SpaceX rocket explodes during test flight in Texas

[IDemo]

Source: CBS News

A reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket used to test landing systems the company hopes to incorporate on future operational launch vehicles exploded shortly after liftoff Friday at the company's 900-acre McGregor, Texas, flight facility, officials said.

The uncrewed rocket stage, a successor to SpaceX's original "Grasshopper" vertical-takeoff-and-landing test vehicle, was destroyed when its self-destruct system was triggered in the wake of an unexplained malfunction.

"Earlier today, in McGregor, Texas, SpaceX conducted a test flight of a three-engine version of the F9R test vehicle (successor to Grasshopper)," the company said in a statement. "During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission.

"Throughout the test and subsequent flight termination, the vehicle remained in the designated flight area. There were no injuries or near injuries. An FAA representative was present at all times."



Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-rocket-explodes-during-test-flight-in-texas/

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[SCVDem]

1. Being a Science Geek

This is an example of the safety systems perhaps terminating, (with extreme prejudice), an anomoly.

Human intervention is mandatory since we will be flying these systems.

Ya know, Shit Happens!

(Science 101)

[Fred Sanders]

2. Half price tickets on sale tomorrow.....

[Wounded Bear]

3. Glad no one was hurt...

Too bad for the program, though.

[Crowman1979]

4. There's your privatized space company in a nutshell.

[kentauros]

6. Every country that's ever ventured into space

blew up plenty of their own, government-funded and built rockets, too. And remember, NASA employees didn't do a majority of the engineering or even building of the equipment. That was (and still is) done by private contractors.

[former9thward]

7. Yeah, like the Challenger and Columbia were private, right?

[intaglio]

12. Well the Challenger boosters were private

Made by Morton - Thiokol who somehow thought the O rings were perfectly safe

[former9thward]

13. And was approved by NASA inspectors.

Everything on both shuttles were approved.

[NutmegYankee]

9. Nearly every program (government or private sector) has rocket failures.

It's less common now, but with so many parts, it's still possible for a failure to destabilize the rocket.

[joshcryer]

10. Absolutely absurd.

The entire space program from the start has been done by private corporations. Only, SpaceX is venturing into areas that NASA has cancelled long ago.

This is no doubt a bad event but everything is OK, experiments fail.

[BlueEye]

17. Government funded rockets and spacecraft built by 100% union labor in the United States...

have exploded and catastrophically failed many, many times in the past. Is that an indictment on the people who built those rockets? No, obviously not. It's just a testament to the fact that spaceflight is not a 100% safe activity, given the intense aerodynamic and physical processes involved.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Well that's a bummer.

Thanks for the thread, IDemo.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. They used to say "Back to the drawing board." but it's all digital now.

[davidpdx]

11. A bummer indeed

We need reinstate our space program as we continue to fall behind other countries due to the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program. At the rate we are going it will be 10+ until we are able to get an astronaut into space on our own.

[WhoWoodaKnew]

14. One step closer to success.

[Plucketeer]

15. I lament the loss of drive for our national space program, but...

I've also been cheering for SpaceX and the Burt Rutan team and their efforts. Look at the Wright brothers - they sure didn't depend on govt. money to succeed.

[BlueEye]

18. I really like the new model NASA has and I hope they receive appropriate funding moving forward.

The private sector is optimized for the routine shots to low-Earth orbit for Space Station resupply/re-crewing, satellite maintenance, etc.

NASA and the public sector will retain deep space exploration. The new Space Launch System (SLS) is well underway and in a few years, the first prototype of this enormous rocket (equal to the Saturn V, later production versions may be taller yet) will be ready to fly. Ultimately, this will take us to Mars.

[hunter]

16. Better to blow it up over uninhabited range...

... then have it destroy an entire town. (wikipedia)

The stringent safety systems worked.

Rockets are inherently very dangerous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#Fatalities_caused_by_rocket_explosions