They fired the Falcon from a bow? That doesn’t sound like adequate funding to me!

Technically, Ariane 5 destroyed itself when it went bad — the people on the ground had no idea what was coming. The space shuttle also has destruct charges, three “Range Safety Systems” (one in each SRB and one in the external tank), which are used “only when the shuttle vehicle violates a launch trajectory red line”, whatever that means translated out of NASA-speak. The decision about whether or not to put the destruct charges on the shuttle had some politics behind it, which Richard Feynman talked about in What Do You Care What Other People Think?, apropos his adventures on the Challenger investigative commission.

Melusine:

Nice rant. (-:

March 26th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
The link in the post mentions that the rocket landed on a “dead reef”. I don’t know what that means, but it might answer the several questions in these comments.

A dead reef means just that: instead of colorful biodiversity it’s just dull rock coral. Sure, fish may still hide out there, but it’s not teeming with life as in live reefs (which are part of that atoll). You can see dead vs live here.

You can read an environmental impact study about Space X and Omelek Island; they’ve had to take all sorts of precautions to not disturb the native life, appropriately dispose of water, tent the run-off pond so birds don’t land in it; fence the beach area 328 feet on either side of the pad so turtles will stay away from the area, and so on. People are evacuated off the island, all materials are inspected for non-native life (construction materials, et al) before going on the island (don’t want rats and such), and a respect for native life is mandated. They feel the risk would be seldom enough not to be a major problem to the atoll.

Sure, it’s never pleasant when marine life gets clobbered, but there are many more consistent practices, e.g. cruise ships, tankers, military sonar testing, that are MUCH more major than the occasional rocket failure. [ok, a little rant there]

Besides, having a real payload on it was probably a handy psychological motivator for the SpaceX crew. If there wasn’t a payload on there, the temptation might have been to treat it as a test run, and no big deal if they fail.

errr that dosn’t sound good for the reef……

or the fish….

This is completely off-topic, but what do people think about the creationist plagiarist who got caught in the act? (Hey, “creationist plagiarist” — that has a sort of ring to it.)

Lies are created only by man. Ironic. Not a very original thinker. [fill in all the blanks]

Lucky about the machine shop. Hope people don’t get paranoid about falling rocket parts. 250 feet away from the pad…not good. BTW, that’s not a very significant reef–it’ll be OK. Besides all the cruise ships are killing the area anyway.

Though the worst rocket accident I’ve personally witnessed happened when my roommate was propelling two-liter soda bottles by filling them with a water-liquid nitrogen mix. It’s not explosive; it just boils really well. And firing them off your thumb while drunk is, ahem, contraindicated.

I had never considered “tearing a piece off my thumb” a possibility.

Switching tracks — I’m very glad to hear that someone else has seen a parallel between the two Ds. I was starting to think that my years of wild hedonism had caught up with me and made me see double.

…Reminds me of some of my model rocket flights.

It is regrettable that it hit a reef. Let’s hope that the local environmental regulations are sensible, and that this doesn’t happen again.

A lot of good things will start happening once we start reducing the cost of getting mass to orbit again.

This is completely off-topic, but what do people think about the creationist plagiarist who got caught in the act? (Hey, “creationist plagiarist” — that has a sort of ring to it.)

If it’s a matter of a couple of bolts not being tightened, then it’s a sign of lax procedures and other problems will most likely arise.

During the web cast of the launch, I noticed a tent in the foreground being blown apart from the exhaust. That just seemed plain amateurish to me, even if it was planned. As much as I love explosions and things being blown apart, it just doesn’t seem right.

i think cost was the deciding factor with no test launch, and actual paying launches are insured iirc. so it’s not actually that big a loss except as far as potential-customer confidence goes.

/actually now that i think about it, it might only be the payload that’s insured.