back to article SpaceX searches for its 'grassy knoll' of possible Falcon rocket sabotage

In its search for the reason behind last month's explosion that destroyed its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has vowed to leave no stone unturned. Now one of its staffers may be taking things a little too far. The doomed Falcon 9 suffered a catastrophic failure while being fueled for a static firing test. It is believed a failure in …

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    1. Lotaresco

      Re: Starstreak

      Not that I'm being serious about this, but a MANPAD would fit the paranoid description in that it's relatively quiet on launch and firs a small but extremely destructive projectile.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Starstreak

      MANPADS - MAN Portable Air Defence System

      MANPAD is not singular, it is incorrect.

      Anonymous because I used to work on the Infrared Countermeasures designed to defeat them.

      1. Lotaresco

        Re: Starstreak

        "Anonymous because I used to work on the Infrared Countermeasures designed to defeat them."

        Probably best to stay Anonymous. You're not going to defeat Starstreak that way. It's laser guided and can't be jammed by infrared countermeasures,

  1. Rustident Spaceniak
    Boffin

    Those sounds prior to the explosion

    Close your eyes and just listen to the tape of the explosion, from the screeching sound to the big bang.

    What it sounds like exactly is something gets loose near the top of the strongback, drops down inside there - hitting the structure (and possibly Ox tubing) a few times - then lands on the launch pad. Unfortunately for SpaceX, it seems they didn't have many sensors outside of the rocket to find out what it was. But I'd take a good look at the debris down there and search for something that looks like it was damaged cold, before the explosion; that should be their trace.

  2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    http://www.snopes.com/unidentified-flying-object-seen-as-spacex-rocket-exploded/

    "Unproven"

    I'd suppose that if you blow up a rocket deliberately like that then there isn't much of it left to be investigated, so, pretty safe.

    1. StuartDavid

      Snopes need a new classification; 'as yet' unproven -

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Snopes

        I think "unproven" may be "as yet unproven". On the other hand, in a court of law in Scotland "Not Proven" means you are deemed innocent, if not quite innocent enough for a "Not Guilty" (this is often debated). I mean it's conclusive, unless double jeopardy is allowed, which it now is.

        Snopes has "Undetermined" as well. This means about the same. I think Google indicated no cases found of "Status. As yet ..." on Snopes, but the words "as yet" are in their collective vocabulary. I haven't found a list of all possible Snopes verdicts, I think they may be editorially flexible, and lately "Hebrews 13:8" comes to mind.

        I recently notified them that one of their dismissed stories appears to be true to the extent that John Kerry has indeed been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in connection with Iran's nuclear industry. It is quite easy to get nominated because a lot of people worldwide are qualified to write in with a nomination. Donald Trump was nominated this year as well. I don't know if they believe me. This is secret for fifty years but they don't and can't stop -you- from telling the world that you have nominated that person. On the other hand, it may hurt their chances, and yours.

    2. Lotaresco

      Accident investigation

      "I'd suppose that if you blow up a rocket deliberately like that then there isn't much of it left to be investigated, so, pretty safe."

      No, there's lots of evidence left even after a major explosions. So not safe for the saboteur at all. Over the years forensic investigators have got good at picking through the debris and determining what happened. This is one way that those who set roadside bombs are identified and arrested. Explosions are not big bangs that handily incinerate all evidence.

  3. You aint sin me, roit
    Trollface

    Shots came from the grassy knoll

    Ask Trump, he knows... "People are saying, I don't know if it's true, I hope it isn't true, I heard it was Crooked Clinton"

  4. x 7

    just how thin skinned are these rockets? If they're anything like the Blue Streak at Loughborough they'll appear to be tissue-thin and easy to tear. Are modern rockets more substantial?

    1. Lotaresco

      "just how thin skinned are these rockets?"

      Very. The aim is to make them as light as possible. The fuel in the tanks is actually a structural component. The balance is that fine between being lightweight and collapsing.

  5. StuartDavid

    Elon - $10m reward for information / evidence showing the cause -

  6. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

    Not worth the risk

    I doubt anyone from ULA would risk it. There is too much instrumentation (audio, video, Doppler radar, etc.) on that site to assume one could get away with taking such a shot and not be noticed.

  7. Donkey Molestor X

    watergate must've seemed far fetched at the time too

    While I also want to withhold judgment on this theory it does remind me of a previous scandal:

    Watergate must've seemed far-fetched at the time too.

    "Why would Nixon's cronies orchestrate a bungled burglary at the campaign offices of the Democratic party?"

    "Why would they then break into the offices of an adversial lawyer's psychiatrist looking for dirt?"

    "How could the optics of having hours of crazy paranoid recordings but THEN having an 18-minute gap in them not be understood to be terrible?"

    "How can you order the deputy attorney general to fire the special prosecutor in charge of the case and not think that would give off a bad smell? - a smell amplified by the subsequent resignation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general in protest?"

    It all seems crazy when summarized like that but, in hindsight, all that crazy shit took place! Some powerful, otherwise intelligent people, decided that that would be a winning game plan!

    So, yeah, I gotta say I'm pretty interested in how this SpaceX/ULA thing shakes out.

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: watergate must've seemed far fetched at the time too

      I'm also not into conspiracy theories, but at the same time, I'm mindful the US business interests have a very long history of dirty dealings.

  8. tekHedd

    The roof? Nah.

    Too exposed. Shoot from inside, well away from the windows. What's another three yards when you're this far away? Less chance of random satellite or aerial photo turning up. "Hey isn't that a gun?"

    Would be totally possible, that's the disturbing thing about this theory. But it's a pretty nefarious scheme. What kind of person would... oh right, it's a corporation. No ethics.

    We have motive and we have means. One snitch though and there'd be deep trouble. I assert that the risk is too high to be acceptable by corporate shareholders.

  9. dapted

    The UFO idea (not the alien thing, just the fact that a straight line object moving incredibly fast across a large distance in the exact 4 frames of video when this explosion happened is very coincidental. You can tell the object is further away than the rocket by the way it lights up during the initial explosion as do the payload fairing and any object further away than the rocket. Plus it seems to be moving behind the lightning protection towers. Calculating the distance traveled and knowing the video frames are 1/30th of a second long you can calculate the object speed at or above 1150 miles per hour, very much supersonic which means there had to be a sonic boom of some sort. I have heard supersonic bullets wizzing over my head and they don't go boom like an F4 phantom doing the same thing and the sound is even more different for a supersonic artillery round passing over head. (Vietnam provided a number of interesting experiences for me) Now thinking back on the video and audio of the rocket exploding I remember the sound that I thought was microphone feedback happening, then the "quieter bang" musk tweeted about, then the big bang. I am beginning to think the sound I dismissed as microphone feedback might have been the sound of that high speed object that many dismiss as a bug or a bird. The softer bang might have been the sound of the object being launched, the timing is right. If the timing of the white flash coincides with these other seemingly inconsequential things then why wouldn't you want to run it all down. I am beginning to think that sound of microphone feedback might be more important than I may have thought before. Could a sonic noise (not necessarily a boom) cause a sympathetic detonation of the launch safety squib explosive? Talk about going down the rabbit hole!!!!

  10. BattleBotBob

    SAS frogman sniper

    Due to hydrodynamic shock any projectile penetrating the thin pressure shell will cause rupture. The people who have the most to lose are the foreign governments losing commercial business to SpaceX. A frogman from a submarine sneaks on shore and shoots it with a cryogenically stored ice bullet to destroy the evidence. It must be the SAS protecting ESA launch systems. Or maybe not.

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