back to article Why SpaceX will sort out Sunday's snafu faster than NASA ever could

SpaceX's perfect delivery record to the International Space Station ended on Sunday, 139 seconds into the flight of its Falcon 9 rocket. But there are good reasons why Elon's Musketeers will be back on schedule far faster than many are predicting. The accident itself was a disaster, and a very unfortunate birthday present for …

  1. Charles Manning

    NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

    NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is an Administration stuffed with administrators.

    They love meetings, passing the buck and basically doing SFA. So long as there's food in the trough they're happy.

    Musk et al are a business. They're interested in making progress. They're used to taking calculated risks and making decisions.

    Which will generate outcome quicker? No contest.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Blowhard

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

      Yes, apart from putting the only humans ever on the moon, getting probes to every planet and exploring the surface of Mars they've done fuck all.

      1. BoldMan

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        The great leaps forward that NASA achieved were done BEFORE they became bogged down with career bureaucrats and health and safety executives, in a time when engineers actually did the engineering.

        1. Robevan

          Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

          New Horizons, the Mars rovers, Cassini etc might suggest you are talking bilge. NASA still seems to be capable of astounding us with its capability and competence.

      2. Anomalous Cowturd
        Joke

        @Blowhard Re: NASA inefficiency:

        Aquaducts?

      3. lambda_beta
        Linux

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        It's so easy to discredit NASA because it's a government agency. But what the fuck has SpaceX ever done? Could any private company have pull off a walking on the moon in 1969? I think not.

      4. Charles Manning

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        We're not talking about the NASA of 1960s, we're talking about the NASA of today.

        The 1960s NASA was a very different animal than today's NASA. They were driven by a very specific goal.

        It was the ENGINEERS that really drove the pace and achieved the goal. The administrators just provided support.

        After Apollo 11, that goal was gone and the real administrative overheads kicked in, trying to make huge programs with lots of management to keep their jobs alive.

        If you've read any of the reports on the aftermath of the SRB failures, the cover ups and the general shit deflection you see the real depths of an administrative quagmire. Engineers know there are problems and try to fix them, but the administrators inflate the reliability numbers and stifle everything.

        Basically people like these would rather spend a week making sure they could not be blamed for anything rather than spend 5 minutes to actually fix the problem.

        For a good read on the disconnect in NASA between engineering (the people that actually solve problems and put people on the moon) and administration (ie. managers who shuffle paper and make up bullshit) read: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt

      5. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        "Yes, apart from putting the only humans ever on the moon, getting probes to every planet and exploring the surface of Mars they've done fuck all."

        Well, there *was* a snafu with metric and imperial measurements that resulted in an unintended ground incursion at high velocity on Mars once.

        But, you can't fuck up if you never try to do anything.

    3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

      SpaceX is building upon the years of experience of launching rockets into space. This is where most of the innovation is coming from. I'm not knocking it. There is a clear vision being well-executed. But it's not like sending a probe to Venus or a man to the moon for the first time.

      The NASA culture stems from too much government and military interference which inevitably leads to feature creep and being beholden to the cost-plus military industrial complex that has a vested interest in delay and budget overrun.

      AFAIK, and I'm happy to be corrected, but SpaceX launches are not yet significantly cheaper than say Ariane. Competition should hopefully lead to better, safer and cheaper launches.

    4. Stevie

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name (4 Charles Manning)

      I guess enough people will have slapped you about the head for your insightless NASAbash by now that you are already sorry you typed, so I'll just say "what do you expect when you tacitly sign on to a low-bid design and materials paradigm?", or perhaps I wrong you and you wrote your congressman to tell him how you wouldn't mind paying a little more for quality and astronaut safety?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name (4 Charles Manning)

        you wrote your congressman to tell him how you wouldn't mind paying a little more for quality and astronaut safety?

        Yeah, it's government all right: Just a little bit more and it will work, promise.

        I wouldn't mind to see all the money for the white elephant F-35 and the Israel Safety Show in the Middle East go to space exploration. mind. But that's not up to me.

        1. Stevie

          Re:I wouldn't mind to see all the money for the white elephant F-35

          No-one wastes public money like the Pentagon.

          Even when the contractors are honest and tell them when asked for a late addition to an airframe that an ashtray made of titanium will cost $800 per whereas an aluminum one can be brought in at about 100th that cost they will pick "only the very best", then look outraged and surprised when the papers get the story.

          Sergeant York was being decommissioned when I first came to the USA. That one took, what, ten years to be proven as unworkable at the design level. Before that there was the first iteration of the M1 tank that wore out transmissions every 36 miles on average. After that there was the Strategic Defense Initiative. All funded from the bottomless public moneybucket.

    5. Gary Bickford

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

      In fairness, everyone I've met from NASA has been a committed, dedicated, talented and skilled professional. It does have a big-organization decision methodology, replete with the usual politics and administrative complexities. But NASA has been very creative in providing a variety of support for outside efforts - they really want the 'people' to succeed where they are not allowed to go.

      There was a milestone back in the late 1960s or early 1970s - I'm too lazy to look the date up just now. At the time, the NASA team were working on an advanced nuclear engine based on the NERVA program. The engine had progressed to the point where they had successful test stand firings, and were preparing to move to the next phase, building it into a new second stage for the Saturn V. This engine was considered essential to a variety of heavy-lift jobs after Apollo, notably a not-yet-official Mars project.

      But certain members of Congress thought all of space was a boondoggle, and killed funding for the nuclear engine specifically to prevent any thought of going to Mars. This was the first time I know of when the politicians really imposed their rules on NASA, which had been working on the magical can-do Apollo project till then. NASA had no choice but to cancel the engine, and put the Mars project file on a shelf. And since that day, NASA has been subject to Congressional and Presidential whims, trying to survive the Washington bureaucracy as best as possible.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        "The engine had progressed to the point where they had successful test stand firings, and were preparing to move to the next phase, building it into a new second stage for the Saturn V."

        I remember that mess quite well. It seems that the US and the USSR had a treaty against things nuclear or nuclear looking going into orbit.

        Hence, the Congressional cut, abiding by a space treaty that remains in effect today.

        I also recall that that particular engine wasn't capable of anything *near* a Mars shot. At all. It'd have made the moon run much faster, but Mars was flat out out of the question.

        That all said, we still do have nuclear rocket designs, which are far more efficient and designed to work in microgravity. However, environmental concerns also are important, for who wants uranium spewed on their beaches or their petunia garden?

        So, what we *really* need is a rocket that is intrinsically safe, which sounds like black heresy today, but within our technological capabilities.

        As for this one, compared to NASA, this is a small shop. Answers will be far more easily available, as one doesn't need to contact each and every subcontractor. The answer is likely simple enough, in terms of engineering. O2 overpressure and failure tends to a rare few methods to overpressure a sealed tank, fire, electrical short inside the tank or placed upon the tank. Heat is the key, as a cryogenic tank doesn't have a pressure increase without a fuckton of heat applied.

        Thankfully, rocket science isn't *quite* as hard as it was when we confiscated war booty in the form of German scientists and V2 rockets.

        Understood is length of wires, lest they separate under boost. Understood is pogo oscillation. Understood are thousands of things.

      2. dncnvncd

        Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

        I share your laziness but the project was an extension of the nuclear propelled bombers(USAF was supposed to have built two) and the radioisotope thermal generators(RTG) built by Martin-Marietta corporation. Part of the reason for the cancellation was due to protest from the nuclear free crowd that didn't want nuclear in space and worried about a crash on launch. But at least it's good to see other people remember what could have been had NASA proceeded with nuclear propulsion and that technology the shared with the public at large. Space X will undoubtedly keep any knowledge earned private, then see if it can be applied to TESLA Motors. We may even some day discover how to use repulsion away from Earth's magnetic field to generate propulsion. I think Boeing and Space X are in a race to build a re-usable space plane while the Air Force is flying some mystery plane about the Earth. Politicians deliberately stall for time when their errors cause a tragedy and private sectors have been known to do the same. In this case, a lot of contract renewals are at stake so time is of the essence. At some point Space X will become bureaucratic and slow to respond as well. In the meantime, enjoy a "will do" attitude.

    6. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

      Idiot.

      Yes, there were organizational issues that resulted in the loss of lives and spacecraft. But, the number of suppliers (who are sub-contractors) was and remains immense.

      Look up the Apollo program, then look up who designed and built the Command and Service Modules, then look at who designed and built the LEM.

      Then, look at who made the Saturn rockets.

      Then, look at Apollo 13, whose accident was triggered by a change of contractor, which resulted in the incorrect voltage heater being installed in a cryogenic tank, which then overheated and blew the tank to hell and gone.

      As the line in the movie said, "It's time to wake up ten thousand people", that was quite accurate.

      Yes, there were safety cultural issues present and some peter principle present, the acronym wasn't an indicator. Some complacency was present and is always a danger, however, mission requirements resulted in other cultural issues, where launch may not be delayed without a major reason.

    7. Bleu

      Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

      You will be laughing from the other side if (I am praying for when) New Horizons starts to sending back good photographs from the Pluto system next week.

      BTW, the latest supplies to the ISS were carried by the Progress craft, sure the one before failed, but unlike the two USA private enterprise efforts since, it did not explode soon after launch, entered orbit, and does not get insane levels of funding and cross-funding (so not 'private enterprise') in the way the two US failures are.

  2. Titus Aduxass

    Saturns I, IB, & V

    "there has never been a rocket system that hasn't had a catastrophic failure at one time or another"

    Except the Saturn series of rockets never had a catastrophic failure.

    NB: individual stages failing during ground testing does not count as "catastrophic", ok?

    1. Robert Sneddon

      Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

      There are also the ESA Vega launchers with five successful launches and counting and the Japanese HII-B launchers, four cargo flights to the ISS and no failures.

    2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

      I'd nod to that, save for one thing. They were used only a bit over a dozen times.

      Far too short a successful launch number to suggest high reliability.

      That said, those rockets and payloads *did* turn a lunar launch into "something as exciting as driving to Pittsburgh".

      But, a total of under 20 launches?

      No.

      1. Titus Aduxass
        FAIL

        Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

        Under 20 launches? No, there were 32 Saturn launches.

        Facts. Please check them before posting.

        1. launcap Silver badge

          Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

          > Facts. Please check them before posting.

          Burn the heretic! Check facts? Next you'll be asking for technically correct articles and then where would we be?

          Eh?

    3. Dave 32
      Thumb Down

      Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

      I suppose it depends upon how you define "Catastrophic failure". The unmanned Apollo 6 flight had some VERY serious problems related to pogo oscillations in the first stage, which caused some minor structural failures in the CSM. The second stage had some very serious performance problems, so severe that the control system shut down two of five engines on that stage!

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6#Flight

      The Apollo 13 launch also suffered severe pogo oscillations in the second stage, although these were overshadowed by later developments during the flight. And, the center engine was shut down before the pogo oscillations caused structural failure.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_oscillation#Hazard

      But, as such, not all of the Saturn launches were considered successes.

      Dave

      1. Titus Aduxass

        Re: Saturns I, IB, & V

        >I suppose it depends upon how you define 'Catastrophic failure'

        How about "loss of the vehicle"? Seems a pretty straightforward definition...

  3. Kharkov
    Boffin

    Well, I guess we'll never... What? You've figured it out ALREADY?

    Yes, I imagine that SpaceX, which is rather well-known for keeping things in-house as much as possible, will be able to have ready access to all the production paperwork, talk to the guys who built the 2nd stage and so on.

    I'd bet that we'll see another Falcon 9 v1.1 fly again before October 2015, with the fallback position being before November 2015. The SpaceX engineers will, in my admittedly uninformed opinion, get this sorted.

    And yes, NASA, being forced/required/compelled to buy stuff from a range of companies, almost all of whom are from certain Senator's/Congressmen's backyards, will find, and always has found, it difficult to get things to go fast.

    That said, let's not go overboard with the NASA-bashing. They don't get to run things as they'd like. As the system stands, the NASA guys, for all their big IQs and many professional qualifications, are REQUIRED by the people who allocate their money to spend their money on things their political masters want them to spend the money on, and in the way that the politicians want them to spend it. Hence SLS, for example, a heavy-lift rocket with a huge price tag when both SpaceX and even ULA have said they can do a heavy lift rocket for much, much less. So if you're going to bash anyone, bash Washington DC.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Well, I guess we'll never... What? You've figured it out ALREADY?

      It is if anything even worse in european projects. Exactly the same pork barreling but you also have countries that spent the last 1000years at war with each other, and some countries who think that only they can build some things because certain other countries are a bunch of neanderthals who can barely bang rocks together. Then you have a bunch of small countries who decide that their post office/civil aviation authority/milk marketing board has to be in charge of approving the specs for a space project.

      And then you have to translate everything into a dozen languages even though everybody working on the project is speaking English.

      Mind you - you do get to go for some very nice lunches when the meetings aren't being held in the UK or Germany.

    2. sisk

      Re: Well, I guess we'll never... What? You've figured it out ALREADY?

      So if you're going to bash anyone, bash Washington DC.

      Oh come on. We can't bash DC. What fun is bashing when all the good bits are served up to you on a silver platter?

    3. Bleu

      Re: Well, I guess we'll never... What? You've figured it out ALREADY?

      Well, I guess you might recall Armstrong's words, 'we came in peace for all mankind.'

      Interesting that British aid budget to India is paying for the Indian space programme, but not to helping anybody in India who is needing aid, and British space programme is long extinct.

      I think they (UK) used to launch rockets in Australia, when not using it for hydrogen bomb tests.

      Good luck to the Skylon people, interesting project.

      I think it will come to nothing, closest Britain comes to space and rocketry these days is politicians and military watching the single demo launch of a Trident, which is part of the bill when they buy the stupid thing.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Have SpaceX been nicking these barge names from The Culture?

    1. Champ

      Yes. It's a matter of record. One of the many things that make Musk uber cool

    2. AbelSoul

      Re: The Culture

      Yes. Both from The Player of Games.

      Depending upon the outcome of the current investigation, they might add a third from the same book, named after the Clipper Screw Loose.

      1. TitterYeNot

        Re: The Culture

        "Depending upon the outcome of the current investigation, they might add a third from the same book, named after the Clipper Screw Loose."

        I'm hazarding a guess that they won't be borrowing the name of the GCU 'Funny, It Worked Last Time...'

        1. Bronek Kozicki

          Re: The Culture

          I think the opposite, now they can borrow this name.

  5. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    Pity we aren't allowed to have the money to put up the British equivalent of Space-X - the Skylon....

    1. Ragarath

      Isn't Skylon a spaceplane, not a rocket and therefore not the equivalent?

      1. AbelSoul

        Re: Isn't Skylon a spaceplane?

        Yes:

        capable of transporting 15 tonnes of cargo into space. It is the use of SABRE's combined air-breathing and rocket cycles that enables a vehicle that can take off from a runway, fly direct to earth orbit and return for a runway landing, just like an aircraft.

        More here.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "Pity we aren't allowed to have the money to put up the British equivalent of Space-X - the Skylon...."

      IIRC they don't *want* Govt. money and the strings that come attached to it.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Boss Euphemisms

    "Musk is known for working his staff hard"

    His biography made it clear that he is a very nasty @#$% of a manager.

    1. Tom_

      Re: Boss Euphemisms

      Yeah, but sometimes it comes in handy.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Boss Euphemisms

      CJ to Reggie Perrin : I didn't get where I am today being nice.

      CJ to Reggie Perrin: I didn't get where I am today without making enemies.

      CJ to Reggie Perrin : I didn't get where I am today by having green frogs thrust down my crotch.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Boss Euphemisms

        There's not being nice, and there's being a Steve Jobs / Elon Musk £$%@.

    3. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Boss Euphemisms

      Musk might be a @#$% but I'll bet he still has a better reputation than Wernher von Braun.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Mushroom

        Re: Boss Euphemisms

        Doubly topical ! :

        "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down, That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun

        http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/wernherv.htm

        [ Conventional explosion of course, because that's all he had, luckily. ]

      2. Martin Budden Silver badge

        Re: Boss Euphemisms

        Musk might be a @#$% but I'll bet he still has a better reputation than...

        St. Jobs

  7. Nigel 11

    there has never been a rocket system that hasn't had a catastrophic failure at one time or another

    For unmanned rockets, occasional catastrophic failure should probably be designed in at some level.

    The penalty of any added weight for something going all the way to orbit is very high (in terms of reduced payload). Henry Ford once asked which parts on his cars never went wrong, and then ordered "make them cheaper". For getting an unmanned vehicle into orbit, there's far more justification for "make them lighter".

    This is also the weak point of any proposed spaceplane. Because it'll cost very much more than a rocket, it has to be reusable many times, but that level of reliability will impose a weight penalty. It would be a non-starter, if it didn't have the advantage over a rocket of being able to do away with a large weight of oxidizer (it can use ambient air until it's a few miles up).

    1. Jonth

      Falcon 9 is also intended to be reusable, so your second point isn't valid. There is a penalty to pay in reduced payload for any launch that returns the launcher to ground, but the economics of building a reusable launch system of any form are still good despite this.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Depending on how much extra you need to add.

        In the case of the Falcon it is an extra thruster at the nose, a few fins, some carbon fiber legs and keep a few % of fuel. With the shuttle it was a 100tons of aircraft, wings, landing gear, tiles, crew etc etc

  8. Robert Sneddon

    NASA is not in the rocket business, it's in the space business

    Nice bit of flim-flam about how lean mean SpaceX will fix the problem real quick once they figure out what happened not like stodgy old NASA who are, you know, the people paying SpaceX to fly the CRS missions to the ISS.

    NASA doesn't build or fly rockets, it buys launches from manufacturers like ULA (Boeing and Lockheed) and SpaceX. The big kerfuffle about the Shuttle disasters was that people were killed and determining exactly what went wrong in the operational sense was what took the time -- the true causes were known a day or two after they happened.

    This failure is going to put a crimp on man-rating the Falcon design which was otherwise moving along smoothly and it's also going to make the US DoD and No Such Agency a bit more wary of offering SpaceX contracts to fly their pricey military and spy hardware, just after Elon managed to wedge his way onto that gravy train.

  9. confused one

    32 days, not 32 weeks

    They'll handle this a lot faster than 32 weeks. More like 32 days (ok, that's too fast, call it twice that at 2 months) It's a relatively small private company with a big backlog, they can't afford to take half a year to find the problem. They will find the root cause, verify it to everyone's satisfaction, institute changes, retrofit everything in production, retest everything in the queue and be back on the launch pad by end of August.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    bit too gushing at times

    "Mistakes made are owned up to, and when the issue that caused the loss of the Falcon is identified, you can bet it will be dealt with quickly and efficiently."

    Did you get this from an inside source, or is it just some fantasy brown nosing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: bit too gushing at times

      Agree. The Musk fanboism from those so infected is a bit much sometimes.

      Perhaps they could 'just get a room' already.

  11. PhilipN Silver badge

    Allan McDonald

    Thanks for the passing reference to him.

    Every organisation needs a guy like him, with unsurpassed expertise and the balls to use it.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What if they don't find a design flaw?

    How long will it take to get back to launching if they do not find a design flaw?

    Just suppose that it was not a design issue but a security issue.

    How do you prove that and convince everyone the rockets are safe?

    1. Bleu

      Re: What if they don't find a design flaw?

      Interesting and valid point.

      OTOH, it is a new rocket system, most have trouble, but sure, sabotage cannot be ruled out.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What if they don't find a design flaw?

        "sabotage cannot be ruled out"

        Did an ISIS suicide bomber hide out in one of the packing crates?

      2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: What if they don't find a design flaw?

        Sabotage? Please. Wasn't that one from the original "Star Trek" series.

        Reminds me of the rumor "Al Qaeda shot down Columbia via MANPAD". Well, that was before we decided to fly air support for them.

  13. imanidiot Silver badge

    My prediction

    The 9 Aug 2015 04:30:00 launch with the Jason 3 sat will go ahead as scheduled. I doubt SpaceX doesn't already have a very clear idea where the problem lies given the MASSIVE amount of data streamed from the rocket during accent. (The telemetry received from any previous rocket system pales in comparison, they have a finger on pretty much everything)

    1. Bleu

      Re: My prediction

      You gain my downvote for writing 'ascent' as 'accent'.

      1. imanidiot Silver badge

        Re: My prediction

        sorry, not intended and I do see the difference. English is not my first language, little things like that sometimes slip by, even after a second read through.

        1. Bleu

          Re: My prediction

          Not mine either. I make spelling mistakes from phone input (never by speech) when drunk and or tired, but wouldn't make a howler like that.

          It suggests being clueless or careless use of speech-to-text, I call bullshit on your reply.

          Please study the homophones 'they're', 'there', and 'their'.

          Thanks for the downvote for a comment on your failure. That is all.

      2. Martin Budden Silver badge

        Re: My prediction

        Bleu - your downvote would have been justified if he'd chosen the handle "imanexpertatspellingandgrammar", but I reckon he's done pretty well for an idiot ;-)

        1. Bleu

          How sweet to be an idiot

          copied by Oasis to become 'I'm free to be whatever I am', I gather the Pythons never sued, may be misinformed there.

          Not bad on the part of the Pythons if they never did.

          1. Martin Budden Silver badge

            Re: How sweet to be an idiot

            Bleu - did you miss the part where he politely explained that English is not his first language? Cut him some slack. I wish I could speak (type) a second language so well.

  14. Bleu

    No wonder

    that Musk industries will likely fix all of the problems.

    The massive state subsiies will see to that.

    Musk Inc., has, if you read the articles after this debacle, free (as in beer) assistance from NASA to work out what went wrong.

    Perhaps NASA may have some helpful insight to offer? Perhaps providing that assistance gratis is in itself a massive subsidy?

    Interesting to contrast the schadenfreude crowing from many commentards about the last Progress supply ship going into a spin and not reaching the right orbit with all of the word spin on this debacle.

    At least, the rocket for the Progress craft didn't blow up seconds after launch.

    I would very much like to see an accurate article (sure, difficult for the reg., but from anywhere) on how much of Musk's gargantuan fortune he has invested in his projects, seems to be in the several hundred thousands of dollars range.

    The millions and hundreds of millions all seem to pour in from state actors.

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: No wonder

      FFS. All covered extremely well in Vance's book about Musk. Read it before commenting.

      But in short - he nearly blew his entire fortune (within a couple of day of going broke) on SpaceX and Tesla.

      1. BitDr

        Re: No wonder

        Agree with James. Musk risked it all, not just a few hundred thousand, but his entire fortune. Read Vance's book.

      2. Bleu

        OK.

        I find it difficult to believe, and other sources that seem to know say otherwise, but I will flick through the book if I find it in a bookshop that has many English-language books or an English-language bookshop.

        I admire what he is trying to do with rockets and power storage, but the cars clearly are relying on a less efficient and more polluting energy source than efficient internal combustion and hybrid vehicles.

        Simple engineering, thermodynamics, entropy, also rare and diminishing materials. I would be sure you know.

        Just because the energy is delivered as electrical charge, does not make the source clean, the obvious point many are forgetting. Conversion introduces much inefficiency, at every stage.

        I also enjoy the minor flood of downvotes for any questioning Musk, it is much like Apple and their St. Steven.

      3. Bleu

        Re: No wonder

        Downvote for FFS, you as the Musk fanboi, I guess I am just returning what I received.

  15. BigFire

    Challengers Investigation

    Feynman was the stalking horse used by some of the other people on the commission (such as NASA insiders, Air Force General) to get the proper information out. They kinda of knew what cause it right away, but they really cannot disclose it without being exposed. So they use a complete outsider, feed him hints and have him go through the whole show and tell. The movie The Challenger Disaster, which is based on Feynman's memoir on this let you know it wasn't him, but a group effort.

  16. JeffinLondon

    Ian Thompson

    Well written piece Ian. Mose SpX articles these days are just gooey over this unexpected failure - just pouncing on Musk and his team. This was well researched and balanced. Thank you.

  17. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Coat

    Unlucky 4?

    Elon Musk - turned 44

    Rocket reached altitude of 44.9 km, and a speed of 4,733kph

    Rocket was loaded up with around 4,000lbs of cargo

  18. sisk

    Anyone else find it mildly odd that this is the second time a rocket carrying the same equipment has blown up?

    1. launcap Silver badge

      > Anyone else find it mildly odd that this is the second time a rocket carrying the same equipment

      > has blown up?

      It's aliens I tell you, ALIENS!

      (And not the not-from-my-country sort either. It's the "we can't let those smelly partially-evolved-simians-into-space sort. Not being permitted to deploy Vogon poetry at us by the Galactic Sentient Rights legislation they have resorted to blowing up unmanned rockets instead*)

      * And if you think I'm serious then can I interest you in this bridge I have? One careful owner.. (but beware of the large green regenerating lifeforms that live under it)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One minor correction

    The otherwise excellent article contains a minor mistake.

    The claim "there has never been a rocket system that hasn't had a failure at one time or another" is contradicted by the Black Knight record: 22 launches, no failures.

    1. Bleu

      Re: One minor correction

      Our pencil rocket (and later ones) also had no failures. Must be many others. IIRC, there has been no explosion soon after launch for a rocket made in Japan.

  20. dapted

    Jumping to Conclusions

    Its not a big leap to decide the failure of CRS7 SpaceX flight is the fault of SpaceX, but while it is a remote possibility nothing should be off the table until the investigation is complete. Other possibilities include Sabotage and Cargo Failure, both of which have brought down Airliners all over the world.

    Think about it. 4 failures of 4 different vehicles from 4 different companies/entities in very short succession. It seems quite a coincidence with some very reliable machinery. Who would benefit from such sabotage? I don't know but if there is any commonality of personnel or contractors servicing more than one of these flights It deserves a looksee. At least 2 of the flights and possibly 3 had science experiments heading to the space station. I still haven't heard anything definitive about the cause of the obital failure or the failure of the Russian cargo vessel. What kind of cargo failure could cause a failure. I am not a part of any of these companies so conjecture is at least entertaining and might lead to something interesting and worthwhile.

  21. Tim Brummer

    "Musk is known for working his staff hard"

    And I bet that will end up being the root cause. Human error during construction, cause by overworked tired employees.

  22. 'Chengdu

    It was Richard Feynman's presence on the panel that opened the door for those inside NASA who KNEW what happened to secretly confide in him and tell him WHERE to look so that he could bring the findings to light.

    ...with all due respect to Mr. Feynman; it was not HE that discovered the O-Ring flaws...he was simply the 'go-to-guy' chosen to let the cat out of the bag by those from within NASA who could not do so without jeopardizing their careers.

    THAT describes the problems with NASA as well as, to some degree, all bureaucratic institutions: An unwritten code of internal politics followed by all; designed to 'protect the heads' of the establishment above all else.

  23. genejm29

    Wrong Conclusions

    I'm going to be a bit on the generous side with this piece and say this is so sophomoric. The author here draws a comparison between the CRS 7 failure and tragic loss of Space Shuttle Mission STS-51L. In my mind, its comparing Apples to Coconuts. The Shuttle was a piloted vehicle and as such before you decide to allow people to fly on it again, you want to make 1000% sure you have determined root cause before you fly again. Also to quote the article. "The liftoff went perfectly and the ground crew was getting ready for first stage separation as the rocket reached 44.9 kilometers of altitude and a speed of 4,733kph, when the upper half appeared to bloom and contact was lost. At that point, the ground crew commentary went silent, which is to be expected." Not so fast there. After the Antares /Cygnus mishap at the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virgnia back in October of 2014, the flight loops were kept open. We heard in real time, warts and all, the situation on the ground as it was being reported to the launch directors. Either it was kept open by accident or by design, it still was a gutsy move on the part of NASA and OrbitalATK, to do that. It also seemed to me that both SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and it's President Gwynne Shotwell were not on the same wavelength during last Sunday's Post Mishap press conference carried live on NASATV. While Ms. Shotwell, had a graceful, tactful response, it was quite clear the Twitter post from the boss caught her by surprise. Also to say that political oversight won't be a problem in the CRS7 investigation is being quite naive. There are those in Congress right now who smell blood in the water and what to shut the Commercial Crew and Cargo program down or slow it to a crawl, especially now that both runners SpaceX and OrbitalATK have stumbled. SpaceX will fly when they are ready to fly no sooner no later. That is the single philosophy that they have learned from NASA. There's a lot at stake both politically and for the US Space effort. This piece, which draws some very simple conclusions fails to understand that.

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