Thursday, April 20, 2023

AKA "Exploded".

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly" - if they weren't talking about the destruction of a $90M USD rocket, that would actually be a pretty funny way of saying that it blew up.

(Which looked like this:)

The SpaceX team considers the launch to be a success, and I can understand their position.  These are unmanned test flights, and as such having the launch vehicle explode (or rapidly disassemble, if you prefer) provides them with crucial information about their design and how it operates in practice - that's what testing is all about.

However, at $100M+ for the combination of rocket and launch, it's a bit of an expensive hobby.  Let's hope that Elon Musk is prepared to stay the course in order to ensure that future rockets don't disassemble when there's a crew on board.

- Sid