SpaceX rocket EXPLODES – blowing up Facebook’s £150MILLION internet satellite – IOTW Report

SpaceX rocket EXPLODES – blowing up Facebook’s £150MILLION internet satellite

Thursday, 1 September 2016, 14:45 MJA Uncategorized 27

TheSunUK: NASA says SpaceX was conducting a test firing of its pioneering unmanned rocket when disaster struck.

A series of explosions sent smoke and flames shooting through the sky and shook buildings miles away.

The blast took with it Facebook’s first satellite costing the company a whopping £150 million.

SpaceX – founded by PayPal and Tesla tycoon Elon Musk – confirmed there was an anomaly on the launch pad which resulted in the loss of the rocket and its payload.

The Israeli made Amos-6 communications satellite was, according to Tech Crunch, carrying technology to allow Mark Zuckerberg’s firm to spot beam wireless internet directly to smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa.

The social media company was working in conjunction with a French satellite provider named Eutelsat to lease the communication array for five years.

The first explosion occurred shortly before 9am with a second blast following about 20 minutes later.  MORE

27 Comments on SpaceX rocket EXPLODES – blowing up Facebook’s £150MILLION internet satellite

  3. An Israeli satellite? Didn’t ocrapo man NASA with a bunch of mooselimbs as outreach to that piece loving death-cult, er, religion? That might be their first clue to start looking at as why it never got off the ground. Just sayin’.

  12. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company or a better couple of assholes. (/sarc off)
    I wouldn’t trust Z’berg as far as I could throw him over my right shoulder with my left arm.

  13. They must want to spy on us real badly to risk $200M like that.
    – “technology to allow Mark Zuckerberg’s firm to spot beam wireless internet directly to smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa.” – I call bullshit on that. Those globalist bastards have evil intentions, now thwarted.

  22. To me, this is sad. Not because of the FB satellite; anything to lessen them is a net good. But SpaceX will be set back for a long time now.

    For those that don’t follow, SpaceX is the most advanced commercial space flight company in the world. Commercial space launch is new, and several companies are just finding their legs, SpaceX included.

    The concept is to vertically land and re-use the first stage of rockets, saving around $40 million from the cost of new. Even if a re-used rocket proved infeasible, SpaceX would still be lifting more into orbit and at a lower cost than NASA has, save for Apollo and the Saturn V. But, like NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, and others, failure will happen. Anything remotely related to space is exceedingly difficult. (BTW, you should really Youtube SpaceX and Blue Origin landings.)

    Still, the idea that one day, free-market capitalism may put NASA out of business delights me. Or, at least, the commercial endeavors could do what NASA cannot, such as citizen space flight. It also saddens me, as NASA has proven itself to be one of the very few things government can do well.

    In summary, this disaster, while good for those of us who despise Facebook, is utterly disheartening to those who dream of one day seeing the stars and the glories of our universe unimpeded by the distortions of our atmosphere.

    Kudos to Musk for putting his money into something noble and not giving up! This is capitalism on its grandest scale, and to my mind, should not be so derided.

  24. Maybe someone will notice that my previous post doesn’t read quite like normal for me. Permit me to explain why.

    I remember standing out on the deck one summer night, on the Connecticut shoreline. It was well after dark. Mom and Dad were leaning on the railing talking to each other; I was looking up, noticing the stars have different colors and brightness. Contemplating, as best as a three year old can, how far space extends, I asked my parents, “How far does it go?”

    “It goes on forever,” Dad replied. Infinity, it turned out, was a difficult concept for a three year old, and after several distracted days, I was unsatisfied with the answer. A few nights later, in a similar setting, I asked, “How far is forever?” Dad struggled to find an answer and got angry.

    From that point on, I’ve devoured everything I could find on the subject, answering not just how far it goes, but the universe’s layout, format, geography (for lack of a proper term), history of mankind’s understanding of it, physics of how it works (Newtonian, Einsteinian, and Quantum), and it’s very nature.

    After more than forty years of study, I’m more fascinated than I ever could have been at three. This is my passion.

    Today, I can name people who’ve moved our understanding forward with a simple question, but the whole of the Internet is just rediscovering. I can explain quantum mechanics to an eight year old. I can quote Newton’s Principia in Latin. I can describe, in detail, what happens inside a star during supernova, and why there are diamonds out there the size of the Earth. But I have never been to college. Worse, I’ve never experienced my most vivid dream – looking through a telescope. Unquenchable curiosity has brought me all of these gifts.

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