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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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Call me naive and foolish, but I'm not giving up all hope on Dragon yet. That chuck falling off was ABSOLUTELY Dragon peaceing out before things got really bad, and looked to be in OK condition judging from the silhouette(no missing chunks). While I doubt there was a failsafe for it to deploy chutes... I still hope.

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Call me naive and foolish, but I'm not giving up all hope on Dragon yet. That chuck falling off was ABSOLUTELY Dragon peaceing out before things got really bad, and looked to be in OK condition judging from the silhouette(no missing chunks). While I doubt there was a failsafe for it to deploy chutes... I still hope.

Poor naive fool. :sticktongue:

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Call me naive and foolish, but I'm not giving up all hope on Dragon yet. That chuck falling off was ABSOLUTELY Dragon peaceing out before things got really bad, and looked to be in OK condition judging from the silhouette(no missing chunks). While I doubt there was a failsafe for it to deploy chutes... I still hope.

It doesn't really make a lot of difference, does it? The most important bit of cargo was in the trunk, and even the ones that have been recovered entirely nominally have seen no reuse.

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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' date=' 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.[/quote']

*Cough* Orbital ATK *Cough*. Orbital hasn't flown another supply mission since their launch failure.

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I've said it before the shuttle made its second flight, and say it again "It would be pure stupidity to consider yourself (whomever is launching/recovering spacecraft) to feel invulnerable to suffering a mishap, be it launch, or re-entry/recovery, due to the nature of the business and the complexity of the vehicles themselves."

I feel bad, for spacex, for losing the docking rings going up to which they and boeing would later use, for now those have to be re-sent, so I feel bad for nasa, but it isn't unexpected. Spacex has done a remarkable job of mitigating the risk, but the unplanned variable, or more likely human element cannot be totally eradicated from the equation.

I am glad that it wasn't a manned Dragon II, for I'd hate to actually have to use an abort recovery for real.

We find out, fix it and move on ...

My speculation - Something occurred in the second stage during chill down to the engine, which was occurring just before stage 1 sep, from the video it appears to me that a tank ruptured and you have that cloud of either fuel or oxidizer spreading out and then it was either ignited by the first stage, or range safety hit the button and blew it up.

The initial cloud seems to me to come from further up the vehicle than the first stage, and it had not separated when it occurred.

Just speculation.

Edited by RW-1
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*Cough* Orbital ATK *Cough*. Orbital hasn't flown another supply mission since their launch failure.

Because it damaged the pad and they're having to entirely re-engine their rocket.

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I have to admit I'm a bit sad. I was watching for over an hour really excited to see the launch, then shortly after the launch had a bad feeling and a minute later saw parts falling everywhere. And I even saw the Dargon capsule flying off and was wondering if they may be able to recover it. It looked unharmed and has chutes on board... But still a pretty sad moment. And yes, I did have this sabotage thought, too. Two times a resupply mission fails? Well, two more upcoming until the ISS runs out of supplies. If they blow up as well...

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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.

What you are saying is about the equivalent of saying if we launch up 2 astronauts and we take 2 down and upon reentry they burn up but since we sent the main payload up its a success. And keep in mind today the dragon was supposed to bring back experiments from the ISS so if it crashed on landing it would still be a success even though research was lost?

- - - Updated - - -

So....I'd been planning on making a vid of my fully reusable Falcon9 system, should I carry on or is that kinda in bad taste now?

Its not bad taste, And personally i would like to see how to put the 9 engines on the first stage!

Edited by Space.exe
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*Cough* Orbital ATK *Cough*. Orbital hasn't flown another supply mission since their launch failure.

Which has nothing to do with Congress giving it the axe or them giving up. Orbital is redesigning Antares and will be using an Atlas V in November to continue launching Cygnus.

Simple fact of the matter is, unless the Falcon 9 had something go wrong that fundamentally makes the entire system unworkable (and why after so many flights are we only just seeing this happen), SpaceX isn't going to be impeded by this at all.

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What you are saying is about the equivalent of saying if we launch up 2 astronauts and we take 2 down and upon reentry they burn up but since we sent the main payload up its a success. And keep in mind today the falcon 9 was supposed to bring back experiments from the ISS so if it crashed on landing it would still be a success even though research was lost?

The Dragon would bring back the experiments, the Falcon just lands on a barge.

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So my armchair analysis says that the cargo in the trunk came loose and damaged the O2 tank at the top of the second stage. The resulting explosion destroyed the trunk, and so detached the dragon capsule which you can see falling away, and created the oxygen cloud around the top of the rocket. All the while the first stage continues to burn until the range destroys the rocket.

Now just have to wait to see what the folks who don;t get to do it from an armchair have to say.....

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My speculation is that the heavy docking adapter in the un-pressurized trunk shifted the center of mass more than predicted, and forced one of the engines to gimbal too far for too long, and something that wasn't supposed to get warm (or was supposed to have better heat shielding) warmed up.

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Judging from that, its not a first stage issue(which I think we already had figured out). First bits of cloud comes from top of stage two, bottom of Dragon. The "stuff in truck breaks things" theory seems to be the most likely at this point.

My guess? Boeing planted explosives in there docking adapter to take out SpaceX :D

I'm joking of course.

E/ sniped... of course...

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What a lousy thing to wake up to, I was hoping to wake up and see Falcon standing on a barge, instead I see pieces raining down and Dragon did not go to space today. My heart goes out to the hard-working staff at SpaceX and everyone whose hard work was aboard Dragon. But this is the rocket business, where it doesn't take much for the whole thing to go boom. "The Powers That Be" know this, and life will go on. I don't expect this to seriously affect CRS or ComCrew aside from the proverbial fine-tooth comb treatment going down to micro-sieve.

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For those interested: there will be a briefing on that failure on all NASA tv channel.

It won't take place earlier than 12h30 EDT

here the link for the public channel: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

the education channel: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#education

and, finally, the media channel: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#education

The same content will be streamed on those three channels.

Also, check this link: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#iss it's a camera on the ISS pointed toward earth. It's beautiful :)

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My speculation is that the heavy docking adapter in the un-pressurized trunk shifted the center of mass more than predicted, and forced one of the engines to gimbal too far for too long, and something that wasn't supposed to get warm (or was supposed to have better heat shielding) warmed up.

CoM is easy to calculate, the only reason that the vehicle would have been negatively affected by the IDA is if it broke lose and punctured the second stage. I am leaning against that explanation. I suspect that the second stage LOX tank had a structural failure probably due to manufacturing reasons.

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Oh yeah the HDEV is basically my screen saver lol. I typically fall asleep to it. (OR, when available, I boot up KSP and do the same thing with one of my stations)

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