SpaceX rocket explodes shortly after takeoff.

[Micrornd]

Elon Musk posted this on twitter "There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause."

I watched it live.
If you watch launches regularly, you knew it was doomed from take-off.

The LOX quick disconnects never closed properly, most likely caused by the over-pressurization that Musk refers to.
It appeared that both stages were streaming LOX, but that the first stage was consuming it fast enough to delay an immediate problem at take-off.

You can see the LOX streaming unhindered from the moment of disconnect of the lines at lift-off.

The leakage never subsided and appeared to cause a pressure increase at the top of the LOX tank.
Notice in the seconds before explosion how the rocket casing at the upper end of the second stage LOX tank appears to swell, the second stage LOX tank access panel blows off next (and is seen flying through the exhaust trail), and then all hell breaks loose.

 

[dainthomas]

"Interests: Designing rockets that don't explode unexpectedly."

Win :thumbsup:

 

[Sabrewings]

If you are a rocket scientist, that probably increased your odds of getting hired.

Not so much, but I'm an avionics technician and can fulfill avionics engineer responsibilities as needed (just missing the bachelor's for the official title).

 

[mzkhadir]

Shit

Orbital blew up last October
Progress spun out of control in April
Now SpaceX blows up.

Resupply not a problem yet but it's going to get there if we don't start hitting more than 1 resupply in a row. (My opinion- not speaking for my employer)

All industries have their issues starting up. This is a new thing for a private industry to go into space.

 

[Brovane]

I don't suppose any organization is investigating something like SpaceShipOne's approach: Use a jet to lift the rocket through the thickest part of the atmosphere, and then rocket into space. My understanding is that our current method is not terribly efficient with regards to fuel requirement, as the thing needs to ascend without the lifting assistance of all this handy air that's available; rather, it has to ascend against the air's resistance.
(It wouldn't necessarily solve this particular problem, but it sounds like it'd be generally beneficial.)



"Interests: Designing rockets that don't explode unexpectedly."

SpaceShip one is sub-orbital, big difference in delta-V between SpaceShip one and a orbital system.

Orbital ATK has a air-launched rocket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)

The actual air launch doesn't add that much, about a couple % increase in payload. The biggest benefit of air-launch is you can fly closer to the equator and you are essentially just about immune to weather delays because you can either fly to another area where the weather isn't a concern or just fly above the weather. Even then the Pegasus can only put about 1/2 ton into LEO. A company called strato-launch is working on a much larger system but it will require a very large aircraft (larger than the Spruce Goose). It will then be able to carry a 230 ton rocket that could put about 6-7 tons into LEO, which is still about 1/2 the useful payload of the Falcon 9v1.1.

 

[Brovane]

All industries have their issues starting up. This is a new thing for a private industry to go into space.

Not really, private industry has been launching vehicles into space for several decades. It is just difficult to get into orbit with current rocket engine and it takes a vehicle pushed to it's engineering maximums to accomplish the feat. Any type of vehicle can have mis-haps, Airliners still crash because of vehicle failure. You cannot engineer out all possible failures in a vehicle.

 

[Ruptga]

Really depressing that this happen but they are 19/1 now.. pretty damn good record imo.

We don't need none of that around here. This right here is all you need to know about SpaceX.

 

[Brovane]

This is harrowing news. I worked on a payload that was rushed to go up in SpaceX 6 instead of later. It is just now starting operations on the ISS. It could have been on this launch instead.

When Orb-3 blew up there was a big ripple effect causing a lot of things to get delayed and pushed onto SpaceX instead. This is only going to make things worse. And it's probably going to cause more anxiety over SpaceX's manned vehicle in development.

NASA still fully supports SpaceX and Commercial crew flights. However SpaceX has enemies in Congress since they have disrupted the government contract flow to specific companies with deep pockets for campaign contributions. From NASA's viewpoint. If the flight would have been manned, the crew would have been fine because the Launch Escape System would have pulled the capsule off the launch stack as it disintegrated. By the time the Falcon 9 vehicle actually carries a crew it will have a extensive flight history and whatever caused this failure will have been corrected so the vehicle will actually be safer from this failure than it would have been without this failure.

 

[tynopik]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkna...trut-may-have-led-to-falcon-9-launch-failure/
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...blamed-in-rocket-explosion-20150720-post.html
http://science.slashdot.org/story/1...strut-may-have-led-to-falcon-9-launch-failure

1. Sound triangulation led them to identify a strut holding helium tank as root cause where the falling helium tank pinched a line causing overpressure in the LOX tank.
2. The failure occurred at 2,000 pounds of force, and the struts were rated at 10,000 pounds of force. They initially dismissed this as a cause until sounds triangulation pointed back to the strut
3. Further testing of struts in stock found one that failed at 2,000 pounds of force, with further analysis identifying poor grain structure in the metal, which caused weakness
4. It will be months before the next launch while SpaceX goes over procurement and QA processes all struts and bolts, and re-assesses any "near misses" with Air Force and NASA
5. Next launch will include failure mode software, which will allow recovery of the Dragon module during loss of the launch vehicle since they determined that it could have saved the Dragon module in this lost mission

 

[Ken g6]

Thanks, Tynopik! Good to know it's probably not a design flaw.

 

[tynopik]

another good article:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/spacex-falcon-9-failure-investigation-focuses-update/

 

[cabri]

Quality control failure