This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of apply.

SpaceX-Falcon-9

What does information technology take to stump the real-life Iron Man? An explosion that wasn't an explosion, one without an obvious spark or other ignition source.

SpaceX's Falcon nine rocket was supposed to launch its 29th mission in the wee hours of the morning time on Saturday September 3, conveying the AMOS-6 telecom satellite. The preceding Thursday morning, engineers were preparing for a static fire test, during which the rocket briefly fires its engines while notwithstanding "docked" to the launch tower. It's standard process to clear all personnel from the pad during fueling and other such dangerous operations, and so even though the strongback is pretty mangled, nobody was hurt. Just they were tanking upwards the Falcon 9 showtime stage with LOX oxidizer and RP-1 kerosene when something went wrong.

spacex fire

"Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation," said Musk. "Turning out to be the most difficult and circuitous failure we take ever had in 14 years."

What'south really stumping people is that the fireball went up without an apparent cause. The rocket was nowhere well-nigh its ignition sequence. The engines weren't on, and in that location shouldn't have been anything hot enough to cause a deflagration. Considering it was hooked upwards to the strongback by all those cables and hoses, information technology should accept been electrically grounded. And in that location was a quieter "blindside" sound merely moments before the fireball. Despite the fact that SpaceX equipment is positively bristling with 3,000 channels worth of sensors and telemetry, nobody knows all the same what happened. Some commenters, here and elsewhere, take even suggested sabotage.

The not knowing won't last long, though. Elon Musk is reaching out to anyone and everyone who has expertise or A/V recordings of the event. And aerospace is a unique environment when information technology comes to tracking the source of a problem. An engineer who's agape of losing his task is much less likely to come forward about an mistake he knows he committed, especially ane that led to the loss of a $60 million rocket and its $200 one thousand thousand payload.

Hopefully SpaceX et al. will hold to these principles, although much volition depend on who sues whom and for how much. SpaceX could probably eat the price of the rocket, but the stakeholders of the AMOS-6 satellite are singing a dissimilar tune. The successful installation of AMOS-six was the linchpin in a nearly $300 one thousand thousand merger betwixt Spacecom, an Israeli communications business firm, and the Chinese Xinwei Technology Grouping. Spacecom apparently didn't have its satellite insured for disasters that happened before launch. Information technology could sue SpaceX for the sticker toll of the satellite, or need a gratis ride to space once the replacement satellite and a new, space-worthy rocket are built. Mark Zuckerberg, whose cyberspace.org projection was supposed to use AMOS-6, is merely "disappointed."