Why did the Falcon 9 Explode?
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Believe it or not, nasa currently cannot put a man into space. After the shuttle was decommissioned, NASA decided it was going to put their human launch capability in the hands of the private sector. In principal not such a bad thing..... in practice.... its highly debatable. The explosion of the spaceX falcon 9 rocket on the pad in Aug. 2016 was a hell of a wakeup call. Nasa hasnt had an explosion while fuelling for ~40 years. This was all pretty well sorted out a LONG time ago. Further how can you actually get an explosion while fuelling unless you have a structural failure of either the oxidant or fuel? This looks to be a flaw with the actual rocket design... and further a rather expensive flaw. Turns out the rocket that blew up cost about 60 million dollars per launch. Further the satellite it was carrying cost about 200 million dollars. Now to be fair, NASA blew up a LOT of rockets before they worked out more or less how to do it right. All that knowledge is basically locked up in NASA engineers minds. It seems remarkably optimistic to hope that Spacex will be able to do as good a job. Sure spacex has done some good stuff. Recovery of the first stage looked impressive, but its so ridden with problems, that in practice its doubtful if it will ever be cost effective. Reusable space vehicles has been a dream for DECADES, however in practice it cost almost as much to maintain as build new ones. Many thanks to all those who supported this video through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Thunderf00t
Comments
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The 02 was super cooled to a point that it froze causing the line to rupture into the helium tank. This is simple to correct with different refueling procedures.
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What the fuck are you rambling about in the last halve of the video?
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what about oxygen bars?
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We get ecstatic over the return of a first stage to a safe landing because:
1 - It's Not the government with tax money doing it, but Private Enterprise!
2 - It is a development on the road to reusable rockets. Current system is set up like an airliner that throws away its plane after every flight - a wasteful and expensive process.
3 - Without reusable rockets, the expansion into outer space by the human race will be too slow & too expensive to be of any benefit.
4 - R&D failures are just that: R&D failures. They are lessons.
5 - NASA, as great an organization as it is, is still a Government Bureaucracy, and therefore protective of its "turf", even when it screws up royally (see the Columbia accident: failure to check for damage before reentry, and Challenger accident: Bureaucracy rules over engineering ). NASA also is as resistant to changes in thinking and methods as any Government Bureaucracy. -
This video makes me think. The footages of Saturnus V rockets - the biggest and most powerful rockets ever built -plays an important role in the explanation of big powers involved in launching rockets. The the Space Shuttle came and now we have only Soyuz rockets from the same era as Saturnus V for bringing people in outer space. America still has no actual rocket program for bringing. In fact after the sixties there has been a technological decline going on. All those dreams of going to Mars, without a working rocket program it is lacking credibilit. Or am I too somber?
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i love elon musk. pretty fucking great he is putting his money where his mouth is.
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the difference with what Musk is doing is that he is at least trying new and cost effective ways of doing things. You can harp on about how some things haven't happened in such a long time, but fact is, NEITHER HAS INNOVATION OF ANY REAL SUBSTANTIAL KIND EITHER. FAILURE IS INDEED AN OPTION when pushing the envelope. Better to iron out problems now than to wait until there are people sitting on top of that candle. Also, I think it's worth noting that nasa and the usaf seem to view the rocket as more than just a simply VIABLE vehicle..... The fact is that if we don't lower the cost of getting to space... we might as well hang it up on manned spaceflight. and look at history to prove that if you ever want government to do anything, you better have crap-tons of money laying around that the public won't mind spending, you better also have the ability to get it done in under ten years... because once you go beyond the realm of at best... an eight year termed presidential administration....the likelihood of getting the new administration continue to fund "THE LAST GUY'S" agenda is next to nil. I don't want to sound fanboy-ish here but quite frankly, i'll stand up for the only person of consequence that's getting off their butt and trying to shake things up to get human spaceflight back to where we should have been twenty plus years ago.
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I think people idolize Musk's accomplishments today for two reasons. First, he's doing this so cheaply! It's surely not fair to compare the Falcon 9 (62 mil launch) to projects like the Saturn V (1.16 bil launch) or Apollo 11 (2.5 bil launch). Elon may be rich but he isn't the size of a major world power. Its impressive what Elon has been able to do with his limitations. Pretty much making his rockets from scratch he has slashed the cost of rocketry showing all the waste in NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc. Also, The Falcon 9 in its current form isn't meant to be on missions the scale of its predecessors. It take engineering prowess to do what he's done for so little. Give him the equivalency of NASA's budget in the 60's then you're well within your right to crucify him shit but don't go around comparing apples to oranges. While repeating mistakes of the past isn't excusable you can't forget to limitations put on SpaceX compared to 60's-70's NASA.
Second, He is the only promising force in modern aerospace. Sure, we did greater things decades ago but after the space race space exploration was more or less abandoned with no more missions to the moon or further. Even getting to low orbit is a feat by today's standards. To see a dedicated entrepreneur like Elon Musk take this sort of work into his own hands is promising and makes his fanboys, such as myself, hopeful for the future. Is the landing of the Falcon 9 anywhere as great as the marvels of the space race? No. However its a much needed light in a vacant industry that once had so much promise. -
The point of reusing rockets is so that people can travel back from Mars. Not solely for generating profit.
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Around 5:30, was the blue print an XKCD explainistration?
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it was a UFO look at the top of the tip of the rocket you will see a black dot that goes by very fast
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Any chance of doing a debunk video on Musk's direct ascent landing of 100 people Mars in a single launch BS?
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can you provide links to the rocket components and blueprints? nice video btw
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Ask the Apollo one astronauts how pure oxygen went for them. Oh wait, you cant!
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It's kind of far fetched to use this incident to argue that free market principles don't achieve innovation in the same way government does.
Your pretending like NASA has all of it's knowledge simply because they have the gov behind them..
Meanwhile, most of NASA's "findings" came from private german contractors that NASA hired in the same pretext that they hired SpaceX. -
You made one major research poo-pooh in this video. Upper stages run on LOX/LH2 rather than LOX/RP-1 (yes, fancy kerosene). As the explosion seem to start in the upper stage, I would speculate that the cause is a hydrogen leak - get the right concentration and that's all that's needed.
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George Bush blew it up.
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16:26 eeeehhh no. the solid oxygen in COPV problem is a new one, unique to the Falcon with subcooled LOX. not solved 40 years ago
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Now imagine them using ClF3 instead.
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The fact of the matter is, NASA, though very historically successful, is a bloated giant. And SpaceX's vehicle reliability is actually quite good. They have designed the most efficient gas generator and staged combustion engines (Merlin and Raptor) in history, and have done it at a fraction of the cost. Nasa designs can take decades to be completed, and the obsessive bureaucratic oversight strangles projects via committee, and this will NEVER EVER make spaceflight affordable. The cost cutting is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART if more than 12 people are ever going to leave the planet for more than 2 weeks. It cost 400 million to over a billion to launch one shuttle. And it was the most dangerous spacecraft ever designed. SLS will be somewhat better, but its going to be almost 20 years before it can get a human to Mars' surface. If it ever gets built at all. Look what happened to constellation. And NASA has lost a hell of a lot more rockets than SpaceX.
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