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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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Sad day. Though fortunately not a game breaker. I was looking forward to watching the landing too.

I know it's extra weight, which is no small deal, but maybe it would be worth considering sticking chutes on supply capsules as standard, then at least some expensive stuff has a chance of being salvaged. As well as maybe testing the escape system as a bonus.

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It also makes you wonder how it will be possible maintain crew on ISS now.

From Spaceflight Volume 57 page 253, the crew have supplies until August 21st, the next Progress mission is scheduled for early July.

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How could Dragon still transmit telemetry after the explosionn?

It was transmitting after the event, not after the explosion. Meaning it was still transmitting telemetry after the oxygen tank rupture and up until it was destroyed by the disassembly. At least that's how I understood it.

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I suspect Dragon itself survived both the detach from Falcon, and the RUD afterwards. Several seconds pass in video from when Dragon falls off, and the final explosion. To a rocket traveling at that speed, that's a large buffer distance. Dragon already has chutes onboard, but the chances that they are programmed to fire in an event such as this is too much to hope for. The impact with the water several minutes later most assured shattered Dragon into just so much rubble, as well as its cargo.

Edited by Wingman703
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These two just in:

[h=1]With SpaceX Rocket Failure, NASA's Now Had Three Cargo Failures From Three Providers[/h]- http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2015/06/28/with-spacex-rocket-failure-nasas-now-had-three-cargo-failures-from-three-providers/

[h=1]NASA chief says SpaceX explosion will not deter human space flight program[/h]- http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/06/28/us-space-spacex-launch-bolden-idINKCN0P80U720150628

I'll take it such things were expected up front, and built into the budget.

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In the Challenger accident it was easily visible live that the crew compartment was intact all the way down, it's unsurprising that Dragon was intact. Given chutes, etc, it would be interesting to have a failure mode where the chutes could deploy, but the counter to that is that you never, ever want them to go off by mistake.

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Dragon did not survive it, it was destroyed during the event, there is no concrete evidence of even a large chunk of it leaving the explosion cloud. Even if it had, the procedures for it to go through its landing deployment after such an event are not in place. The capsule is dead.

I don't know if "explosion" is the right word, but it was definitely more than just venting gas, there was a rigorous fireball enveloping the entire upper stage and dragon during the 'event' as you can see in this slow motion video:

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Dragon did not survive it, it was destroyed during the event, there is no concrete evidence of even a large chunk of it leaving the explosion cloud. Even if it had, the procedures for it to go through its landing deployment after such an event are not in place. The capsule is dead.

I don't know if "explosion" is the right word, but it was definitely more than just venting gas, there was a rigorous fireball enveloping the entire upper stage and dragon during the 'event' as you can see in this slow motion video:

you don't see a large object from :32 to :50 departing the scene?

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"Overpressure event"....I actually heard that term used before when I worked for an aerospace company.

People might be reading too much into it. "Overpressure event" is basically the PC way of saying "explosion", not unlike "rapid unplanned disassembly" :P

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Dragon absolutely left Falcon intact before the RUD. Dragon survived whatever killed Falcon. There is an UNMISTAKABLE Dragon-shaped object leaving Falcon several seconds before everything went boom. I can agree however, that Dragon was dead the second it encountered the water below. Heatshields may be great, but they aren't THAT great...

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you don't see a large object from :32 to :50 departing the scene?

I see a shadowy form that almost sort of might match the basic shape of the dragon capsule, if it had somehow came off cleanly detached from the trunk. Or it was a piece of the tank skin that got blew off, or its a shadow. that fades when it gets away from the fireball.

CRS7 is gone guys. It'll be okay though.

Note that they did say during the news conference that they have the parts to assemble a 2nd docking port, but they don't 100% need a 2nd one, because aside from redundancy the 2 ports basically is used for crew overlap like the soyuz ports allow, they can do without it though and schedule the crew flights to arrive after the last one parts and just use the one port; though they do want to get the 2nd one online.

edit:

Dragon absolutely left Falcon intact before the RUD. Dragon survived whatever killed Falcon. There is an UNMISTAKABLE Dragon-shaped object leaving Falcon several seconds before everything went boom. I can agree however, that Dragon was dead the second it encountered the water below. Heatshields may be great, but they aren't THAT great...

Wishing does not make it so. Seeing a shadowly object in a smoke cloud and saying it is UNMISTAKEABLE is like reading your horoscope and declaring you know what you'll have for breakfast next year. SpaceX and NASA would know if dragon had survived and they would have very gladly shared that information with glowing enthusiasm. It's time to move on, man.

Edited by Tiberion
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Well, the capsule does look like the capsule :D

It was a shadow. It coulve been anything as Tiberion said.

Also people keep calling this a rapid unexplained disassembly. Its more of a slow unexplained disassembly this time around.

Edited by Motokid600
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Yeah, something like that is company-killing.

Edit: The one about repeatedly ignoring a LOX tank cap cracking because the upper stage to dragon connector was badly designed and overstressing it, not the yelling at engineers, If he's yelling at them because he just found out about the caps like us, it's entirely justified.

Edited by CptRichardson
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I see a shadowy form that almost sort of might match the basic shape of the dragon capsule, if it had somehow came off cleanly detached from the trunk. Or it was a piece of the tank skin that got blew off, or its a shadow. that fades when it gets away from the fireball.

CRS7 is gone guys. It'll be okay though.

Note that they did say during the news conference that they have the parts to assemble a 2nd docking port, but they don't 100% need a 2nd one, because aside from redundancy the 2 ports basically is used for crew overlap like the soyuz ports allow, they can do without it though and schedule the crew flights to arrive after the last one parts and just use the one port; though they do want to get the 2nd one online.

edit:

Wishing does not make it so. Seeing a shadowly object in a smoke cloud and saying it is UNMISTAKEABLE is like reading your horoscope and declaring you know what you'll have for breakfast next year. SpaceX and NASA would know if dragon had survived and they would have very gladly shared that information with glowing enthusiasm. It's time to move on, man.

So, Gwynn was lying when she said they continued to get telemetry from Dragon after the event? No one is saying it survived landing, just that it survived the RUD.

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Gwyneth did confirm that Dragon transmitted telemetry after the initial LOX venting/RUD. What else is going to hold its shape/form like that under the areo stress? The 2nd stage engine doesn't look like that, tank wall would crumple/be flipping around, solar panels/covers would be shredded. Its Dragon, its unmistakable.

I can agree, however, that Dragon is dead now, after impacting the water.

Edited by Wingman703
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