In the story I read about the Space x rocket explosion, it said the satellite cost 150M.
How much was the rest of it worth? Rocket, fuel, launch pad, man hours, just wondering.
I am far from an expert on the SpaceX costs, but I think they are charging about $60-70 million per launch, which may be operating at a loss. That's much less than an Atlas launch which I could price out, but might be something like $200 million. Today, clearly, they had substantial damage to the pad and support equipment, so figure maybe $20 million for that. Those are all slightly better than guesses, but it's within an order of magnitude. What it will cost them in the long run is TBD, but it wouldn't surprise me if Musk had to insure the next few on his own dime.
I would have to dispute the description of the failure. It seemed pretty clear that the second stage exploded, not just catch fire. That's quite puzzling. I think we all expected that there was some sort of a tank vent valve issue that caused the tank to burst (as the LOX boiled off), then caught fire. But it was far too sharp an explosion for a mere leak, even a severe leak. I don't know how their tanks work, but if it had a common bulkhead, that could have leaked LOX into the fuel tank, and then it's just a matter of a sharp impact or tiny initiating event followed by a very bright and fast disassembly. Essentially, this kind of tank is a single more-or-less cylindrical tank, with a single bulkhead across the middle to separate the fuel and oxidizer. This still follows the LOX vent valve icing or failure theory, except that instead of bursting the side of the tank, it burst or separated the common bulkhead and leaked internally.
Once the second stage blew, it collapsed on the first stage, causing a bigger but much less sharp explosion and fire at the base of the pad. Then, the injection/upper stage, payload, and payload fairing, still held by the gantry, pulled the top of the gantry to the side, then tipped over and fell to the ground. At that point, it clearly burst the tanks and exploded the upper stage, so that's a third big blow up and fire. The service tanks blew in the fire, and then towards the end, the spacecraft propulsion also blew with a relatively small pop.
Several other interesting questions are raised. First and most obvious is why they want to do a static test in the first place. That was common early on, but later mostly abandoned as not particularly insightful. Any firing is a risk. If the static test is good, you learn nothing useful because it would have worked in a real flight anyway. If it doesn't work, aside from a few minor failure modes, it will blow and wreck the whole thing anyway, and at best you haven't damaged the payload. Which brings up the next obvious question, why do it with the payload stacked? This eliminates almost any value to the test, because you are taking almost all the risk you would in a real launch. When they did it on the Atlas back in the 50's/60's, they didn't do it with a live H-bomb on top, and they didn't ask John Glenn to climb up there and ride it out, because if it does blow, you kill everybody so the only reason to static test is to test the relatively cheap rocket before you risk the payload. The way they did it, you gain almost nothing. Third question is why, if you are doing a static test, do you also fuel the upper stage. You sure aren't going to static test that, it's sitting on the rest of the rocket, so why bother fueling it. Usually, fueling tests are done completely independent of a static test. or at most you do the lower stage fueling test and static test, and do the upper stage fueling tests later.
I have to say, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Musk and company. They have spent the last 5+ years telling everyone how stupid and backwards everyone else is, particularly the experienced contractors like ULA. I have no great love for ULA, either, but having 50+ years of experience has at least taught them to be very careful. Musk, Rutan, et al seem to operate on hubris. Perhaps they are learning some hard lessons and humility, but no evidence of it so far.
One thing I have learned over the years operating in the most stressing and difficult environments is that no one is smart enough to slap-dash it and beat the odds for long. You can never be *too* rigorous or careful. Knowing that is largely *why* ULA costs 5x as much. Even that doesn't guarantee success, but is sure raises the odds. It can be a very humbling business and one single mistake can destroy tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars and maybe kill a bunch of people.
Brett
p.s . in case anyone hasn't seen it, heres the definitive video. Money shot at about 1:11 and definitely turn on the sound:
Topic: A question for Brett (Read 6341 times)