Boy, Mr Musk is having a bad week. First, the problems with getting capital for the car/solar battery endeavor, now this. I do hope they get to the bottom of this soon. In any event, it's going to be awhile before any more Falcon 9's get off the ground.

Tony Bruno just Tweeted Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, "Tough day. Let us know if we can help." My already high respect for him just went up another notch. Exactly the correct tone!

You're right,Donald, Tory is a class guy. He's very talented, but doesn't seek the hero worship. If this were to happen to ULA, I'm not certain Musk would respond as amicably. In fact, I don't think he'd respond at all. Narcissist is how I perceive Elon Musk, but maybe I'm wrong.

I think that's too harsh; when Boeing's 787 was suffering from lithium battery problems, Elon publicly offered to help. No reason to denigrate him as a narcissist.

Ok if you say so.

The only billionaire narcissist doing space stuff seems to be Richard Branson.

Depends on the definition of "doing".

You got me there.

I believe that there is a wide open opportunity for the next launch startup to come in, and build a new space launch company with slightly different philosophy of SpaceX, with much more solid focus on repeatable reliable performance. Hoping FireFly, RocketLab, Vector etc are all watching intensely and hopefully figuring out how to do that.

Wake up.Don't you think SpaceX are
doing there best? Simplistic nonscence coming from you.This board is full of amateurs with no logic.

At this point, it is not publicly known if this is a launch vehicle or launch support infrastructure failure. For that matter, it is unknown if the entire chain of events was caused by one of the satellites inside the payload fairing. There are a lot of people passing conjecture as fact, but in almost every case, that conjecture is uninformed and worthless.

Then there are the people seem to be climbing out of the woodwork to drive their personal political agendas. As usual, there is a cadre of people blaming President Obama for "canceling the Shuttle" despite the fact that the decision to do so was made in 2004, before he was president, and despite the fact that today's incident had nothing to do with the old legacy Shuttle system. Then there is the Ares/Constellation crowd, trying mightily to link that program's shutdown with today's events, as though an Ares booster would have ever been used to loft two commercial satellites. Neither of these groups seem to be bound by logic or objective historical facts when they peddle their straw men.

Bottom line is this: something happened. The incident will be thoroughly investigated by SpaceX, by NASA, probably by the Air Force and FAA and they will rectify any problems and move on. They have not announced a thing yet, save for something happened, the payload was destroyed and most importantly, no souls were lost. In due time the facts will come out. Until then, I would caution you to not listen to fools and instead wait until reliable sources come out with verified facts. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time.

Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2016

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I've talked about Ares, but not as a fix to what happened today. Today just reminds me we could have been back to flying human missions by now with CxP while the SLS has no destination or mission beyond 1 or 2 test flights. Ares had a full mission roster. It just reminds me we have no real vision or destination other than 1 or 2 SLS LEO test flights and space tourism. SLS is as capable of taking us to Mars as a 10 year old is capable of bench pressing 405 lbs.

And the replies make your point for you. All the jugglers and clowns will flock to this story.

Except that Obama had every opportunity to extend the Shuttle program, reversing the Bush Administration order, including letting NASA take up United Space Alliance's offer to operate Atlantis and Endeavour commercially at less than half the typical NASA yearly budget. Luckily we did at least get STS-135, which at least put ISS in a very good position logistics-wise for a few years after the Shuttle program ended.

I disagree. When the new Administration got its new space policy together at the beginning of 2010, there was no realistic option to keep the shuttle going. Not from hardware, spares, or even people standpoint.

Yeah. By that point, the most Obama could do was a little more of what he had already done - cobble together funding for a few more missions on a greatly reduced tempo. A lot of the infrastructure and supply chain was already being shut down at that point. And every additional Shuttle launch was a real risk.

Not true at all. There have been several very good articles done on the subject matter for years at Nasaspaceflight about this and it has been well known that the external tanks and other items needed could have been started back up and the missions carried out for a while at a low pace until either things picked up or until a Commercial Crew contender got flying. Essentially there was a two-year window of opportunity to do so during the Obama tenure and he did not take it. The ET sent to California to join Endeavour at the California Science Center was flight qualified, just a bit heavier than the usual tank, and there were parts to build several more tanks.

All that was needed was will and leadership, both of which were lacking.

It would have required a lot more than ET's to keep Shuttle going. There were literally thousands of little mom-and-pop shops that subcontracted Shuttle components. A lot of these were gone by the time Obama took office. I yield to no one in my general disapprobation for our current President, but on this one, he's clean.

I yield to no one in my general disapprobation for our current President, but on this one, he's clean.

And neither would Mike Griffin, who, for all his visceral opposition to Obama's cancellation of CxP, was just as viscerally opposed to any extension at all of STS. He wanted those funds freed up to accelerate Ares and Orion development as soon as possible.

And as for NASA Space Flight Forum, here is an article from 2010 which confirms your point about the numerous lesser contractors that had already shut down by that point. John Shannon was lobbying loudly and vocally against the proposals being floated in 2010.

We could have squeezed a handful of more missions out of STS, but at a high price, a price that would have been paid by depriving development funds for successor systems (SLS, Orion, Commercial Cargo and Crew). And there wasn't much more will on the Hill to do that than there was at either NASA or in the White House.

There is no way to see this as not bad news for "new space." On the other hand, since "old space" is not a political and economic option for the future, this is bad news for the entire space endeavor. However, my only real comment at this early date is: If SpaceX were a public company, now would be an excellent time to buy stock.

Auburn Parks, as for why "old space" is not an economic option: While not enough engineers is a (relatively small) part of the problem, not enough dollars is the main reason. There are not enough dollars because, outside of a few nuts like thee and me, the US public does not care enough to devote the dollars, and what few dollars we do devote to this activity, we waste on endless generations of new rockets instead of actually going there. But even within any given level of dollars, you are far better off launching smaller payloads on existing rockets and actually going somewhere, rather than hanging out on the ground building (or half-building and cancelling) multiple generations of rockets. Transportation will only improve at the margins, we need to spend our money learning how to do more with less launch mass, and thus less money. If we had spent the same money over the last twenty years launching small lunar spacecraft on Delta-IV Heavies that we've spent trying to re-create the Saturn-V, we'd have a lunar base right now.

It's a very simple equation. It's really not important where the problem occurred along the line whether a failure of the rocket or other factor was the culprit. As a customer, you put your trust in Space X to safely and successfully put your method of making money where you want it to be put. If Space X can't do that, then it's not 'cheaper' to apply that trust. What went wrong is not a consideration to a customer. Their reality is a black spot where their money maker used to exist and the entity into which they put their trust failed them. That's reality. And, that's business. History is littered with hopes, dreams, and noble aspirations. The simple equation is- 'Where do I put my big bucks to make me more big bucks? If my choice is wrong, a lotta people gonna be displeased.' 'Cheaper' don't mean pile of bull crap if my money maker just got turned to ashes. Nothing personal. It's business.

One answer is diversification.

If there were more launch providers companies would launch on several of them no matter if one was more expensive than the other simply to put eggs in a different basket.

There are plenty of launch providers to go shopping. Again, it's who provides the product you wish to spend your hard earned dough on.

They do. If they didn't, even after accidents, the Proton would never launch another commercial satellite.

Video of explosion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Interesting that there was no visible warning at all.

It doesn't look like a pressure vessel popping. It looks like a bomb went off.

Just say'n.

Doesn't look satellite related either though, the fairing was intact and didn't fall till a few seconds later, as it then nosedived into the ground and exploded, I'd guess the hydrazine going off at that point.

Hydrazine does not detonate.

How do explain the explosion when the payload hit the ground?

Compare the initial explosion and its high velocity (a lot of "brisance") with the impact of the payload on the ground. The payload merely ruptures and ignites. It did not detonate.

The sound you hear as the payload explodes on the ground is actually from the first explosion (it takes time for the sound to get to the microphone).

Indeed. I think it is better I sit and listen for awhile. I am not an expert in this area so I'll wait to hear what the experts come out with.

Wise decision.

I know what I don't know.

Thanks very much for posting that. I was looking for video on this.

If it really was a problem on the Cape launch pad and not with the rocket itself could SpaceX still not be able to carry out the missions scheduled to depart from Vanderberg after the investigations ?

My understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that Vandenberg is really only suitable for polar orbits. They do not want to launch anything facing east as that would be over land.

I know that only some missions are fit for Vanderberg but my point was that if the investigation is fast enough and they reveal that the problem was with the Cape launch pad and not the Falcon 9 rocket, for the missions scheduled to already depart from Vanderberg (like the Iridium one mentioned in the article), they could go on with those before the end of the year.

If the cause is cleared quickly, and its with the GSE not the rocket, its possible they could resume launches from 39A instead as it is complete short of conducting wet dress rehearsals with the GSE. That would be the quickest way to get back in service. The damage to SLC-40 may not be severe however based on the views so far, but no idea what condition the GSE is in, and its the long pole. The transporter/erector looks intact as do the lightning towers. I'm waiting to see a good view of the hangar.

I expect they'll still want to have the problem fully identified to be sure it could not also happen at Vandenberg - whether it's with the ground service equipment or the rocket.

Yeah. Even if 39-A is usable right now, no way they'll want to endanger another payload or launch vehicle until they're dead sure what went wrong with the pad fueling facilities.

Agreed, 39-A and F_H launch pad will be grounded until the root cause is found and a corrective action is in place, even if the problem is related to GSE. I think this is probably going to set back the Falcon 9 progress by a few months.

Sure ! I was talking after the investigations. But as we can see in some pictures the Cape launch pad is toast for now so no more missions for a while there (unless they can use the Falcon Heavy pad to launch the Falcon 9)

I don't see why not if they can clear the vehicle as the cause of this incident. There are some comments on Reddit indicating that it was indeed a pad issue as the explosion occurred around T-3 minutes before the engines had even been lit.

p.s. sorry, I did mis-read your initial post. My bad!

Ok! Thanks :)

NP for the mis-read ! It happens to the best of us :) And I could have been clearer but english is not my first language :(

Well the anti commercial space people are smiling that their prayers have been answered....

On the other hand, there are others who are down-playing this.

I'm not. This was a very bad day. It's going to delay some things that don't need any further delays. Even if it turns out that the cause of failure was something easily findable and fixable, rebuilding SLC-40 seems likely to take quite awhile. That's going to affect both the cadence and number of launches SpaceX can do for at least the same amount of time.

IMHO, SpaceX pretty much is the critical path for nearly everything affecting the future of humanity in space. Anything that delays it or jams it up gets in the way of our whole damned future. That is major league double-plus ungood.