Yesterday , one of SpaceX ’s Falcon 9 rockets travel up in a blaze of flames , taking its satellite payload in good order along with it . But it was n’t an explosion , suppose company founder Elon Musk . Instead , what we catch was just a really loyal fire .
Musk took to Twitter to mark the difference :
yes . This seems instant from a human perspective , but it really a fast fire , not an explosion . Dragon would have been fine .
— Elon Musk ( @elonmusk)September 1 , 2016
Musk believes that the SpaceX Dragon capsule ’s outflow pod would have been hardy enough to survive that same huge blaze . SpaceX has been quiz the escape seedcase as a safetyfeature , for its crew - carrying missions , like the one it plans to Mars . In the event of a launch failure , SpaceX says it couldeject the crew in a way that is “ similar to an ejection seat for a attack aircraft pilot , ” except they would be protect by a pod .
SpaceX had already take up testinghow the capsule handles a jettison . Now it sounds like it ’s also see at data from yesterday ’s fire to calculate out how the capsule needs to knead to protect the work party .
The party antecedently managed to come up back from an exploded ISS launch ( with the full cargo indoors ) to become a key provider for NASA ’s shipment runs . And its road to land a rocket on a hoy was littered with crashes and explosions before it started reliably land them . Whatever yesterday ’s hell was , what we con from it might at last mean a good rocket .
Elon MuskSPACEX
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