Author Topic: What if the Cause of the Falcon 9 AMOS-6 Pad Failure is Never Uncovered  (Read 24824 times)

Online sdsds

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In this case I am confident the investigation with SpaceX in the lead and with the full support of other involved organizations will find and develop a fix or fixes for whatever might have caused this. But in a totally hypothetical case, what if the most probable cause of some future wet-dress failure was that the vehicle had been struck by a meteorite? How would they fix that?
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Offline yokem55

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In this case I am confident the investigation with SpaceX in the lead and with the full support of other involved organizations will find and develop a fix or fixes for whatever might have caused this. But in a totally hypothetical case, what if the most probable cause of some future wet-dress failure was that the vehicle had been struck by a meteorite? How would they fix that?
They would find the full statistical likelihood of it happening again (and there is actually data on how common meteorite strikes are for any given place on earth) and if the risk was high enough they would dig a hole and launch from a silo.

Offline Bynaus

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The likelyhood of a meteorite strike is just astronomically low (approx 1 meteorite >100 g per 36'000 km2 per year*). Contrast this idea, e.g., with how many airliners you have to hit (statistically speaking) with a meteorite before you hit a rocket... No airliner has ever been hit by a meteorite, and there are thousands of them.

Also, a meteorite would just fall at terminal velocity, so about 100 m/s (so it would likely be in a few frames of the video - although perhaps not visible, depending on size). There might be other meteorites too, and (being stones) they would probably even survive the "fast fire" and be found among the debris.

*From: Bland P. A. & Artemieva N. A., 2006, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 41:607-631.
« Last Edit: 09/16/2016 02:33 pm by Bynaus »
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Offline Rocket Science

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No need to dig one, Challenger's remains are in LC-31 and the state of LC-32 I'm not sure of at this point. Unless this a really a concern to some... Just sayin'...
http://www.wired4space.com/launch-sites/cape-canaveral-afs/lc-32-launch-complex-32-at-cape-canaveral-afs
« Last Edit: 09/16/2016 02:44 pm by Rocket Science »
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
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Offline Falcon H

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Maybe SpaceX should redesign their pressurization system completely at this point.......

Offline ugordan

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Maybe SpaceX should redesign their pressurization system completely at this point.......

How would they know what they have to avoid in the redesign, to prevent a recurrence of this fault if they don't find the root cause first? Simply hoping that a different design doesn't pick up the same inherent flaw? Or introduce another one?

Just because you redesigned something doesn't by itself make it better than the old solution.
« Last Edit: 09/28/2016 01:36 pm by ugordan »

Online sdsds

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Maybe SpaceX should redesign their pressurization system completely at this point.......

[...] Just because you redesigned something doesn't by itself make it better than the old solution.

Maybe SpaceX should redesign their pressurization system acceptance test criteria at this point....

;)
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Offline Jet Black

In this case I am confident the investigation with SpaceX in the lead and with the full support of other involved organizations will find and develop a fix or fixes for whatever might have caused this. But in a totally hypothetical case, what if the most probable cause of some future wet-dress failure was that the vehicle had been struck by a meteorite? How would they fix that?

you wouldn't need to as you would have an unavoidable statistically improbable event.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard Feynman

Offline Rocket Science

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With the cause still unknown, as suspected NASA is considering buying more seats as I suggested they might...
yg1968 posted this article link:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37802.msg1592568#new
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/nasa-officials-mulling-the-possibility-of-purchasing-soyuz-seats-for-2019/?comments=1

« Last Edit: 09/30/2016 06:12 pm by Rocket Science »
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
~Rob: Physics instructor, Aviator

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