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The automated flight termination system may have detonated it due to it deviating from the "planned" flight path. It looked too instantaneous and clean of an e
by CarVac 7y ago
The automated flight termination system may have detonated it due to it deviating from the "planned" flight path.
It looked too instantaneous and clean of an explosion to have broken up naturally.
- olex 7y agoThere are pictures of the second stage coming down in one piece and exploding upon hitting the water (at a safe distance away from the capsule and recovery crews). So it certainly doesn't look like the flight termination system was engaged.
- bob1029 7y agoThe SpaceX FTS should be fully-automated per this test. It is one criteria that still needs to be certified for the commercial crew program. That entire sequence should have been performed automatically by a computer (throttle back->fire abort rockets->terminate stage 1 booster). I suspect the FTS was appropriately triggered and that the 2nd stage simply survived the initial carnage via happenstance or potentially unintentionally due to changes in the structure regarding the missing front piece.
- JshWright 7y agoThe webcast hosts explicitly said the FTS wouldn't be triggered.
- _Microft 7y agoYes, it definitely looked different from the CRS-7 launch anomaly.
- lutorm 7y agoI agree, although CRS-7 was higher altitude so the atmospheric pressure and aerodynamic forces were smaller, so that may not be unexpected.
- JshWright 7y agoCRS-7 started as a failure of the second stage, at much higher altitude. The cloud of gas from the ruptured upper stage tanks would have obscured much of what was going on with the booster. It was a very different "failure", which would naturally look different.
- _Microft 7y agoThe overpressure from the burst helium COPV ruptured the second-stage tanks and spilled the contents. We didn't really see clouds of unburnt fluids or gases this time, it was an explosion right from the start. That's what I meant when I said it looked different this time.
- JshWright 7y agoRight, but your explanation for those differences seemed to be (based on the context) related to whether or not the FTS was triggered.
- _Microft 7y agoYes, I actually meant to say that the sudden explosion did not look like CRS-7 which had this spilling-a-dewar look and guessed that the AFTS might have been involved. It was really nothing more than a wild guess.