News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by jsprogrammer on Thursday September 01, 2016 @12:34PM (#12406691)
How often is the self-destruct mechanism tested?
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by akiselev on Thursday September 01, 2016 @12:46PM (#12406819)
Very often. Air Force range safety guidelines require a million dollar flight termination system and most of that cost is testing and quality control. I don't have an authoritative list of all flight terminations but it happens at least once every few years whenever a rocket fails to follow the set flight path.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by Phlarp on Thursday September 01, 2016 @01:01PM (#12406953)
I also have to suspect things like isolated, dedicated and redundant comm links with the flight termination system are part of these guidelines. Perhaps even a "dead man's switch" that terminates the flight if this separate communication system loses signal at some point. (Even if this means a costly false positive or two~)
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by Animats on Thursday September 01, 2016 @02:46PM (#12407840)
For the Space Shuttle, the flight termination system had two huge 10KW transmitters to send the signal. That would get through despite damaged receiving antennas, noise, or jamming.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by dingo_bat on Thursday September 01, 2016 @10:23PM (#12410393)
10kW? That sounds like a lot of energy to dump into air. Certainly unhealthy for operators or people near the tx site.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by makomk on Friday September 02, 2016 @05:14AM (#12411855)
Less than the typical TV or FM broadcast tower, and remember there's a lot of empty space around the launch sites. Even ham radio operators in the US can run at 1.5kW peak.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by planteen on Friday September 02, 2016 @12:28PM (#12414189)
You can get up to 30 kW (pulsed) on a MRI all directed at your body.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral by MertsA on Thursday September 01, 2016 @08:28PM (#12409879)
As an example, the strut failure in the falcon 9 a while back didn't explode from the failure, that was the flight termination system that actually caused the fireball when things started going south.