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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

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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
palmotea 1y ago
> 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. It's completely kooky, so kooky in fact, there's a (IMHO very funny) sketch about turning business competition into a gunfight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpC_hO15IoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpC_hO15IoA. It's funny because the idea is so absurd. United Launch Alliance has lawyers. Blowing up your competitor's rocket with a gun would be about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. The upside is low (single rocket launch ruined), the downside is massive (huge civil and criminal penalties). It also suffers from the typical conspiracy theory weakness: everyone involved would need to keep their mouths shut forever, and realistically, at some point someone's gonna have loose lips.
- oskarkk 1y ago
  > Blowing up your competitor's rocket with a gun would be about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. The upside is low (single rocket launch ruined) Not commenting on the overall viability of shooting a rocket by competition (it would be stupid IMO), but it's not just a single launch ruined. Launch failure can stop launches/production for months (3-4 months in this case, 5 in the case of the previous SpaceX failure), or even longer if finding the cause of the failure is very hard. A pause in business like that can destroy a company that needs cash. Also, it reduces customers' confidence in the failing rocket, which would be good for the competitor with a flawless record. Compare that with Boeing's MCAS problems, the plane crashes themselves were less financially damaging than the resulting groundings, production pauses and canceled orders.
- marcuskane2 1y ago
  It wouldn't need to be some plan signed off on by ULA's top brass. It could have been a single person acting alone for whatever reason. Plausibly an employee of ULA who formerly worked at SpaceX and was mad as mistreatment there, or mad they interviewed and didn't get hired, or mad that SpaceX was beating them at whatever and making them look bad or whatever. Or it could have been a person unaffiliated with ULA who just found a way to access their roof. History has a handful of pretty significant events that were basically "one guy with a rifle".
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squigz 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.

palmotea 1y ago

> 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. It's completely kooky, so kooky in fact, there's a (IMHO very funny) sketch about turning business competition into a gunfight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpC_hO15IoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpC_hO15IoA. It's funny because the idea is so absurd. United Launch Alliance has lawyers. Blowing up your competitor's rocket with a gun would be about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. The upside is low (single rocket launch ruined), the downside is massive (huge civil and criminal penalties). It also suffers from the typical conspiracy theory weakness: everyone involved would need to keep their mouths shut forever, and realistically, at some point someone's gonna have loose lips.

oskarkk 1y ago
> Blowing up your competitor's rocket with a gun would be about the stupidest thing you could possibly do. The upside is low (single rocket launch ruined) Not commenting on the overall viability of shooting a rocket by competition (it would be stupid IMO), but it's not just a single launch ruined. Launch failure can stop launches/production for months (3-4 months in this case, 5 in the case of the previous SpaceX failure), or even longer if finding the cause of the failure is very hard. A pause in business like that can destroy a company that needs cash. Also, it reduces customers' confidence in the failing rocket, which would be good for the competitor with a flawless record. Compare that with Boeing's MCAS problems, the plane crashes themselves were less financially damaging than the resulting groundings, production pauses and canceled orders.
marcuskane2 1y ago
It wouldn't need to be some plan signed off on by ULA's top brass. It could have been a single person acting alone for whatever reason. Plausibly an employee of ULA who formerly worked at SpaceX and was mad as mistreatment there, or mad they interviewed and didn't get hired, or mad that SpaceX was beating them at whatever and making them look bad or whatever. Or it could have been a person unaffiliated with ULA who just found a way to access their roof. History has a handful of pretty significant events that were basically "one guy with a rifle".

deleted 1y ago

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