Very cool :cool:

We now need a landing pad built at the Ponderosa and cross-Atlantic visitors will find it easier to visit :03:

SpaceX does it again!!!
 

This morning SpaceX launched a satellite into orbit and landed the first stage of the rocket aboard a ship again!! Congrats for a great job!!:yeah:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techno...ing/ar-BBsIo3Q

A Falcon 9 rocket conducting a static fire test at Cape Canaveral just opted to conduct a Static Rapid Disassembly Test instead. :oops:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrRWg16WgAEs6d3.jpg

I'm no rocket scientist, to make an understatement, but I read that it had a $200.000.000 payload on top when it blew up. Is that the norm? Sounds strange to have a payload on when you want to test fire the engines. At least they can conclude the rocket disassembles real quick which is good to know.

SpaceX has confirmed that the explosion was not due to their Falcon 9 but from some sort of launch pad anomaly. Here's a closer shot:

https://thespaceport.us/forum/upload...1449_thumb.jpg

Some info here
https://www.reddit.com/live/xix3m9uqd06g

The mishap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ

Wow...yeah, that's going to leave a mark.

At least it wasn't the fault of the vehicle, something must have ignited the propellant whilst it was being loaded onto the vehicle. The payload fairing actually survived the initial explosion but not the sudden onset of gravity caused by the rocket underneath it atomising.

A major bummer for Spacecom. Quote from the news link above
"Devastating blow for Spacecom, the owners of the AMOS-6 satellite:
Elon Musk has stated that because the rocket didn't intentionally ignite for launch, the loss of payload is not covered by launch insurance."

From what I understand, they are a small company that have been in talks about being bought by another company, depending on the success of this launch. Hard to talk when things explode around you.

EDIT: They really do have rotten luck. This satelite, Amos-6 destroyed and the previous one Amos-5 stopped calling home last year. 1/3 of them out is not a shortcut to financial success.

Another quote from the same link
"Spacecom, the owner of the satellite onboard today's Falcon 9; are down 9% on their stock exchange today; and continuing to fall."

Lady Luck is certainly not smiling on them atm.

The quote earlier
"Devastating blow for Spacecom, the owners of the AMOS-6 satellite:
Elon Musk has stated that because the rocket didn't intentionally ignite for launch, the loss of payload is not covered by launch insurance."
has now been retracted, it seems, but neither Musk nor SpaceX mention any of it in any tweet or other newspost I have seen. One can hope for Spacecom that the relevant insurance companies are playing ball.

Not trying to sound like an evil person

Every setback is at most a positive thing it is mostly through these setback we learn a lot more than if everything was working great, but with hidden failure

Markus

That I agree on. Of course, that only holds true if you don't go broke or do a Nedelin but yeah, failure and learning is one step towards perfection.

Footage of the incident:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ

Sounds like their marine cargo insurance will cover it.

I am not going to touch the frothingly insane theories that pop up now concerning the incident but one thing really depresses:

A search on Youtube for Facebook Satellite gave me 1120 hits (filtered for past 24 hours) :/\\!! and various media are hot onto it, parroting the same nonsense.
Spacecom isn't even spelled the same way as Facebook, let alone pronounced the same way but still, good luck trying to tell the nutters it wasn't Facebook's sat.