SpaceX's Grasshopper

[YellowSubmarine]

People on a camera crew? That's so last decade.

Just put Google Glass on a shark and you're done.

 

[publiusr]

An update
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/07/spacex-roadmap-rocket-business-revolution/

There is an image of a barge toward the end.

 

[sojourner]

The barge is a stock photo used for the article.

 

[sojourner]

BOOM!

 

[gturner]

Nice bang for Grasshopper 2 (which they called the Dev1 vehicle).

 

[publiusr]

Things do fail from time to time--but...

Why do I have this feeling that some executive in a smoke filled room just got a call from a blue-suited spook?

"It's done."

All it took to bring an Ariane down was a rag left in some plumbing...

 

[sojourner]

^Unlikely. If you're going to sabotage something, go for the operational vehicle with the paying payload. Not the test article that's main intention is to find failure modes. (FOUND ONE!)

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Yeah. ULA has to be stipud to sabotage stress testing of a downscaled experimental version of a vehicle that was going to blow up sooner or later anyway. And after the test site was moved to avoid debris raining over people, suggesting SpaceX were expecting it.

 

[sojourner]

The test site wasn't moved. They've always done flight tests in McGregor, TX. It also wasn't a "downscaled version". That was a full size F9 first stage. It just had only 3 engines instead of 9.

 

[Metryq]

Hmmm, do you suppose people would drive better if cars were outfitted with range safety charges?

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnL-7x4n4d8[/yt]

 

[YellowSubmarine]

The test site wasn't moved. They've always done flight tests in McGregor, TX. It also wasn't a "downscaled version". That was a full size F9 first stage. It just had only 3 engines instead of 9.

Hm, for some reason I thought they had already moved to the New Mexico site, and didn't read the Texas part. They had said their current site is too populated for dangerous tests at high altitudes. But I guess this wasn't high altitude (even if the video made it seem so, I thought the operator was going to be hit by debris).

Isn't 3 engines downscaled? When I read it, seemed far enough from launch configuration to make me consider it different from the launch vehicle. The real vehicle would re-enter with fewer engines (3?!), but lifts off on all nine. And, while it is probably ridiculous to speculate without any information on what the anomaly was, if it was an engine anomaly I would guess nine engines give you more room for gracefully ending the flight in ways other than blowing up on purpose. At the very least, you could shut down the anomalous engine while the capsule flies to safety and the vehicle is away from inhabited areas. Then again, this might be something completely unrelated to engines.

Regardless, having a failure of a test flight with a different number of redundant engines (and less fuel I assume) that's pushing the vehicle to the limits and trying new things doesn't tell you much about the vehicle reliability in its forthcoming real flights, which was basically my point.

 

[sojourner]

Considering the F9 will be mostly empty of fuel during the flight regime after second stage separation, the only real difference is the number of engines on the vehicle. All 9 engines aren't needed for the tests they're doing. "Downscaled" isn't really the right word since everything there is full size, try "not installed".