Space X Dragon Crew Capsule

Space X suffered a major set-back Saturday during a test of the Draco boosters on the abort system aboard the Dragon Crew capsule for the Falcon Heavy Rocket. It was on the test stand doing the last of a series of tests when something went terribly wrong and the whole load of hypergolic fuels [momomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide] blew it in to tiny pieces. The whole thing went up in a huge explosion. When I heard they used the capsule that flew to the ISS with supplies a few weeks ago, splashed down in the Atlantic and then sat in salt water for over an hour waiting to be picked up blew my mind. These were tests to certify it for human flight. Why didn't they use the fucking new one that is sitting in the barn at 39-A???? What the fuck Elon, you arrogant fucktarded asshat?

These people are blowing up their own company in front of the world.

Well that sucks. SpaceX seemed to be the one thing Musk was doing right. Was the salt water culpable (a cause of) in the explosion?

They don't know yet. At this point, they're still gathering up all the shrapnel and pieces to see what they can figure out. From the rogue video I saw online, the explosion seemed to come from beneath the capsule and sweep upward extremely rapidly. My guess would be instantaneous decomposition of the hypergols due to some catastrophic failuer in either jet pumps, or a massive over pressure causing a burst line.

This was not televised other than some local blurbs. Nothing in the national news. Zero. This is a major setback. They were supposed to launch a crew to the ISS in July. Not happening now.

Please consider my "likes" as "thanks". I'm sure they got some fairly smart people working on this. Hope they get it sorted out.

A SpaceX commercial crew capsule is believed to be destroyed after a test at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Saturday, possibly complicating the company's plan with NASA to send astronauts to the International Space Station later this year.

The incident sent smoke into the air for miles, but no injuries were reported. The abort engines of the Dragon crew capsule were undergoing tests when an "anomaly" happened, SpaceX said in a statement.
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More: https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...ragon-crew-capsule-spacecraft-suffers-setback

My people cleaned up the AMOS-6 anomaly a while back, and man....,what carnage on the pad! Never saw so much carbon black in my life. Everything went in to open top 30 yard cans, they had 3/8" plate welded over the top and they got hauled out using trucks with no nomenclature.

We'll get the call on this as well sometime soon. Two weeks is my guess.

Took us 5 weeks to scrub the pad and pick up all the pieces of the last one. We picked up fourteen animal carcasses that were instantaneously barbecued when that fucker blew. We're talking 94,000 liters of RG-1 [hydrogenated kerosene] and 145,000 liters of liquid oxygen first stage, then another 17,500 liters of RG-1 and 27,500 liters of LOX.

The reaction control engines, four of 'em, use monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, which is hypergolic, so all you have to do is mix this shit and boom! combustion. That is to say, instantaneous deflagration, and fucking rapid, super hot and uncontrollable that!

Now imagine all that shit burning ALL AT ONCE IN A GIANT FUCKING FIREBALL!

Mother of Barbeques!

We removed a Snap-On tool cabinet [at least we think it was] that was likely full of sockets, pliers, wrenches, the whole magilla. Well, when we got to it, it was sort of one big giant melty tool, and after we washed it, a shiny one. Word has it, the tool guy traded the whole melted pile back to them for brand new tools just for bragging rights.

Why was the Carbon Black treated like it was nasty?
What are the risks of exposure to the resultant chemical cocktail for clean up crew ?

Yeah a full melted together snap-on set would indeed be pretty unique (-:

The carbon black by itself is hazardous on a number of levels. Mixed with a couple of other innocuous elements gives you explosives. Stump remover carbon black and sulfur makes gunpowder, and that's the gentlest of the group. Also, it's a serious inhalation hazard. As fine as it was, maybe 1 - 2 micron, it was one quarter the size of mine particulate breathed in by miners not so long ago. Black lung, or pneumoniultramicroscopicsilicavolcaniconiosis, it's incurable, and worse than asbestosis as a mode of death. In addition, it can harbor a lot of other chemicals in it's matrix, such as remnant hypergols, PCB's from combusted paints and ablatives on the tower that went up in the conflagration, a whole host of other nasty constituents that went up during the fires from shit that were stored in bunkers beneath the pad that went up when burning kerosene and LOX seeped inside.

My guys wore Chemtrex suits and PAPR's [powered air purifying respirators] with chemical stack cartridges and chemical gloves while working. I was out there as well. We pulled down an awning and three of us got douched by unknown liquid. Mostly water, but rancid water nonetheless. Needless to say, we all got taken to the staging area and got twenty minute Silkwood Showers. No fucking fun that!!!

This one is a far, far smaller scale though. Maybe a fiftieth in size, and the hypergols for sure all combusted, so no worries there. But still quite nasty.

bloody hell ancona thats a serious set of shit no mistake.
1-2 microns is well beyond what the lungs can deal with.
How do the filters deal with it, this is down into nano particle size ?

And is there any radiation risk ?
With the temp, pressures and exotic chemicals involved you could be creating short lived exotic particles better than CERN's LHC (-:

Well that really sucks. That will set the SpaceX Dragon program back severely.

Doesn't that leave the Boeing Starliner as the only planned manned capsule to the Space Station?

Ancona, do you know if the Dragon and Starliner are essentially duplicates that can perform the same mission? Or did the Dragon have a different capability?

Drastically different designs and capabilities. The only similarities are the docking rings. As to the set-back, Dragon is still a league ahead. They have two more already built and ready. Problem is, they've got to find and nail down the bug first, re-test, re-test again with perfect results, and then, maybe then find some volunteers. we're at least ten months out now. Maybe a year. Amos-6 set them back almost a year.

As far as the respirators, the chemical stack takes out known constituents and the HEPA block takes out particulate down to 0.3 micron, so no worries there. The nasty part is getting shit on you in the above 11.5 Ph range and below 2 Ph range. That's where quick damage can occur without you even feeling it until it's too late. It happens so fast, your nerves simply melt. The surface nerves, in the epidermal layers and in the adipose, are very sensitive, yet when hit with very high or very low Ph, react similarly; they melt. By the time you feel pain, there will undoubtedly be a nasty scar and permanent damage. I have a few of these. From soda ash mostly.

We got Silkwood Showers because two guys picked up flesh eating bacteria while doing preliminary testing immediately after the anomaly. One guy lost a big bite of meat out of his forearm, and the other his pinkie finger. So anyone doused with any fluid got to dance with the brushes and chlorhexidine diacetate. Nasty shit that as well, but5 nothing can live through a good scrub with it.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is making a little bit of history this week with what is believed to be the first all-female crew involved the space recovery operations off the coast of Florida.

The operation was carried out Tuesday as part of SpaceX’s latest launch of the company’s of its Dragon spacecraft by one of its Falcon 9 rocket, marking the Dragon program’s 27th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station.

More diversity huh? Are they former WNBA players? ...wink and a nudge

searcher said:

first all-female crew

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when will the first launch occur, where there isn't a single tax payer dime involved?


there's a first to be proud of