It was that gosh-darn anomaly again, says SpaceX as smoke billows from Crew Dragon test site It has been an eventful past seven days in space what with SpaceX making a big cloud o' orange smoke, Cygnus docking, and veteran astronaut Owen Garriott taking his final journey into the black. So, farewell then, Demo-1? SpaceX's Crew Dragon appears to have suffered a significant setback as the spacecraft, previously sent to …
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SpaceX have been sweeping bad news under the carpet since the start.
Their amazing "auto-landing-on-drone-ship" for years, more often than not, was more likely to have taken out the drone or the rocket. They just never said when it did, and made an awful fuss about how brilliant it was whenever it happened to work properly.
Nothing different to any other Musk property... don't listen to what they *are* saying, because it's mostly nonsense. Listen to what they aren't saying, and check for yourself.
Okay, I checked for myself.
Since records of their launches are publicly available it wasn't that hard.
I find your assertion of "sweeping bad news under the carpet since the start" utterly without merit.
They've never taken out the drone ship. Heavily damaged, yes but never destroyed. And after a rough start (*Sarcasm* Surprisingly it's really difficult to land a 43 meter/140ft tall rocket on it's ass and keep it standing upright without it going boom. Who knew? */sarcasm*)
And they've now succeeded (when planning to recover the rocket, which they announce ahead of time) more often than they've failed. IIRC they've actually recovered the first stage booster more often than they have dropped one in the ocean INCLUDING the expendable launches now.
If you are going to have criticism on Musk, at least know what the heck you are talking about. There's plenty to criticize, but this isn't it.
Their amazing "auto-landing-on-drone-ship" for years, more often than not, was more likely to have taken out the drone or the rocket. They just never said when it did, and made an awful fuss about how brilliant it was whenever it happened to work properly.
What absolute balls. There's plenty to criticise about Musk so why on Earth you feel the need to make stuff up is beyond me. This is why he has such ardent followers - because his critics inexplicably choose to lie about him instead of making fair comments! If you're going to criticise him, then pick one of the many things which you can make stick!
70 missions, 38 landings. That's better than 50/50. Except they only attempted 45 landings - the other 32 missions were deliberately expendable because they were going to high/energetic orbits and no fuel remained for landing.
So 45 attempts, 7 fails. 6 of those were early-days failures whilst they were still working out the kinks - there was precisely one last year when the grid fins stick and it (soft-landed) in the ocean just off the beach.
Obvious troll is obvious.
54% success, overall, to date.
So as I clearly stated "for years, more often than not" it failed.
Or 84% success. IN THE BEST INSTANCE. If we let them just say "Oh, we never intended to land that time". Or even if we go back a year or so (hey, sorry for not watching EVERY launch ever), that percentage tends back towards the 50% and maybe even below that for quite a while.
Which is fecking appalling for space-faring. NASA's record since the 1960's was way better and they were literally doing it for the very first time ever with nothing but a handful of silicon chips and an awful lot of engineering.
And yet still, just last year, these things are still crashing, or in this year so far - exploding.
Either recognise that it's a stupid thing they are TRYING to do, they are doing it sloppily, or they're just not as good as you want to believe even when you KNOW the numbers.
"...Which is fecking appalling for space-faring. NASA's record since the 1960's was way better and they were literally doing it for the very first time ever with nothing but a handful of silicon chips and an awful lot of engineering...."
Ok...except that NASA weren't trying to land their boosters at all, never mind on a moving barge, so that they could be reused, were they?
Also - NASA built a lot of their work on what the Nazi scientists had previously done - seemed to be a fair few failures with the likes of the V2 if you look... maybe, just maybe, a lot of those early kinks that made them RUD had, y'know, previously been ironed out.
Aaannnddd on top of that, SpaceX seem pretty willing to share even the failures on YouTube et al.
There's a lot to dislike about Musk, for sure, and I've criticised some of it in the past (e.g. the stupid, nasty, petty name calling with regards to the kids rescued from the caves), but as others say, criticise that which should be.
Oranges vs Apples
NASA also had failures. Also in launch?
How many earth based rocket landings did NASA fail or succeed at? Hint, 0, because it never had any.
(Though the Shuttle was a return craft, it also had difficulty and needed a LOT of design and testing time... guess what SpaceX does on return... test landings, and as it's free to test to them, it does not matter if is succeeds or not... a returned craft is free money to them, a failed return is no loss, as normally they just burn up/crash in the sea normally anyhow!).
The succes rate of SpaceX you are now harping on about is ONLY the recovery of the first stage of the launch vehicle. Something not ever done by NASA (or anyone else) and only sort of attempted in some experimental vehicles (not very successfully I might add).
If we look at primary mission succes they've lost 2 vehicles (one during flight due to a strut failing in the second stage LOX tank, one on the launchpad during a static fire test due to unforeseen cryogenic effects causing defects in the COPV tank). They further lost a secondary payload (but successfully delivered the cargo Dragon capsule to the ISS) due to an engine anomaly, which they could have recovered if the primary customer (NASA) had allowed an extra engine ignition.
67 out of 69 launches successful (not counting the 2 Falcon Heavy launches that use pretty much the same vehicle). A 97.1 % success rate for a new rocket program is nothing to sneeze at. During the 60s and 70s NASA didn't even reach 90% overal success rate. Counting all NASA vehicles it wasn't until the 90s that they reached about 95%.
Recovery of the first stage has never been a priority for SpaceX. They've freely admitted (before launching) on the first recovery attempts that they didn't think they were going to make it for various reasons. Many design changes were made to get to where they are now and every prang was giving them valuable information. Your comment "If we let them just say "Oh, we never intended to land that time"." Is just stupid. I already told you in my first post that they have always announced intent to recover the booster BEFORE launching. No takesies backsies there.
Please stop being intentionally obstinate. There's plenty to criticize Musk (and SpaceX) for, but this isn't the problem you're looking for.
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> Hopefully they'll soon figure out how to talk, or send video, between two barges.
I've never understood why they don't relay video from the barge direct to the recovery vessel that is standing off nearby, rather than attempt direct satellite communication from the shuddering barge.
The tug is stable enough to maintain satellite comms.
"anomaly" is required NASA speak for "something unexpected happened". That's why spacex keep referring to explosions this way. Putting the word in scare quotes and treating it as if spacex are being disingenuous to use it shows a lack of understanding of the topic that I wouldn't have expected from the reg.
While there is no word yet on what caused the incident, close attention will be being paid to those SuperDracos.
Interestingly, whilst CRS-17 had already slipped to April 30th, it is apparently still on, with FAA permits submitted. This would indicate that whilst SpaceX are remaining tight-lipped, they already know more or less what the problem was, know it is unique to Crew Dragon and have satisfied NASA of that - meaning that Dragon 1 cargo missions are unaffected.
One of the key differences between the capsules of course is indeed the Launch Escape/Abort SuperDraco engines (and the plumbing and COPV fuel tanks to support those). Dragon 1 doesn't have those - just the smaller Draco engines for on-orbit manoeuvring. The refreshing thing with SpaceX of course is that they tend to be pretty open with their incident reporting once investigations are done. So whilst they've been tight-lipped so far, in due course they'll no doubt explain exactly what went wrong and how they will avoid killing astronauts on manned missions.
IIRC Dragon-1 Cargo don't have the Dracos, right? As in, if you don't have the big explosy stuff on it, then it's not gonna explode.
Dragon-1 has Dracos for orbital maneuvering.
It doesn't have SuperDracos (which I think is what you're referring to) - which are the upscaled version for Launch Abort/Escape.
But the two engines are same family, same hypergolic chemistry. Dragon-1 has hypergols onboard, but given that the next CRS mission is still going ahead on schedule, it would seem NASA are satisfied that the problem lies with SuperDraco, the plumbing, seawater corrosion or something specific to Crew Dragon.
..quite lidderally.
It's hard to imagine an incident like this not causing a catastrophic loss of vehicle / loss of crew accident if it had gone pop whilst docked to, or in the vicinity of, the ISS. Chunks of titanium aren't going to be stopped by micrometeorite-resistant panels bolted to the side.
And the more crewed space hardware is built from multiple separately launched components, the bigger it gets, the larger the crew and the greater the number of cryogenic tanks containing substances that explode when mixed,.. the greater the chance of a total loss accident.
If humans are ever going to have a permanent presence in space that's more ambitious than going round and round in LEO taking selfies, we need to find a solution to this problem.
"It's hard to imagine an incident like this not causing a catastrophic loss of vehicle / loss of crew accident if it had gone pop whilst docked to, or in the vicinity of, the ISS. Chunks of titanium aren't going to be stopped by micrometeorite-resistant panels bolted to the side."
Except this was an engine firing test that... would not fire when close to ISS (they use a different system for that).
This was also a first gen recovered pod. So either they adapt it for re-use, or don't re-use if seawater always causes this fault.
"the larger the crew and the greater the number of cryogenic tanks containing substances that explode when mixed."
Dracos/Super Dracos don't use cryogenics. They use hypergolics.
You are wrong on many levels, and may be reaching for some reason. The design may be faulty or dangerous, but not for the reasons you think.
It's like going "my car broke down because it's a thursday and the phase of the moon is off". Like, yes, the tides of the moon tell you when it's dangerous to swim, but not when the car will break down. Cryogenics are dangerous (and so are hypergolics), but not in the instance you are applying it to. :/
When anything happens (or appears to have done so) news weenies rush to get SOMETHING out there. They have to be first, most informed, etc... or more commonly try to pretend that they are. They gotta grab those viewers before the other media outlet does! This famously leads to talking heads immediately saying nothing useful (because they must be talking!) and and showing the same video clip every five minutes.
So now everyone expects SpaceX to rush out a meaningless statement like the talking heads would. I'm glad they don't! They already said "It blew up. We don't know why, we're going to figure it out. More info later." There is nothing more to be added yet.
Nevertheless, strident ignoramuses here are demanding detailed statements or CONSPIRACY! SpaceX are sweeping bad news under the rug as always! They're hiding things! They're withholding cancer cures! They cloned Hitler! No you fools, they simply don't speak until they have something useful to say. I for one appreciate that.
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