcons down in the deep Pacific were far more dangerous to the company.
I don’t count the first failures because if SpaceX had gone under after a few failures before achieving any success, that would have just been an underfunded startup, something that happens all the time… not an operational, profitable corporation suffering a big setback.
No way. Nobody except us heard about the launch failures in the Pacific. The failure on Thursday had a viral video and coverage on the nightly news.
See my comment to Michael S. below (or above, depending on how you sort).
If this a ground issue, it’s at least at a good time for LC-39A. They should be able to incorporate fixes more easily than if it were already up and operating.
I also pick a return to flight in a few months, regardless of the shape SLC40 is in.
From SpaceX today: “Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base is in the final stages of an operational upgrade and Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center remains on schedule to be operational in November. We are confident the two launch pads can support our return to flight and fulfill our upcoming manifest needs.”
Vandenberg launch site is close to worthless. Last time I looked less than 25% of the Falcon launches were going to be out of VAFB You can’t simply move Florida launches to California.
I never suggested launches could be moved. Vandenberg is NOT worthless, polar launches are done from there.
You can’t move the launches, but SpaceX has three launches from Vandenberg planed for this year and two more in early 2017. I may be wrong, but I thought the bottleneck for their launch rate was production, not availability of a pad. They have been launching at a rate of about once per month this year. So, with a return to flight in November or December, and one launch per month out of Vandenberg, their flight rates won’t be slacking off until next spring (except for the delay from now to return to flight.) They have enough of a backlog for polar launches to keep them busy. That’s eight or nine months to fix SLC-40. Admittedly, they won’t be increasing their flight rates (which they need to do) but they also aren’t dead in the water.
They’re still a long way away from being able to use LC-39A for launches. This will put an end to SpaceX launches from here for a while. They can still launch from Vandenberg AFB in California.
Delta II, fourth most reliable rocket in history (after Atlas V, Delta IV, and Saturn which are liquid fueled and have no launch failures) had one of its rare failures when its solid fuel strap on exploded: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Similar for Titan IV: http://www.military.com/vid…
And Challenger.
Go back in the archives for a full, my reason for solids. I will repeat though. That was a crack caused by dropping. Shuttle SRB had a 100% success. Challenger was a strut burned through by a leak. Thrust was good. The strut failed not the SRB, the way I look at it. A single stick would not have that problem. Perhaps it is enough for you not to use them. Not I. Don’t know how fast ATK could get a SRB ready though. I wish that NASA had chosen Planet Space Athena-3 for COTS. Two different systems SpaceX liquid and solid, not 2 of the same.
In the Challenger disaster, the SRB burned through the side of the casing. The SRB failed. No struts were involved.
True, but if you had a single SRB stack would the failure have been catastrophic? The loss of the orbiter was caused by the strut failing and the SRB hitting the main fuel tank which ruptured.
Possibly not, though certainly the burn would not have been optimal. Because of the burn-through, the internal pressure was lower than normal and the SRB was not producing the amount of thrust it should have. At best the mission might still make orbit, but a lower orbit than intended.
I just see it as better to not make orbit then to have the whole stack go up in flames. And if you are worried about the G forces using SRBs, do not use them for crew. I don’t know why, as with SLS, there are those who insist on putting crew and cargo on the same stack ever the failure of STS – two totally different mission requirements and risk tolerances.
SRB burn-through could cause a structural failure and break the SRB in half. Wind shear could bend the SRB and make the breach worse, then kaboom – which is what happened on Challenger.
That’s the first I heard that wind shear was involved early in the progression of events.
“At approximately 37 seconds, Challenger encountered the first of several high-altitude wind shear conditions, which lasted until about 64 seconds. The wind shear created forces on the vehicle with relatively large fluctuations. These were immediately sensed and countered by the guidance, navigation and control system.
The steering system (thrust vector control) of the Solid Rocket Booster responded to all commands and wind shear effects. The wind shear caused the steering system to be more active than on any previous flight.”
…
“16. The leak was again clearly evident as a flame at approximately 58 seconds into the flight. It is possible that the leak was continuous but unobservable or non-existent in portions of the intervening period. It is possible in either case that thrust vectoring and normal vehicle response to wind shear as well as planned maneuvers reinitiated or magnified the leakage from a degraded seal in the period preceding the observed flames. The estimated position of the flame, centered at a point 307 degrees around the circumference of the aft field joint, was confirmed by the recovery of two fragments of the right Solid Rocket Booster.
a. A small leak could have been present that may have grown to breach the joint in flame at a time on the order of 58 to 60 seconds after lift off.
b. Alternatively, the O-ring gap could have been resealed by deposition of a fragile buildup of aluminum oxide and other combustion debris. This resealed section of the joint could have been disturbed by thrust vectoring, Space Shuttle motion and flight loads induced by changing winds aloft.”
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/…
“However, some experts believe that the O-ring failure, and as a result the Challenger accident, would not have occurred without the high wind shear.
The puffs of smoke originating from the aft field joint stopped roughly 3 seconds after liftoff. No further indication of trouble with the joint was seen until the plume at one minute into the flight. What happened during that interval?
One leading theory is that aluminum oxide particles, a byproduct generated by the solid rocket motor combustion, helped plug the gap in the joint. This could have prevented the hot gas from escaping around the failed O-rings during the first minute of flight.
Dr. Mark Salita, who modeled O-ring erosion for Morton Thiokol, wrote that the wind shear – the “worst wind shear experienced by any STS flight up to that date” – shimmied the segmented booster case enough to dislodge the particles that had been temporarily plugging the joint gap. Salita believes that without this wind shear “the damaged but plugged O-rings probably would have survived the 120 seconds of booster operation without leaking” and the accident would have been avoided.”
https://weather.com/science…
I actually forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.
The SRB field joint failed at ignition, was temporarily sealed by debris, and finally opened up again at around T+60 secs. The strut failure was a consequence of the SRB leak. It was absolutely an SRB failure.
And those reasons are not valid now or back then. Solid are suboptimal for space launch. They are neither more safer or more reliable.
When solids fail, they often fail quite spectacularly. Look at the size of the launch escape system needed for Orion. It needs to be that big to escape chunks of flying solid rocket fuel set loose by a SRB case rupture. On the SpaceX launch where a Merlin failed (fairly spectacularly for a liquid engine), the other engines continued to operate and the payload made it to orbit. That would *not* have happened if a solid rocket booster case ruptured on, say, an Atlas V.
@saturn13 The Challenger explosion was caused by a leak from a SRB because it was very cold at launch. A rubber seal between segments was rigid because of the cold and when the SRB segments flexed because of the rigors of launch the seal could not contain the leak. The tragedy happened because the launch was allowed at a temperature below design specifications. So, while the SRB didn’t not have 100% success this explosion occurred because of human error and not faulty design of the SRB.
🙁
Significant damage to the Strongback:
The major problem I see is that they need to understand fully the cause of this failure. This is a major event and now they have lost customer cargo on top of the launch pad. They need full accident investigation and successful RCA, ie fully identify the causal chain to move forward, especially for manned flights. Not sure what the impacts will be for short term commercial payload missions, but it can’t be good. The pad needs to be rebuilt and recertified and that won’t happen overnight either. At a minimum this is a major schedule hit.
Musk and his casual attitude towards these types of events continues to make me lose confidence in him and Spacex. There will be failures no matter what as long as we continue to fly on fireworks, but his cavalier behavior doesn’t help. Probably time for him to give another speech about how it’s never been done before. Too bad.
Somebody get us the material to build a space elevator already. **pipe dream I know**
I don’t think he has ever been casual in his attitude. He is about as type-A as one can be without stroking out.
Having had professional relationships with some high level folks that went to Spacex early on and then left Musk behind, gives me an insight you probably don’t have. My opinion also comes from spending the majority of my professional career in manned spaceflight, so I am critical in a way others may not be, simply because they don’t know the innards of the beast so to speak. Mr. Musk definitely takes the cake when it comes to the whole Tony Stark persona- maverick to a tee. He says and does irresponsible things on a regular basis, usually because he is a salesman, but I don’t excuse that sort of stuff because it is insulting to the people that bother to do things right.
Some of the public things that bother me are his views on process and his opinion on testing. Another is his continuous claims of first private company to do ex A, B, C. Those items alone speak volumes for me. Manned spaceflight is going to have accidents, but I honestly expect his company to be overly risky and have more, unless NASA forces them to actually stick to the man rated standards. Having left the industry I don’t know if that is/ going to be the case, but I certainly hope so for the sake of the future crews that will test and fly the Spacex vehicles. I also know some of those fine human beings that will do that will ultimately have to accept those risks and they also do that willingly. I just hope they have the best understanding of the true risk and not some napkin math that gets them to 1/1000000 without any basis in reality.
Don’t get me wrong either, I think Spacex and the other new spaceflight companies are good for the industry, but there are new risks that come with that growth and Mr. Musk is most definitely overly dismissive of those things in my view.
Just one minor nit. NASA don’t have Man rated standards that one can refer to. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the mixing of crew and large segmented SRBs.
Musk may appear casual in his attitude but I think it is more a case of the fact he understands these setbacks are going to happen from time to time and that what is needed is first and foremost to ensure human safety when they do happen and secondly is a clear calm reaction to prevent as far as possible the same problem occurring again and this is best achieved by simply being prepared and accepting that things do go wrong when you are dealing with rockets carrying thousands of tonnes of highly explosive fuel!
Sounds like the explosion occurred at 9:07AM for a test firing at 9:15AM. It may have been a fire with the ground support system that caused the rocket to explode and not a fault with the rocket. Other than redesigning the ground system and rebuilding the pad it may not cause a big disruption. I would guess SpaceX flights resume in 3 months with it taking 6 to 9 months to rebuild Pad 40.
Edit: Maybe at least a year to rebuild all of the Pad 40 support buildings?
This is a pain for Space-X however people should realize that Space-X are pushing very hard, they have made more progress towards low cost high rate, high payload capacity launches in the past 5 years than has been made in the history of spaceflight, by their own admission there will be problems like this along the way, what needs to happen is calm analysis of the problem, not media (and forum) hyped tales of doom and gloom for Space-X. If anything this simply proves that Space-X human safeguards work, launching rockets is potentially always going to have the risk of catastrophic failure and the most important thing is to ensure crew (flight or ground) safety which seems to have been the case here. Lets hope this is sorted out quickly and efficiently and that Space-X can get back to doing what it does best ASAP.
SpaceX faces a bigger problem than fixing a simple design flaw that caused Item A to fail, causing Item B to explode. They may determine the direct cause of failure tomorrow, but this isn’t a field where you can simply correct yesterday’s failures to launch safely tomorrow. How many other potential failure modes exist that nobody knows about yet? There needs to be a serious internal investigation and, potentially, serious change in how they do business before they even consider putting humans on top of that rocket.
“How many other potential failure modes exist that nobody knows about yet? There needs to be a serious internal investigation and, potentially, serious change in how they do business before they even consider putting humans on top of that rocket.”
Unfortunately launching rockets is difficult and dangerous, with every launch there are millions of possible failure modes and you will truly only know what they are when they happen, you could spend the next hundred years investigating every potential cause of failure this is a problem NASA has suffered with, lengthy, costly investigations into how to improve safety but at then end of the day the accidents still happened, the most important thing is to make sure that whatever happens the safety of human life is the priority and Space-X seem to be taking this seriously, the Dragon LAS will be one of the best Launch Abort Systems on any crewed vehicle, I would rather they make that a priority than trying to do the impossible and account for every possible failure scenario.
Investigation is important as far as finding out what happened, which SpaceX typically finds out quickly, and in correcting the actual problem in the design or procedure, which SpaceX also does quickly. The long and extremely detailed investigations typical of NASA have not prevented future accidents, nor have unrealistic requirements for redundancy.
And, often, the lengthy investigations don’t really add more information. Crosswinds during the Challenger 51L launch, for example, have been mentioned in this blog. The detailed investigation could only conclude “maybe”, and that there were insufficient data to say whether or not crosswinds were a contributing factor.
The worst (or funniest) example I’m aware of is the JPL investigation over the loss of the Mars Observer spacecraft. Although they identified one cause as more probably than others, they also identified half a dozen other potential causes. All identified causes, including the most probable one, were considered unlikely. Given the limited data, the report stated that, “the post-facto probability of failure is unity.”
ROTFL
By pushing very hard to the point of catastrophic failures, they have actually capped their flight rate. Ariane launched more than they did in 2015, and depends on how this plays out may do so this year, too.
Yes but equally only by putting in the effort do you end up doing things like landing your first stage on a floating barge. It is very easy to sit on your laurels like so many old space companies making small increases in efficiency and flight rate but as has been proved over the last 60 years that doesn’t change the game, which is what Space-X is attempting to do, if all you want to do is sit counting the cash steadily coming in then certainly do as ULA, Arianne etc do, if you have a dream as Elon Musk has you have to push the envelope even if things sometimes go wrong.
Maybe it’s the focus on parlor tricks like landing on a barge, instead of improving the reliability of the system after the last launch failure, that led to today’s problem?
You can attempt to improve reliability for ever but it simply won’t prevent every possible failure scenario, this was by the look of it a totally different problem to the last in-flight failure (possibly ground equipment related). The barge landings are anything but a parlor trick, Space-X now has several flown stages back on the ground, if anything will help to improve the overall reliability of the F9 its examining flown hardware to see what might be running very close to the limit. I have a lot of faith in Space-X’s way of working they are trying to make everything as safe as possible for those involved while accepting that space is hard, and problems and accidents happen.
The big thing will be if this is found to be a quality control issue like the failure last year. Musk has reduced costs by reducing testing and using less labor. If those measures caused the accidents then perhaps he’s cut costs too much.
Yes I agree in principle, but the problem is weighing quality control against fiscal reality, and that happens in many businesses it’s a very fine line and you don’t always get it right but every time things go wrong you gain some more knowledge as to where you need to draw those lines. The main thing in both accidents no one was killed, showing Space-X has good human safety protocols in place.
With this balance, it speaks volumes to have common configurations for cargo and crew to find that unknown unknown, hopefully having failures with lower class payload (e.g. propellant).
Range safety protocols are established by the range, not SpaceX…you are using a requirement (if you will) of their lease as a big fat red herring.
Yes but Space-X has to have it’s protocols that ensure their employees understand and follow range safety protocols. Just because they didn’t set the actual rules themselves doesn’t make their own internal protocols any less important, most companies safety protocols involve following regulations set by someone else and most deaths etc. occur because a company’s internal procedures are not adequate and allow circumventing of external regulations.
Mars passengers by 2024
Is it just me or does it look like they didn’t N2 purge the fuel line / tanks prior to filling opening the door for a static discharge to blow the whole stack up? They should have crazy grounding though.. or you think they just use flow velocity to avoid sparks and don’t purge (like we do on pipelines)?
The explosion occurred at the upper part of the 2nd stage. Could be a leak somewhere. What do they usually do with the 2nd stage engines when conducting static fire test? Are they turned on also?
No offense, MLGB, but you just made me spit out my soda. Once the 2nd stage has been mated to the primary stack…then no, the 2nd stage is not also static test fired. If it were, the results would be at least as spectacular as you see in the current video. The 2nd stage Merlin engine is static test fired during development and testing phase. Some one with more knowledge of Space X QC and Test procedures will need to chime in on whether every 2nd stage flight engine is static test fired prior to delivery to the Cape, and stack integration.
Hmm..You may be on to something here . I’d like to see that 2nd stage test. Who knows maybe that’s what they were doing
The rocket would blow up if they tested the second stage. Seriously.
You guys are trying to be funny or what? lol. Ok, I should not have said turned on, which can have other nonsensical interpretations than I intended. What I meant is is the tank filled, electronics turned on, control systems engaged, etc. Any idea?
Well, it’s safe to assume they were doing something. There are some fuels or oxidizers that just explode whenever they feel like it, but RP-1 and oxygen aren’t on that list. Something was almost certainly happening around the top of the launch vehicle, in order to initiate the event. But what they were doing is far less clear. Perhaps even nothing at the time, but with the second stage tanks already filled.
That’s an interesting issue, and someone else mentioned “launch fever” (rushing to launch on time and with minimal time between previous launches.) Doing something with the upper stage at the same time as preparing for a lower stage static firing isn’t inherently a bad idea. Doing several things at once can really cut down the time required to prepare the vehicle. This is the normal practice in both civil and military aviation. Airlines can turn around a plane in under half an hour because they simultaneously refuel, unload/load cargo, disembark/embark passengers, fix mechanical glitches and do routine maintenance. That isn’t being in a rush, it’s just being efficient.
The trick is to make sure those simultaneous tasks don’t interfere with each other. If they do, you can have all sorts of minor and major problems. I have no idea if this is related to the Falcon flight 29 event or not. I certainly expect this will be one of the things the accident investigation looks into.
The Russians lit off the second stage engines once on the pad and killed > 100 engineers who were working on the rocket at the time. I don’t think anyone’s tried it since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
According to the Wikipedia link you provided, the Russian’s did not try to fire the second stage engine. The event was caused by an accidental firing of the second stage engine. Soviet engineers did some things I consider crazy, but never something as insane as deliberately firing a second stage engine while it was mounted on top of a first stage.
Poe’s Law strikes again – I was being sarcastic. Actually what they did was still insane, trying to work on an unsafed vehicle after a failed launch attempt.
I hate to see an incident like this no matter the company doing the launch. I will wait to see what the investigation reveals before I get too concerned about the ability of SpaceX to be successful. I think we have a good cause to be concerned but the details of what went wrong will reveal if this was a bump in the road or a serious crash. Naturally, I am hoping for the best.
Well, that sucked.
From the first frame it’s obvious this wasn’t a structural or pressurization failure. Seems the LOX tank issue has reared it’s ugly head once more.
Video has 24-32 frames per second. To look at each frame and grab a frame try imagegrab4.exe. It is free for personal use. It should show the start of the explosion. Have to download the video and maybe convert. It takes AVI and MPEG. The video only shows seconds. Pause play does not work. I have not tried it yet on this video. It does work really well on an AVI I took. There may be others that are better.
There are already videos with much slower frame-rate (and YouTube lets you drop the playback speed further), the explosion appears between one frame and the next. It’s well established within a single frame.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
But it looks like it appears on the right side of the upper-stage LOx tank, right where it was venting.
[edit: Replaced it with a better video by Scott Manley]
You Sir are ill informed.
OK instead of a short stupid comment about me being ill informed, which I am, educate me! What’s so much better about SpaceX using old Russian tech versus how we were doing it before the nonsense of privatizing space travel began?
What Russian technology do you think SpaceX uses? They build most things in house, and don’t even outsource much to American companies. Musk did, early on, look into buying Russian hardware, but decided not to.
Last I read was that they were using redesigned Russian engines. Are they? If not, and they’re making their own stuff with ex-NASA engineers input, cool beans. Still, if I was an astronaut I’d be pretty nervous about getting on top of a SpaceX rocket. What is SpaceX’s success vs. failure rate percentage wise? Versus NASA? Can anyone tell me? What it seems like to me is that Musk is really taking a cavalier attitude about this. It’s lots of money and if used for manned flight, lives at stake. Yeah, stuff will happen but you have to strive to make sure it doesn’t. You can’t mess about with this kind of stuff. One mistake. All it takes is one.
No, SpaceX does not use redesigned Russian engines. Their engines (the Merlin) was designed by SpaceX and are manufactured by them. All in California.
The design is also novel in many ways, including the use of 3D printing. So it is not recycled, NASA hardware or ”cold beans”.
As others have pointed out, the manned version of the Dragon has extensive abort capabilities, to get the crew away safely should anything go wrong with the launch vehicle. NASA did not really bother with that for the Space Shuttle.
As far as failure rates go, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has one failure for 28 launches, plus the recent pad failure on the 29th planned launch (which is not relevant for manned launches, since the crew doesn’t get in for pre-launch tests a couple days before launch.) NASA’s last vehicle, the Space Shuttle, had two fatal accidents out of 135 flights. So, in terms of risk to the crew, that’s 1 in 28 for SpaceX versus 1 in 67.5 for NASA. That difference is in the statistical noise.
A possible source of confusion just occurred to me. The _other_ company flying commercial resupply missions to the space station (Orbital/ATK) uses Russian engines on their Antares launch vehicle. Maybe that’s what you read about.
Well, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky did invent the rocket equation…
Jason is perhaps confusing Space X with Orbital, whose Antares booster does indeed use Russian engines.
in the event the RCA leads them to a 1st stage issue, it may be helpful that they have a number of as-built as-flown examples sitting on the ground for inspection.
“If I was an astronaut and had the choice of a SpaceX capsule or a Soyuz capsule I’d take the Soyuz. Boeing capsule on a other than SpaceX rocket versus the SpaceX rig, I’d want the Boeing.”
I think I would trust the dragon Launch Abort System any day over Soyuz, with it’s full pad to orbit Abort coverage, I think Dragon will be one of the safest rides to orbit of all. The simple fact is rockets can fail from time to time, it’s the nature of the game, (light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance!) you may have 10, 100, 1000 perfect launches under your belt but the next always has the potential to fail (aircraft can still crash to this day), the best way to ensure your guys don’t die is a good worst case scenario abort system, this is far easier to achieve than the impossible, perfectly reliable rocket. People need to keep calm accept these accidents happen, If a race car fails, crashes and a driver is killed the team will try to prevent the same happening again and improve survivability, there isn’t a mad media flurry of demands for a years long investigation and that no one sets foot in a race car again until we can make sure they never ever, ever, crash.
A big question in my mind is how much did launch fever contribute as an underlying cause to whatever the problem turns out to be? Did mistakes (design, process, execution) get made in the effort to increase launch rates? Did the impending hurricane have anything to do with rushing the schedule?
One thing is for sure – the whole idea of doing a hot test with a payload onboard seems dubious at best. We all know rockets blow up. It’s part of the business. We put precious payloads on rockets because we have no other way of launching stuff. But why, oh why, would you put a satellite on a hot rocket before you absolutely have to? I’ve heard it saved a day or two of schedule – clearly that idea doesn’t look very smart now.
I have not checked, but since this happened at 3 min. the strongback should be retracted? It does not look like it. Maybe they don’t retract on a static fire. Maybe the angle. On a launch it is retracted at around -6min. I think. May not make any difference if it was or not, but I thought this was a dress rehearsal. I was thinking about those feed lines being strung out after retraction. I think I remember them strung on a cable. The feed lines could break or the cable could break, no support and the feed lines break or detach. Unless they change the feed lines every flight, the repeated flexing could cause failure. Probably I am completely wrong thinking in that direction. Spark from the electrical connection sets it off.
SpaceX says -8min so it should be vertical.
Main difference between a NASA failure and a commercial failure is that NASA has insurance through the American Tax payer (and Chinese banks) to perform a thorough investigation and make the necessary design changes while standing down for, lets say…….hmm…… a long time. Commercial entities don’t have the same insurance and are at risk (that’s what commercial means). I hope this is a ground and not a rocket issue, for SpaceX’s sake.
It’s likely to be a combination of the two, but the changes needed will probably be obvious. The long pole is how long will it take to convince NASA that the problem has been corrected.
Here ‘s my educated guess: Upper umbilical released during fueling.
If the LOX or Hydrogen alone had sprung a leak, there would have been a brief visible leak, followed by fire, followed by explosion. This looks like the LOX and Hydrogen sprung a leak simultaneously resulting in instantaneous explosion.
SpaceX doesn’t use Hydrogen as a fuel. Both stages use RP-1, a type of kerosene
Sorry you are of course correct. But my statement still applies. A leak of oxygen or kero by itself would not have resulted in immediate conflagration.
RP-1 has a pretty high flash point. I think it’s one of the hydrocarbon fuels crazy people have tossed matches at, just to prove that point. Oxygen, even by itself, is another issue. If the concentration is high enough, just about any, theoretically combustable substance and a spark can start a fire.
How did the faring just sort of hang there for a while?
There’s a set of arms that cradle the second stage, just under the payload fairing. As the second stage disintegrated and fell away (and took out the first stage), the payload fairing was obviously left hanging until the top of strongback deformed far enough for the payload fairing to fall off/out.
http://www.spaceflight101.n…
http://www.spacex.com/files…
http://i.imgur.com/2rSKWyf.jpg
Hopefully that makes sense.
Thanks! It does.
The Ariane family of launch vehicles had four failures in the first 29 launches. The Ariane 4 had one failure in the first 29 launches of that configuration, and the Ariane 5 had two failures and two partial failures in its first 29 launches.
Does anyone know what the weather at the Cape was like last night? Hurricane Hermine made landfall not too far north of there, and I can’t imagine that would make the accident investigation easier. Was there any appreciable storm damage? Or are the pieces all in place and any damage reliably associated with the explosion?
Florida is much larger than many imagine. The hurricane made land fall north of the big bend, and while there may have been some rain at the Cape- the center of the storm was hundreds of miles from the rain bands on the south and south west quad- as there was down here in Naples (and by ‘some’ rain I mean 5-8″ or so, not so horrible), high winds weren’t likely. And, it was only a Cat 1.
/amateur meteorologist
Problems with the pad are much easier to fix. It could just be a procedural change (do X before doing Y). The vehicle itself involves lots of systems which interact with each other. Fixing problems with the vehicle can get into difficult and expensive redesigns.
There have been some comments made about the explosion and the upcoming crewed Dragon capsules. There is a video by Scott Manley where he uses the USLaunchReport video. I’m not sure how accurate his commentary is, but he does some interesting work with the video with slow motion and frame by frame with superimposition of images to show where the explosion occurs relative to the booster. Near the end of the video he also does a composite of the Dragon launch abort test superimposed over the explosion footage that appears to show the Dragon capsule escaping the explosion.
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The video is on YouTube:
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https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Saturday Sept 3 AM— somewhere today I read a quote attributed to Elon that said the anomaly was more of a ” fast fire” than an explosion. Fast, indeed.
Here’s some fun facts about cryogenic Oxygen ( O2 , not O4 molecule)
• LOX freezes at -361° F and boils at – 297° F. So there is a temp range of 64°F where it’s liquid. I’m guessing the SpaceX ‘ densified’ LOX is right at the -355 to – 360° temp point. And necessarily under some extreme pressure , which brings me to:
• LOX has an expansion ratio of 860 to 1. Yup. One liter of liquid oxygen becomes 860 liters of gas. That’s h-u-g-e.
• LOX is strongly Paramagnetic. You could suspend a blob of it between the arms of a horseshoe magnet. So LOX has some peculiar electromagnetic properties as well.
Considering all those attributes, it’s easy to presume pumping paramagnetic densified super-cold sludgy LOX thru a hose into a tank under extreme pressure with very narrow tolerances is…. VOODOO.
I’m further presuming that the super-cold densified RP-1 is somewhat more benign. But I’m not the Cryo-Engineer here….
I sometimes drive around to the back of my local hospital to look at a tall standing tank of LOX (?) on its concrete base, behind a fence. It’s about 2.5 feet x 12 feet , shiny stainless steel, about 75 feet away from the building all by itself. It’s the closest analogue to a rocket tank that I have. There’s also a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in my town that has a lot of cryo-oxygen and nitrogen in a fenced enclosure that I see venting once in a while.
My hunch is the ” anomaly ” occurred apart from the Falcon 9 rocket itself , something on the ground side. The extreme conditions of loading/ offloading RP-1 and expecially LOX are beyond my comprehension. I sincerely hope the anomaly was external to the F9 vehicle, and cryogenic learning curve can resolve this unfortunate circumstance. Too much is riding on it.
Actually, I don’t remember reading any statements about terrorism in regard to past launch failures (or other, non-military spacecraft failures.) Perhaps I just missed or forgot them.
But I don’t see terrorism as a likely cause. Terrorists targets, almost by definition are people, places or things which will cause public fear. A launch vehicle exploding on the pad is not really something the public would find shocking or terrifying. It probably wouldn’t be considered surprising by the general public, assuming a significant fraction of the public even noticed.
In addition, security at the cape (both the NASA and air force portions of the facility) is quite good. It would not be a soft target for a terrorist. I also doubt that firing a gun at a launch vehicle or setting a bomb off at a random location would have a high probability of dramatic results. Hitting one of many critical locations definitely would. But taking pot shots from long range would be as likely to scratch the paint on the launch gantry as cause a massive explosion.
It’s hard to rule out anything absolutely, but I think there are many more plausible causes for this event.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes at SpaceX but isn’t it possible one launch per month is just too high of a flight rate for Musk and Co. right now?
While there is a need to allow individual employees adequate rest, the number of launches per month was probably not a factor in this incident.
Trying to turn around LC40 in 20 days may have been too ambitious.
Ok everyone, mystery solved.
Elon Musk’s enemies have declared war and attacked the Falcon 9 with a drone…..
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/…
Back to your regularly scheduled program.
Some reporting on the insurance situation here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016…
I read former Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane’s book, Riding Rockets, and there was a very sobering chapter where right before the Challenger accident NASA was working people for weeks at a time with little to no time off: “I don’t know my family anymore”.
This was all in the attempt to increase the flight rate, which obviously blew up in their face.
I don’t know if this is happening at SpaceX but would it be farfetched to believe something similar is happening there? I highly recommend Mullane’s book for anyone who want’s to know how NOT to run a space program.
Does the F9 upper stage LOX tank have any internal mechanisms? I.e., a stir system to keep the densified LOX in a uniform state?