3 ms·

I mean, if they thought they saw a flash from the top of the competitor's building a mile away the right amount of time before the explosion, I'm not surprised

I mean, if they thought they saw a flash from the top of the competitor's building a mile away the right amount of time before the explosion, I'm not surprised they wanted to investigate the theory. I'm also not surprised they didn't push it much publicly. It sounds like trying to deflect blame for your failures.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Wouldn't leaving a muzzle flash be almost comically incompetent?
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I don't know that much about sniper rifles. Can you not leave a muzzle flash? Is that possible (with flashless powder or something)? And if you do, what are the trade-offs?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    It's not very noticeable in daylight from a distance in the first place, plus you would shoot from inside a room which would all but completely hide it. (The whole idea seems a bit crazy too, there are a thousand things which can go wrong with a rocket, so let's look for snipers.)
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      > (The whole idea seems a bit crazy too, there are a thousand things which can go wrong with a rocket, so let's look for snipers.) If I didn't know any better, I'd say some guy who both roasted his brain with drugs and spends a lot of time in the company of a person who was sniped at is in charge of the company.
      - dandelany 2y ago
        …you realize this happened nine years ago, right?
    - mingus88 2y ago
      This is the first time I’ve heard of this incident and I’m not ashamed to admit that with everything we now know about Musk, it seems totally plausible that he would have internally squashed any other theories. He has convinced his shareholders that FSD will ship by the end of every year for the past decade, so why wouldn’t he believe he could convince the FBI that the only way his super fueling process could have gone wrong is via an action movie sniper plot?
      - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
        I think you're going a bit too far. The article doesn't say that he internally squashed any other theories. Their investigation successfully found the real issue.
    - anton-c 2y ago
      I mean a competitor shooting from their own property is just comical corporate sabotage too considering we're dealing with rocket scientists here.
    - tekla 2y ago
      There are a thousand things that can go wrong when the Rocket is doing things. It exploding while just sitting there doing nothing narrows the possibilities 99.9%.
      - actionfromafar 2y ago
        Things happen while sitting, fuelling etc. But this rocket was in the air when it exploded IIRC.
        tekla 2y ago
        What? Amos-6 blew up on the launch pad. The article headline picture shows it on the pad.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    I mean it's pretty easy to hide the flash. Said flash is just burning powder after it leaves the barrel. So if you have an expansion chamber after the barrel it will be contained. Silencers do this secondarily with the first order effect of reducing the noise. An empty silencer (no baffles) will still hide the majority if not all the flash.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Also, flash hiders are quite effective.
  - free_bip 2y ago
    Silencers can reduce or even entirely eliminate muzzle flash.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Yup. Definitely won’t suppress the supersonic crack from any projectile able to deliver useful energy at that range though.
      - coldburst 2y ago
        Suppressors only reduce the loudness of the muzzle blast without impacting the projectile's ability to break the sonic barrier. In fact, suppressors slightly increase projectile speed because they effectively add barrel length.
        lazide 2y ago
        First part - that’s what I said? Second part - no suppressor I’ve ever seen or used did that, they all did the opposite.
      - reverendsteveii 2y ago
        wasn't there a rocket launch going on at the time the shot was fired?
  - thijson 2y ago
    The Boer's during the Boer war were able to using a sniping attack against the British because they had smokeless gunpowder, so I would imagine flashless is also an advantage. I remember seeing artillery and tanks having something on the end of the barrel that diverts the flame to the sides.
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      The thing on a tank is called a “muzzle brake” and it greatly reduces felt recoil. Also available on many smaller guns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor But a flash in the middle of the day would not be very visible anyway.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    Sniper rifles have longer barrels that both suppress barrel flash and increase muzzle velocity - thus making the rifle more accurate at longer distances. They also fire larger rounds with larger cartridges to get even greater muzzle velocity. The trade-off is size and weight. Longer barrels, larger rounds, bigger cartridges - that increases the size and weight of the weapon and its ammunition. That's size and weight an infantry neither needs nor wants.
digdugdirk 2y ago
It is trying to deflect blame for your failures. It also signals a lack of understanding of their own design, and an unwillingness to dig into the details to figure it out. These are not good signals to be sending when you're trying to get a contract to send a manned mission to space.
- prasadjoglekar 2y ago
  This was 9 years ago. The article itself says the theory isn't completely kooky. Quote: This is not as crazy as it sounds, and other engineers at SpaceX aside from Musk entertained the possibility, as some circumstantial evidence to support the notion of an outside actor existed. Most notably, the first rupture in the rocket occurred about 200 feet above the ground, on the side of the vehicle facing the southwest. In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX's main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket. This seems a wildly broad description, doesn't it? What interval, for what projectile?
    - tekla 2y ago
      Why would you even bother to bring this up. This is a non-technical consumer oriented news report, not an engineering analysis. SpaceX saw a weird coincidence that might be worth investigating. Thats all you need to know.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Well, projectiles would travel somewhere between just under mach 1 and a top limit of... mach 3, maybe? So the flash would have to be some time between 1.5 and 5 seconds before the explosion? That is not a very large window.
jajko 2y ago
If you want to shoot 1 mile ammo, you need anti-material stuff like .50 BMG or at least .338 with some very hot loads. Probably even bigger if you want to have better chance, wind can easily carry the round 10 meters aside even in calmer conditions. Plus bullet would leave very distinct entry and exit points that couldn't be mismatched with some random shrapnel or other damage, or get lodged in more solid parts of rocket body and it would still be identifiable as bullet. Such shot would be heard for a mile in quieter conditions. Not joking. Even during distant launch, a perimeter of few 100s of meters of shooter anybody there would hear it clearly. I never owned or operated seriously any gun, just followed few gun channels + you have all the info on wikis and elsewhere, its just rather basic physics. Anybody with similar or better knowledge would quickly debunk such theory as bs and focus more on known facts (but we talk about elon's ego here, not the most rational entity, he ie prefers pedophilia accusations when things don't roll as he wants). If they stated some very powerful laser gun, mkay more reasonable but then no visible flashes outside target itself. And such gun would require massive installation, preparation, testing etc.
- aeonik 2y ago
  You could reasonably hit a target within 36 inches at a mile with a lot of different calibers. You don't necessarily need large caliber. .50 cal has a great ballistic coefficient, but bullet design and speed matters a lot too. 6.5 creedmoor and others in the intermediate precision class can all do this as well. That being said 1 mile is really really long shot, and right where a lot of the lighter calibers start getting near transonic. Wind is another beast, if it's steady it can be compensated for, but I don't know what the weather was that day... chaotic gusts will wreck a shot for sure. All that being said, the rocket is a pretty big target, 12 feet across and almost 230 feet high... that's going to compensate for a lot. Agreed that if you found the piece where the bullet punctured it should be pretty evident what happened. But I don't have any experience doing investigations in this area, and I've heard at least from plane crashes that the fuselage can disintegrate pretty readily in high force scenarios. I have operated and owned precision rifles, but not big bore, and have not gone out to extreme distances. More fun to play with the math and ballistics. Would love to hear from someone who knows more than either of us.

actionfromafar 2y ago

Wouldn't leaving a muzzle flash be almost comically incompetent?

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
I don't know that much about sniper rifles. Can you not leave a muzzle flash? Is that possible (with flashless powder or something)? And if you do, what are the trade-offs?
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  It's not very noticeable in daylight from a distance in the first place, plus you would shoot from inside a room which would all but completely hide it. (The whole idea seems a bit crazy too, there are a thousand things which can go wrong with a rocket, so let's look for snipers.)
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    > (The whole idea seems a bit crazy too, there are a thousand things which can go wrong with a rocket, so let's look for snipers.) If I didn't know any better, I'd say some guy who both roasted his brain with drugs and spends a lot of time in the company of a person who was sniped at is in charge of the company.
    - dandelany 2y ago
      …you realize this happened nine years ago, right?
  - mingus88 2y ago
    This is the first time I’ve heard of this incident and I’m not ashamed to admit that with everything we now know about Musk, it seems totally plausible that he would have internally squashed any other theories. He has convinced his shareholders that FSD will ship by the end of every year for the past decade, so why wouldn’t he believe he could convince the FBI that the only way his super fueling process could have gone wrong is via an action movie sniper plot?
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      I think you're going a bit too far. The article doesn't say that he internally squashed any other theories. Their investigation successfully found the real issue.
  - anton-c 2y ago
    I mean a competitor shooting from their own property is just comical corporate sabotage too considering we're dealing with rocket scientists here.
  - tekla 2y ago
    There are a thousand things that can go wrong when the Rocket is doing things. It exploding while just sitting there doing nothing narrows the possibilities 99.9%.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Things happen while sitting, fuelling etc. But this rocket was in the air when it exploded IIRC.
      - tekla 2y ago
        What? Amos-6 blew up on the launch pad. The article headline picture shows it on the pad.
- pixl97 2y ago
  I mean it's pretty easy to hide the flash. Said flash is just burning powder after it leaves the barrel. So if you have an expansion chamber after the barrel it will be contained. Silencers do this secondarily with the first order effect of reducing the noise. An empty silencer (no baffles) will still hide the majority if not all the flash.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Also, flash hiders are quite effective.
- free_bip 2y ago
  Silencers can reduce or even entirely eliminate muzzle flash.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Yup. Definitely won’t suppress the supersonic crack from any projectile able to deliver useful energy at that range though.
    - coldburst 2y ago
      Suppressors only reduce the loudness of the muzzle blast without impacting the projectile's ability to break the sonic barrier. In fact, suppressors slightly increase projectile speed because they effectively add barrel length.
      - lazide 2y ago
        First part - that’s what I said? Second part - no suppressor I’ve ever seen or used did that, they all did the opposite.
    - reverendsteveii 2y ago
      wasn't there a rocket launch going on at the time the shot was fired?
- thijson 2y ago
  The Boer's during the Boer war were able to using a sniping attack against the British because they had smokeless gunpowder, so I would imagine flashless is also an advantage. I remember seeing artillery and tanks having something on the end of the barrel that diverts the flame to the sides.
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    The thing on a tank is called a “muzzle brake” and it greatly reduces felt recoil. Also available on many smaller guns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake
- IshKebab 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor But a flash in the middle of the day would not be very visible anyway.
- taylodl 2y ago
  Sniper rifles have longer barrels that both suppress barrel flash and increase muzzle velocity - thus making the rifle more accurate at longer distances. They also fire larger rounds with larger cartridges to get even greater muzzle velocity. The trade-off is size and weight. Longer barrels, larger rounds, bigger cartridges - that increases the size and weight of the weapon and its ammunition. That's size and weight an infantry neither needs nor wants.

digdugdirk 2y ago

It is trying to deflect blame for your failures. It also signals a lack of understanding of their own design, and an unwillingness to dig into the details to figure it out. These are not good signals to be sending when you're trying to get a contract to send a manned mission to space.

prasadjoglekar 2y ago
This was 9 years ago. The article itself says the theory isn't completely kooky. Quote: This is not as crazy as it sounds, and other engineers at SpaceX aside from Musk entertained the possibility, as some circumstantial evidence to support the notion of an outside actor existed. Most notably, the first rupture in the rocket occurred about 200 feet above the ground, on the side of the vehicle facing the southwest. In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX's main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.
- squigz 2y ago
  > The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket. This seems a wildly broad description, doesn't it? What interval, for what projectile?
  - tekla 2y ago
    Why would you even bother to bring this up. This is a non-technical consumer oriented news report, not an engineering analysis. SpaceX saw a weird coincidence that might be worth investigating. Thats all you need to know.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Well, projectiles would travel somewhere between just under mach 1 and a top limit of... mach 3, maybe? So the flash would have to be some time between 1.5 and 5 seconds before the explosion? That is not a very large window.

jajko 2y ago

If you want to shoot 1 mile ammo, you need anti-material stuff like .50 BMG or at least .338 with some very hot loads. Probably even bigger if you want to have better chance, wind can easily carry the round 10 meters aside even in calmer conditions. Plus bullet would leave very distinct entry and exit points that couldn't be mismatched with some random shrapnel or other damage, or get lodged in more solid parts of rocket body and it would still be identifiable as bullet. Such shot would be heard for a mile in quieter conditions. Not joking. Even during distant launch, a perimeter of few 100s of meters of shooter anybody there would hear it clearly. I never owned or operated seriously any gun, just followed few gun channels + you have all the info on wikis and elsewhere, its just rather basic physics. Anybody with similar or better knowledge would quickly debunk such theory as bs and focus more on known facts (but we talk about elon's ego here, not the most rational entity, he ie prefers pedophilia accusations when things don't roll as he wants). If they stated some very powerful laser gun, mkay more reasonable but then no visible flashes outside target itself. And such gun would require massive installation, preparation, testing etc.

aeonik 2y ago
You could reasonably hit a target within 36 inches at a mile with a lot of different calibers. You don't necessarily need large caliber. .50 cal has a great ballistic coefficient, but bullet design and speed matters a lot too. 6.5 creedmoor and others in the intermediate precision class can all do this as well. That being said 1 mile is really really long shot, and right where a lot of the lighter calibers start getting near transonic. Wind is another beast, if it's steady it can be compensated for, but I don't know what the weather was that day... chaotic gusts will wreck a shot for sure. All that being said, the rocket is a pretty big target, 12 feet across and almost 230 feet high... that's going to compensate for a lot. Agreed that if you found the piece where the bullet punctured it should be pretty evident what happened. But I don't have any experience doing investigations in this area, and I've heard at least from plane crashes that the fuselage can disintegrate pretty readily in high force scenarios. I have operated and owned precision rifles, but not big bore, and have not gone out to extreme distances. More fun to play with the math and ballistics. Would love to hear from someone who knows more than either of us.