SpaceXplosion Update: Preliminary Review Suggests “Large Breach in Cryogenic Helium System”
Credit: USLaunchReport.com
SpaceX Falcon 9 Loss Update
September 23, 1:00pm EDT
Three weeks ago, SpaceX experienced an anomaly at our Launch Complex 40 (LC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This resulted in the loss of one of our Falcon 9 rockets and its payload.
The Accident Investigation Team (AIT), composed of SpaceX, the FAA, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and industry experts, are currently scouring through approximately 3,000 channels of engineering data along with video, audio and imagery. The timeline of the event is extremely short – from first signs of an anomaly to loss of data is about 93 milliseconds or less than 1/10th of a second. The majority of debris from the incident has been recovered, photographed, labeled and catalogued, and is now in a hangar for inspection and use during the investigation.
At this stage of the investigation, preliminary review of the data and debris suggests that a large breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank took place. All plausible causes are being tracked in an extensive fault tree and carefully investigated. Through the fault tree and data review process, we have exonerated any connection with last year’s CRS-7 mishap.
The teams have continued inspections of LC-40 and the surrounding facilities. While substantial areas of the pad systems were affected, the Falcon Support Building adjacent to the pad was unaffected, and per standard procedure was unoccupied at the time of the anomaly. The new liquid oxygen farm – e.g. the tanks and plumbing that hold our super-chilled liquid oxygen – was unaffected and remains in good working order. The RP-1 (kerosene) fuel farm was also largely unaffected. The pad’s control systems are also in relatively good condition.
SpaceX’s other facilities, from the Payload Processing Facility at the Cape, to the pad and hangar at LC-39A, are located several miles from LC-40 and were unaffected as well. Work continues at Pad 39A in preparation for bringing it online in November. The teams have been in contact with our Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center partners and neighbors and have found no evidence of debris leaving the immediate area of LC-40.
At SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA, our manufacturing and production is continuing in a methodical manner, with teams continuing to build engines, tanks, and other systems as they are exonerated from the investigation. We will work to resume our manifest as quickly as responsible once the cause of the anomaly has been identified by the Accident Investigation Team. Pending the results of the investigation, we anticipate returning to flight as early as the November timeframe.
Other efforts, including the Commercial Crew Program with NASA, are continuing to progress. Getting back to flight safely and reliably is our top priority, and the data gathered from the present investigation will result in an even safer and more reliable vehicle for our customers and partners.
21 responses to “SpaceXplosion Update: Preliminary Review Suggests “Large Breach in Cryogenic Helium System””
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Wasn’t that the tanks they took in-house two years ago?
I’m sure the welds and struts were FINE this time! 🙂
AIUI the strut Heim joint is what failed in CRS-7.
Maybe. I heard recently that they were still using some of the tanks supplied by the vendor.
The problems with their helium systems go way back. If I remember right they had a whole slew of delays in 2013. That things ‘seem’ (to us at least) to have been going well, it seems there’s some underlying 2nd order problem that pops up due to slight variances in the known procedures. Hopefully, they’ll diagnose it, and add to the procedures to prevent these things. I’m starting to get the impression, that Space X might decide to fly-on and let the problem happen again with the hope that they’ll understand it better then.
A few words from headlines of various Parabolic Arc articles on the incident and its aftermath, in chronological order:
“Failure”.
“Anomaly”.
“Accident”.
“Firesplosion”.
“Explanomaly”.
“Explosion”.
“Firexplanomaly”.
“SpaceXplosion”.
They just keep getting better–I look forward to the inevitable use of the term “FireSpaceXplosionomalyomgwtfbbq”.
“…wtfbbq” lol!
Same cause as the previous accident. Didn’t I tell you so? Hell, I’m rocket scientist! 😉 Shame on the weirdos talking about flying objects or bullets hitting the rocket. Shame on them so that they learn something and get their minds in order. They desperately need the negative feedback.
They never learn.
They will just claim that the helium story is a cover up to keep the public uninformed about the UFO/conspiracy/etc…. 🙁
The helium bottles are just a cover up by the freemasons to hide that UFOs are the real cause 🙂
As we all know, these Stallmanist freemasons have been challenging capitalistmasons like Musk for a long time! 😎
But seriously now, there were great reasons why no independent official wanted to underwrite SpaceX “strut theory”. The case that all the news were immediately filled with (preliminary) conclusions produced by the launching company itself (which has BTW paid nothing for the damages it created! – [EDIT: please see the posts below]) and it is pretty hard to find in media outlets some more tangible outcomes – all of these tells a lot about an “ADHD” society, PR campaigns and a state of journalism in 2016.
Even sadder I get when I take a look at enthusiasts’ fora like ArsTechnica. The extent of delusion, echo chamber, confirmation bias and a clear lack of scepticism under space related articles is not even funny anymore.
My PR people tell me that nowadays the material truth does not count anymore; the media rarely notice they are fed with fake numbers and overpromised stories of events that are not going to happen. Close to nobody cares, as nobody remembers yesterday’s news.
This is why thank you Mr. Messier for keeping it up and thanks to all the people making these fora informative. I don’t need to agree with all of you all the time 🙂 but it is usually a good read anyhow. Cheers.
Didn’t Nasa change their cargo contract with SpaceX to “pay” for the failure?
You are right! Thanks for your fact checking, I need to correct/enhance my statement!
Having digged a little bit, it seems that while indeed, under the contract SpaceX did not need to compensate for the loss, NASA was less than happy and managed to obtain some compensation while negotiating the latest CRS contract. Quoting the SpaceNews:
“NASA modified SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract to add five additional missions, designated SpX-16 through 20. Those additional missions will be flown at “discounted prices,” the report stated, “to help compensate for the SpX-7 failure.” In addition, the report stated, “NASA negotiated significant consideration in the form of Adapter hardware, integration services, [and] manifest flexibility” that SpaceX will provide to NASA at no cost. The report did not state the overall value of the concessions SpaceX made.
Source: http://spacenews.com/nasa-n…
Thus, I need to correct myself: while SpaceX did not pay anything directly, they were forced to somewhat compensate while negotiating a new contract. I need to dig farther to see if something more about the extent of compensation is publicly known and if there will be some better procedures of compensation now (new compensation clauses in CRS 16-20, and even all the remaining flights would be welcome).
Once again thank you for correcting my wrong and we have a yet another win of the fora!
I feel a need to clarify my rocket scientist status, since irresponsible clueless people have up-voted my comment here:
Both explosions began, as I’ve optically inspected on your tube, in the upper part of the rocket vehicle. And with the term “upper” I mean that part of it which is furthest away from where that yellow stuff emerges from when it lofts to the Angels. Now it started burning in the wrong direction, like a candle upsidedown, which is never no good.
Well, hopefully this is the cause, if for no other reason than they can get to work on fixing it.
Also, hopefully they’re not jumping on the first good possibility as “the cause” in an effort overly focused on quickly returning to flight. However, as they say, “All plausible causes are being tracked in an extensive fault tree and carefully investigated”, which seems to say that other plausible cause are still being well looked into right now, that’s a good sign.
Good luck with the investigation, SpaceX
Spacex has a major advantage this time, they have all the hardware pieces. They can be much more thorough and exhaustive when most of your evidence isn’t sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic
They should do these on the pad every time then !
One fix might be to use the Atlas tanks or supplier. Bruno said he would be happy to help. I guess that NASA will go on with Crew the way they have it scheduled. A F-9 should be available if Dragon 2 is. I don’t see how a test flight or being next will make any difference. NASA is in the best position with the Dragon 2 abort system. Just watched the ARES-1X launch again. Very nice. Simple, no muss, no fuss. NASA is stuck in a time loop and will not change though.
Dragon 2 has to be on internal power. Switch guards off, finger on switch and only paying attention to abort. An automatic system has to be correct. No false aborts. The easiest, safest abort would not to have one as with a SRB.
Actually, you would not want to abort with an SRB, since they cannot be shut down if there is a problem. SRBs are inherently more dangerous because of that.
Oh …. This should be considered a flight failure. The test did just what it was supposed to do find the weak point of flight systems …. of course having the payload on top makes it sort of the ‘Buggs Bunny Dud Test’ where Buggs hitts the artillery shells fuse with a hammer looking for duds. 🙂 …. sort of. But my point is, it was a flight systems that failed, and had the test not been done, it would have failed in flight taking everything with it.