SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, satellite destroyed in explosion on pad

[gary]

Story and video here -
http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/spacex/2016/09/01/explosion-reported-spacex-pad/89710076/

[Somnium]

i read this in the morning, really sad stuff.

[pluto]

Absolutely, but what an awesome explosion!
Or as Musk would put it a RUD ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ

[Somnium]

They are referring to it as an "anomaly" haha. i really hope this doesn't set them back too much.

[Regulus]

Hate seeing these guys fail. They are such an exciting company.

[pluto]

They got back to flying fairly quickly after the last loss, hopefully they can track down the issue quickly.

[Windston]

Other than telescopes and astrophotography, SpaceX is my other primary interest and to see this happen to them, after all of the work they do really just sucks. And it really doesnt help them out that all of the US media is demonizing them because they are a private company, and they act like NASA never had these problems in the early days when they encountered the near vertical learning curve of rockets!!! Hell, even the Ariane 5 only a decade ago (maybe 2) failed the first few flights from memory and is now running strong!

Did anyone notice that not even on ABC24 did they mention the Falcon 9 first stage landing back on land in December? Or on the barge a few months back? The only time that space agencies ever get any publicity is when something goes really wrong and there is a video to show for it to keep the viewer amused. And all this gets the space agencies are a bunch of angry yankees yelling about how NASA is chewing through all of their valuable tax payer dollars, when NASA's budget is just a shoestring of what it used to be.

Sad stuff nonetheless, anyway thats my rant, sorry guys :rofl:
Dan

[pluto]

Ad astra per aspera.

I mostly feel the same way as you do, however, I don't expect non-enthusiasts to care about space news which is why I get my space news from space news sites and my pop news from pop news sites. The same goes for tech, science, etc. I always find it strange when I see people linking to sci/tech articles from sites like news.com.au... always feels like a waste of time as you end up having to check on a real news site anyway...

Fortunately SpaceX isn't a public company so hopefully a few stumbles won't shake the nerves of it's investors too much.