Today is a sad day for future space exploration. A supply mission of SpaceX to the International Space Station ended in catastrophic failure a little over two minutes after launch. The unmanned vehicle exploded. Here is a tweet from Musk, the CEO of SpaceX:
SpaceX was planning on starting manned missions by 2017. Whatever the failure was today, I suspect that the 2017 date will now be pushed out. I was rooting for the success of SpaceX. This is a major setback for them.
Here is the video of the event. The silence at the end is deafening:
Sad news indeed, and frustrating as all get out. I spent much of last week covering all the cool science that was headed up in yesterday’s launch. Spent yesterday morning eagerly awaiting the launch, checking in with Ustream like a terribly OCD person. “Click…it is on yet? Click…is it on yet? Click…is it on yet?” I had meant to cover the launch as usual, knowing full well something might happen. Seems to at least 50% of the time. Weather delays usually, and those irk me to no end. When the rocket exploded, I basically lost all the words I had meant to type. I put up a placeholder on our FB page “This happened and we’ll update you when more details are available,” and then walked away from my computer. I will struggle to find the words this morning, but I know it must be done.
To make it worse, yesterday with Musk’s 44th birthday.
Oh man! That really DOES suck!