SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Musk said Falcon rocket flights will not resume until September at the earliest. Because of the buoyancy of helium within a liquid oxygen core, the bottle shot to the top of the tank and discharged its contents. Musk said SpaceX now plans to add the software to future cargo missions.
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The demise of an global Space Station-bound Falcon 9 rocket last month was likely caused by a broken liquid helium bottle strut, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. That then led to the destruction of the rocket and forced the Dragon capsule that was headed for the worldwide Space Station to crash into the ocean.
The accident occurred about two minutes after lift-off and was due to the failure of a strut in the rocket’s second stage, as indicated by preliminary findings, said Musk.
Preliminary assessment of a vast quantity of telemetry data from that flight, which was carrying supplies to the global Space Station, indicate failure of a strut supporting a second-stage helium tank, which resulted in over-pressure and destruction of the stage.
Musk, who also runs the Tesla electric auto company, said before every launch, he would send out a companywide email encouraging workers to let him know if there is any possible reason for delaying the flight. A failure at such a low threshold is “pretty insane”, Musk said. The upper stage exploded, sending a Dragon capsule packed with cargo plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. It has forced one of its main competitors, the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, to reconfigure its business to compete with SpaceX. “Especially with all the successes in a row, I think this is an important lesson and something we’ll take with us into the future”.
But he also sounded as if he were giving a business-school lecture on how a successful startup can retain its innovative culture and edge as it grows into a corporate behemoth. He also said the company’s own quality- control teams will double check the strength and other characteristics of certain parts even if longtime vendors vouch they meet all SpaceX standards.
He said that the strut assembly would be redesigned and readjusted before the Falcon flies again, and that SpaceX would readjust its attitude as well. The strut was meant to hold down a helium tank in the rocket.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk initially admitted that the cause of the explosion was a mystery, and a lack of concrete information in the weeks since the explosion has suggested the company was struggling to explain what happened.
The struts are certified to withstand 10,000 pounds of force, but engineers believe one gave way at 2,000 pounds, triggering the rocket’s mid-air breakup.
“We’re obviously not going to use these particular struts” in the future, he said.
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In theory the US government was supposed to make a choice of superheavy lift rocket for its manned deep-space program this year, but it would appear that the choice has been made for it in advance by NASA, the established US rocket industry which built the Shuttle, and their many political allies.
