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Old April 26th 19, 11:35 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Default SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule destroyed in abort motor ground test

In article ,
says...

On 2019-04-25 18:49, Fred J. McCall wrote:

No, it's not. When SpaceX knows something they will say it. Until
then there's nothing to say.


They haven't receleased video of the event, nor of the state of the
capsule after the event. These are facts they know.


Boeing has not released video of its anomaly during its ground test of
its liquid fueled abort system. Reportedly there was a leak. NASA
knows how bad it was. But the public, not so much. This is part of the
commercial nature of the contracts. Anything that can be considered a
trade secret can't (easily) be released by NASA as it could give the
competition insight into the design and how it works.

In the past, Musk had built expectations to see videos even of stuff
that doesn't quite go right.


That was mostly Falcon 9 landing tests. As the head of the company,
that's his call to release those videos. Besides, a Falcon 9 landing
will never endanger people. Commercial crew is a bit different.

(In the rocket that exposded at pad, it was enthousisats who released
videos, not SpaceX, so there is precedent of SpaceX not releasing video
of a catastrophic failure.


Likely a cell phone video. Could have been someone at NASA, who was
observing the test. Their entire account on YouTube has since been
deleted. That's telling (i.e. someone is in hot water with their
bosses).

I suspect SpaceX decided that allowing speculation of what happened is
better than confirming what happened. Have to wonder if SpaceX' hands
may be bound because this is a NASA contract/hardware.


They've decided not to release information until they've come to the
conclusion what caused the anomaly. This is quite normal for an
investigation of this type. However, that does not stop armchair
engineers from speculating, now does it?

Either way, they will at one point have to release details of the
accident prior to resuling flight because NASA doesn't want to be seen
flying something which the public might deeem to be unsafe.


They'll most likely release the details once the actual cause is known.
Right now they're surely busy cleaning up the site, cataloging the
debris, and investigating the cause. These things take time.

Jeff
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