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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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They probably don't, but it was certainly accelerating things (I can't imagine a company developing a crew capsule purely in their spare time on the off-chance that someone wants to buy a trip to space), and now their reputation has certainly taken a hit. If I were someone with a delicate satellite I wanted launching I wouldn't be knocking on SpaceX's door to do it after they've broadcast their launch failure live to thousands of people on the internet. Sure failure is a part of the learning process and all that but public opinion and the numbskulls at congress are going to be against them. If NASA sticks by them and they continue to receive funding then they may have a chance, but this sort of failure could cost them very dearly. I'm sure Boeing won't be too happy about their docking adapter being blown up by a rival company.

As others have said, that docking adaptor is quite likely the cause of this failure.

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The point is that with this failure, congress is almost certainly going to reduce funding for commercial crew and use it as an excuse to stick with the status quo instead of the guys who can probably change things for the better.

Status quo? What is that for getting astronauts to ISS - paying the Russians? Surely US congress would not be so daft as to think that was a good long term solution? I suppose the CTS100 now becomes the focus of attention to ensure that it succeeds.

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It still crashed/did not preform the desired output.

That's irrelevant. The primary mission goal was achieved.

All mission have primary and secondary goals. Conducting a powered landing of the first stage was one of the secondary goals of the mission. Not sure if there were any more, but primary was still achieved.

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Something about this also break my illusion of mid air rocket explosion - I always thought it was going to be a lot of burning flame, but this just had a lot of white smoke like a magician's trick and suddenly the rocket emerged in pieces. Did it look like a pressure explosion?

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That big cloud around the front of the vehicle appears so fast, and changes shape so rapidly that it looks like condensation to me. So perhaps something broke loose, or started to, and this caused the entire vehicle to break up very quickly. Anyway, it's sad, but I'm sure SpaceX will keep trying and succeed.

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If I were someone with a delicate satellite I wanted launching I wouldn't be knocking on SpaceX's door to do it after they've broadcast their launch failure live to thousands of people on the internet.

Companies were still booking Protons after the 2013 failure, Zenits after the 2007 failure, and Ariane 5s after VVA517, all of them 'broadcast to thousands of people over the internet'. Very few rockets have 0% failure rates, and satellite operators are used to dealing with that. The biggest issue in that front are going to be issues with the manifest, given SpaceX were already having trouble with their backlog.

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Something about this also break my illusion of mid air rocket explosion - I always thought it was going to be a lot of burning flame, but this just had a lot of white smoke like a magician's trick and suddenly the rocket emerged in pieces. Did it look like a pressure explosion?

Thats what I thought. In my own thread I proposed an improperly fitted fairing on Dragon. We won't know until we know I guess

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Something about this also break my illusion of mid air rocket explosion - I always thought it was going to be a lot of burning flame, but this just had a lot of white smoke like a magician's trick and suddenly the rocket emerged in pieces. Did it look like a pressure explosion?

43km up there's not enough oxygen to explode & Fire & such. Same thing on Challenger, you're seeing the fuels vaporizing.

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Yeah, the failures are part of the learning proccess.

Except that politicians don't really give a damn about the learning process, only getting what they paid for. This could set back the Commercial Crew program months or even years, except for Boeing's secretive vehicle. /rant

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I was half expecting some kind of warning when the rocket blew up, like some kind of danger escalation. But nope. It just flatly blow up without a warning, too fast to even utter a swear word, then it is gone. I guess hollywood does left me with some unrealistic expectation about those situations.

Hollywood will leave you with unrealistic expectations about everything, as it should, because nothing about Hollywood is real.

Not a good day for SpaceX.

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Spacex has a 1.6 billion dollar commercial resuipply contract with NASA. Now I am sure there can be ways for nasa to back out of that contract but why would they? This is a failure that was bound to happen. It needed to happen. They will learn from the mistakes and continue on, mainly because they have to.

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From SF101: Looking at consumables, ISS would hit reserves in September if no more cargo arrived, but HTV-5 & Progress M-28M will launch before that.

Two things to keep in mind tho.

NASA would order decrew long before supplies run out. In case there needs to be an emergency recrew to save the station.

Progress will help. But in the grand scheme of things it is better at delivering fuel and re boosts over cargo. And HTV is a one off thing. Giving the station a few extra months of supplies.

ISS remaining crewed is going to require zero failures all the way until a good part of next year. Assuming SpaceX needs that long for Dragon to fly again.

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Status quo? What is that for getting astronauts to ISS - paying the Russians? Surely US congress would not be so daft as to think that was a good long term solution? I suppose the CTS100 now becomes the focus of attention to ensure that it succeeds.

The status quo is relying on already established companies like Boeing and keeping newcomers out of the market. Of course people will argue that failures like this are the reason why newcomers should be kept out, but failures are a part of development and one failure doesn't mean the whole company is unreliable. Unfortunately that is the way I can see it argued.

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It was still a goal and if you look at the news reports it DID crash.

We are not disputing that the first stage crashed, minutes after separating from the main craft, mind you. We are talking about the technical classification of whether or not a mission was a success or failure. The distinct guidelines that have been set forth by space flight organizations, public and private, is that if the payload is placed successfully in the desired orbit, the mission is a success.

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I don't see why people are getting so worked up over this. Its not like this was the first manned Dragon flight or something. Now if that eventual flight does end in a castastrophic failure, then yes, I could understand the whole "Welp, SpaceX is done for now!" shtick. But with this flight?

Don't see a reason for it whatsoever. Even from the viewpoint of Congress looking to nix the funding. The only thing really significant about this flight was the first stage landing and recovery, and its not like Congress was invested in the success of this one test for it.

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This makes me very sad. Where did you see it had been declared lost?

Aside from NASA saying "Eastern Range confirms the Falcon 9 and Dragon vehicle broke up", just read anywhere (Spaceflightnow, 101, cnn, bbc, twitterverse etc)

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