
SpaceX – Launch Vehicle Failure - onwardly
About 3 minutes in the vehicle appeared to explode. At the time it was ~15km downrange, going 1km&#x2F;s and around 35km up in the atmosphere.<p>UPDATE: Contingency press conference scheduled for 12:30pm EST- NASA TV said they wouldn&#x27;t have much to update before then.
======
rorykoehler
Can anyone here with a little more knowledge answer the following please?

Who pays for the expense of these types of failures? Does SpaceX have some
sort of 3rd party insurance from a private insurer or are they insured by NASA
or another branch of the US gov?

How much is the equipment that got destroyed worth? If this happens multiple
times in a short space of time as it seems to have recently does the cost of
insurance go up for every launch? Does their analysis of data have any impact
of the cost of insuring future launches?

~~~
engi_nerd
Both SpaceX and Orbital ATK carry insurance policies on their ISS resupply
launches to protect against this sort of thing, although the policies are not
absolutely comprehensive (Orbital's policy had a bothersome gap related to
damages caused to the launch facility, owned by a third party). I do not know
what the SpaceX vehicle's cost is, but I do know that the Antares rocket that
Orbital ATK lost last year was itself valued at ~$200 million USD.

~~~
mikeash
According to the One True Reliable Source of All Knowledge
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Resupply_Services)),
SpaceX got $1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions, so that's about $133 million
for the Falcon 9, the Dragon, and all the work involved in shooting them into
space. I have no clue what their profit margin would be on that, but that at
least gives us an upper limit.

~~~
engi_nerd
There is a lot of money thrown around in commercial space, but it is not a
particularly high-margin business. [http://spacenews.com/39492orbital-eyes-
broader-antares-busin...](http://spacenews.com/39492orbital-eyes-broader-
antares-business-geostar-satellite-platform/) This cites Orbital Sciences (now
Orbital ATK) CEO David Thompson as saying that the profit margin on CRS was
about 5.5% and they hoped to reach 6% with CRS-3.

~~~
dewarrn1
So with a 5.5% margin the $1.6 billion contract would be expected to yield $88
million in profit? Given what I'm assuming are large R&D expenditures on top
of launch-related costs, I wonder whether the business is sustainable.

~~~
damoncali
I used to work for Orbital as a NASA contractor. I never dealt with the
business end of things, but the margins were small and very stable so long as
there was work to be done (i.e. a giant (sub)contract on some huge NASA
project). It wasn't exactly a pressure cooker of a work environment. The
government stuff was a very different atmosphere than the commercial side.

~~~
engi_nerd
I too am a former Orbital employee. I worked on the sounding rocket program.
It was very much a pressure cooker because of the incessant pressure to work
more overtime and do more missions in less time.

I always heard that other parts of the company were far more laid back. Wish I
had worked in one of those parts.

~~~
damoncali
Yeah, I worked there for 6 years, mostly at Goddard on the HST project. It was
very relaxed - to the point of boredom at times (that's why I left, despite
the insanely cool work). The guys in Virginia (where I worked about a year or
so, but still on NASA stuff) told a different story about the Orbcomm and
other commercial rocket businesses. I have no idea what it's like today
though.

------
dcposch
I watched the launch live this morning. It reminded me of one of the best
interviews ever. Elon Musk after SpaceX's first three launches all exploded:
[http://archive.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa](http://archive.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa)

I read that in high school, and it's part of the reason I became an engineer.

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy
nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory
nor defeat." \--Teddy Roosevelt

~~~
Edmeral
"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my
bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work." I got goose bumps reading
Elon's response at the end of the article.

~~~
nhstanley
"Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?"

"Because it's there. Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man
has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is
instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man's desire to conquer the universe." \-
George Mallory

~~~
Retric
That's a great reason to be the first to climb Everest, but it seems lacking
to be the 4,000th.

~~~
kalleboo
"Why do I climb the mountain? Because I'm in love" \- William Shatner

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kestt5BI3eg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kestt5BI3eg)

------
Osmium
Looks like Southwest Research Institute's meteor shower camera will have been
lost again. They're not having much luck :(

> The device aboard [today's launch] was actually a backup of the original
> meteor camera that blew up along with Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket in
> 2014.

[http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/27/meteor-camera-
iss/](http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/27/meteor-camera-iss/)

~~~
justizin
Neat to hear about SwRI still doing space work. My grandfather was the
director of engineering for many years, and I learned to program in BASIC on a
286 that he brought home when he retired.

I get the impression looking back that he worked on so many projects he didn't
have time to tell us about many.

------
51Cards
From Elon just now via Twitter:

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data
suggests counterintuitive cause. That's all we can say with confidence right
now. Will have more to say following a thorough fault tree analysis."

~~~
Havoc
>Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

What does this sentence mean?

~~~
chillingeffect
I'm guessing if there was an overpressure event, that one would normally think
that it was due to unanticipated heat, or a valve opening incorrectly (too
early/late, far/little), etc. but that data from a measurement system on e.g.
thermal or flow indicate the opposite, such as temperature doing down instead
of up.

I wonder what the specs are for the systems they're using for telemetry...
must be a gazillion channels at a high rate...

------
ash
Video of explosion, from 23:40.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m40s)

~~~
TimWolla
This one is blocked in Germany, here is another one that works:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9793679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9793679)

~~~
kid0m4n
I always wondered why?

~~~
th0br0
YouTube cannot assure that no GEMA-licensed content is played during the live
streams. To avoid a battle with GEMA here, they decided to ban it.

------
jerf
So, the advantage of a weekend launch is that I could show my kids (boys 7 &
4), right?

 _Facepalm_.

In the last few minutes, over a dozen K-Nex rockets have lifted off and
exploded shortly after takeoff.

Sigh.

Not the _best_ introduction to the second Space Age for them.... ah well,
we'll try again later.

At least nobody was aboard.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
Aye, it's a good thing no one was aboard.

On my 12th birthday, I watched the Challenger explosion happen right in front
of my eyes. Me and the rest of the kids from Indian Harbour Beach watched the
pieces of the shuttle slowly fall out of the sky. Some speculated that one of
the pieces was an escape pod, but one of the kids whose dad worked on the
shuttle said there wasn't an escape pod. We just couldn't believe it. It
didn't seem possible that with all that focused attention on getting those 7
astronauts safely into space that such a thing could happen.

It was not the best experience for a kid who loved space and science.

However, it didn't turn me off from it, far from it. I ended up going to
college for Aeronautical Engineering, before switching to Physics. I ended up
as a nuclear physicist and doing a nuclear fusion startup. I still live within
sight of the VAB.

If you want your kids to be interested in science, its more important that
they be exposed to rockets, science, etc. than that they see it always be
successful. Just showing them that it's cool goes a long way. But its much
easier if you don't have to mix in questions about life and death, especially
at such young ages.

~~~
vlasev
Did you know that the shuttle was mostly intact after the disintegration [1]?

"The crew cabin, made of reinforced aluminum, was a particularly robust
section of the shuttle. During vehicle breakup, it detached in one piece and
slowly tumbled into a ballistic arc. NASA estimated the load factor at
separation to be between 12 and 20 g; within two seconds it had already
dropped to below 4 g and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. The
forces involved at this stage were likely insufficient to cause major injury."

So, in a way there was a pod...

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Cause_and_time_of_death)

~~~
bluehawk
> Did you know that the shuttle was mostly intact

The shuttle wasn't intact, just the crew cabin, or the very front part.

------
hackuser
Costs and catastrophic failures:[1]

* United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin): 0 "outright failures" and 83 successful launches, ~$110 million/launch

* SpaceX: 1 failure and 18 successful launches, $60 million/launch

If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you
choose?

[1] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-
destroyed...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-destroyed-in-
launch-mishap/)

~~~
solomatov
>If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you
choose?

It heavily depends on the cost of the asset. If a satellite costs close to
1bn, it worth to use $110/launch but more reliable rocket.

~~~
damoncali
For some context, that's roughly the cost of a single instrument for the
Hubble (~$100M). There's no free lunch in the space business...

~~~
jimrandomh
But do realize that the replacement cost of an instrument is much lower than
the original creation cost; most of the cost of these things is designing and
tooling, and not part of the unit cost of the actual article.

------
amix
My thoughts go out to the SpaceX team. Must be devastating to see your hard
work blow up :-(

~~~
damoncali
It's part of the job. I was working on a mission scheduled to be launched on
Columbia when it blew up. Loss of life aside, that our vehicle blew up wasn't
the end of the world. We just used another (which required some adjustment-
orbiters weren't all the same).

~~~
TrevorJ
Interesting - what were the differences between the orbiters that you had to
account for?

~~~
damoncali
The cargo bays are laid out a little differently - If I recall correctly, it
was mostly due to different styles of airlock between different orbiters. And
since the loading on the cargo is highly dependent on where it sits in the
bay, you can't just move stuff around willy nilly.

There are probably other minor differences (I want to say there were some
electrical interface issues), but that was the part that impacted my work.

~~~
flashman
Let me guess, your mission went up on Atlantis instead? Being the newest in
the fleet I'd expect it to have a different layout from Columbia. Also from
your other comments in the thread, sounds like you worked on a Hubble
servicing mission, which only Atlantis did after the Columbia accident.

------
NamTaf
Well, that was an unexpected and uncontrolled structural disintegration.

e: On the upside, happy birthday Elon, I hope you enjoyed your really awesome
fireworks!

~~~
mtreis86
"Confirmed we have had a non-nominal flight"

~~~
dabockster
"Lock the doors"

~~~
danielweber
Maybe people didn't realize you were referencing the Columbia Shuttle
disaster.

------
kid0m4n
Yep... just saw... hate the silence on the stream

Update: Looks like the explosion was triggered by Range Control in response to
non nominal flight

~~~
Laremere
Damn, that sucks, but not nearly as much as if it was a random explosion. I
believe in this scenario, astronauts would be able to do an emergency
separation, getting far away from the lower stage before it was detonated. My
biggest worry from this is that human flights will be delayed (justly or
unjustly.)

~~~
ceejayoz
It appears from the video that the Dragon capsule came off intact. Crewed
abort probably would've been just fine, which is indeed a relief. After all,
that's the point of it.

------
UnoriginalGuy
I feel bad for the SpaceX team. No sympathy for Musk considering all the mean
spirited and unfair things he's said publicly about Orbital Sciences' rockets
(inc. "One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply
the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the
punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the
'60s. I don’t mean their design is from the '60s -- I mean they start with
engines that were literally made in the '60s and, like, packed away in Siberia
somewhere."). Which is an even more ironic quote if you knew that Musk tried
to buy exactly those same rockets from Russia and was declined[0].

Hopefully Musk is learning some humility.

[0]
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russi...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3082067/Russian-
space-bosses-SPAT-Elon-Musk-tried-buy-rocket-persuading-build-new-book-
reveals.html)

~~~
adanto6840
Interesting, I didn't know that. I was intrigued enough that I had to look up
the original quote[0] as I had my doubts. I was able to easily find it though,
is from a 10/12/2012 interview with Wired.

Perhaps he's gained some humility since then; I'm still very inspired by him
regardless...

[0] [http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-
qa/](http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/)

------
xur17
It exploded :(. Link to that part of the livestream:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s)

------
satyajeet23
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm.”

~~~
taf2
The challenge will be convincing people like the ULA backers from this
hearing: [http://youtu.be/IWVZYKGTenE](http://youtu.be/IWVZYKGTenE) that this
is not a sign of spacex being less reliable because it is significantly less
cost. My hope is spacex can bounce back.

------
daguava
I would rather see SpaceX fail a thousand times unmanned than once with
astronauts aboard: this is all part of progress forward.

------
n_coats
Was just watching the rocket from my backyard and it looked like it
exploded... wow, can't believe that.

~~~
n_coats
I saw two big puffs of smoke and initially thought it was the boosters
releasing.

~~~
danbruc
On the video it looked to me like a tank ruptured somewhere in the top half of
the rocket, probably the second stage, and set free all the fuel. The rocket
kept its course for some time until it suddenly disintegrated.

~~~
phkahler
I was impressed with how long the first stage kept going with all that
happening up above.

------
cloudwalking
Elon: "There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.
Data suggests counterintuitive cause."
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/615185076813459456](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/615185076813459456)

------
neals
Elon Musk's 44th birthday today. Crazy way to celebrate that, right: Launching
a rocket into space and getting to re-use the rocket.

~~~
batou
* possibly getting to re-use the rocket.

Good luck to everyone involved however; very exciting.

~~~
batou
Damn now I feel bad for saying that.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Yeah, we all knew the return and landing part is new and uncertain, but I
thought they would at least get to try.

~~~
batou
Indeed. I was looking forward to the landing. I never thought it wouldn't make
it to start with. A sad day but you can always learn things from failures so
not a complete waste of effort.

------
solomatov
It's absolutely ok to have failures during rocket development. See statistics
of American and Russian rockets at the dawn of space race.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_accidents_and_incidents)

I wish the best SpaceX and hope they will make space flight affordable for
many commercial and consumer applications.

------
moioci
This is the natural consequence of testing being so expensive that you _have_
to test in production.

------
nkoren
Gods, it feels good to see the future finally arrive. It's been a long time
coming.

Growing up in the 80s, I became quite bitter about the pace of technological
change. Sure, personal computers were _nifty_ , but the heroic age of
spaceflight was really what the future should've been about. That age had
ended with Apollo 17, three years before I was born. Everything since then
looked like a shambolic shuffle into a new dark age.

One insane coincidence in the late 80s gave me some remarkable perspective on
this. I was taking the train down the coast of California, around the horn of
Vandenberg Airforce Base. The train was the only place from which civilians
could see the Vandenberg Launch Complex, including the SLC-6 Shuttle launch
site[1]. Nasa had spent over $4 Billion preparing it for shuttle launches
which would never come. The Challenger disaster had ended all hopes for that;
the complex had been mothballed and was already starting to rust. Seeing this
made my 13-year-old-self angry. I started ranting to the poor gentleman
sitting next to me about how my grandmother hand grown up with horses and
buggies yet got to see men walking on the moon; my generation, on the other
hand, had seen nothing but decline.

As I ranted, the gentleman slumped in his seat. At the end of my rant, he gave
a long sigh and said "tell me about it." Then he introduced himself. He was
Deke Slayton, a Mercury and Apollo astronaut[2]. He'd retired from NASA in
1982, frustrated with its bureaucracy, and tried to start a private space-
launch company. It hadn't gone well.[3] I wish I could say that our
conversation gave me hope for the future, but it didn't.

Later, my hopes were raised by the DC-X[4], then dashed by the subsequent
(insanely corrupt) X-33 fiasco, and the failure of Beal Aerospace[5]. Raised
again when I stood on the flight line at Mojave and watched SpaceShipOne take
its first space shot[6], then dashed again when that program seemed to fly
into molasses. Throughout, there was the sense that the future was _possible_
, but by no means inevitable. There was no guarantee that it would arrive in
my lifetime.

But now here it is. This time it's real, this time it'll work, and nobody will
have to get nailed to anything. I couldn't be happier!

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Complex_6#Space_Shuttle)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deke_Slayton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deke_Slayton)

3:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevefrancis/sets/721576293246...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevefrancis/sets/72157629324639570/)

4:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X)

5:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace)

6:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne_flight_15P](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne_flight_15P)

~~~
nkoren
Addendum: well, crap. The future is still hard.

~~~
robzyb
Your post was in my mind when I was watching the live stream. Your post was
the first thing that I thought of when I realised what had happened.

~~~
TrevorJ
How are their posts that are 4 hours old when OP is only 3 hours old? How does
that work?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Pre-launch and post-explosion threads were merged.

------
51Cards
So in a case like this, would it be possible to have the pad abort system kick
in? It could potentially pull the cargo module away and make an attempt to
parachute it back for recovery? I doubt it could overcome the speed of the
rocket but it might have a chance to separate it from the debris cloud?

~~~
bmiranda
Cargo dragon doesn't have a pad abort system.

Dragon 2 would be able to escape just fine, though. Cargo dragon could
_technically_ survive if didn't get blown up too much.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Cargo dragon could _technically_ survive if didn't get blown up too much.

It appears to be intact after the explosion. You can see it detach and drift
back in the video at about 2:35.
[https://twitter.com/nextlaunch/status/615191061636481024](https://twitter.com/nextlaunch/status/615191061636481024)

Unfortunately, parachutes on the cargo version aren't armed during launch
(would be bad if they accidentally deployed) so it'll have smashed into the
ocean and broken up.

~~~
rzimmerman
Their COO mentioned in the press conference (just a few minutes ago) that they
did receive telemetry from Dragon after the event.

------
transfire
It's never going to work well until we find a way to get to space without
lighting our asses on fire.

------
doguozkan
What are the implications of this for SpaceX in monetary terms? Can they just
shrug this failure off?

~~~
yoha
Failures are expected. This is not catastrophic, although it would have been
nice if they had the opportunity to try a return to barge.

------
tocs
I think (of course just an uneducated guess) things were going poorly from the
beginning. It just looked slower than usual. Also, it looked like some of the
engine exhaust was in places it should not have been several seconds before
the "anomaly".

I hope they get everything figured out and get back on track soon. Best
wished.

~~~
marktangotango
I noticed that too, seemed slow clearing the tower, I thought it was mo
imagination, or the camera angle.

~~~
fbender
I find all SpaceX launches to be "slow" compared to (some) other launches. But
this is mostly due to the Falcon not having any solid rocket motors: These
produce a massive amount of thrust (far higher than liquid engines) and thus a
high accelerating force right from the beginning. You can see that in e.g.
Shuttle launches or the recent Vega launch (all solid motor), compare them to
other liquid-only rocket motor launches.

------
eps
Hold on.

So that's the second in a row ISS resupply mission that failed, isn't it?
First was with the Progress in late April. How does this affect the ISS plans,
does anyone now?

~~~
hackuser
This article says they have food and supplies through October. If I'm on ISS,
maybe I start skipping lunch now.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-
destroyed...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-destroyed-in-
launch-mishap/)

------
AYBABTME
I'm very saddened at this event, it makes me worry about how future launches
will go.

Will their customers agree for them to add landing legs to their future
missions? Will their manned flights be delayed? How about their certification
to launch for the USAF.

Also I'm not sure but, did I see the Dragon spacecraft eject?

~~~
fbender
1) They will assess the failure, maybe change some elements minimally, and
launch again. It does not look like they'll go out of business anytime soon,
and that would be the only reason not to try it again and again.

2) The legs have nothing to do with it, based on what we know (and it's very
unlikely, too). Manned flight certification could be impacted, e.g. assessment
period will be extended, but insignificantly (assuming they find a cause and
the next launches go well). USAF certification will probably not be impacted
since they reached the minimum amount of successful flights (assuming there
are no other rules like "no launch failure in last X flights").

3) No, the rocket was probably terminated, i.e. explosives fired to break up
the malfunctioning rocket. So you probably saw the debris.

------
dEnigma
To quote xkcd: "You will not go to space today"

------
satyajeet23
SpaceX and NASA is continuing to evaluate. Live coverage:
[http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html)

~~~
baggers
T+15m NASA TV says flight was terminated by Air Force, but does not state
reason

[http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3b27hk/rspacex_crs7_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3b27hk/rspacex_crs7_official_launch_discussion_updates/)

------
Thorondor
The press conference is being broadcast live now (1 PM ET).
[http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/)

~~~
codeulike
Just watched some of it. The SpaceX COO just said they're still analysing data
s dont have anything to add to Elon's tweets yet. The rest of the conference
is just reassuring everyone that the ISS is fine for the time being.

------
vonklaus
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue
that counts" \- winston chruchill

------
adanto6840
Press conference just started, YouTube live stream here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyMOYHiatos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyMOYHiatos)

------
MichaelMoser123
Good that nobody was hurt.

that reminds me that Elon Musk said that Antares rockets are junk, so now his
own spacecrafts are exploding. Space tech has its problems. Maybe that will
teach him to be a bit more humble.

[http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/10/iss-bound-
gear-...](http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/10/iss-bound-gear-
experiemnts-lost-in-antares-explosion-space-xs-elon-musk-called-the-rockets-
outdated-.html)

~~~
Osmium
I think that article might be a bit disingenuous. Elon Musk didn't say that in
response to the Antares explosion, he said it _several years earlier_ , and
the part that's quoted is pretty accurate to be fair.

When a failure does happen, nobody goes around celebrating it, whether they're
competitors or not, and honestly I believe that includes Elon Musk. I believe
that on a human level, but even on a business level it's bad, because it
reduces public faith in space transportation generally. Nobody likes to see
this happen.

:(

~~~
lutorm
He did express sympathy for Orbital's failure:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176)

------
FrankenPC
My only question is, is the real time telemetry at a high enough resolution
that the exact cause of the explosion can be ferreted out? I'm guessing yes.
This is another very important learning experience. One of countless thousands
on the way to reliable space launch and recovery.

My only pessimistic thought in all this is that companies like Space X simply
do not have the funds necessary to keep absorbing catastrophic loss and will
just give up.

~~~
pbreit
SpaceX at this point is pretty well-funded, still in a solid position to tap
capital markets and has a healthy manifest of paying customer launches.
There's probably some insurance in place to mitigate financial losses. And
this is the benefit of bringing costs down, especially with the complete
complete re-use SpaceX is targeting.

~~~
FrankenPC
Reminds me of that article about the Sony Aibo dogs ending their mechanical
end of life. After 16 years, they are failing and they're no replacement
parts.

Point being, if Sony had kept going with that incredibly sophisticated
robotics tech (for the time) they would be an industry leader right now at a
time when robotics is about to explode. Did Sony run out of funds? No. They
abandoned the project because of fear for stockholder repercussions. That's
what I meant by that comment. Sometimes stockholder flash back is enough to
abandon a really great idea.

------
DanielBMarkham
Meta: From many years of watching various rockets explode, I believe the
correct euphemism is "catastrophic departure from controlled flight
conditions"

------
dordoka
It has exploded! :(

------
xur17
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s)

And the NasaTV stream is still going with updates:
[http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/)

------
ChuckMcM
Bummer. Telemetry will be useful and of course. I doubt it will de-rail
SpaceX.

Several interesting questions came to mind though, especially given the
successful test of the Dragon 2's thrusters, which is whether or not an
inflight abort could have saved the cargo. I understand that isn't practical
in the general case but in the specific case of a Dragon cargo capsule, I'm
wondering if they can fly one with the super draco thrusters. And have that
one do the in flight abort sequence at some point in the future.

And given a rocket at mach 1+ what is the velocity of the explosion wavefront?
In particular if you know that the back end of the rocket has just exploded,
how many milliseconds do you have before the shockwave catches up to the front
of the rocket? Could you perform a disconnect and burn of the super draco
package to put the Dragon capsule far enough ahead of the shock wave to
survive it?

------
thecrumb
Bonus points if any of the debris lands on the barge!

~~~
kid0m4n
Thats a mighty tasteless thing to say. I am guessing you are on the "we should
not be exploring space" camp?

~~~
serf
this was the failure of a cutting edge rocket that resulted in no loss of
human life. How is it tasteless? I'm personally more saddened by the fact that
the ISS is getting schedules pushed back than some billion-dollar company lost
a rocket.

I'm very much pro-space exploration, and I thought it was funny. It's just a
tongue-in-cheek joking reference as if this was a huge game of lawn-darts.

Lighten up, and stop 'guessing' about what 'camp' people are a part of as part
of public discourse. It makes you look rude, presumptive, and (possibly worst
of all) wrong.

------
vonklaus
>The seventh cargo resupply mission of Dragon to the ISS, also carrying the
first International Docking Adapter in the trunk of Dragon, for use in
Commercial Crew missions.

Are they looking to relight and land today? They usually do for geo or ISS
missions.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Yep, and _Of Course I Still Love You_ is in position.

[https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xaf1/t51.28...](https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xaf1/t51.2885-15/11386494_1452562881712991_551422559_n.jpg)

~~~
myth_buster
What's usually the timeline and when could we expect the docking?

Edit: Go it...

    
    
      Post-Launch Booster Recovery
    
      Okay, that's the routine stuff dealt with. I know we're all here 
      to see what happens to the first stage! Following stage separation 
      approximately 3 minutes into the launch, the first stage 
      will manoeuvre and orient itself to conduct a post-mission 
      landing test attempt on an autonomous drone ship named 
      "Of Course I Still Love You".
    

Source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3b27hk/rspacex_crs7...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3b27hk/rspacex_crs7_official_launch_discussion_updates/)

~~~
vlasev
Since you edited with the first stage landing info, the expected landing is
roughly T+9 min.

------
whoisthemachine
Lift-off looked normal, seemed like things were going fine. Personally, I
noticed a darker piece of material fly off the rocket, and then
disintegration. Will be interesting to hear the reason/root cause.

------
bendtheblock
A complete coincidence, I was just watching these worst rocket malfunctions
[1] then flicked over to HN and this was #1 story.

Initial thoughts are that the main difference is now we have HD video and for
some reason the controllers remain silent after the explosion... Why the
silence? There used to be at least some reaction from the controllers. From an
"oh no" to "obviously a major malfunction"... no sh*t Sherlock...

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qJh9upqW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qJh9upqW8)

~~~
engi_nerd
> Initial thoughts are that the main difference is now we have HD video and
> for some reason the controllers remain silent after the explosion

When something like this happens, all the conversations about what happened
are being held on comm nets that aren't broadcast. Believe me, the controllers
are talking to each other, gathering and sequestering data, etc. But they
aren't doing it on the net that's broadcast to the public.

------
filvdg
It looked like the exhaust fumes changed patern and than everything
desintegrated ... maybe it autodistructed ... it did not look like it changed
direction or anything before the explosion

------
LesZedCB
Does anybody have a way to watch the video again? I'm curious to watch it
again now that I know what happened. I haven't watched many launches before so
I didn't know if what was happening was routine or not. Though, admittedly, it
was weird that one second there was a rocket, then the next there was only
debris...

edit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&t=23m38s)
Thanks xur17!

~~~
alexggordon
Here's a second[0] video in case the first one goes down.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ)

~~~
Seanambers
Based on that, one can clearly see by stepping frame by frame at 3:20
disintergration of what i imagine must be second stage fueltanks. Difficult to
say if it is oxygen or kerosene, but since its expanding so rapidly it would
seem likely that its a oxygen tank.

But nevertheless its just guessing from me and im no expert.

------
mkempe
Live broadcast here:
[http://livestream.com/spacex/events/4152712](http://livestream.com/spacex/events/4152712)

~~~
thomasfoster96
Here if you prefer YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw)

~~~
agildehaus
YouTube stream usually works better and is Chromecastable :)

~~~
danbruc
Excpet »Live Streaming is not available in your country due to rights issues«.

------
scolson
I was wondering what happened. This was my first time watching the live stream
so I wasn't sure if that was normal or not.

Edit: They just called it, they had an "anomaly."

------
JackWebbHeller
So what's going to happen to the astronauts aboard the ISS - this was a
resupply mission. How much longer can they stay up there with their current
supplies?

~~~
mdumic
Russians can lift anything in matter of days if need be.

~~~
SuperChihuahua
Didn't a Russian rocket with supplies to ISS explode not long ago?

Edit: One exploded in May:
[http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/05/soyuz-2-1a-third-
stag...](http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/05/soyuz-2-1a-third-stage-
progress-m-27m-iss-changes/) It seems like they are going to launch again with
supplies to ISS in July

~~~
arrrg
Not every space flight failure is the result of an explosion.

The Progress vehicle did actually enter an orbit (it reached space and was
circling the Earth for a couple days), just the wrong one and after that it
spun out of control and was no longer controllable from the ground. Since
there is still some atmosphere and some drag in low Earth orbit it eventually
was slowed down enough to burn up.

Basically, it failed because it couldn't be controlled anymore, no explosions
involved. (Had it been launched to an higher orbit it may well have stayed up
for a long, long time, no explosions or anything else interesting going on,
just spinning round and round and being uncontrollable.)

------
nothrabannosir
did it just explode???

~~~
dordoka
yes...

------
ColinWright
Oh. Crap.

Space really _is_ hard.

~~~
hyperion_
Seems like we do ok once we're in space, it's the going in between that's the
hard part.

------
binoyxj
BREAKING: "The range confirmed that the vehicle has broken up. @SpaceX is
putting together their anomaly team."

~~~
cbhl
Source:
[https://twitter.com/NASA/status/615164919978328064](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/615164919978328064)

------
PieterCVoges
Just wondering... Why don't they use the new V2 Dragon with it's escape/abort
system in all future resupply missions? At least they should be able to save
the very expensive lab supply equipment, instruments, experiments, etc. Just
fit it with the current V1 Dragon attach system for ISS docking.

------
neals
Awkwards silence on the livestream... RIP Falcon 9. Still happy birthday Elon,
I guess ?

------
waterlesscloud
Wait, is the banner on SpaceX's YouTube channel really the terraforming of
Mars?

[https://www.youtube.com/user/spacexchannel](https://www.youtube.com/user/spacexchannel)

~~~
kristofferR
It clearly is. Damn, that's cool!

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk had already started thinking
seriously about that phase of the colonization project.

~~~
jakebaker
When you walk into their office and go back towards the area where Elon's
cubicle is, the same photo of the terraforming transition is blown up on the
wall:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/9848295393](https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/9848295393)

Their company mugs also have a heat sensitive image of Mars that terraforms
itself: [http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-81/occupy-mars-heat-
sensi...](http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-81/occupy-mars-heat-sensitive-
terraforming-mug.html)

Elon is ::definitely:: already thinking about the colonization phase of the
project and has taken steps to highlight it to the company and the public.

------
calin2k
"Non nominal flight"

~~~
orian
What does it mean?

~~~
001sky
_How did nominal come to mean “within acceptable tolerances”?_

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-
did-n...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-did-nominal-
come-to-mean-within-acceptable-tolerances)

So, it's another way of saying something is 'out of tolerance'.

------
ekianjo
Gone, baby Gone. Too bad... :(

------
thomasrossi
I remember as a kid playing buzz aldrin's race into space I was fascinated by
the exploding rockets. Now that I better realize the cost, no more fascinated.
Trial and error has its costs

------
knrdev
First time i watch SpaceX launch. Rocket explodes. Disappointed.

------
jacquesm
Man that sucks... At least it wasn't a manned flight yet.

------
ytdht
[http://rowvid.com/?v=PuNymhcTtSQ&t=200&s=1](http://rowvid.com/?v=PuNymhcTtSQ&t=200&s=1)

------
cosmolev
Happy birthday Elon! We know you'll do it eventually.

------
akhilpo
India's ISRO sent a mars mission for around $70 million. That was including
the payload i think. How is $60 million cheap for just a launch vehicle?

------
mabbo
As the ship exploded, the words on the screen were something to the tune of
"At this point, the ship is under the highest aerodynamic pressure".

~~~
dasmoth
From the timeline, and from remembering past launches, I'm pretty sure it was
well past Max-Q.

~~~
xgbi
I think Max-Q occured about a minute before. You can review the stream, it
passed supersonic way before (you see the shock cone on the two sides), then
max-q, then a minute later the explosion

------
transfire
I sat here watching it go up and thought "please don't blow up. please don't
blow up." I should have stayed in bed. Sorry all.

~~~
drux
Its OK. We know it wasn't intentionally.

------
noobie
RIP Jebediah Kerman.

------
satyajeet23
Elon Musk Tweeted: There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid
oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

------
32faction
gif of explosion: [http://imgur.com/SYwUIbI](http://imgur.com/SYwUIbI)

------
satai
AFAIK only three launch vehicles have better count of starts before the first
big acident: Space Shuttle, Soyuz and Delta II.

------
tocs
Hate to see it also. It think things were going bad right from the beginning
though (a completely uneducated guess).

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Isn't 180 seconds just the burn time of first stage? So it's when 2nd stage
should fire?

------
yoha
vlc [http://iphone-
streaming.ustream.tv/uhls/6540154/streams/live...](http://iphone-
streaming.ustream.tv/uhls/6540154/streams/live/iphone/playlist.m3u8)

~~~
pohl
You have to cut the "%22" off the end of that URL for it to work. 404
otherwise.

~~~
yoha
This was due to HN including a quote as part of the URL.

------
sidcool
I feel very sad. This is second in a row. The guys up there are short on
supplies...

------
logingone
Why don't they eject the cargo as they've tested for crew?

~~~
patrickyeon
I don't know for sure, but I suspect the (not very extensively tested) launch
abort system wouldn't have actually been installed of this flight.

~~~
mikeash
SpaceX's launch abort system is integral to the Dragon 2 capsule. It's not a
bolt-on and couldn't be reasonably retrofitted to Dragon 1.

------
bingobob
Poor Microsoft HoloLens

------
dantheman
I love watching as many launches as I can it's great!

~~~
dantheman
A valiant effort! Keep up the good work. Everyone is rooting for your success.

------
transfire
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE)

------
stox
So honey, how was the launch today?

We had a blast!

------
brodo
Has anyone got a video recording?

~~~
wcoenen
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiBFtkrZEw&feature=youtu.be&t=23m34s)

~~~
brodo
Thanks!

------
sabertoothed
so sad

------
facetube
Holy shit.

------
cwt137
did it just blow up?

------
cwt137
End of the live broadcast

------
kjson
it blowd up

------
benihana
Crazy how little actual conflagration there is. I would have expected a big
fireball when that much RP-1 and LOX explodes. I mean the entire second
stage's fuel exploded.

Edit: Here's a Titan 1, which was fueled with RP-1 and LOX exploding on the
pad:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzigaTSPZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzigaTSPZY)

~~~
lotu
There were pretty close to Main Engine Cutoff so there would have been
relatively little fuel left.

~~~
greglindahl
It was fueled for a landing, which means 30% extra in the first stage.

------
jedikv
SpaceX - making the world's most expensive bottle rockets

