CptRichardson

It's only what they're saying in your head. There is no actual statement whatsoever one way or another, and saying 'they asked for any additional information that can be provided means they're helpless schmucks' is rather baseless given people have already pointed out that everyone does this if there is a chance someone has more information to provide, because more data points almost always helps to narrow down the problem quicker than trying to solve on internal data stores.

The last time a test fire exploded on the pad in the US.

Well, it says 'this seems to be the first time anything like this has happened, and even the most remotely similar failure in the US happened 58 years ago'. This is something at the end of the bellcurve for bellcurves, an event rare enough that everybody looking at it can't figure out what the hell happened yet.

It's dimmed twice approximately 20% or so (or was it 10%?) either way, way too much for a normal natural phenomenon. More importantly, we detected uneven dipping, and these dips lasted for multiple days. Oh, and the whole '5% drop or so over the course of the kepler observations'. Basically, to also point to Sir Pratchett, these aren't mere million to one odds, these are billions to one odds that seem to be lining up just right, and honestly we don't have anything else that's stood up.

No, the 'artifact' explanation was written off as Kepler detected an overall long-term dimming trend that slowly intensified over the course of the observations and matches up with previous observations. You are probably indeed mixing things up between Tabby's and this EPIC star.

Highly unlikely. CRS-7 was overpressure. Rupturing destroyed the structural integrity of the booster without causing a blast. This was straight-up ignition. It is fairly unlikely to almost certainly not the same problem, and will probably be 'minor seal failure followed by static event'.

I can already say that it fails sanity checks, as the star is dimming more as time goes on, and there still isn't any sign of a infrared shift from orbiting material.

I have not said "You are a dupe of a conspiracy." I have said "This basically unheard of error mode happening to a company with a proven record and who have demonstrated extremely good engineering and handling practices, and especially with their coming up major world-first milestones is highly unusual/straining SoD, and should at least be examined as a possibility due to the sheer number of factors that coming together that make it at least theoretically possible, with the hopes that it's some new form of failure mode that nobody could have anticipated." Perhaps you should stop reading too much into it? As for the reconstruction that is giving the current 'event at the fill valve' explaination circulating around, he took the initial frame of the blast and turned its opacity almost to zero and lined it up perfectly with a frame of the rocket from pre-detonation and it centers in on the fill valve as the center of the blast based upon the artifact rays of the blast flare in the image.

No, it's probably not the COPV failing, but instead a static discharge around the fueling port, given some of the footage reconstruction work of people trying to figure out the initial flashpoint. Which, once more, given that the last US static-fire test failure was in 1958, is still suspicious as hell.

They were given defective parts that were supposedly cert'd for launch while following industry-standard practices. They didn't know that their supplier was doing a excrements job on their testing and passing on defective parts. Yes, it was absolutely the supplier's fault in that case. In this case, it's suspicious because of the bell-end of bell-end abnormality of this failure, and it's still not even clear if this is internal to their rocket or pad-side failure on the fueling equipment.

First one wasn't their fault, and this one is too suspicious to pin on them yet. Otherwise, the second stage has been entirely reliable.

You wouldn't have the tank-internal ignition.

The only source of ignition in the second stage that I can think of is electrical. But even then... this makes no sense whatsoever, and I can't think of a failure mode that would cause this on the pad.

Not really, no. This was an explosion in the PAD, not the launcher. This wasn't a launch failure.

Well, yeah, but there are a lot of things that still make the timing fishy as hell. SpaceX is getting ready to start the relaunch train for real with SES-10 at the end of the year, has the FH coming out and planned manned flights coming up, the communications company they were servicing for this launch is getting bought out by a chinese company from what I understand, and in general the ground systems have never-EVER been the cause of a launch explosion as far as I'm aware. Something just doesn't seem right with this, and I can't figure out why.

The 'hydrazine explosion on the pad, not in the rocket' story sounds fishy as hell. Not in a 'SpaceX needs handling help' way, but in a 'this almost sounds like sabotage' way.

SpaceX's BFR lifting the assemblies for an Orion drive into deep lunar orbit, followed by LIGHTING THAT CANDLE and cruising over at factor METAL on a wave of nuclear devices.

You presume that they will use liquid methane beyond Earth orbit. We don't yet know what their plans are for the Mars end of the trip, but it is ridiculously silly to assume they will do something like that.

Uh, you list is at least partially pretty freaking wrong. They HAVE proven that their 1st stages are robust enough to relaunch and are currently testing their most-worn 1st stage to destruction to see how many times they can reuse one before failure. They have not outright relaunched them due to paperwork, but have demonstrated that they can still withstand the forces of launch several times after landing. They HAVE demonstrated powered landing from orbit, also known as 'every single landed F9 ever'. They have not demonstrated orbital craft reusability, but will be demonstrating this within approximately a year. They have not demonstrated orbital refueling. They have demonstrated the ability to refuel and immediately refire their landed stages after recovery, showing their ability to ramp into fast turnaround. Long-duration life support is still being worked on by everyone, so not a particularly pressing need, and can be countered by lifting ungodly oodles of current-tech life support. Mars reentry is theoretically proven and possible with their currently existing landing tech. Mars powered landing is theoretically proven and possible with their currently existing landing tech. Automated ISRU and ground refueling is still being worked on by everyone, and once more has the potential counter of 'launch some as tankers to land on Mars. Mars Launch... yeah, that one needs some thinking. Reentry from Mars: Current reentry gear, just oodles more of it. And all of this discounting that they're sending the so-called 'Red Dragon' to Mars first as a testbed for Mars landing, reentry, and deep space tasks, likely pressurized and prepared as the greenhouse to Mars concept that Musk originally founded SpaceX just to do, and that at least the first BFR to Mars will be unmanned and carrying around 20 to 100 tons of probe cargo. Or that they'll almost certainly be using the BFR in Cislunar space to build the rest of the BFR infrastructure for a proper cycler ship or transport to Mars and back, and god knows how many other things that I can't even think of off the top of my head right this second.

Uh, try 'billions', at least theoretically.

It shall be named by committee, only after we figure out what we're dealing with. It's our closest neighbor ever, and the only exoplanet that can be feasibly be visited within a human lifetime depending on how crazy we book it. We've got one shot to properly naming this sort of thing, we need to get it right. Or we could call it 'Bob'. Bob works.

You know, having a rocket with the power of the MCT would be just as useful in translunar space as interplanetary space, and the moon does make an interesting test target with which to test many of the technologies prior to going to mars...

Don't need to get a seperation of imagery. We've been able to glean atmospheric data from planets without doing so before thanks to spectrally analyzing the star during transits to detect the elements associated with the planet. If any part of the planet transits, we should be able to get atmospheric data with a concentrated hubble campeign, and if not then Hubble will be better able to constrain the orbital characteristics, mass, and other properties of the planet.

Uh, we're going to hear that, with percentage-chance calculations of how certain they are and maybe a few of the characteristics. They need peer review before they can completely confirm it, but now that they've seen something they can swing Hubble around and glare at Proxima until the little dwarf coughs up its secrets like Jeb beating the crap out of a booster-pinata.

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Deals/Toray-carbon-fiber-to-carry-SpaceX-s-Mars-ambitions?page=1 SpaceX just signed a TWO BILLION dollar deal for carbon fiber supply. I have the teeniest-tiny squeak of 'oh god, it's really happening' right now.