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The payload was apparently on the rocket at the time[1]. A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom g

The payload was apparently on the rocket at the time[1]. A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom government bird. [1]https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/771352977315684352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/771352977315684352...

sangnoir 10y ago
> A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom government bird. In fairness, when did the government last lose a bird? Doesn't the ULA have a '100%' success rate (where success is getting payload to space, though some payloads fail to make it to the planned orbit)
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I suspect the $2b custom government bird refers to the space shuttle. Of which we have, in fact, lost more than one.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    More like NSA/CIA/NRO spy satellites.
  - vkou 10y ago
    The shuttle was a vehicle with vastly different capabilities, and technical challenges to overcome, compared to a Falcon rocket. There have been 133 successful shuttle launches, and 2 failed ones. There have been 27 successful Falcon launches, and 2 failed ones.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      All that was intended by my comment was to shed light on what the parent comment probably was intending to say.
    - rlanday 10y ago
      And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing Reentry, not landing.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        Interesting question of how you'd classify that. A design flaw (foam) under launch stress resulted in foam shedding and leading edge wing impacts damaging tiles and ensuring loss of the vehicle on reentry. I'd argue the failure was in design, triggered during launch, and manifested on reentry. But Columbia was doomed from seconds into flight.
        rlanday 10y ago
        The Falcon only has to solve the problem of getting the payload into orbit. The Shuttle had to both get payload into orbit and return its crew (and the Orbiter, and any return payload) safely to Earth (the Dragon capsule has to do this as well but the statistics given are for all Falcon launches). So as far as comparing the technical challenges involved with Falcon vs. the Shuttle, the Shuttle was solving a harder problem, which I think makes the numbers for the Shuttle look even better relative to the Falcon. Harder at least as in there are extra steps that can go wrong (re-entry + landing), I suppose it’s debatable which was really a more difficult engineering project…
    - dpcx 10y ago
      While true, NASA was able to have the shuttle program be so successful because of the things that they learned in the previous space programs. This is SpaceX's first space program. Don't compare a "senior" program to a "freshman" program.
      - vkou 10y ago
        Which is great advice - that should temper everyone's expectations of the firm (Which were sky-high a few days ago, when Musk was promoting his 'flight-tested' reused rockets.)
      - linkregister 10y ago
        I think this is a false equivalence. Many if not most of the engineers working at SpaceX came from NASA or its constellation of contractors.
    - peeters 10y ago
      I know this will seem like nitpicking, but this was not a failed launch. It was during the inspection phase, which is performed to uncover flaws in the vehicle before launch. Small consolation I know because in this case the payload was lost anyway. But it's still important to note that the expectation of failure is going to be higher for inspection/static fire, and that in the case of commercial crew launches, the crew would not be near the pad at the time of static fire.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    That figure's low by a factor of 100 for the Space Shuttle program.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Specifically referring to the cost of the orbiter vehicle itself (or the cost you'd incur building a replacement if you lost one), roughly $2 billion is a decently accurate figure. The shuttle program as a whole, yes, is drastically more expensive. "The Space Shuttle Endeavour, the orbiter built to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger, cost approximately $1.7 billion." http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl...
- kuschku 10y ago
  ESA’s Ariane also has a far better successrate than SpaceX’s Falcon, and if I’d send a satellite to space, unless it would be a really cheap one, I’d likely not use the Falcon as delivery vehicle.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    So you would rather pay $600 million per launch with 95% chance of success vs $200 million per launch with 93% chance of success? There is no such thing a 100% chance of success, everyone has a chance of failure. I would not put ESA more than a few % more reliable. Math says your satellite would need to be really expensive for the price difference to be worth it.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Depending on the cost of failure, however for virtually every mission the 600M$ is a winner this is a no-brainer. That "little" difference has huge huge economic repercussions, cost of insurance, ease of financing, and many other things. Not to mention that a satellite going boom can kill an operator if it doesn't have a backup. This isn't an insurance case where you get your money and try again the week after, building a satellite is a huge undertaking it takes years to build, years to negotiate the contracts for and you have to do it from scratch all over again if it goes boom.
      - notahacker 10y ago
        The flip side is that estimating the reliability of a launch vehicle is an inexact science at best given the paucity of actual launches to provide data points (frankly, there was no real way of assessing the reliability of the Falcon 9 other than to note that launch failures or partial failures tend to occur more in the first couple of years of launches of a new rocket type is backed by a reasonable amount of evidence across the history of other launch vehicle programmes)
      - manarth 10y ago
        The satellite build costs $200m. Launch 1 costs $600m: total cost, $800m. Launch 2 costs $200m: you can build 2 spare satellites for the same cost (assuming you don't pay for the launches that go boom; and even if you do, that still gives you one spare satellite).
- sbierwagen 10y ago
  A Delta II blew up 13 seconds after launch in 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_IIR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_IIR-1
pmarreck 10y ago
One has to wonder why it was thought to be a good idea to keep an expensive payload onboard during a live-fire test EDIT: Did some research, it seems that those tests (without the payload) already ran successfully, and that this accident happened during the fueling stage at T-3 minutes... that's super unlucky :/
- kirrent 10y ago
  This wasn't launch. It was still a live fire test, but as you say, there are previous tests before integration.

sangnoir 10y ago

> A $200 million loss there, which sucks for the insurance company but better than losing a $2b custom government bird. In fairness, when did the government last lose a bird? Doesn't the ULA have a '100%' success rate (where success is getting payload to space, though some payloads fail to make it to the planned orbit)

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I suspect the $2b custom government bird refers to the space shuttle. Of which we have, in fact, lost more than one.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  More like NSA/CIA/NRO spy satellites.
- vkou 10y ago
  The shuttle was a vehicle with vastly different capabilities, and technical challenges to overcome, compared to a Falcon rocket. There have been 133 successful shuttle launches, and 2 failed ones. There have been 27 successful Falcon launches, and 2 failed ones.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    All that was intended by my comment was to shed light on what the parent comment probably was intending to say.
  - rlanday 10y ago
    And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > And one of the Shuttle failures was actually on landing Reentry, not landing.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Interesting question of how you'd classify that. A design flaw (foam) under launch stress resulted in foam shedding and leading edge wing impacts damaging tiles and ensuring loss of the vehicle on reentry. I'd argue the failure was in design, triggered during launch, and manifested on reentry. But Columbia was doomed from seconds into flight.
      - rlanday 10y ago
        The Falcon only has to solve the problem of getting the payload into orbit. The Shuttle had to both get payload into orbit and return its crew (and the Orbiter, and any return payload) safely to Earth (the Dragon capsule has to do this as well but the statistics given are for all Falcon launches). So as far as comparing the technical challenges involved with Falcon vs. the Shuttle, the Shuttle was solving a harder problem, which I think makes the numbers for the Shuttle look even better relative to the Falcon. Harder at least as in there are extra steps that can go wrong (re-entry + landing), I suppose it’s debatable which was really a more difficult engineering project…
  - dpcx 10y ago
    While true, NASA was able to have the shuttle program be so successful because of the things that they learned in the previous space programs. This is SpaceX's first space program. Don't compare a "senior" program to a "freshman" program.
    - vkou 10y ago
      Which is great advice - that should temper everyone's expectations of the firm (Which were sky-high a few days ago, when Musk was promoting his 'flight-tested' reused rockets.)
    - linkregister 10y ago
      I think this is a false equivalence. Many if not most of the engineers working at SpaceX came from NASA or its constellation of contractors.
  - peeters 10y ago
    I know this will seem like nitpicking, but this was not a failed launch. It was during the inspection phase, which is performed to uncover flaws in the vehicle before launch. Small consolation I know because in this case the payload was lost anyway. But it's still important to note that the expectation of failure is going to be higher for inspection/static fire, and that in the case of commercial crew launches, the crew would not be near the pad at the time of static fire.
- throwanem 10y ago
  That figure's low by a factor of 100 for the Space Shuttle program.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Specifically referring to the cost of the orbiter vehicle itself (or the cost you'd incur building a replacement if you lost one), roughly $2 billion is a decently accurate figure. The shuttle program as a whole, yes, is drastically more expensive. "The Space Shuttle Endeavour, the orbiter built to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger, cost approximately $1.7 billion." http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl...
kuschku 10y ago
ESA’s Ariane also has a far better successrate than SpaceX’s Falcon, and if I’d send a satellite to space, unless it would be a really cheap one, I’d likely not use the Falcon as delivery vehicle.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  So you would rather pay $600 million per launch with 95% chance of success vs $200 million per launch with 93% chance of success? There is no such thing a 100% chance of success, everyone has a chance of failure. I would not put ESA more than a few % more reliable. Math says your satellite would need to be really expensive for the price difference to be worth it.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Depending on the cost of failure, however for virtually every mission the 600M$ is a winner this is a no-brainer. That "little" difference has huge huge economic repercussions, cost of insurance, ease of financing, and many other things. Not to mention that a satellite going boom can kill an operator if it doesn't have a backup. This isn't an insurance case where you get your money and try again the week after, building a satellite is a huge undertaking it takes years to build, years to negotiate the contracts for and you have to do it from scratch all over again if it goes boom.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      The flip side is that estimating the reliability of a launch vehicle is an inexact science at best given the paucity of actual launches to provide data points (frankly, there was no real way of assessing the reliability of the Falcon 9 other than to note that launch failures or partial failures tend to occur more in the first couple of years of launches of a new rocket type is backed by a reasonable amount of evidence across the history of other launch vehicle programmes)
    - manarth 10y ago
      The satellite build costs $200m. Launch 1 costs $600m: total cost, $800m. Launch 2 costs $200m: you can build 2 spare satellites for the same cost (assuming you don't pay for the launches that go boom; and even if you do, that still gives you one spare satellite).
sbierwagen 10y ago
A Delta II blew up 13 seconds after launch in 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_IIR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_IIR-1

pmarreck 10y ago

One has to wonder why it was thought to be a good idea to keep an expensive payload onboard during a live-fire test EDIT: Did some research, it seems that those tests (without the payload) already ran successfully, and that this accident happened during the fueling stage at T-3 minutes... that's super unlucky :/

kirrent 10y ago
This wasn't launch. It was still a live fire test, but as you say, there are previous tests before integration.