Leaked Memo Confirms Obvious: Crew Dragon Capsule Blew Up
The Orlando Sentinel reports that a leaked memo from a NASA contractor confirms that a leaked video showing SpaceX’s Crew Dragon exploding on the test stand on April 20 is authentic.
Contractors employed under the Test and Operations Support Contract, which NASA awarded to aerospace company Jacobs for ground systems capabilities, flight hardware processing and launch operations, were notified Monday of the new rules in light of the SpaceX video.
“As most of you are aware, SpaceX conducted a test fire of their crew capsule abort engines at [Cape Canaveral Air Force Station], and they experienced an anomaly,” the email obtained by the Orlando Sentinel read. “Subsequently, video of the failed test — which was not released by SpaceX or NASA — appeared on the internet.”
[….]
TOSC employees were told in the email Monday that they were “prohibited from photographing or videotaping operational activities that take place on KSC CCAFS property unless officially authorized,” as well as releasing any imagery whatsoever regardless of its origin to the public.
“It is up to NASA and other companies onsite to make the determination about what information related to their activities is released to the public,” the email read. It also cited the human resources guidelines in the TOSC contract on confidential disclosure, noting that employees could be fired if they are caught sharing the images.
The story further reports that part of the crackdown is a result of complaints from professional photographers about employees who work at Cape Canaveral and NASA Kennedy Space Center publishing photographs of launches.
None of this is much of a revelation. SpaceX and NASA would have immediately denounced the video as fake if that had been the case. A reliable source told me the vehicle had exploded and been destroyed. Photos showing a toxic cloud of smoke risking from the test site surfaced.
A Crew Dragon exploded. But, everyone involved still insists on using the word anomaly (and, in Jacobs’ case, failed test). An anomaly occurred that caused the vehicle to explode.
It’s mystifying why no one involved will describe the event accurately. I fear the Trump Administration’s penchant for “alternative facts” is beginning to affect NASA. The fact that President Donald Trump has just surpassed 10,000 false or misleading statements since taking office is not a good sign.
144 responses to “Leaked Memo Confirms Obvious: Crew Dragon Capsule Blew Up”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Boeing never revealed exactly what went wrong with the hypergolic fuel anomaly in their test, why are folks demanding that SpaceX do so? Again the double standard, as illustrated by this leaked memo by a NASA employee. Either NASA needs to require both contractors go public with test results, including pictures/video, or neither should be required to do so. Of course doing so might require revising the contracts that Commercial Crew is being developed under, and/or ITAR approval.
Also I don’t see where this involves President Trump. It just was a NASA employee that showed poor judgement in posting the video without permission, something incidentally he would probably be fired from if he was in private industry since most corporations regard recording of such activities on a personal phone by employees as violating confidently of corporate IP. A policy trend incidentally goes back to the first inclusion of cameras in mobile phones in the long ago days when President Trump was still a Democrat.
Not a lot of mystery in the Boeing failure. The escape engine ran to full duration. There was a propellant leak at the end of the test due to a hydrazine valve failing to fully close. If I recall correctly, a source told me the problem occurred on the ground equipment.
Yes, it was a setback. But, it’s not unusual to have failures occur in tests. And this was one of many milestones Boeing needed to reach at the time.
In SpaceX’s case, it was an explosion that destroyed a capsule destined for a crucial abort test that is one of the last major milestones before crew flies. And it happened during a test of the escape system. So, yeah, that’s pretty big news. And it’s disappointing that they can’t come out and say the capsule was destroyed.
The backlash against the video leak and the long silence start to make it look really bad. Best thing they could do is a joint press conference with SpX , explain, and answer questions
Yes, that would be good and SpaceX should have done so. But its also important to ensure NASA workers aren’t taping tests on their personal phones and posting them on their social media accounts.
These are two different issues and you are right about both being important. The more crucial issue at present, however, is not leaked video from a NASA contractor’s employee but the fact that Dragon 2 blew up on the test stand and neither SpaceX or NASA have a thing to say about it now 10 days later.
Why? Is NASA conducting any super secret activities that would warrant such security measures?
No because SpaceX is a privately owned company and NASA has to do Non Disclosure agreements on all proprietary equipment owned by private companies.
Bull. They might be a privately owned company, but the vehicle in question was developed with taxpayer money.
Look if SpaceX wants to be hush hush with BFR or Starship or some other project they fund themselves, more power to them. But they don’t get to cover up explosions on public property (CCAFS) with a publicly funded vehicle (Dragon 2).
Nobody tried to cover up anything. The publicly observable after-effects of the explosion pretty much made that a non-starter anyway. Any notional “cover up” would have had about the same chance of success as a cat trying to cover up an “accident” on a linoleum floor.
A source is not the same as Boeing coming clean on it, especially if it was such a minor issue…
The space news article was pretty clear on most of it. Look it up.
I have but it would have been good for Boeing to have released the information.
they more or less did with the SpaceNews article…they were pretty open in that.
It was not on ground equipment. There are new design valves being used developed by AJR.
But the internet trolls say time for old space is over. Close Marshall, right?
A little off-topic thought.
I have heard it said that some of the production V-2s had a rough surface due to the unwilling hammer blows of the forced labor, yet they were smooth compared to Starhopper.
I don’t have a problem with Starhopper’s appearance because it isn’t about looks.
https://www.nextbigfuture.c…
But still…
If none of the usual snarky posters at space websites knew who or what Elon/SpaceX was, and you showed them a picture of Starhopper (the same rocket mind you)–but told everyone it was from Russia, (or worse…North Korea)– the internet hate would be pitiless.
Oh, the cutie pie remarks write themselves….something to the effect about building a laughable 1950s-ish finned contraption on a dirt pile using pallet jacks, cranes and sheet metal, etc.
But on the flip side, maybe there would be more love on the web shown to Old Spacers about the tried and true “Gradatim Ferociter” approach.
Boeing didn’t lose it’s vehicle. That’s a fairly important distinction. Also, since Boeing has been playing second fiddle behind SpaceX both in press and schedule, nobody cared that much. Boeing’s problems with the 737 Max 8 also diverted the press’ attention. Now people are going to care a whole lot more and be watching Boeing a lot more closely since that they are now number one for the runway at KSC.
Yep, and since the next event on the schedule for Boeing is using their hypergolic launch escape system to simulate a pad abort they will be the focus of attention.
The employee belonged to a contractor and presumably would not be civil service. He may have already been fired. It is also possible to fire civil service workers too but it just takes more paperwork. I actually kind of hope he wasn’t fired since without his act we wouldn’t have the video.
My worry is that the reason SpaceX hasn’t said much is that they don’t have any idea what happened.
they probably dont right now
The hell with that noise. These vehicles were developed with taxpayer money. If there’s a video of one of these vehicles disassociating itself into a few thousand pieces, it absolutely should be made public. That goes for both companies.
The rest of it is the same tiresome shilling for SpaceX by those who think it is just a super idea that all this be kept hush hush because it makes their favorite aerospace company look bad.
I’ve read this entire comment thread and didn’t find anyone making such a claim.
I see Doug set it right about the boeing failure…there was never any danger of an explosion but there was a leak…this surprised them and 1) they are trying to figure out why it surprised them and 2) the most effective fix…
this is why you test…
what you dont expect to occur, at least today is your vehicle going boom when you are claiming it was ready for flight
Yes it is why it is important to test, which is why SpaceX scheduled the test for a real launch abort, unlike Boeing which because of money is only doing a simple pad abort test similar to the one SpaceX did years ago. So let’s see Boeing try to approach the same level of testing SpaceX has been doing by finally launching the CST-100 capsule into space and then follow it up with an actual launch escape like SpaceX has scheduled and see if it holds up.
nope
the launch abort test would not have simulated the dynamic loads of a booster exploding because they were not going to destroy the booster as the capsule came off
the only purpose of the dynamic launch was to verify the aerodynamics of separationg which were important to do in the spaceX case because there is not a lot of data on how that shape works as it comes of at or near MaxQ. Boeing chose the shape it did because there is
what would be interesting to see is what happens in both cases if the booster was destroyed by range safety with the capsule system on top and then how it “got away” from an exploding booster. ie how the dynamics of pressure of the booster exploding affected the profile…but I doubt anyone really wants to know that or is willing to take the damages of the booster exploding in flight
“The fact that President Donald Trump has just surpassed 10,000 false or
misleading statements since taking office is not a good sign.”
This statement is meaningless unless put into context. How many false or misleading statements did Obama, GWB, Clinton, or any other president you care to name make while in office? I’d wager it’s probably a similar number if not more. Politicians are by nature liars, be they Republican, Democrat, Independent, or any other party. It’s their stock in trade.
Similar if not more?
Pul-eeze! You’re embarrassing yourself with such claims. This is whataboutism both sideism at its worst.
Trump is in a category all his own. And he shows how far the presidency has fallen since George Washington occupied the office. There was a man of integrity, dignity and honor.
Nope, just saying that a bare number with no context is meaningless in and of itself. Any good journalist should know that. You’re confusing my questioning of your data presentation with some sort of political agenda on my part. That’s not what I was getting at. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if trump has racked up more false or misleading statements than any other pres. But absent context, we’ll never know.
Journalists know that Trump’s relationship with the truth is easily the most estranged of any administration they have covered. Historians know the same about how Trump ranks among all the presidents.
How’s that for context?
It’s a bunch of BS. When you compare how much trump has lied numerically to some other president, then fine. Comments like “journalists know trump lies” are meaningless. Do you even see how non scientific your assertions are?
The problem is that Trump supporters don’t really care about facts or reality, they care about maintaining a comforting worldview. One could point such a person towards data demonstrating the extent of Trump’s historic level of dishonesty (indeed, such data is trivially easy to obtain) they’d just dismiss it as invalid due to “left-wing bias” etc. etc.
So there’s no point. If in 2019 a person somehow still doubts that Trump is not far more dishonest than his predecessors, there’s no help for them.
The tolerance for exaggeration and lies didn’t start with Trump, it’s been evolving for half a century. Everyone from advertisers to job applicants lie at almost every turn.
Some of us us remember Lyndon Johnson (D) and his Big Lies wrt Vietnam, which cost 60k US lives and and another 1.3 million elsewhere. After that even the “…when their lips are moving” prevarication of Trump, Obama be (you can keep your doctor!), Clinton (where to begin?!?) etc. fade into the background noise.
Double that for the media, which has rightly earned it’s place in the “damned liars” category.
Trump may lie a lot, but he’s so bad at it we can figure them out. The media and others not so much.
Yes, yes. “What about” “What about” “What about.” Nothing new to see here.
Whataboutism is a weak argument, requiring neither historical perspective nor the recognition that most modern politicians are not much better – on either side. Which is why the Midwest tossed that live grenade at DC and the coasts to begin with.
That’s where you’re wrong — most modern politicians ARE much better, on both sides. It’s sad to see so many once-decent men line up behind Trump simply because of the cult of personality he has cultivated with the holdout “republican” base.
As long as trump spews hate over mexicans, muslims and immigrants..the base doesn’t care about anything else he does.. as trump said.. he could murder someone on 5th ave and his supporters wouldn’t care.
You can do a goggle search of his base that preach he should be made dictator …
I’ve done search engine inquiries that turned up flat-Earthers and even geocentrists. There are always a few nutbars to be found peddling pretty much any brand of nonsense you can imagine. Making Trump dictator of the U.S. is not a normative agenda item of Trump supporters by any means. The number of demonstrably false things believed wholeheartedly by normative leftists, on the other hand, is truly mind-boggling. You, in particular, bought the transparently bogus Trump-is-a-Russian-tool nonsense hook, line and sinker. Do you still believe that?
I know .. those silly people thought Mexico would pay for the wall.. they thought trump would drain the swamp.. thought trump would take no vacations.. would spend less on vacations then Obama.. that trump would not play golf … they actually thought trump didn’t lie to them 10,000 times… lol. Talk about staggering ignorance… Trump supporters are dumber than a stump.
For two and half years the American Left has been screaming that Trump is a covert agent of the Russians and – hey, whaddayaknow – that turns out to be unicorn farts. But we Trump supporters are “maintaining a comforting worldview.”
Indeed you are, acting like a man who has repeatedly taken Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence agencies is anything other than a complete patsy.
The only one spewing BS like it was gold is you. Head ups, you are not Rumpelstiltskin and you can not spin your BS into gold.
I will be to busy to take vacations.
Mexico will pay for the wall.
I will not be playing any golf.
It is outrageous how much Obama spends on vacations I won’t be doing that.
I won’t touch social security or medicare.
All False statements involving Donald Trump
https://www.politifact.com/…
You have to systematically IGNORE everything trump says to believe you … any 20 second search will show you the lying
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Yep, for us Independents it will be an interesting election watching the two parties trying to “out idiot” each other. Judging by this thread they are off to a good start. 🙂
Politifact is a leftist propaganda organ, not an objective arbiter of anything.
Most of the media have been doing nothing but lying about Trump since even before he got elected. Academic historians are also nearly all leftists. I take their opinions of Presidents with an appropriate hogshead of salt.
Trump is temporary. But the damage the Left is inflicting on itself from its hysteria about all things Trump, will last a very long time.
How’s that for context?
No one knows more than trump
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I don’t know. John Tyler took it pretty low…
http://content.time.com/tim…
Fail to the Chief
John Tyler
“And when he ascended to the presidency following the death of William Henry Harrison, being dubbed “His Accidency” made it a lock.
Tyler was so deeply unpopular during his presidency that all but one of his Cabinet members resigned in protest when he vetoed a bill establishing a national bank. Shortly after, he was expelled from his own party, and the House of Representatives tried to issue impeachment charges against him.”
BTW you also seem to forget that George Washington owned slaves from the age of 11 and signed the Fugitive Slave Act.
LOL! Tyler might have given the current occupant a run for his money but the fact that nobody remembers Tyler anyway may give us a clue as to the current occupant’s eventual mark on history.
Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!
(whatever that heck means, 😀 )
It was President Harrison’s nickname that he gained from a battle in which he brutally suppressed a tribe of native Americans trying to save their lands from European settlers.
Nice (read in a sarcastic voice)
Did I mention that after the battle he burned their village to the ground and destroyed their winter food stocks? Yep, a really nice guy… (more sarcasm).
Not good
The federal government was rather small and its impact on the citizenry and the world rather light in the antebellum era. So there were some real mediocrities in those mid-19th century years. Ocassional presidents like James Polk would rise above that. The country expanded more geographically under Polk than any other president. Texas, California, the Southwest and a peaceful boundary settlement with Britain on the Oregon Country.
Anyway, today things are very different…
Interesting selection given he was another pro-slavery/slave owning president (Democrat Party) who started a war with Mexico to grab nearly half their country from them. Abe Lincoln was so sicken by it he quit politics and went back to being a lawyer for nearly a decade.
Oh, I don’t know. I’d rate Obama, for example, below every preceding U.S. President except maybe James Buchanan. Being charitable, I’d say his peer group is Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.
lol
But then again, you seem to like the current occupant.
I do. He seems to make all the proper people crazy among other positive characteristics. Plus, he’s restored a reasonable American economy, undone the worst of Obama’s depredations, said no to the Climate Change fraud, called for a long-overdue Space Force and taken steps that, I hope, will clear the deadwood out of NASA in due course and accelerated the national program of deep space exploration. Then there’s border security improvements. What’s not to like?
I liked his tax reform. My taxes were a lot lower this year under President Trump’s tax reform than under President Obama. Anyone who is able to put money in my pocket, instead of taking more money out, is all right with me. 🙂
There are millions more in your shoes. Most of them are the Obama-era long-term unemployed who now have jobs again for the first time in a decade.
Yes, George was the standard bearer for truth. The only one that admitted to cutting down the cherry tree. And Lincoln was the only one with an “Honest” nickname. The rest is just politics. But I also don’t trust these politically biased “fact checkers”. And despite the “lies” and so-called scandals, Trump seems to be one president that is actually following thru on everything he mentioned in his campaign. He may have failed to build the wall or replace Obama Care, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. And every other one of his accomplishments go right back to what he said he was going to do during the campaign. You might not like what he is doing, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. So, just ignore the fish stories, and find a better candidate next election.
he has been lying since the comment about crowd size…
once he knew people like you would accept the lies, he knew he had you
Trump doesn’t “have” me, but I can wait until the next election to vote for a replacement. There is only 1 candidate that I like so far, but I don’t think Tulsi will make it out of the primaries. No one else makes sense. Certainly not Joe Bite-Me, or some stupid mayor would can’t even solve the problems of his town of 100,000. But somehow, the money keeps flowing to the wrong people.
Yes, the Democrat field has been less than impressive, both in qualifications and message.
And that is EXACTLY why we ended up with our current President. The voters chose the lessor of 2 evils back in November of 2016. The negative campaigning has started already among the current group of candidates. It’s really pathetic.
Well, as I’ve observed before on this and other forums, the Democrats aren’t going to be able to beat something with nothing, And nothing is, unfortunately for them, all they’ve got – in 20 or so different flavors.
anyone who does not think that Trumps administration is lead by and full of substantial liars…should be required to watch the AG testimony…which was literally no lie left behind…
You really need to get back on your meds. Sure, the Dems are upset with the findings of the Mueller report. Too bad. Guess what, Comey deserved to be fired. Trump should be credited with REMOVING an obstruction to justice. And if you haven’t learned anything yet, Trump likes to fire people, especially when things don’t seem to be working out well.
babble
Whose number are you quoting?
Golly gee! However did such a loser manage to beat such a shining light like Hillary Clinton? Even though the entire national media was on her side? Even though she outspent Trump by something like 2 to 1? How? How?
Could it possibly be the Democrats and their fellow travelers have been acting terribly for years? Decades even? Acting so very badly in fact, that even a carnival barker like Trump could beat them?
Yep, after stealing the primaries from Bernie Sanders the Democrats ran the one candidate that President Trump could beat and they have been whining over their mistake like a spoiled kid ever since.
And like a spoiled kid they have been doubling down on it ever since. Sad, just really sad. ?
The question is if in the next election the public will buy either of the Democrats major themes for the next election.
Theme 1: Trump is evil, he won with Russian help, he should be impeached.
Theme 2: The world is DOOMED unless we all become eco-socialists.
Do they really expect to win with either one?
Seems they do. But then they expected to win in 2016 with a flagrant crook at the top of the ticket. Democrats are like the Kings Louis of France – convinced they have a divine right to rule.
You may be unaware that Trump lies a lot more than…just about anyone, but it’s an easy thing to search for comparisons to other presidents on Google if you’re interested in finding out. Yes, there are historians and reporters who have carefully cataloged the outright lies/misleading or false statements of other presidents. Trump has even boasted about lying (see his statements to GOP senators after a meeting with Justin Trudeau).
Okay here is some context:
“Both presidents have told lies. But one seems to have told more lies than the other. Politifact reports that 15% of the statements by Donald Trump that it evaluated qualified as “pants on fire” level lies. Conversely, the publication found that just 2% of the Barack Obama statements that it fact-checked qualified as “pants on fire” lies. For both presidents, that’s only the lies that Politifact found were “pants on fire” false, not including statements that were just “false,” even “mostly false,” or only “half true.”
Similarly, The New York Times catalogued the lies told by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. “We applied the same conservative standard to Obama and Trump, counting only demonstrably and substantially false statements,” the Times noted. The result? The Times found that Trump often says “whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make. In his first 10 months in office, he has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. That’s an average of about two a year for Obama and about 124 a year for Trump.””
https://www.cheatsheet.com/…
New Report Reveals Just How Often Trump Lies Compared to Obama
https://twentytwowords.com/…
These “sources” are all political enemies of Donald Trump and Republicans in general. Go peddle your fairy stories somewhere else.
What NASA says: anomaly
What NASA wants you to think: it can be buffed out
What I want to think: 2 week delay, tops
What I secretly suspect: smoking holes and body parts
Anomaly schanomaly. The modern word is DISRUPTION
That was a helluva disruption.
Huh. It took less than a minute after Challenger for someone to explicitly say; ‘The vehicle has exploded…’
The Challenger Disaster happened on live TV. Everyone watching at that moment was thinking “Did the Space Shuttle just blow up”? NASA couldn’t do anything but confirm what people already knew.
The silence coming from SpaceX is deafening. I’d like to think differently but the lack of comment coming from Hawthorne suggests that this could be a “back to the drawing board” moment for Dragon 2.
https://www.theatlantic.com…
Yes, especially given how open Elon Musk is.
You’d like to think that they have tested this system on the ground many, if not hundreds of times so perhaps this may come down to a small manufacturing defect in one part. At least, I hope so.
Or giving it a good soak in seawater.
They should have tested for that too.
True, but adding a trip through space and a re-entering might have effected it. Remember, this capsule was originally intended to be recovered on land.
Intended to be recovered on land is a weak argument. They had years to modify and test it. Also, Boeing’s entry will touch down on land so there is no real validity to the argument that NASA insisted on water landings. They just weren’t willing to wait for SpaceX to develop their propulsive landing technology.
What would be interesting is if SpaceX just decided to walk away from the Dragon2. The CCP contracts are based on payment for milestones and nothing requires them to keep working on it. They may well decide to focus on Starlink and the Starship, both of which have far greater potential for profit generation.
And keep in mind, the first operational generation of Starship will be used only for satellite deployment, so there will be no need to put a crew aboard it. That would be for later versions after they developed flight experience and knowledge of its behavior. So there would be logic is just walking away from the Dragon2.
I wonder if the huge public relations backwash from them canceling their contract wouldn’t do them more harm than the botched test?
I think that they need to tough this one out and show everybody that they make safe products that are still cutting edge.
Strictly speaking, the test wasn’t botched, it – probably quite literally given the reported worse-than-flight-conditions vibration load applied – shook loose an issue not heretofore suspected to exist and did so without endangering any lives. The result was unexpected, to say the least, but that is always a possibility when testing. Tests are done to smoke out problems. This one certainly did – the quantities of smoke were quite impressive.
I agree with you completely. I just like that word. However…I suspect that both SX and NASA were pretty shaken up (along with the capsule) by that unexpected result so late in the game. And I imagine there was some dancing on the tables in the Boeing cafeteria.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I’m afraid that if they walked away from Dragon 2 they would be walking away from government contracts forever. They would find ways to make sure that SpaceX did not win contracts and while the government would honor existing contracts, I honestly think that their access to testing and development facilities would dry up. The reputational damage to Musk and SpaceX would be catastrophic. Why would anyone want to ride their rocket to Mars if SpaceX didn’t have the smarts to make a safe space taxi to LEO?
I really don’t think that taking his ball and going home is an option for Musk or SpaceX. There are other players and other balls and he hasn’t even met his real competition yet – Blue Origin.
Generally agree except for the part about access to testing and development facilities. SpaceX does all its development at its own facilities. It used a test stand at Stennis for some early Raptor work, but that has been over with for at least two or three years. It has used the big thermal vacuum chamber at Plum Brook a number of times, but Starship is too big even for that giant facility so SpaceX’s future need even for NASA test facilities is likely to be limited.
SpaceX isn’t going to walk away from D2 any more than it walked away from F9 after CRS-7 and Amos-6.
Working from your thought that SpaceX could be ready to walk, and the answering comments below on the contracting and PR problems that would create.
It seems possible that SpaceX could downshift to a development speed and attitude comparable to the legacy companies, but just on the Dragon 2. Legacy companies would take years to recover from something like these and it would seem quite natural for SpaceX to have ‘learned their lesson’ by spending 2-3 years solving the problem and getting ready to fly it again. Reduces risk as there would be no real intention of flying soon, and would free up resources for other projects.
Properly handled, it could be positive PR. Also it would possibly have the Dragon 2 mission overtaken by events. Boeing gets the 2-3 flights to ISS per year while SpaceX gets bumped from worrying about it. Starship is either flying or much closer to flight. So if your speculation is close that Dragon 2 is considered a tar baby, they might be able to unstick..
All idle speculation based on current comments.
That would be a good way to detach themselves from it while giving the appearance they are working on it. Then focus their real resources to where they will get a better payoff.
lol yes Dear Moon in 24 will show them
23.
That simply isn’t going to happen. Doing so would constitute a reward to SpaceX detractors and competitors – Elon don’t play dat. D2 will be fixed and it will fly.
LOL if Musk had decided to walk away from Dragon 2 then he would as they say “be finished in this town”. so far Musk accomplishments in the field of rocketry are impressive but not spectacular.
he has invented a two stage Atlas that allows him to recover, with help from modern electronics and a lot of failures…the first stage
he has manged to send Dragon to the station but so has OSC and while he recovers them, we have been doing that with capsules for half a century
if you think he could walk away from Dragon2 and say “its just not worth my time” and then hae any serious support for his ntion that his next event “goes to Mars and back” you have had to much fan boy koolaide
How do you know that hasn’t long since been done? Come to that, the test that failed was also following a good soak in seawater.
Yes it was. I’m assuming that they tested the crap out of it and it still blew up after its first reentry and bath. I’m not implying negligence on the part of SpaceX. I am merely stating the obvious, they are up the creek right now and face a long period of re-testing (and they better get perfect marks) before NASA will let their astronauts fly on Dragon 2.
The seawater soak may not even turn out to have anything to do with the explosion.
My own inclination would be to bet on the exaggerated vibration loading applied for this test. Positive feedback resonances can be difficult to model accurately, but are often easy to fix via modest changes to the shape, size or mass of one or a few components.
It will be a fine bit of irony if this turns out to be the explanation for D2’s woes as it also seems to have been just such an unanticipated resonance effect that was responsible for the failure last summer of the propellant valves on Boeing’s Starliner during a test of its own abort system.
that is one of SpaceX weakness…
SpaceX has an entire large facility in McGregor that does nothing but testing. Not testing much is something NASA and the legacy contractors do because their systems are so expensive that any failure would literally require a suppplemental appropriation by Congress to cover.
There was a small release on the day. Not much info in it of course.
An initial lockdown is to be expected. Also, they moved the CRS-17 landing to the droneships so they could search for wreckage. Until that search is completed not much will be known.
We are well beyond the initial lockdown period. I understand not saying much until you know something but the genie is out of the bottle now and more people are learning that this was not just a hiccup but an explosion that took out the primary test article while testing the very system that needs to be proven.
I think everyone on this forum, at least, saw the video within 24 hours of the occurrence. If “more people” are now learning what happened it can only be because they weren’t paying attention at the time.
They will lockdown until they have at least a prelim report, Boeing is the same way. The game is played differently for commercial crew.
SpaceX does not deal with failure well…but this one seems to be of a special nature…ie they may be as you suggest
The very nature of this incident creates monumental problems for SpaceX. Even if the problem was as simple as a manufacturing defect in one of the Super Dracos, NASA is not just going to let them stick another Dragon 2 on a Falcon 9 for the in-flight abort test and accept the problem as fixed. Dragon 2 is grounded and it is far more probable that the 737 Max 8 will be certified for flight before it will. SpaceX is now in the position of having to run a whole gamut of tests on the ground involving every problem they can think of and oceans of seawater baths before they even think of putting it on top of a rocket again. That’s going to take time and a lot of SpaceX’s funds.
I agree there is a fairly long and difficult road ahead for them…
That’s going to depend entirely upon what actually turns out to have gone wrong. If the failure mode encountered is a consequence of the abnormal vibration loads in effect for this test, the fix may well be quick to both find and implement.
There were a lot of dire predictions after both the CRS-7 and Amos-6 failures too – including from you. But SpaceX dispatched those and was flying again in 6 and 4 months, respectively. The idea that the D2 explosion will impose years of additional delay is, given the curent state state of public ignorance as to a root cause, simply wishful thinking on the part of long-time SpaceX detractors such as Adjure and yourself.
LOL. Perhaps they will take a page from Boeing’s manual and blame it on “pilot error.”
if they find that some human did the process wrong I am sure they will blame them
but unlike the MAx where in the last event the pilots let the airplane accelerate to Mach .92 before it stalled, I doubt this is the case.
i realize reality is hard for fan boys to grasp but 1. the two max incidents were pilot error, 2) SpaceX just blew up its flight ready capsule and 3) as a software company they seem to be dealing with it badly (like their newest version has just crashed)…
there is a safety problem at SpaceX …see if |Mush can come down long enough from his fun stuff to solve it
You got one out of three right. Good for you, you’re improving.
Claiming MAX grounded world wide because of pilot error is a new low for you. Apparently you believe every country in the world is wrong.
they are…as is the idiot president. it was clearly pilot error that you cannot grasp this labels you as a fan boy who knows nothing…of course you are 🙂 have a great day…off to certify a new captain 🙂 what will you do today?
I will not try to convince people that I am right and the whole world is wrong, which is a concept you can’t seem to grasp. I also don’t spent my time trying to impress people I’ve never met with claims of accomplishments that they can’t verify. I read your comments for information, while keeping an awareness that on several subjects your bias is overwhelming.
Bob just can’t seem to wrap his head around the idea that SpaceX is the new paradigm for aerospace companies and his beloved Boeing is an also-ran dinosaur. As Heinlein observed, “It’s a pretty serious thing when a man’s religion fails him.”
what you think about me? to see how much I care go listen to Rhett Butlers last line to scarlett in Gone with the wind
🙂
The differential body counts would seem to suggest it’s Boeing that has more of a safety problem.
Given that SpaceX seems to be “dealing with it” in the same way it has dealt with previous setbacks, your baseless assertion that it is doing so “badly” is simply – as usual – irrational animus on your part.
Also, considering that Boeing’s 737 MAX problems seem to be both software and human-interface related at their core, your attempted sneer about “software companies” is more than a bit ironic. Seems to me Boeing would be in a much better place if it was a bit more of a “software company” itself.
SpaceX didn’t issue any statements about CRS-7 or Amos-6 until they had a pretty good idea what the likeliest cause was. The same policy seems to be in place anent the D2 explosion, as it should be.
Well they certainly don’t owe me an explanation but from a PR standpoint it would be helpful to say something more than they suffered an anomaly. Nobody expects them to have the answers yet but no matter what they eventually conclude, they are in a world of hurt from a time standpoint. There is no way that NASA will certify the Dragon 2 until SpaceX demonstrates that the statistical chance of failure with corresponding loss of crew is as low as it can be made to go.
No argument. And based on SpaceX’s prior history in solving problems that led to failures, going all the way back to the F1 days, I’m not anticipating any multi-season soap opera where the D2 explosion is concerned.
the thought that everyone at NASA and should be at SpaceX should be thinking is “how many more of these are there” out there…
After reviewing the tape, I consider that they should post a revision:
“The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in
an anomalya serious anomaly on the test stand.”Lost me with your last paragraph. Now you just sound like another marxist shill. Too bad – thought you were above that.
I loathe Trump and I’m not a Marxist. I simply cannot abide a cowardly draft-dodger like Donald.
Then I presume you didn’t vote for Bill Clinton either.
Ha. Of course I didn’t. Not only was I too young, but I heard it on good authority that draft dodgers weren’t fit for the office, and that such a person could only be a low-character individual who engaged in serial adultery, among other moral failings. Fairly on the mark.
Worth noting that I didn’t discard those principles the moment it became politically convenient.
Bill Clinton did not walk around saying “I would make the best general”
No, he said he would show up for induction then ran off to England.
What say Teslarati?: …’In reality, it’s likely that the failure will delay future Crew Dragon (and thus Dragon 2) launches by a minimum of 6-12 months. SpaceX will likely need to change up the launch order of its capsules, reassigning DM-2’s Crew Dragon to the in-flight abort (IFA) test and the US Crew Vehicle 1 (USCV-1) Crew Dragon to SpaceX’s first crewed demonstration mission (DM-2). After such a serious and potentially fatal failure, it’s even possible that NASA will require an additional uncrewed orbital launch before permitting SpaceX to fly astronauts on Crew Dragon.’
I doubt that it will take an additional uncrewed orbital launch since most of the vehicle won’t change. What they will have to do is run test after successful test (including after seawater baths) on the test stand, then in a vehicle before NASA will accept the results when they put it on a live Falcon 9. It can never fail again and as trite as it sounds, SpaceX will have to re-earn NASA’s trust before they will let their astronauts fly on Dragon 2.
“It’s mystifying why no one involved will describe the event accurately.”
This is the dumbest thing ever, Amos-6 was also classified as an anomaly and clearly blew up.
https://www.spacex.com/news…
Only tin foil hat types would drag Trump into this or think for one second everyone doesn’t know the end result. Above is what media bias looks like.
Also LOC is LOC whether the capsule blows up or conflagration from a massive propellant leak.
The other two losses SpaceX experience could ave been crew survivable with a working escape system. This last one would concern me more.
We don’t even know yet if the failure occurred in conditions that were even flight like. My concern is reserved until such time I know those details.
On the failed test, the D2 was evidently being subjected to vibration twice as severe as what it would be expected to encounter in actual flight. Could be that level of vibrational energy smoked out a “weak link” that wouldn’t have manifested itself under normal fixed ground test or even in-flight conditions. If that turns out to be true, the fix might be fairly simple and fairly quick to do.
Twice as much as expected when booster RUDs in abort scenario.
Good question. Probably twice the vibration expected on a normal ascent but I don’t know. Seems like it would be pretty hard to reproduce vibrational transients equivalent to a booster RUD on the ground without resorting to explosives.