For this flight, the pad infrastructure could be an "expended" part of the launch system, and I'm betting whatever fault led to this outcome won't reoccur! I'm also betting that eventually SpaceX will publicly share their analysis of the event.
I would be more worried about the gripper arm which came off the strongback after the fire.
You can see the arm come off in the video, it happens when the rocket is well clear of the pad when the strongarm was buffeted by the exhaust stream. It was also after the 'fireball', not concurrent with it.It isn't unusual for a pad to suffer some damage in a launch.
Also, is there any confirmation a "gripper arm" is what was seen to be liberated? Could've just been a duct.
LC39 suffers damage at every launch.
Quote from: Lee Jay on 12/14/2010 05:43 pmLC39 suffers damage at every launch.Sure, but pad damage is a part of why Shuttle costs 500 to 1000 millions per flight. It is not something desirable for high-rate systems. How can we talk about reusable stages if we cannot build a reusable strongback?
Non-sequitur? What does the size of the pad have to do with it?
We can build a reusable strongback. This one was not designed to fail like this, it's just something happened with the design of this one or the launch events (perhaps the T-0 fire) that lead to an unanticipated failure. I would bet some team at SpaceX is right now reviewing that design and the events of the launch to figure out why it failed with the goal that it won't happen again, just like the T-0 roll of the first flight was fixed for the second. This isn't something that's going to be required every flight.
Quote from: e of pi on 12/15/2010 06:58 amWe can build a reusable strongback. This one was not designed to fail like this, it's just something happened with the design of this one or the launch events (perhaps the T-0 fire) that lead to an unanticipated failure. I would bet some team at SpaceX is right now reviewing that design and the events of the launch to figure out why it failed with the goal that it won't happen again, just like the T-0 roll of the first flight was fixed for the second. This isn't something that's going to be required every flight.How do you know? Maybe the basic concept is flawed and the strongback is too close to the vehicle at launch and will be heavily damaged after each launch.
Until they redesign it. When you compare it to the F1 set up, they have separate strongback which lays right back out of the way, and a separate utilities tower. Don't think they'll go for that option however but additional angle to get it further out of the way wouldn't seem to go astray.
Quote from: Antares on 12/14/2010 10:44 pmAlso, is there any confirmation a "gripper arm" is what was seen to be liberated? Could've just been a duct.http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23516.msg669853#msg669853 (picture)http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23516.msg669954#msg669954 (video)http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=49739