Musk’s Missile Mistake

Everyone was cheering the Space X launch after it cleared the tower, because there hadn’t been an explosion thereby damaging the launch pad and delaying the next mission. Musk believes in move fast and learn from your failures.

His engineers wanted to install blast shields. He overruled them. This was the result

Even though there are Space X rockets waiting in the wings, they first have to rebuild the Launchpad, which is not a quick task. The power of those engines may have also thrown up debris into them from the disintegrating launch pad. You can see in this picture 8 of the engines not firing. This probably caused the tumbling when they tried to separate the first and second stage. At which point there was no choice but to blow up the mission- literally.

And now the FAA has put an indefinite hold on any more launches.

Plans are afoot to reinforce the launch pad with steel. Musk also agrees with a Chinses assessment that even with the failed engines, the rocket wouldn’t have lost control if the onboard software, which was supposed to use steering engines to compensate for the malfunctioning rockets hadn’t also failed. Read about it on the South China Post, which is owned by Jack Ma’s company.

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