SpaceX pushed “sniper” theory with the feds far more than is publicly known
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The "move fast and break things" approach has certain advantages when it's applied to hardware development. When applied to human institutions and populations, it's criminally catastrophic.
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Not only do we have no actual reason to think Elon is actually on the autism spectrum, this is also not how autism fucking works, and "Aspergers" is not even a diagnosis anymore. It is not necessary to retreat to ableist pop psychology to explain all the ways he's an asshole.
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I modified your terrific post (bold) and refashioned it in the form of a multiple choice exam question.
(a) or (b)?!
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Except, it wasn't Musk's Idea, it was the idea of the diver's actively working to save those kids, and was asked to continue it by Rick Stanton himself. They still wanted it even after Plan A was working.
Those other Diver were asking Vern Unsworth, the man Elon insulted, to basically stop the commentary, because he:
"isn’t a cave diver, had minimal firsthand knowledge of the rescue’s dive path, had made an incorrect initial prediction that could have nuked the rescue effort, had no unique knowledge about where the trapped kids were (and was mistaken in his guess, which he later lied about), was wrong about Musk’s sub and his having been asked to leave the cave, and when put under oath cited his sub claims entirely to a YouTube video."
Not excusing Musk's actions at all, Unsworth didn't deserve the accusation. But Unsworth was a bad actor, getting in the way of the plans being put together by the divers at the scene.
https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/the-real-thai-cave-rescue-pt-1-elon
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I said "blow up" because that's the context, but I appreciate your support of my point: nobody ever has blown up a rocket by sniping it! It wouldn't even work!
As for hitting a target, that's not in question so don't imply it. However an accidental miss would be potentially problematic. Talk about reading into things incorrectly…
Again, blowing up a rocket with a sniper rifle is bad military science fiction no matter how many broadsided barns you can hit with a rifle. And the risk of trying to do something like this and being caught is not worth it. There's no reason to try in the first place.
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talent? no. big and convincing piles of other people's money? yes.
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Did you notice that your comment (and not only yours) assumes there was a suspicious flash?
You heard a SpaceX claim with no evidence or contextual information, and seem to have assumed the claim was true. Then your first question was why the FBI discarded the flash as evidence that they may or may not have identified.
Assumptions are sneaky.
Maybe your first questions should have been about evidence for a suspicious flash.
@EricBerger owns some responsibility for these assumptions. The article isn't very discerning about repeating what is ultimately an unsupported SpaceX claim (which was originally "a shadow then a white spot" on a video).
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Maybe it's the sleep deprivation. Some are cut out for that, like Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, who in the book "A bright shining lie" was comfortable with 4 hrs sleep per day. And he had his personal demons.
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The 20K temp rise is just from JT expansion to a very low pressure. But as it's filled although JT expansion will be less you also have to take into account the flow work being done. With an initial temp and pressure of 40 K and 400 bar, respectively, and an initially empty vessel that leads to a final temp of 100 K if adiabatic. Obviously this isn't fully adiabatic, you'd be boiling some LOX at that temp but it's not so hot that you are worried about things failing.
On the other end of the spectrum if it was 300 K and 400 bar, the final temp is 535 K. That's more in the neighborhood of where they started, and why you'd want to do the filling slowly with the COPVs immersed in LOX.
The issue though is again that while I assumed, like you apparently, from everything previously stated about the problem that they were closer to the former situation, Eric's comment in this article make it sound like they were experiencing the latter. If he's correct that the liner buckled from heat it doesn't sound like the helium was chilled to cryo temps before being loaded, and therefore wouldn't be cold enough to freeze LOX in the wrap. I really don't know if Eric's understanding was mistaken or we've been told the wrong case of failure this whole time, but there does seem to be a contradiction.
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Or, if you prefer, a "crack ker" team... the GOP side of Congress is more diverse than DOGE is. Which is a WILD ass statement IMO, but here we are.
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It wasn't hard to read that into your comment, especially given the degree of passive-aggressive snark commenters like to throw at Musk while trying to appear unbiased and reasonable.As for hitting a target, that's not in question so don't imply it. However an accidental miss would be potentially problematic. Talk about reading into things incorrectly…
And the near-miss wouldn't be very "problematic", especially compared to a hit -- the areas around the SLCs are pretty darn empty -- any such miss probably would have carried on out into the empty country and never be found. Just aiming higher or lower on the F9 would have generated hundreds, if not thousands, of yards of difference in the long axis of the impact ellipse.
Similar to the Hollywood meme of shooting gas tanks on cars.
That said, SpaceX did actually test the sniper theory IIRC, and was able to duplicate the effect, including the explosion. Though I can't speak to just how high-fidelity the test was, relative to the sniper theory.
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shows Musk' mindset. Rapidly believes a lot of things too quickly without taking a pause and thinking things through. See his various twitter tweets.
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Setting this nonsense conspiracy aside, my biggest takeaway from this is that Musk is totally fine with sacrificing astronauts to poor engineering and logistics. I'm glad Jared Isaacman has a bit more consideration for flyers – as difficult & deadly as spaceflight already is, it necessitates precaution and care especially when the human element is involved.
This has always been one of the highest principles, at least since Apollo 1. Accidents, oversight, cut corners, and failures happen, but they don't need to be made more likely through recklessness and a callous disregard for human life.
Simply being rich and powerful doesn't create that mindset, but that mindset certainly enables certain kinds of entreprenuers and leaders. They don't need to be narcissists or sleep-deprived, it's really about their values and whether they make ethical considerations when making choices. They didn't break and start malfunctioning, rather POSIWID.
Move fast? Sure. Break things? Only if truly necessary. Bad policies leading to astronauts yet again dieing horribly in a deathtrap?! No!!!
That's happened too many times already. Space will doubtless claim more lives, but it cannot be due to a total disregard for human life. That's not progress, that's not victory, it's infamy.
This has always been one of the highest principles, at least since Apollo 1. Accidents, oversight, cut corners, and failures happen, but they don't need to be made more likely through recklessness and a callous disregard for human life.
Simply being rich and powerful doesn't create that mindset, but that mindset certainly enables certain kinds of entreprenuers and leaders. They don't need to be narcissists or sleep-deprived, it's really about their values and whether they make ethical considerations when making choices. They didn't break and start malfunctioning, rather POSIWID.
Move fast? Sure. Break things? Only if truly necessary. Bad policies leading to astronauts yet again dieing horribly in a deathtrap?! No!!!
That's happened too many times already. Space will doubtless claim more lives, but it cannot be due to a total disregard for human life. That's not progress, that's not victory, it's infamy.
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so... i think there's some additional things going on here.
the tank is in contact with LOX (90-55 K), and it's unclear what temp the He is coming in at, but the pressure inside the tank is always going to be less than the pressure inside the fill line (otherwise there's no fill), and if the He is coming in at a higher temp than the LOX, then whatever He is inside the tank is going to contract a bit (lower temp, lower pressure).
i don't know for absolute sure, but i doubt the incoming He is liquid (4 K) - it's just cold gas, depending on how it's getting chilled on the way in (source could be large LHe tanks, but it'll be transferred at some higher temp). the speed at which they're wanting to fill that tank just doesn't seem like it'd support liquid fill. too many heat leaks along many meters of fill lines.
anyway, when entering the tank, you'll have relatively high pressure He in the line before the entry valve, and relatively low pressure He downstream of the entry valve. as such, you will have some expansion at the valve, and that'll cool both the valve AND the He gas going through it. by multiple Kelvins, and with decent cooling power. this will make the valve and whatever it's thermally coupled to colder than its surroundings, and the spray of the He gas going through it will make whatever it contacts colder, in an asymmetric way, relative to the tank wall, even though there's other He gas in there mixing and also getting cooler.
so, i think if you try to use super pressure to fill that He tank quickly, you'll end up with an asymmetrically cold tank wall, probably most cold at the entry valve, and maybe significantly cooler at the opposite end of the tank, with not enough time for the wall temperatures to equalize. and, the temperature differences are probably enough to cause significant stress within the wall, probably enough to cause it to warp and then buckle.
in addition to that, the earlier reports were that the tank temp dropped low enough to freeze the surrounding LOX (so, sub 55K, even though surrounded by LOX at 90-55K) - and from the above, that frozen LOX would accumulate non-homogenously on the tank, and apparently within the wrappings. that would cause the temp differentials within the wall to increase (frozen LOX would act as a thermal insulator in those areas, lowering the heat leak, so allowing that wall area to get colder with the same applied cooling power), and the accumulating frozen LOX could also cause additional weirdly localized stresses within the wall of the tank, increasing the likelihood of buckling.
i think that fits the facts. i don't think He gas heating fits the logistics of filling a gas He tank at cryogenic temps, where solid LOX is forming on the outside of the tank due to something going on inside the tank. room temp He gas compression causes heating, but the majority of that is occurring before the gas enters the fill line outside the rocket. what's going on inside the tank is more of a fill than a compression (though depends a bit on the entry valve geometry).
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It probably never went that far, but it's the FBI and a major defense contractor.
They could easily have just pulled the surveillance from the ULA building and verified there were no gunshots picked up at the time, and no one on the roof.
More likely an expert assessed the situation and found XYZ bits of evidence you'd expect from such a crime scene were not present, and ruled it out. If there's anything the FBI is expert on, it's ballistics and how to conduct a criminal investigation.
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Well, yes, but the actual cause of the explosion was pretty wild and crazy, too. Looking into all the possibilities takes quite a bit of knowledge and imagination.
How many people know that solid oxygen [mp. 54K], like sucrose, is triboelectic? (I.e., when you crush it, it sparks.) Or that loading up a COPV with supercritical helium [5K], at 5,000 PSI, might just freeze ambient oxygen and crush it in the carbon-fiber windings? Oxidizer, fuel, energy...
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Yeah, I hesitated a bit before replying with that because I was way more up on video tech back in the days when tubes were giving way to CCDs but I don't see any reason why the newer stuff wouldn't still be affected by random particles zipping through. And for that matter there's all kinds of steps between the sensor and the recorded video file. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if pixels get lost to undetected software bugs every now and then.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was a wind-powered bird deterrent - wouldn't be surprised if the wind blast from the explosion caused it to move at about the right time....
I can only imagine that this would not unfold in the same manner today...
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I agree he has next to zero engineering talent or many other things. But lying to people and getting them to believe that mars/fsd/tesla taxi/ai/whatever bullshit - thats a real skill he has. Imagine if he used it for something worthwhile instead of fleecing stupid investors or powering fascism. Though at this point the damage is done. The "returning to tesla" is just more lies and bullshit. Only a fool would believe that he is no longer a nazi. Thus there is only 1 solution for a nazi
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It explains a lot about what Elon's doing now when you realize he assumes his decisions can never be wrong, and failure can only be explained by outside sabotage.
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To be fair, a 50mm would be a good choice if you wanted to be real sure it exploded lol. One of these would be a little hard to hide tho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM913_chain_gun
I would be surprised, because that would require the pressure wave to move backwards in time...
You would see the flash, then 1-3 seconds later, the bullet would arrive, the explosion would happen, then 3-5 seconds later the blast wave would reach the putative shooting position. In your scenario, where the flash was caused by the explosion, you would be seeing the flash 4-8 seconds too late to have been the cause of the explosion.
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My takeaway from this revelation is that Elon Musk was a very much a nutjob going back a decade or more-- he just hid it better back then.
This man is the walking, talking human manifestation of "fake it till you make it"; and not the benign version but the one that can and does get people killed in the name of what he sees as progress.
For more info, see, "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving", Department of Government Efficiency, et al.
This man is the walking, talking human manifestation of "fake it till you make it"; and not the benign version but the one that can and does get people killed in the name of what he sees as progress.
For more info, see, "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving", Department of Government Efficiency, et al.
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I would, since the "flash" (whatever it was) occurred before the explosion. In fact, it was right there in the article, that the time between the flash and explosion was similar to the flight time of a high-caliber rifle round at that distance.
The sniper theory was pretty "out there," but so was the actual (well, "official" at least) culprit -- it must have taken some real imagination to figure out the actual cause. I've also seen it speculated that the 2015 Cargo Dragon in-flight failure might have been caused by this, rather than the "failed strut" that the investigation eventually settled on.
Given the sheer number of successful F9 launches since, either SpaceX really did find and fix the root cause, or the AMOS-6 incident was an extremely low-probability fluke. Given that SpaceX was able to duplicate the AMOS-6 explosion using test hardware, I'm strongly inclined towards the former.
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Of course, Musk retweeted a post that said Hitler, Stalin, and Mao didn’t kill anyone - it was the “civil servants“ that did. So by his view, getting rid of all the civil servants somehow saving lives.
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It's even more insidious than that. From the Guardian:
MAGA’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed
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Yes, that's exactly my point. So you say that, not "it was disproved."
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I recall there were 2 strains, St Louis, and Pennsylvania. It was the St Louis strain that spread around the world.
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Or even simpler, the FBI got access to the roof and found that there was no place to take the shot from.
I’d love to know to the details too! I’ve learned enough about this kind of stuff to know that the methods used by the FBI are sometimes intentionally not discussed
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thanks! do you know if it's cooled via heat exchange with the LOX line on its way into the rocket-side tank? or, is it just cooled by LOX boiloff directed around the He delivery line?
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For anyone coming to this thread late and thinking "boy that flash on the roof sure does sound suspicious" I've actually figured out exactly what caused it: Sunlight reflecting off Occam's Razor.
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