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Today’s launch of a cargo mission to the International Space Station ended with the loss of the vehicle at about 2:19 into the launch. From what I can see, it looks like a failure structurally somewhere forward on the vehicle, rather than the booster stages exploding.
Today’s launch of a cargo mission to the International Space Station ended with the loss of the vehicle at about 2:19 into the launch.
From what I can see, it looks like a failure structurally somewhere forward on the vehicle, rather than the booster stages exploding.
Elon Musk tweeted that there was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.
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I wonder ifthere is a backup plan – do they have a duplicate payload in case of this eventuality?
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Bill I wondered that too. Do they insure the payloads? Some could be in the multi million range.
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It’s still a young program. Good thing this happened fairly early so that it can be sussed out.
As long as we launch with high-pressure cryogenic engines, this will happen. Best we can do is ratchet down the failure rate.
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Generally the payload cost is comparable to the launch vehicle.
Fortunately, in this case, it was mostly just food etc for the space station.
Unfortunately, the last resupply was lost too.
They still have a few months supplies, so it’s not Donner Party yet.
I would suspect that intense interest in getting a recoverable booster resulted in higher priority quality control there at the expense of the upper stages.
Despite being fully funded by taxpayers, this is at the highest level a for-profit venture, and the big payoff is IF the recoverable booster is perfected it would make the company more competitive for future contracts.
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Mrs. Peel’s widget was supposed to be on this rocket. The loss of the Orbital rocket bumped her off this flight. Whatever they’re trying to get up there right now must be snake-bit.
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XBradTC 
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