Aerospace SpaceX rocket: Explosion at Kennedy Space Center

Bummer.

 

The accident at the Cape introduces a more severe problem than how to repair / replace for the current launch. In connection with the earlier accident during boost, it suggests a possibly pathological problem with safety. SpaceX has Falcon Heavy and the *manned* Dragon on the table. Now, those systems can't responsibly be made operational until SpaceX identifies systematically what enabled an on the pad catastrophic accident and then retrofits the coming programs accordingly. Of what use are the various emergence escape measures for, say, Dragon for an on the pad failure.

 

Massive! Looks like it started just under the payload. You can see both of the towers smoking from the blast.

 

Over what period? These two Falcon accidents are 13 months apart.

I count 21 fatalities due to accidents in a particular space craft design (including the three Americans in Apollo 1 due to the pure O2 atmosphere), regardless of the mission stage.

Finding a particular problem and and fixing it is necessary but insufficient for critical operations. For example, finding in the June 2015 accident that the mechanical support for the O2 tank was underrated for load was necessary but insufficient. They also have to determine what was flawed in their process and system design that allowed the mistake to happen in the first place; it is this latter issue which might/might not be pathological. With NASA in the Challenger days the report findings labeled the problem "go fever".

 

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2016/20160901-falcon9-pad-explosion.html

The launch window for the Falcon 9 was scheduled to open at 3 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 3.
SpaceX regularly conducts a "static fire" test a couple days before launch, during which the
rocket remains held to the pad while the engines fire up for a few seconds. Today's accident
originated near the rocket's upper stage oxygen tank, which was being pressurized in
preparation for the firing. It remains unclear whether the accident was caused by the rocket, the
launch pad infrastructure or a combination of both.

 

This little bit of news on who pays.

https://twitter.com/pbdes

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/01/when-a-rocket-blows-up-space-insurers-pay-for-it.html

 

There's most always opportunity cost as well.

Zuckerburg's comment on the loss of his satellite suggests there is a larger loss than that of the hardware. Facebook stands to lose the promotion of their platform, for a period, into regions where that satellite would have put them. If someone else beats them to it, then Facebook forever loses being first into those areas.

 

A NASA advisory committee warned about the safety hazards of SpaceX's fueling procedures, some time before this accident. The committee objected to the refueling procedure for manned missions.

Paywalled:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nasa-ad...-about-spacex-rocket-fueling-plans-1477955860

In contrast to traditional procedures, SpaceX plans to seat it's astronauts first and then fuel. The order of events is made necessary by Spacex's use of supercooled LOX, which apparently has a short, use it or lose it time limit once loaded into the vehicle tanks, too short to allow astronaut seating post fueling.

I imagine this is going be a challenging problem to resolve, with supercooled fuels inherent to the Falcon design (or all SpaceX designs?). Supercooling improves density, enabling a greater fuel volume, supposedly one the innovations that enables the booster landings.