A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral | Hacker News Reader

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral

techcrunch.com

986 pointsmariusz79535 comments

Here's good video of the test/failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ#t=1m10s

Updates...

Elon tweeted:

"Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon." [1]

SpaceX tweeted:

"At approximately 9:07 am ET, during a standard pre-launch static fire test for the AMOS-6 mission, there was an anomaly at SpaceX's Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 resulting in loss of the vehicle.

The anomaly originated around the upper stage oxygen tank and occurred during propellant loading of the vehicle. Per standard operating procedure, all personnel were clear of the pad and there were no injuries.

We are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause. Additional updates will be provided as they become available." [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/771394161756942336

[2] https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/771395212304277504

Upper stage, so, unrelated to the reused first stage.

Rocketry is hard... And very unforgiving.

The first stage for this launch was brand new. They have not launched a reused stage yet (they just announced a contract with SES about such a launch).

Unfortunately, it's 2 for 29.

But if you look at the FT version, it's 1 for 8.

1. What kind of insurance will be needed on a billion dollar NSA satellite? $100 million? $125 million? It's not so cheep anymore, and considering delays etc. It's not such a great deal anymore. 2. They probably should have a "stable" platform and a "beta" platform, with a discount offered for beta.

Unfortunately, the "move fast and break things" attitude doesn't work with rockets.

As unforgiving as brain surgery. :)

> all personnel were clear of the pad and there were no injuries

But it still must burn a hole in Musk's pocket.

Frame-by-frame: http://rowvid.com/?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ&t=71.75&s=0.25

Was that a bird flying in the background right as the explosion occurred? If so, it must have really scared the crap out of it!

That's quite a lens, assuming the sound is correctly synchronized with the image.

You can get cheap consumer cameras now with pretty absurd zooms. The $600 Nikon P900 [1] has an 83x optical zoom lens, giving it the 35mm-equivalent focal length of 24-2000mm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SC_2yD6wKk.

[1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1127274-REG/nikon_264...

How good is the photo quality? Is it close to entry-level DSLRs'?

That's my thought. I counted about 12 seconds between initial explosion and the sound hitting the camera, which puts it at roughly 2.88km away.

Edit: Helps if I multiply properly. 12 seconds * 340m/s == 4080m.

Ok, the Falcon 9 1.2 [1] is 70m tall [2], and the rocket fills up about 80% of the vertical frame [3].

Using the "Image = FL * Obj / distance" equation, we get:

.8 * 24mm = x * 70m/4080m

Where x is the focal length of the lens assuming a full frame camera.

This comes out to a x = 1119mm equivalent focal length. If you have a crop sensor, this isn't too hard to obtain. I'd be amused if the video was taken with a Canon EF 1200mm lens or something, but the probability of that is 0.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos-6

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Full_Thrust

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ#t=1m10s

i think you mean 4.1 km?

15, 5k

It's pretty easy to mate an interchangeable lens camera (DSLR, Micro Four Thirds, etc) with a small telescope. There are standard adapters for it. That basically gives you the telephoto lens to rule all telephoto lenses.

I know, I've done it. It's beautifully clear for a 5km throw though.

The frame rate isn't high enough to tell for sure, but it looks like the initial explosion might be between the strongback and the second stage, followed less than 1/30 second later by the second stage exploding. Certainly the initial explosion spreads out vertically much more than horizontally in the first 1/30 second, perhaps implying that the explosion was in vapour outside the second stage.

There is something flying just above when the explosion starts, probably a bird, but how hard will it be to just fly a drone there with some kind of projectile?

[Edit] Pre and Post explosion: http://imgur.com/a/IIzg2

> but how hard will it be to just fly a drone there with some kind of projectile?

It's a massive long metal tube full of extremely flammable things...what seems more likely: drone with projectile entering a highly restricted piece of airspace, or as rockets are want to do, it blew up by itself.

NB: wont to do.

Though you've given me a reason to look up the etymology. Now I now: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=wont&allowed_in_fra...

Of course it's more likely that there was a malfunction, no one is saying otherwise, I was just wondering how SpaceX guards their lunch pad from aerial intrusions, hitting a small drone flying fast isn't an easy target and you'd have to have a constant watch for them.

The camera is over 4km away, I think its something flying past much closer to the camera.

An insect flying in front of the camera lens. You can see this multiple times throughout the video: 0:54, 4:28, 4:41...

Given the distance between the camera and the rocket, it still could be a bird.

Looks way too fast and round for a bird.. but yeah it's clearly there

It's probably a bug in the foreground of the camera. You can see the same thing at around 1:06 in the bottom half of the frame before it explodes.

Anomaly at 1:10 in that clip, as a SpaceX fan its hard to watch.

You can just say explosion, we're not at the Cape.

Which is a sub-class of anomaly :-) it is really hard to scrub Youtube videos, and I (like probably a zillion others) was looking for root cause indicators; things like where exactly on the fuselage does it start? What equipment is there? How energetic was the explosion (oxidizer only? mixed with propellant? Etc. There are at least 30 frames between 1:10 and 1:11 (maybe 60). There are many things to rule out, was it a leak in the LOX hose? Was it a rupture of an internal tank? did the equipment detach prematurely? etc etc.

Is there a bird just flying above the explosion just seconds after the sounds comes through ?

What exactly happened at 1m14s - 1m15s where the _big ball of fire_ seemingly exploded again ?

p.s. skip forward to 1m21s to see AMOS-6 burn (in case you dislike facebook _very_ much).

Can somebody properly explain the different stages of the explosion? Obviously there's the first explosion but then after about 3.5 seconds there's a second, bigger one.

What's exploding in the first boom and what in the second?

Then, about 12 seconds in, the "nose" is falling down and causing a 3rd explosion. Why hasn't the nose "co-exploded" already with the 1st or 2nd explosion?

The first explosion is the smaller second stage igniting. The second, bigger explosion is the first stage exploding. The first stage has most of the mass of the rocket in the form of propellant and is what SpaceX lands on the barge after it separates from the second stage. The second stage is smaller and lighter, and puts the satellite into low earth orbit, or into its transfer orbit in the case of higher orbits (eg geostationary orbit).

The 'nose' falling is payload and its protective fairing. The idea of a fairing is to protect the the satellite from aerodynamic, heat and acoustic stress. It explodes because the satellite has propellant in it - certainly for its rcs system for attitude adjustment and station keeping, and it might have a main engine to help it reach orbit.

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9

http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/04/12/fairing

Just some wild guesses:

First explosion related to second stage (upper). Second explosion related to first stage's fuel igniting (I was expecting some much bigger, but likely there was already little oxygen left in that area and why it burned for so long. Third Explosion was the satellite's internal fuel (Hydrazine or something like it) detonating due to the fall damage and contact with the rest of the flame.

THANK YOU. The TC video has a giant stupid banner over it that blocks and distracts from the video.

This video is also insanely high quality. Thanks!

Nice to see that the payload didn't start to topple until around 6s after the blast. Gives hope of the launch abort system having time to do its job had this been a manned launch.

interesting highlights:

1:23 you can see the sat fairing fall from the stack, and then a secondary explosion when it hits the ground (presumably sat propellant)

3:24 second explosion with a fairly fast projectile coming out the top. Any clue as to what that is?

No sign of a fire extinguishing or pad deluge system, such as NASA had for the shuttle. Maybe Space-X needs that. Fire crews can't approach until the fire burns itself out - too toxic.

The point of those systems was to limit damage from vibration and rocket exhaust on a normal launch, not to allow the pad to withstand an explosion. (And SpaceX does have them as well; the pad deluge system is more visible than usual in this video of the Dragon pad-abort test, which was conducted at the same launch pad they use for Falcon 9s, though without the rocket itself or any of its mobile support equipment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8 -- the large streams of water kick in a few seconds before the Dragon abort thrusters kick off.)

> The point of those systems was to limit damage from vibration and rocket exhaust

It is important to note that the deluge functioned to protect the launch vehicle from sound vibrational damage, not the pad.

> Fire crews can't approach until the fire burns itself out - too toxic.

You're thinking of hypergolic propellants like hydrazine and nitric acid. This is kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen. Not particularly toxic, just hot as hell.

The deluge system in shuttle launches was for the flame trench and sound dampening to avoid the air pressure from the noise damaging the vehicle, not fire extinguishing.

You can see the launch tower get charred black, that's the fire protective paint.

It's not really possible to fight rocket fuel fires, just mitigate the damage.

Although the satellite itself had a lot of hydrazine on board. That's probably what caused the smaller second explosion when the fairing fell off and hit the ground.

Oh, right; the Falcon second stage is just a smaller version of the first stage.

Looks like they had a payload go with it. Sad.

> "SpaceX confirm Amos-6 was aboard the Falcon 9 and was lost in the explosion."

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77135388623807283...

This disaster may have bigger implications for Spacecom. They were in the middle of being acquired by Beijing Xinwei and the successful launch of Amos 6 was supposed to be a factor in closing the deal[1]. I have no idea what blowing up on the pad means for the merger.

1. http://www.satellitetoday.com/technology/2016/08/24/spacecom...

It's a deal breaker most likely, the terms of the deal were based on AMOS-6 becoming operational by march 2017.

There has been high level of criticism in Israel about the deal as many seen this as giving up it's sovereignty over its space platforms even tho under the deal the all operations of spacecom platforms would be still handled from Israel proper, I'm sure the r/conspiracies is already booming with sabotage theories.

But yeah it's not great for spacecom in general, Facebook also will now withdraw from their contract with them for supplying internet to Africa as AMOS-6 was supposed to replace AMOS-2 and enhance the coverage over Africa and the Middle East. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Amos-6-K... Israel is one of the few countries that is pushing satellite coverage in the area, AMOS-6 was supposed to grant up to 20gbps of bandwidth to Africa over the leased Ka band which was desperately needed.

So sabotage could be a factor?

This is in the realm of conspiracy theory. No evidence points to this. Nothing the parent comment said suggests it. I think you are filling in the blanks with your own hypotheses but they're accusatory shots in the dark at this point. It's possible, sure, but so are a lot of things.

I like the way you think. How could someone determine if this occurred? Rocket sabotage seems like a rather perfect crime, very little evidence is left afterwards.

Sounds like SpaceX just killed multiple deals for this company. Could someone who knows about this kind of stuff (I assume this subset of the population is small) comment on whether there is recourse against SpaceX for losing the payload?

The risk of this happening was almost certainly accounted for in the contractual relationship.

Unfortunately accidents happen, I have a feeling that some insurance company somewhere is going to end up paying for the damages...

Won't they just relaunch in a few months? Not sure what the rebuild timeline is.

It takes years to build a satellite, the bus, and every component is purposely built each component and the satellite itself goes through months of testing and even if they could build one within 6 months all of the contracts would expire by then which will require Spacecom to open the bids again.

All of the contracts were based on AMOS-6 being operational by a given date, AMOS-6 has been "under construction" for probably 4-5 years, SpaceX was selected as the launch contractor in late 2012 originally for a mid 2015 launch but the launch was delayed for various reasons.

No, they don't have redundancies for satellites. It's 2 to 3 years.

Why did they make a contract contingent on factors outside the contractant's influence? that seems counterintuitive.

Based on what others have posted, it's not necessarily a clause like, "If you launch successfully, we go ahead with the deal", but rather a clause like, "If the satellite is operational within X amount of time, we will go ahead with the deal."

This explosion probably put them way past the X amount of time so the deal would fall through.

Your legal and technical claims sound highly questionable to me. Satellite operators are not responsible for the successful operation of the launch vehicle, and one would expect their contractual arrangements to reflect that. That would be like firing someone because their commuter train derailed and they were late to work as a result.

Stock is down about 10%. Makes me wonder if high-speed traders seek realtime video feeds of such launches. Is the "official" feed delayed?

There was no official feed, it wasn't a launch, it was a pre-launch test fire.

It's irrational to argue that you would pull out of a merger because a 3rd party's rocket failure delayed a launch. Contracts almost invariably include escape clauses to avoid liability for matters that are outside the control of the parties. If the launch was already scheduled at the time of the merger agreement (which seems likely, a rocket launch is not the sort of thing you arrange at the last minute) then Beijing Xinwei would be expected to factor the risks into its pricing calculations.

The failure of the launch changes the real world situation. It's not irrational to argue that such a change also changes the pros/cons of a merger. The fact that it was related to a 3rd party is irrelevant.

"It's irrational to argue that you would pull out of a merger because a 3rd party's rocket failure delayed a launch."

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of things intertwined - moreover, M&A is not the most rational area of business.

Also - one side may 'cancel', huff and puff about it, then use it as a premise to come back to the table and negotiate a much better deal.

I don't think the USG will allow SpaceX to be acquired by a Chinese company.

I know nothing about space - why are they doing tests, where the rocket could possibly explode or fail, with the payload on board?

They do the tests to validate that this rocket won't turn into a cruise missile, headed for the nearest residential area. Not an impossible scenario. Lots of energy stored up in one of those rockets.

Just like when we test software, they want to have everything as close to what they would expect on launch day as possible (2 days from now). All the stresses, the structure, etc. That means putting stage 2 and the payload on top of the main rocket before the test starts. They probably did a lot of tests before the payload was on board as well, and those didn't reveal whatever flaw has caused this issue.

Yes, it sucks that the payload was lost but there will have been insurance to cover the loss. No human lives lost, no cruise missile scenario, no out of control fire... this is the best case scenario for a rocket failure.

Nitpick: you're thinking of a ballistic missile. Cruise missiles are more like exploding fixed-wing drones. The V-1 flying bomb was a cruise missile, and the V-2 rocket was a ballistic missile.

If a fully loaded (cryogenic fuel + oxidizer) SpaceX rocket did a belly flop into downtown Orlando I suspect this distinction would be quite meaningless to the locals!

Not sure what exactly are you nitpicking here - ballistic missiles have propulsion for a short time after lunch and afterwards continuing on a ballistic (hence the name) trajectory towards the targets. Cruise missiles have propulsion usually during most of the flight.

A rocket straying off course could either smash into city under full power (thus being a cruise missile) or have its propulsion cut off remotely beforehand (thus being a ballistic missile), depending on a scenario. What kind of a correction were you making?

'Cruise missile' has always sounded cooler than ballistic missile, imho. But you are 100% correct according to Wikipedia.

> They do the tests to validate that this rocket won't turn into a cruise missile, headed for the nearest residential area.

In that case the rocket has a flight-termination system, though, which should activate as soon as it veers too far outside the planned/expected parameters of the flight.

For more context, all (edit: American!) rockets for decades have had onboard self destruct systems and a "Range Safety Officer" on the ground whose entire job is to determine if and when to deploy this self destruct system.

The cruise missile scenario is highly unlikely as the rocket itself would be destroyed soon after leaving its intended trajectory.

It too should work. Just like rockets shouldn't explode while loading fuel before a test firing.

But of all systems I never want to have to test in production, the flight-termination system is at the top of my list.

This discussion reminds me of the failure of the first Ariane 5 launch. The flight-termination system was activate erroneously, and the payload was not insured. Ouch.

http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet87/cavall87.htm

https://around.com/ariane.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_%28spacecraft%29

That doesn't mitigate the danger really.

Could they not have mocked the payload?

Mocking a six ton payload is actually fairly expensive, to get the cg, vibration etc. right. A lot more difficult than payload = mock(satellite); NASA did it for the Hubble but so the ground crew could practice operations and not drop the billion dollar space observatory, not to try and save some money if something blew up during testing.

It is possible to damage the rocket and systems when mating the payload in the faring, which would not become apparent without further testing and somewhat negates the purpose of this test itself.

The payload is mated early to save time by speeding up the launch schedule [1] so a mock payload would have the opposite effect - it would need mated and then removed after the test fire.

[1] https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/771411924907094016

The question nobody is answering....

Insurance isn't magic pixie dust, it just moved the cost around.

If the organization underwriting the insurance is implicitly and explicitly insured (too big to fail) by the US govt, it might as well be magic pixie dust!

They do the tests to validate that this rocket won't turn into a cruise missile, headed for the nearest residential area. Not an impossible scenario. Lots of energy stored up in one of those rockets

This is a big plot point in the "Twin Spica" series.

Same reason anyone else does tests: Find potential and actual issues earlier than in production. The static fire they were doing is sort of a short integration / smoke (pun not intended) test whether the rocket as a whole (whether the payload is attached already depends on the customer; it reduces time between test and launch, though) works properly. Other tests are part of sort of a pre-flight checklist directly before launch and there have been launch scrubs due to issues at that point already. Every single engine is also fired for the full duration of the flight prior to installation in the rocket.

There's a lot of testing, both in isolation and in integration with other components. The risk of the rocket exploding should actually reduce with each test. Note also that in this case the malfunction was most likely with the pad equipment, not the rocket, so not doing static fires would in this case probably just have meant that you'd have an explosion at launch time one day.

EDIT: The static fire is more of a test for launch procedures, apparently:

“The goal of the static fire is to provide a dress rehearsal for the launch team, culminating in a three second firing of all nine of the first stage Merlin 1D engines to validate the health of the rocket.” (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/09/falcon-9-explodes-am...)

Makes sense in that the rocket itself is tested quite a bit beforehand already.

Is launch pad designed to take a hit like this? Or do you think it would have caused a lot of damage to Cape Canaveral.

Launch pads usually are not built for rockets exploding on them, but as the pad itself is mostly a concrete plane it should be mostly fine. Controlled burn of the propellant, a.k.a., a launch, is obviously fine as well ;-)

Facilities and other things on the pad may not like it, though.

They already said that their Horizontal Integration Facility (where the rocket is put together prior to erection) is intact, as are the tanks on site. But the strongback looks mangled and may well be destroyed. It's also right beside the rocket, so the most likely casualty in such an explosion. Other pads and facilities are most likely far enough away that the only concern is debris from the explosion landing there.

Unlikely, it wouldn't be much of a launch pad if it couldn't handle failure modes for rockets (aka bombs with a hole in one end). Compare to this Saturn V launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y

A rocket contains the energy of a mini-nuke. You could not design a launch pad to withstand an anomaly like this.

This is a good question. There could be substantial damage. The Antares failure at Wallops knocked the pad out for months and took $15 million to repair.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/10/06/workers-complete-15-mi...

The pictures of the aftermath speak for themselves. The strongback is a mangled wreck, and all of the fuel tanks blew up. The vast majority of the launch complex, expressed in economic terms, is going to need to be rebuilt.

The Apollo 1 accident[0] was during a similar test (a "plugs out test", which tests the spacecraft independent of all the support systems on earth to verify that it works correctly on its own). The rationale behind all this tests is "better have a problem on the ground, where we can fix it, than have the spacecraft fail in space".

If you get interest in this stuff, the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" has an episode about Apollo1 (and the series as a whole, though slightly dated on the FX side, is amazing).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

I haven't seen it in a long time, but +1 on the recommendation. I need to go borrow the DVDs from my parents and watch it again.

The series is awesome, but the book on which it's based is even better: Andrew Chaikin's "A Man On The Moon".

My understanding is that it is up to the customer whether they want to integrate the payload before or after the hot fire test. Integrating before means higher chance of an incident like this, while integrating after means significantly longer turnaround between the hot fire and launch.

Thanks, that's the answer I was looking for. Other commenters seemed to think I was asking why they test at all!

I think this kind of test is generally just looking at the performance of the engines. Certainly highly unusual for the rocket to explode as part of this kind of test.

The payload is probably loaded in a clean-room type environment.

Because losing the payload amortized by the chance of its loss is less expensive than the 100% dead expense of a test rocket.

Well, I know that In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.

Maybe they offer discounts to payloads on test flights

It wasn't a test flight. The "hot fire" test is conducted on every rocket shortly before launch.

As an aside, when SpaceX do reuse a rocket for the first-time (I suppose you could describe that as a test-flight), they have apparently given SES a discount [1].

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/30/technology/spacex-rocket-reu...

That was my first reaction. I thought they could create a dummy payload with the same dimensions and weight. But, then... unless the weight distribution of the payload is important.

Loading the payload isn't a quick thing, it takes time and a lot of careful work to do. So doing it before the tests can save a lot of time and I'm guessing money.

What's sad about it? They have insurance, it's just hardware. Nobody died or was even injured, so it's merely an invoncenience.

There are engineers out there who actually care about their work, and put years into it. It's really most sad for them.

For the some of those engineers, its a loss of an Olympic gold...

Apparently one of the satellites was meant for internet connectivity in the developing world. Zuckerburg is very mad right now. Lost time is lost opportunity.

Everything about Internet.org went in a way contrary to what Mr Zuckerberg wanted.

The bourgeoisie of the developing world he wanted to help protested, the political class looked into constraining it by law, the first world hated it for misrepresenting the ideals of the Internet and going against hard-earned net neutrality laws, local Internet service providers backed off because of the negative publicity...

And the satellites he wanted to use to circumvent that went up in flames.

Lives were lost, just incrementally; person-hours in building things that will never add value.

Not completely; person-hours involved in building satellites, which are ultimately unique things, add a whole lot of experience to people involved in the building and handling, as well as for the organization. Sure it's not as much as a successful launch, but not totally wasted.

> They have insurance

Nope.

>Elon Musk has stated that because the rocket didn't intentionally ignite for launch, the loss of payload is not covered by launch insurance.

There were no personal injuries, so I can't really be sad about a piece of electronics.

I think it's unfair that you are getting downvotes for this statement.

All you said was that it is good to have some perspective. Yes, it sucks to lose the rocket and the satellite. But to put it into perspective, the husband of the lady sitting next to me as I type this (and a friend of mine) is currently sitting in the shelter at the launchpad. He texted her to let her know he was alive. He can't give out any more details.

Have some perspective people.

I agree. You could argue it could always be worse (2 deaths vs 1, a death of a loved one vs. a stranger) but I'm sure the level of badness has a steep curve before human loss is considered.

How close is the shelter to the tower? That's gotta be terrifying. I'd have thought people would need to be pretty far away just to avoid permanent hearing damage in an event like this.

I could have formulated that better.

That's tons of work. Lots of heart and soul went into that. I can still be sad for people even if we didn't lose people.

Not to mention money. $200MM investment into space, gone.

https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g/updates/613f262a-70...

One could also feel sad for the (possibly millions) of people in Africa who were depending on this satellite launch to give them internet service. The difference between having internet, and not having it, is huge, especially in the developing world. This has real human consequences.

The actual chips may have to be made again, but code that has been written once should be fine to just load on again.

Yeah it sucks, but it could have been a lot worse.

On any project like that many engineers involved will have invested more than regular hours and pushed their work life balance - losing it all a couple of days from launch into space - that's harsh dude

Most of the stuff on which we engineers work ends up in the bin anyway. This is just more spectacular than some manager showing up one day to announce that this XXX M$ project, the one you and many others spent your last 2 years regularly overtiming, is cancelled because mblllmbllbllsometopmanagementfuckedupmbbllmbllblll. I just mention this case because it was the most ridiculous that happened to me but a large majority of others projects I've worked ended up in the bin a way or another, or should have because they are designed from scratch to be useless.

It's the life that they've chosen. It comes with ups and downs.

Can you prove any of this?

Knowing how smart and methodological Musk is, I wouldn't be surprised if the rule at the office is actually to leave your desk and go home at 5pm sharp.

You are prone to make more mistakes when you tired and overworked and I cannot imagine more important place not to make mistakes, than building a rocket.

Tell that to the people in Africa who will soon have no internet access once AMOS-2 fails.

This payload, AMOS-6, was a replacement for the soon to fail AMOS-2 which among other things is part of a Facebook initiative to provide internet access in parts of Africa.

I am not aware of any replacement in the works for it, so that service may just shut down, and who knows if it will ever start back up.

So while this might be "nothing" to you, it has actual repercussions for people.

Not to mention the effects on the Israeli company that made the payload. Insurance may or may not pay for the satellite itself (I don't know), but even if they do, they were also relying on income generated from running it.

Actual humans working for that company may now be impacted.

> provide internet access in parts of Africa

If you mean internet.org wheter it's a loss or not is debatable

It's a real bummer, also don't forget that now that SpaceX has had two payload losses in two years will mean that their insurance is very likely to go up.

Agree. "Sad" is the PC thing to say when something like that happens. In most people's lives it's a big "who cares". [1]

The fact that you were downvoted (at least when I saw your comment) indicates people don't agree with what you are saying and is an example of trying to enforce a particular type of thinking on someone else as far as what they should think or feel.

[1] Of course I wouldn't say "who cares" directly to someone involved in the project in some way then you extend your condolences.

You wouldn't say it directly to someone involved in the project, but you'll say it in a public forum where there's a decent chance some of those people will see it?

Why the need to comment on perceived downvoting injustice? Is it that big a deal? Is there a downvoted support group somewhere? :P

Anyway, here's the scanner feed of Kennedy Space Center Communicationshttp://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/705

He was downvoted for only looking at first-order effects: People harmed during the fire.

And ignoring second-order effects: People harmed because of the results of the fire.

The second group of people is not less important than the first.

Per @SpaceX, the issue was not with the rocket itself, but a pad anomaly and the Amos-6 payload was to be Facebook's first-ever satellite.

Testing in production. Tisk tisk.

Every rocket is test fired before launch. SpaceX does do many things that might be considered "testing in production", but this isn't one of them.

How stupid, to test with satalite on-board?? esp considering how expensive they are, they should use a dummy the same size and weight. You can't test satalite functionality on the ground so a completly pointless risk to include it.

There are actually things to test in the integration between the rocket and satellite. It's not like the satellite is a dump piece of steel sitting on top of the rocket. The payload has its own computer, power systems, and propulsion. The interactions between that and the launching rocket / ground systems matter. Also mating the two is non-trivial, so you can push the static fire back closer to the launch if you are doing it with the payload on board.

A static fire without the payload on the rocket was already done in Texas several weeks ago. This is the final dress rehearsal before launch. I always thought of these tests as low risk, but I guess nothing in rocketry is low risk.

Would they do so if human cargo?

Actually they specifically plan to load astronauts before fueling begins. If they're in the capsule the launch escape system (LES)[1] can propel them away from any on-pad disaster; not so if they're still walking across the gantry.

That said, NASA has raised concerns about loading crew pre-fueling as part of the NASA-SpaceX Commercial Crew development contract (CCDev).

[1] Here's a video of the LES test for Dragon 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8

The payload was apparently on the rocket at the time[1]. A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom government bird.

[1]https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/771352977315684352...

One has to wonder why it was thought to be a good idea to keep an expensive payload onboard during a live-fire test

EDIT: Did some research, it seems that those tests (without the payload) already ran successfully, and that this accident happened during the fueling stage at T-3 minutes... that's super unlucky :/

This wasn't launch. It was still a live fire test, but as you say, there are previous tests before integration.

> A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom government bird.

In fairness, when did the government last lose a bird? Doesn't the ULA have a '100%' success rate (where success is getting payload to space, though some payloads fail to make it to the planned orbit)

A Delta II blew up 13 seconds after launch in 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_IIR-1

I suspect the $2b custom government bird refers to the space shuttle. Of which we have, in fact, lost more than one.

The shuttle was a vehicle with vastly different capabilities, and technical challenges to overcome, compared to a Falcon rocket.

There have been 133 successful shuttle launches, and 2 failed ones.

There have been 27 successful Falcon launches, and 2 failed ones.

That figure's low by a factor of 100 for the Space Shuttle program.

More like NSA/CIA/NRO spy satellites.

ESA’s Ariane also has a far better successrate than SpaceX’s Falcon, and if I’d send a satellite to space, unless it would be a really cheap one, I’d likely not use the Falcon as delivery vehicle.

So you would rather pay $600 million per launch with 95% chance of success vs $200 million per launch with 93% chance of success?

There is no such thing a 100% chance of success, everyone has a chance of failure. I would not put ESA more than a few % more reliable. Math says your satellite would need to be really expensive for the price difference to be worth it.

Wild-ass speculation in the absence of more information than a tweet and a photo of a pad fire:

SpaceX test-fire the first stage motors before each launch. If this was a test firing that went spectacularly wrong, it's embarrassing -- but there won't have been any human beings within blast range and it's better to fail in test than to fail in flight with a payload on top.

(If it was a catastrophic failure during fueling/de-fueling ops, that's another matter entirely, and far more serious -- and an explosive test failure is serious enough as it is.)

Test fire for the launch of a commercial satellite (AMOS-6), which had been scheduled for a few days hence (and now presumably delayed, along with the rest of their launch schedule, pending further investigation). It might conceivably have been during fueling/de-fueling around the test. It's not yet clear from public reports whether the payload was attached at the time of the test-fire; sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.

(Note that fueling operations for Falcon 9 got a whole lot trickier when they switched to use of super-cooled fuel and oxidizer, to increase density -- if that stuff gets warmer, its volume increases to more than that of the tank, but it's still liquid, so you can't just vent it off.)

> of a commercial satellite (AMOS-6)

According to wikipedia this is related to the AMOS-2 staelite leased by Facebook to provide internet coverage in part of Africa.

An interesting clause in their contract is:

"The parties have agreed to the right to terminate the contract if Amos-6 and the ground gateways in France, Italy and Israel are not ready for service by January 1, 2017"

So this fire could have wider repercussions if SpaceX doesn't get a new launch ready in time. (Unless that same contract also has a clause about SpaceX failure vs IAI failure.)

> but it's still liquid, so you can't just vent it off.

You can vent off liquid to keep the pressure down, but since it's heavier than air it will just add to the fire. Unless maybe they have some sort of piping system connected to the vent to route the extra fuel elsewhere.

Unless they happen to have a backup satellite already built, nothing SpaceX can do is going to accomplish this mission in 2016. There's no chance whatsoever that IAI is going to crank out a new satellite in just 3 months.

So does that put the rocket in a situation where its either launch or warm up and explode? I'm adventurous, but I don't want to be strapped to that thing if thats the case.

It means that if there's a launch failure, you can't just let the stuff sit there. They clearly can pump it out -- the normal sequence for this sort of test (which SpaceX generally does before every launch) involves filling the tanks and then running the engines for only a second or two, and they also obviously need procedures for last-minute launch scrubs, which can happen for a whole bunch of reasons. (One launch was recently delayed because someone steered their boat into the no-go area.)

The main operational consequence to date has been to limit the number of times that they can try to launch within an extended launch window. But if something goes wrong with the fuel-handling equipment, or thermal management inside the tanks, things can get bad.

I'm sure it's not like that. Pressure relief valves aren't exactly rocket science.

Interested to know more about the fuels... when I searched for info about Falcon-9 fueling a week or two ago (having briefly conceived of a semi-idle interest in rocket propellants) I read it was RP-1 plus oxidiser - so basically "just" high-spec kerosene. That doesn't jibe with supercooling in my mind... Please enlighten us further.

They chill the fuel and oxidizer to slush, just above their freezing point, to fit more of it into the same volume and save on structure.

Liquid O2 aka oxygen is a common and cryogenic oxidizer. Loading cold liquid fuels also has benefits like lower volume, but few things stay liquid at cryogenic temperatures.

PS: When dealing with rockets oxidizer is also a fuel because they need both it and something to burn.

For oxygen to be liquid it needs high pressure and low temperature.

Rumor on the Reddit SpaceX thread is that it blew up at T-3 minutes, so likely during fueling ops.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/50n5cl/rspacex_cape...

SpaceX frequently conducts these static fire tests with the payload on board. So unfortunately it's entirely possible that AMOS-6 is lost too. Very sad. Hopefully no one is hurt.

The entire pad may be totaled, too.

Seems likely. Based on the photos we've seen the strongback sure as hell is. It's all twisted and mangled.

It looks like it was during fueling, and the payload is lost.

From the video it looks like the fire didn't start where you'd typically have your first stage motors.

Unconfirmed via reddit live stream: payload not on booster, and it was a scheduled test firing so no human beings affected (everyone was well clear).

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-explor...

This article has some information on the new characteristics:

- Although considered to be an iterative upgrade from the Falcon 9 v1.1 that preceded it, the modifications to the Full Thrust version have increased the vehicle’s published liftoff capabilities by as much as 30 percent.

- A key component of this performance increase is the use of “densified” propellant. By chilling the liquid oxygen to minus 340 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 207 degrees Celsius) and the RP-1, a highly-refined form of kerosene used as rocket fuel, to 20 degrees Fahrenheit ( minus 7 degrees Celsius), SpaceX has demonstrated the capability to store more oxidizer and fuel in a given volume, as well as increase the flow of propellant through the turbopumps on the first stage’s nine Merlin 1D powerplants and on the upper stage’s lone MVac.

Interesting on the fuel. Oxygen's boiling point is at -297F (turned into liquid) and its freezing point is at -362F (turned into solid). Lowering the temperature to -340F would be solidifying the liquid oxygen but not quite yet. I guess at that point the volume has reduced, enabling the packing of more LO into the container.

Having an additional phase change doubles the risk factor along the whole pipeline that it flows through, the container, the valves, the pipes, the chambers, whatever. Liquid to gas can be dissipated quickly. How bad can uncontrolled solid to liquid expansion be?

Edit: uncontrolled liquid to gas venting is equally volatile and dangerous.

You can see the smoke plume on the radar image from Melbourne airport weather radar

http://imgur.com/a/FQ4qx

Live link:

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=mlb

For those of us not familiar with Florida, Cape Canaveral is directly East of Orlando.

Melbourne, FL for those wondering.

Melbourne, FL, United States :)

We sure that's a smoke plume? There's a lot of radar activity over Florida presently due to the "OMG first hurricane in 11 years!!!"[0]

[0] I live in and am in the Big Bend area, so the news, tweets, emails, and texts about the storm are a bit ... much.

It sure looked like a plume. I like the simple animated gif view of the radar:

http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar_lite.php?rid=MLB&produc...

The first couple of images have cycled out now, but they showed that blob expanding from nothing right where it starts in the current sequence.

(it starts at 1246 here: http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/RadarImg/N0R/MLB/ Not a great view without the map underneath.)

This comes at a uniquely bad time. I was reading about the cash squeeze (http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-faces-cash-squeeze-at-...) and it struck me that any interruption at SpaceX would put further pressure on what Elon is trying to pull off.

I really hope they can root cause this failure and get the flight schedule back up and running quickly.

I initially started this comment saying "I doubt that there's that much cash-flow between SpaceX and Tesla/Solar City", then thought I should at least google it first.

What do you know? Turns out SpaceX invested $165M in Solar City last year [1].

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/08/07/this-is-why-elon-musks-spacex-...

Looks like it was in 2015 on a 1-year term. So it would already be paid off. However, the linked article is from Aug 2015, so they may have bought even more bonds after that point.

official word: Payload lost. No one injured. This was not the re-used rocket, but instead a brand new core.

https://twitter.com/TroyLeeCampbell/status/77135367764276019...

Just read no injuries. That's awesome. I mean, bad for the rocket, but hooray for no human loss of life.

I'm glad no humans were hurt or lost. I'm not shedding many tears for Facebook's payload, as I think internet.org is fundamentally misguided.

http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/705/web

Has audio from the local police, who seem to be evacuating the various nearby beaches, due to the danger from the plume.

Live thread over on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g

Looks like reports of it happening during the propellant load were accurate. Explosion originated in the area of the upper stage LOX tank.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/771395212304277504/photo/1

My mind goes to the debugging stage after the dust has settled... how would a rocket scientist determine the cause of a RUD like this?

About the same as you debug an issue from having just a tracelog. The rocket and pad equipment have quite a few sensors that record information, so you have quite a lot of data afterwards to spot anomalies (you could also compare to previous successful launches / static fires to spot them). Admittedly, that doesn't really explain how they figure out some stuff, e.g. with CRS-7 the problem was with a strut holding a high-pressure helium vessel in the second stage. They likely would have seen the overpressurization of the tank and there are not many sources for that pressure, but pinpointing it to a piece that doesn't even exist anymore ... beats me.

I don't recall the source, but they identified the CRS-7 strut by using several mechanical vibration sensors placed on various parts of the rocket.

The deflection / explosion reaches the sensors at different times, and with precision timing, it enables you to reverse pinpoint where it must have originated: the failing strut.

they also have pressure sensors in the tanks so the timing of pressure differences allowed them to determine that the tank came loose before it burst.

They probably brainstorm through all the possible scenarios that could have caused a particular condition and then see if the data matches and they can prove it as best they can.

Not a rocket scientist; just an electrical engineer with plenty of failure analysis experience. Here is generally how I would translate my process to this case.

As a sibling mentioned, there will be lots of telemetry about what was going on with various systems during the incident. That data may indicate a few specific points to start, but it will mostly be useful for putting other facts into context. In parallel would be an effort to comb over the pad, recover as much as possible of what remains of the rocket, and try to identify what parts are what. There may be some obvious forensic evidence of parts to concentrate on, but in all likelihood the analysis will be guided by a combination of analyzing the telemetry and the damage patterns on the remaining pieces. Hopefully the combination will narrow the probable causes down enough to concentrate analysis on a couple-three theories.

Once plausible and probable theories are identified, teams will start to drill down into what event chains could cause them and look for evidence to confirm or reject those. Some of that will involve destructive analysis of the wreckage; you can glean a surprising amount of information from high-magnification images, x-rays, and sections of what otherwise looks like a twisted hunk of scrap metal. Some will involve modeling; no doubt the engineers who designed the engines have some sort of model they used to test it, and the parameters on that model can be varied to create various out-of-spec conditions. Some will be design analysis, to see if some previously-unseen corner case could have caused an otherwise-conformant system to fail catastrophically. Test data on the involved systems will be analyzed to look for any anomalies that might have been passed off at the time but that might be significant on hindsight.

Assuming possibilities still exist and are not sufficiently firm, or even just to be extra thorough, a few possibilities may be tested in practical (and possibly destructive) tests. In other words, try to blow up (or simulate blowing up) another engine in a controlled manner. That may or may not be possible, depending on what the root cause is; a parts tolerance issue, for example, would be practically impossible to recreate unless it were possible to manually change affected parts to match the suspected tolerances that caused the failure.

I'm sure an actual rocket scientist will come along and provide more detail. My work was limited to exploding caps and FETs.

If you're interested in this, you would enjoy reading the analysis of the breakup of the shuttle Columbia (not the earlier Challenger analysis, which is in itself interesting). Give yourself an hour.

The basic link is: http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html

Start at chapter 2, on page 27. Highlights: "lock the doors" (page 44), the hunt for debris (page 45), reconstruction (page 47, 72, 74ff). It's really an amazing engineering detective story.

The fault tree analysis methodology is on page 85ff.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned whether or not this failure is related to SpaceX's first time reusing a rocket. If so, hopefully this isn't too much of a setback!

The reused rocket will be used to launch SES-10 later this year, not AMOS-6.

Source: http://spacenews.com/spacex-to-launch-ses-10-satellite-on-re...

Question is whether they will have a launch pad at that time and how long investigations will last and until a fix is deployed. May well be that there are no more launches this year.

Yeah the last time they lost something it was a 6 month freeze on launches.

This is a brand new rocket. The reused rocket will be used for the SES-10 mission.

Because it would just be speculation at this point, less than hour after it's happened?

It was just yesterday we read about SpaceX launching their first reused rocket. However, after searching for the news article, it's now clear to me that this was scheduled to happen "late this year".

source: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/27935/20160901/space...

"This rocket was scheduled to launch the Amos-6 communication satellite, which among other functions included the capabilities for Facebook to spot-beam broadband for Facebook’s Internet.org initiative"

Bad karma

a facebook satelite doesn't sound too good anyways.

It's hard to imagine that this sort of scheme is the best way to provide broadband to most parts of Africa. Why can't they just put microwave links on their cell towers? This is some sort of speculative play by FB to bypass local influences.

They got rejected in India by activism among users and the regulator TRAI. So, I also wondered the exact same thing.

Well, right now it is more of a faceplant satellite.

No payload on rocket while hotfire test.

"SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries."[0]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g

Payload is sometimes mated, just depends. No word yet on this payload.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/77134295079838924...

UPDATE: payload lost. https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/771352111657385984

That confirmation is so strange. Why would you confirm something with the screenshot of notepad "officially" when you have a twitter account?

According to the Reddit the payload was on the rocket. https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/50n5cl/rspacex_cape...

Video of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ

From the live thread at reddit:

>Elon Musk has stated that because the rocket didn't intentionally ignite for launch, the loss of payload is not covered by launch insurance.

Very sad. I wonder how this will affect future launches from SpaceX.

Wow! So who picks up the bill in this case? I'm sure it was in the contract somewhere.

For all developers of anything. Repeat this mantra.

This is why we test, this is why we test, this is why we test.

It is especially important to repeat this mantra around management types who want last minute builds before going in front of important customers, because the light blue button looks SO much better then the dark blue button...

I mean, it's not like SpaceX doesn't test. They missed something, and unfortunately this time it caused a total loss that they're going to have to answer to. But yes, you're right; we recently implemented a two-week demo lockout policy at my office. No changes are allowed being committed closer than two weeks from a demo date, and two or three guys are dedicated to just testing and shaking down the system. They're the only ones allowed to call for a bug fix, and they're only allowed to call for a bug fix. It seems as though management has finally realized that missing one requirement during a demo is much, much better than having the whole enchilada crash spectacularly.

The problem is that software works the same every time, hardware doesn't have to (for example, if there was some kind of wear in the umbilical, for example).

they do test. space rockets are hard.

This was a test which had followed previous testing.

The Antares explosion footage should accompany that mantra.

Here's some info on this from TC: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/a-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-j...

Looks like this may have been the Falcon 9 getting ready to launch AMOS-6 on 9/3. Not a previously flown rocket.

Static Fire for that launch was due today which is probably during which this happened.

What happens when payload is lost at such an event due to SpaceX related failure? Obviously they have to reschedule but does SpaceX cover partial losses etc?

Aon International Space Brokers (http://www.aon.com/singapore/risk-services/products-services...) covers liability for the payloads to be delivered, however, SpaceX shoulders the financial burden of losing the rocket itself, as only the contents are insured.

It will also likely increase the cost of insuring SpaceX launches. I'm sure it's like car insurance. Of course SpaceX is so much cheaper than their competition that it may not matter, and reuse is about to make them cheaper still.

Short term setback, but probably not so awful long term. Also glad nobody got hurt. It's just money.

> Of course SpaceX is so much cheaper than their competition that it may not matter, and reuse is about to make them cheaper still.

They’re 2 million USD more expensive per launch for a mid-size satellite than the Ariane 5 is, so I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

Launch insurance should cover the cost of the payload.

Is this going to change the launch window (in 2018) for Red Dragon to Mars?? I guess it all depends on the reason for the launch failure. People on Metaculus are discussing about this- http://www.metaculus.com/questions/224/will-spacex-launch-fo...

Last accident, Falcon Heavy had a big delay. Apparently SpaceX pulled engineering resources off of FH to work on F9. Given that the 2018 launch window is narrow, it's quite likely that Red Dragon won't launch until the 2020 launch window.

p.s. are you involved with Metaculus in some way? All of your recent postings appear to mention metaculus.com.

CNBC says that NBC says (I know...) that thankfully nobody was injured

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/01/spacex-rocket-explodes-at-cap...

EDIT: apparently it happened at t:-3m so nobody was around

Not to be paranoid or anything, but with the Russians in the news with hacking, could this be the equivalent of a Stuxnet industrial sabotage? It would seem to be in their foreign ministry's interest to reduce the one successful American domestic manufacturer of rocket motors...

In looking at failures, asking "What changed (was different)" in this case, is one generally useful approach...

Based on previous comments, the most likely failure scenario seems to be related to the new use of super-cooled LOX - and I have to ask, was the temperature at the pad, at the time of the launch, significantly higher than during previous launches involving super-cooled LOX? If so, is there a possibility that the higher temperature differential could have been a contributing factor in the cause of the failure?

(Kind of the exact opposite of the case of the Challenger, where low temperatures were a critical causal factor of the failure)

I'd almost be sad but Facebook.

The smoke looks fairly white and uniform. That suggests it's coming from the rocket fuels, not a burning building or other facility. To me, that means the safety protocols held, limiting the spread/damage. Hopefully nobody was hurt.

A Google self-driving car was seen leaving the scene at high speed!

Live video stream from the Kennedy Space Center (you can paste the link into something like VLC): http://kscwmserv1.ksc.nasa.gov/channel4

(Via Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g/updates/fcbc544a-70...)

Here's a few photos capturing what appears to be a massive secondary explosion: https://twitter.com/taliaeliana/status/771356794291687428/ph...

(There was already an explosion or fire before this one given the smoke in the air).

Does anyone know whether this was one of SpaceX's recovered/refurbished rockets that had previously flown a mission and landed?

No, it was a new one.

The rocket is currently in flames. Staffers at the facility are telling me. Plumes of smoke rising from Launch Complex.

This type of hardware failure makes me glad to do software where the most damage that can happen is an unhappy customer, not a huge explosion. Also why I was glad to give up a chemistry career after nearly poisoning everyone in the building when the hood system failed.

What makes you think this couldn't be a software bug? Studying about bugs like Therac-25 [1] were standard practice at my school to show what it takes to make software an engineering discipline.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

Don't tell firmware/embedded programmers :-/

The reddit live thread seems to be the best source of current informations and updates: https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g

How do you even extinguish that kind of fire? Is there any value in salvaging parts before they completely burn out? Anybody who can chime in the protocol for such fires?

Have a friend who has family working there. Said the accident was caused by a static fire test and the rocket and payload were lost.

Absolute huge bummer.

Relative to the rest of the mission/rocket lifecycle, how risky is filling it with fuel generally considered?

This seems like a good place to point out that we are hiring! See the "Who's Hiring" thread. :-)

I would leave wild speculation out of this debate and wait for a SpaceX official release.

Watched the live feed. That "smoke test" failure definitely made some smoke.

Was the launch rocket supposed to be one of their recovered/recycled rockets?

Shouldn't the static fire test have gone ahead without a live payload?

The music in the techcrunch video seemed a bit inappropriate.

It wasn't carrying it though, it was just a test.

From the twitter feed: http://imgur.com/6b6MfNQ

404 for me.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-KY6bmYW5xXE/V8guijPQh7I/A...

http://i.imgur.com/6b6MfNQr.jpg

The imgur link doesn't work but the other one does.

One small loss for mankind, one giant win for Net Neutrality.

You mean one small loss for Facebook maybe?

That was my immediate thought too. Israel is known for playing rough when it comes to sovereignty concerns, particularly of a technological nature.

Since this subthread went off the rails in several directions at once, we've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12406651 and marked it off-topic.

Sounds good. Keep up the good work! : )

The Israeli government has approved the deal with China, if they didn't want it to go through they would have blocked it, their MOD has oversight on virtually all exports and international dealings.

Israel needed AMOS-6 more than anyone else because communication satellites are important for national security and are used by military and national defense agencies.

Even if somehow your crackpot theory had merit delaying the launch would have been an easier and cheaper way of tanking the deal than sabotaging a rocket.

This wasn't an Iranian spy satellite, Israel has no interests in hurting it national security, economy, and reputation by blowing their own shit up, I don't even understand why people would think they blew it up.

> Even if somehow your crackpot theory had merit

We try to avoid that kind of tone here, regardless of the merits of anyone's comments.

However, the adjective is an accurate measure of the theory's merit.

Speak for yourself. The tone seems completely appropriate to me.

Let me point out in a nicer way what dogma1138 said below:

Why would they want to do it in such a way when they could have stopped it just with formalities.

I know Israel isn't right all the time but there is little reason to believe they are stupid.

Same reason they did a false flag bombing attempt on US and British targets in the 50s instead of simply asking for support?

That doesn't make sense in this context. Presumably, in your example, the Israelis knew the answer would have been "no." In this case, the Israelis could've just themselves said "no" -- which would've been the result they wanted.

Are we allowed to go 60 years back to find something on everyone else we have a beef with as well? ;-)

"Same reason they did a false flag bombing attempt on US and British targets in the 50s instead of simply asking for support?"

-> This is not the 1950's

Enough with the conspiracy theories here. Unless you have some evidence and a strong thread of logic - please leave it be.

This is crazy!

Damn it. 0 Days since SpaceX Rocket exploded.

According to sources (twitter), they where F-3 minutes so no-one should be out on pad, payload was not loaded either.

The environmentally friendly aspect of Tesla's cars is seemingly negated by SpaceX's black-smoke rocket fuel laden explosions.

For those overthinking about the loss of the payload:

Contact (1997): "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

I'd argue: at less than twice the price.

I don't understand what the quote has to do with this at all. It's neither a government payload, nor AFAIK do they have a second satellite.

Maybe I'm overthinking your comment.

You are. :)

The comment was essentially stating that Facebook should have built two of the satellites, as a contingency plan. Rocket science is hard. Having a backup is easier.

Hmm… cash squeeze at Tesla and SolarCity. Next thing, a SpaceX rocket blows up. Maybe he did it for the insurance money? >:-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405092

There is no insurance for SpaceX here. The payload is insured, but the loss of the launch vehicle and any damage to the launch facilities will be born SpaceX directly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com