Rocket scientists love their jargon, and it seems to be infectious. On September 1, when a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to SpaceX, a private rocketry firm, blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, in Florida, the emergency services announced that the mission had undergone a “catastrophic abort.”
It happened while the rocket was being fueled for a prelaunch engine test. No one was hurt, although windows were rattled several miles away. A communications satellite costing $200 million, which was mounted on the rocket in preparation for the planned launch on Sept. 3, was destroyed in an instant.
The blast is a setback for SpaceX, a firm founded by Elon Musk, an entrepreneur who also runs Tesla, an electric-car maker. With contracts to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station for NASA, as well as a thick book of orders from private satellite firms, it is the flag-bearer for a growing, buccaneering “new space” industry. The explosion was SpaceX’s second big failure in 15 months: On June 28, 2015, an uncrewed Falcon 9 rocket exploded halfway to the ISS.
History suggests that rockets do become more reliable over time: The European Ariane 5, for instance, suffered two complete failures and two partial ones in the early part of its life, but has now gone through 72 launches and 13 years without mishap. And SpaceX’s machines are blazing entirely new technological trails. The Falcon 9 is the first-ever reusable rocket. Its first stage is designed to fly back to land on an oceangoing barge, a fiendishly difficult process that the firm seems now to have mastered. Musk hopes that will allow him to cut prices even further.
But the accident may delay the firm’s ambitious future plans. The postmortem will tie up engineers at a time when the company already has a great deal on its plate.
In the early months of next year the firm is due to attempt the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, a new machine derived from the Falcon 9 that will be by far the most powerful rocket in the world today. That date could well be postponed. In addition to its contract with NASA to supply the ISS, SpaceX is soon due to start flying astronauts. The first mission is scheduled for some time in 2017.
In the aftermath of the explosion, NASA, one of SpaceX’s biggest customers, declared its support for the firm. SpaceX itself has said it intends to go back to flying rockets as soon as possible. Musk is not in the rocket business only to make money. He has always been clear that the ultimate goal of SpaceX is to lower the cost of spaceflight to the point where it is financially feasible to establish a human colony on Mars, as an insurance policy against potentially catastrophic events on Earth. Exploding rockets hurt that aim, as well as profits, so the pressure for a successful launch next time will be intense.
© 2016 The Economist Newspaper Ltd., London (September 10, 2016). All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Image credits: Kim Shiflett/NASA, Monica Almeida/The New York Times