“a rapid unscheduled disassembly” LOL.
“Musk himself claimed last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the launch.”
It’s part of the process.
4 minutes of flight isn’t bad for a first attempt.
The rocket was basically obsolete. They have innovated far past it, so used it to learn what they could.
Catch fire like a Tesla.
Looked like several engines failed to ignite. And, when the engines gimbled and flipped the vehicle over for stage separation, they got stuck and the rocket pinwheeled.
Rocket science is hard.
Take note: It was a successful launch. This was a historic event.
The science-ignorant media just sees the flames at the event and wants to laugh at Musk.
The explosion occured after the primary mission was complete. If it could keep going, more goals were planned, and they would be nice to have, but it was a success, not a failure.
Keep watching how this is covered, it tells you everything.
It had major Separation Anxiety.
A C++ launch, having left the new launch tower intact, and made it past Max Q before exploding.
There was only a 1 previous booster test for 5 seconds with 31 engines firing. Full thrust of 33 through the launch was not assured.
Making it past Max Q or Maximum Mechanical Stress was another huge milestone. Separation would have been the next milestone.
Great success, SpaceX!
Next tine will be even more successful in the test-to-failure cycle.
Too bad the launch ultimately failed, but hopefully enough data was secured to enable corrections so that ultimately manned flight to Mars, (and elsewhere) is possible. For it is only when Man can live off the planet will he be a successful species. Good Luck Elon
It cleared the tower and it flew through max Q. Successful day.
Sabotage?
The thing about Musk is he throws a lot of things at the wall, many of which fail. But he does it quickly, applies changes to incorporate lessons learned and comes out swinging. What I’ve learned about him, from losing money betting against him, is that he’s a degenerate gambler, but a really smart guy who really does learn from his mistakes. What’s more, he learns in a way that isn’t just about platitudes, but is effective in overcoming those mistakes, way late and way over-budget, but ultimately successful in coming out with a working product. What differentiates his products from the rest is that they are typically things that customers want to buy, at scale, that nobody else can quite replicate with remotely the same features and price.
Daily Mail has no clue they’re testing PROTOTYPES ,LOL
This is how you do it. They got good data and a lot of stuff worked. Now they try again. This is how the early days of rocketry worked.
These days NASA spends $3 Billion sitting around in meetings and launches very little.
I wish I could buy stock in SpaceX.
Click, click, click. Click Vampires sucking the good out of the story for maximum clicks by writing the most negative, manipulative headline possible. I will not add to their click total.
definition of rocket scientist: someone who blows shit up until something flies ...
The booster started its flip maneuver but the stage separation had failed causing an out of control flight.At that point mission control should have hit the destruct button.
Also, looks like 6 raptors failed to start which could have caused the failure.
All in all, it was a great success.