Tesla owner Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technology Corp.) has again failed to maneuver a depleted rocket booster back through the atmosphere and land it successfully on a hovering platform. This event of Tuesday will delay the most important SpaceX project; the company has initiated this project to find ways of reusing spent rockets.
Musk other than being the chairman and founder of the company is also the chief technical officer (CTO) of SpaceX. In a recent tweet of his, he informed the world that the fifteen story tall segment of SpaceX rocket Falcon 9 couldn’t survive an extremely harsh landing.
Space experts had high expectations from this voyage by Musk’s space company. They said that this expedition, if successful, will be one of the most notable expeditions to have ever taken place in the history of space science. Successful completion of the voyage, according to space scientists, would mean that corporate firms and government will get to save a lot of money on future rocket launches.
Skeptics, on the other hand, said that reusability would turn out to be an important addition to space science only if SpaceX succeeds in carrying out launches at higher tempo. After the incident, Elon Musk tweeted:
Droneship is fine. No hull breach and repairs are minor. Impact overpressure is closer to a fast fire than an explosion.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2015
Tuesday’s event established two facts. It helped scientists and engineers of SpaceX to realize that their wait for seeing reusable robots will be much longer than they actually thought. Additionally, the failed landing also assisted them in comprehending the extent of technical challenges they will be meeting in their attempt to make rockets reusable.
The failure was not an expected one for the majority of the people associated with the operations at Space X. This is because the launching process of the rocket went perfectly.
https://thehoopsnews.com/2015/04/16/4407/female-chimps-kills-more-than-males-because-they-are-smarter-says-study/
What’s more surprising is that the initial phase of the landing process was also perfect. After around 40 minutes of the launch, Musk announced the mishap on his official Twitter account. His tweet indicated that the rocket failed to survive even after landing perfectly and the culprit this time was excess lateral velocity.
What is the company planning to do now? Musk informed that now the experts at SpaceX will check the video showcasing Falcon 9’s return to find out what exactly went wrong.
