SpaceX News

[paperburn1]

Tin foil hat on
ok if it was a shoot down, whom?
China, not likely, the fact that it is a coastal conex carrier that never gets more than 200 miles from coast and the company has only 2000 employees. It would be almost impossible to put a false flag Chinese crew on board and not have anybody notice plus the logistics of loading the container in the right spot. shipping at the exact moment for intercept. just to many points of failure to be successful.
Enter The Merchants' War is a 1984 satirical novel by Frederik Pohl
If you read the book it was about how wars were now fought by corporation over consumers.
Next player Boeing and the 747 laser platform based somewhere in in ohio.
They go out for a spin and test flight, then come back in never getting within 200 miles of the target.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/21/28140 ... d-boneyard
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Tactical_Laser
the Aero-adaptive Aero-optic Beam Control turret that Lockheed Martin is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects
A corporation would never disable another corporation program.
http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/10/comcast ... furiating/

Tinfoil hat off

[Giorgio]

1) Scattering attenuation of the laser in the atmosphere at 80 Km.

2) Laser beam divergence at 80 Km.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics

http://www.ibtimes.com.au/china-conduct ... ry-1386452

China has conducted two anti-satellite tests very recently, using its advanced laser technology. This was done during a recent exercise of the Peoples Liberation Army. The anti-satellite exercises were conducted using laser weapons. This was disclosed by Konstantin Sivkov, deputy head of the Moscow-based Think Tank, Academy of Geopolitical Problems, in an interview to Voice of Russia.

What is higher, LEO or 80 km?

Oh my my....... Here we have another one that copy random articles and wikipedia links without any understanding of what he is talking about...... For a split second I even believed that you actually was willing to have a technical and logic discussion about this issue... so silly of me to have this hope.

1) Scattering attenuation was meant to make you think to what was supposed to be the total power INPUT to the Laser to actually get a power "X" delivered to the target at 50/80 Km altitude. You clearly didn't get this as you thought it was same issue of laser divergence, which is not. Had you bothered to apply "logic" and "science" to this point you would have discovered that the laser power input scales up quite quickly and that to apply enough power to actually damage a rocket will require a laser input power in the MW region with an operational time of tens of seconds.

2) Quoting a wikipedia article about Adaptive Optic and implying that you can apply it to a MW class laser means that you have no idea of the involved problems and and technological needs. Please tell me you are NOT a real engineer....

3) The China anti satellite tests (as written in the same link you quoted) are for "blinding" satellites. The same could be achieved with the sun and a mirror big enough, Archimede docet!
Destroying a satellite in orbit with a ground laser... well, that's another issue that no one accomplished so far.

3) Where the ship had installed the Radar Tracking System to track a rocket flying at more than 1km sec and at 80 Km altitude.

Known launch time/location and booster performance. Good weather. Optical tracking. No radar.

Optical tracking to focus a laser on an area less than 3 mt wide at a distance of at least 50 km and moving at 1 km/sec???
Ahahahahahaha thank you, that made my day!!

The ship is "operated" by Univan.

Do you know if the captain/crew are Chinese or not? Being home-ported in HK, it seems likely.
No Communist Party involvement (overt or covert) in a company based in China? Seriously?

Being home port in a country has no influence on the nationality of the captain or crew. Most of the ships managed by Univan have Indian captain and first/second officials. Generally they use Chinese personnel as third official and crew.
And no, HK is not (yet) China, I live and travel among the two places almost daily, I think I have some better knowledge than you about this.

2) If you think that you can actually operate some machinery from the top of a container ship than it means you have never been aboard one (I have) or you never saw one from real life.

Who said top? A containerized laser, sensing and firing through, say, a sliding door on the side of a ConEx box, could operate remotely or even autonomously, without the crew even knowing about it, if it was properly engineered. Or, just lock the human operator(s) into the box before loading. The power supply could be optimized for near-silent, one-time only use (it would only get one chance anyway).

LMAO, there are so many logical and technical flaws in such a few words that it would deserve a stand alone post.
With this paragraph you lost any whatsoever credibility you had left.

Engineering IS science.

Engineering is one application-oriented subset of science. Another is medicine.
"Science" to me means the seeking of knowledge for its own sake, regardless of application, but that's because I think like an engineer. Semantics. <Yawn.>

The world does not care about your own personal definition of science. The world defines science in specific ways, one of which is:
"Art, skill, or expertness, regarded as the result of knowledge of laws and principles."
This is why we speak about "Medical science" and "Engineering science" and so on.

Additionally if you applied the "logic" you claim to have, you would have realized that a "subset" of a thing is a part of the thing itself, hence (by your own words) engineering IS science, yet you claim the opposite.....
Like you said, "semantic", why should we bother about words meaning, let's all live in wonderland... <yawn> indeed!

[Maui]

Lets review some facts
Looks like if you hole the tank, pressure lost not over pressure.

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause."

I read Musk's statement to imply that pressure was lost to the point where it boiled...

[DeltaV]

Tin foil hat on
ok if it was a shoot down, whom?
China, not likely,

If it was China, that would be in step with the demonstrated history of Communism over the past century, and with modern statements by their generals and leaders. No tin foil hat required. China is running out of time to become the top superpower and they understand the value of the "high ground" (orbit and beyond). SpaceX is their only real competitor with the same drive. Elon, however, is not going for Earth domination, in spite of the stuffed white cat. Mars, that's different.

If it was not China, use the heavy-duty foil for your hat, because then you have to get into some real conspiracy theories.

the fact that it is a coastal conex carrier that never gets more than 200 miles from coast and the company has only 2000 employees.

What does that have to do with it? Surely they go back to home port HK once in a while, anyway.

It would be almost impossible to put a false flag Chinese crew on board and not have anybody notice

Why would you need to? The crew may already be Chinese, not that it matters, since a single-use ConEx laser weapon would not need any of them to operate it, or even be aware of it (silent power supply, remote/autonomous ops or "boxed-in" human operators).

plus the logistics of loading the container in the right spot.

Computer hacks. Bribes. Meh. Stack the containers so that the field of view is adequate for the planned heading/position and so that nobody onboard can see the sliding door opening and closing. The beam would not be visible on a calm sea with bright sunshine.

shipping at the exact moment for intercept. just to many points of failure to be successful.

When the countdown goes well, the launch occurs at the scheduled time. Ship departure times can be "engineered". With a covert setup, you could try and fail several times and no one would be the wiser. You only need to take out one to create a long delay for SpaceX.

[Skipjack]

If I was to assume saboutage of sorts, then I would simply follow the money. The company that has most to lose is ULA (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin). They recently lost the monopoly on DOD payloads. So they have a lot to lose and are very angry (lots of congressional hearings and stuff thanks to their strong lobbying). They have the motive, weapons and opportunity.

[Tom Ligon]

Consider the similarity of this malfunction to that of the Apollo 13 Service Module. That O2 tank blew when undergoing a routine tank stir, due to a vent damaged in an earlier procedure. There's a precedent for these things going wrong.

And if you wanted to sabotage a launch, rather than putting a hundred million dollar laser (built under government contract so it is certain to be accounted for), and its power source, in a container on a ship, where you have a crew of a dozen or so who must know about it, wouldn't you get a single tech to jigger a connection on an O2 control? Rig a solenoid valve to fail to open when it should? Crank a tank heater on full? Change a value in a line of code via an undetectable patch installed via a BDM port on an onboard computer?

[jrvz]

Who said top? A containerized laser, sensing and firing through, say, a sliding door on the side of a ConEx box, could operate remotely or even autonomously, without the crew even knowing about it, if it was properly engineered. Or, just lock the human operator(s) into the box before loading. The power supply could be optimized for near-silent, one-time only use (it would only get one chance anyway).

Remember that airborne laser is chemically powered - in effect, it is a rocket engine with toxic propellants. There's no way the crew would not notice it. And it needs a big optical window, so its diffraction-limited spot size is smaller than the entire rocket.

[Giorgio]

If I was to assume saboutage of sorts, then I would simply follow the money. The company that has most to lose is ULA (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin). They recently lost the monopoly on DOD payloads. So they have a lot to lose and are very angry (lots of congressional hearings and stuff thanks to their strong lobbying). They have the motive, weapons and opportunity.

Agree, if one has to assume sabotage than an "internal job" is the most logic possibility. I bet there is plenty of low pay technicians working on a lunch pad willing to increment their income without caring of the consequences.
I still have doubts on what really happened in the last flight of DC-XA......

[paperburn1]

I agree, the most simple explanation is something broke and it went boom.
Even the shuttle had a NASA determined odds of 1 in 57 of crew loss.
The Shuttle killed more people than any other space vehicle in history.
The explosion of the Challenger killed seven people, six astronauts and one Teacher in Space participant, during the launch of its 10th mission in 1986. The explosion of the Columbia killed seven more during re-entry of its 28th mission in 2003.
Let me spell it out for you: out of five Shuttles–Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor—two met a disastrous and fiery fate. That’s a 40% vehicular failure rate and a flight failure rate of 1.5%. This would have grounded any other vehicle permanently.
To compare, the Apollo I mission resulted in the death three astronauts during a launch pad test. The Mercury and Gemini missions had no fatalities.
So in retrospect Spacex is doing just fine with a better safety record than its competitors.

[hanelyp]

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause."

I read Musk's statement to imply that pressure was lost to the point where it boiled...

Overpressure to the point of tank failure would explain the overall failure as far as I can see. As for what caused the overpressure, I see 2 suspects:
- a valve stuck open from a helium tank.
- unexpected heat input into the tank.
The comment suggests to me the data does not point to a stuck valve.

[DeltaV]

Who said top? A containerized laser, sensing and firing through, say, a sliding door on the side of a ConEx box, could operate remotely or even autonomously, without the crew even knowing about it, if it was properly engineered. Or, just lock the human operator(s) into the box before loading. The power supply could be optimized for near-silent, one-time only use (it would only get one chance anyway).

Remember that airborne laser is chemically powered - in effect, it is a rocket engine with toxic propellants. There's no way the crew would not notice it. And it needs a big optical window, so its diffraction-limited spot size is smaller than the entire rocket.

( Unclassified )

[Giorgio]

What's the point?

[D Tibbets]

"There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause."

I read Musk's statement to imply that pressure was lost to the point where it boiled...

Overpressure to the point of tank failure would explain the overall failure as far as I can see. As for what caused the overpressure, I see 2 suspects:
- a valve stuck open from a helium tank.
- unexpected heat input into the tank.
The comment suggests to me the data does not point to a stuck valve.

Just to add to the speculation:

The helium tank valve failure as mentioned- that is what pressurizes the oxygen tank.

Excess heat from a heater or a short (I think due to insulation failure due to a poorly planned increase in voltage as in Apollo 13)

Stuck oxygen tank overpressure relief valve

Structural failure of the tank even though it was within pressure limits

Structural failure outside the tank

Bomb- sabotage, much easier and more plausible that an external laser. Only the Flying Laser Laborartory might have been able to do this in it's latter days before decommissioning. I do not think anyone has come close to this sense then. Surface based lasers are becoming useful for intercepting close and low flying bombs, airplanes, and missiles, but this is an extremely more difficult proposition.

Sensor or non malignant programing failure. The active valves are useful only if used appropriately.

Dan Tibbets

[Maui]

Since they were already having trouble with their helium tanks, I wonder if one of these were to spring a leak, is there a valve that would prevent the helium from escaping back into the helium tank and and out once all the helium was lost?

[paperburn1]

I have no idea of the plumbing but one would assume that there would be a check valve of some sort. They are common and well tested industry standard type of items.