The explosion took place 2 minutes and 19 seconds after launch (Image: ddp USA/REX Shutterstock)
The explosion of SpaceX鈥檚 Falcon 9 rocket mere minutes after launch yesterday was strike one for US hopes of rebooting crewed space flight: this is the very type of rocket the company wants to use to send people into space in 2017.
鈥淵ou want a really, really reliable rocket before you put people on it,鈥 says of Harvard University. Now that SpaceX has lost its perfect launch record with this rocket, it will need to quickly convince people that the rocket can be trusted, he says. 鈥淵esterday [the Falcon 9] was 18 for 18 and looking pretty good. Now it is 18 for 19. That鈥檚 a 5 percent failure rate.鈥
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But if another 10 launches of Falcon 9 proceed without incident, that will bring the failure rate to 3.5 per cent, which could be acceptable, he says.
Among almost two tonnes of supplies and equipment in the Dragon capsule atop the rocket were two docking stations, intended for Space X to dock its crewed Dragon capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). It was also carrying several plant and animal experiments.
The failure shouldn鈥檛 force a delay in plans to launch the first crewed space mission on US soil since 2011, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA鈥檚 associate administrator for human exploration, at a press conference. 鈥淚t could help us to nail down designs and move forward,鈥 he said.
Counterintuitive cause
The Falcon 9 rocket exploded 2 minutes and 19 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Elon Musk said it was triggered by too much pressure in a liquid oxygen tank in the upper stage of the rocket, adding: 鈥淒ata suggests counterintuitive cause,鈥 without further explanation.
鈥淚t was in the upper part of the rocket, not the part that was firing at the time,鈥 says McDowell. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 representative of a class of failures associated with structural and aerodynamic problems.鈥
McDowell says there are probably no safety procedures that SpaceX would undertake during a crewed flight that could have prevented this explosion. 鈥淏ut Crew Dragon would have an escape system that would save the capsule, so you wouldn鈥檛 have killed the crew.鈥
Another SpaceX rocket spectacularly exploded during an attempt at landing it as part of a plan to make the Falcon 9 reusable. That attempt was highly experimental and appears unrelated to yesterday鈥檚 explosion during launch.
鈥淪paceX have been careful to do the experimental tests after the operational part of each mission is over,鈥 says McDowell. 鈥淪o playing with new stuff in the stage 1 re-entry phase shouldn鈥檛 make the all-important launch phase more dangerous.鈥
The explosion also follows a number of failures of other ISS supply rockets.
鈥淭here鈥檚 really no commonality across these three events other than the fact that it鈥檚 space, and it鈥檚 difficult to go fly,鈥 said Gerstenmaier. 鈥淲e鈥檙e essentially operating systems at the edge of their ability to perform and operate.鈥
Watching from on board the ISS, US astronaut Scott Kelly summed up the sentiment in a tweet:
