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@tgibbs I know you can't talk about the crash, but I hope everyone at SpaceX is keeping their spirits up. This sounds like a difficult problem, with no clear evidence of what happened, and I don't think Elon or his team are the type to make assumptions if the evidence doesn't support it.
A good wiki on Falcon 9, but unless there is only one of each revision, I still don't have an understanding for how many Falcon 9's are in rotation flying.
@Big Mike thanks for the thoughts. With as large as the company is it's still a little surreal from my position as it hasn't really affected what I am working on at all. The end of the day it really sucks to fail a rocket, but like the team did in the early days when Falcon 1 went through its failures we will pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, and keep flying vehicles.
As for vehicles flying, every vehicle we launch thus far has been a brand new one fresh off the factory floor. Same goes for Dragon capsules although I think that is going to change soon. There isn't really any direction from the top as to when we will begin reflying the same 1st stage vehicle other than as soon as we can (with the general assumption we have to be comfortable with it). If I had to guess I would say post flight 30 though for a customer reflight mission. We still use a lot of traditional aerospace parts that don't have the reliability needed for multiple launches along with still trying to figure out exactly how to land this beast back at the launch site.
That's an interesting article. Got me thinking, I assume SpaceX has better video of the incident than what people were shooting from the ground. From some sort of aircraft or satellite tasked for this?
I'm actually not even sure how long it takes to fully build a vehicle. The rate is increasing weekly as well, each vehicle that gets built means the process becomes more streamlined and easier to build. The reduction of man hours witch hunt has been huge. My guess though from when the first piece of raw material hits a machine is at least 8 months, probably closer to a year though ahead of launch though. Raw material orders are being placed in huge lumps for some of the more exotic materials we get; years ahead of actual need dates. The entire production process is still very amazing to me ... I look at a launch vehicle that we build and its very simple ... couple tanks, some valves, vents, bolt on an engine and you go light the match. Look at an airplane and the production line they go down theres lots of different videos, this one popped up first in a search Anyways getting off track
One thing about that laser thingy that a co worker pointed out was had it actually been a laser then that would have also given an ignition source for the LOx in the 2nd stage tank. From the videos I have seen the vehicle purely crumpled with very little explosion (relatively ... for example thats a Boeing Delta II that a solid rocket booster strap on blew up not far above the pad).
Even after this issue if the entire launch service industry isn't shaking in their boots yet then they will be out of business soon enough. You can see the repercussions already of us just hitting a barge with a rocket not even being able to make it stay upright and now all of a sudden ULA and Arianne are working on "reusable" sections of their vehicles. I am glad they are seeing the light though and making moves in the same direction, competition is good for everyone. To sit back idly and not admit that the aerospace industry can change is foolish.
Elon's always stated that his companies were a means to an end. They need to be profitable, but only to encourage others to change their ways for the benefit of mankind. I am glad Elon exists.
Each of his projects have a very specific goal to better humanity. Very few companies can say the same, with a straight face.