Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
by mandevil on Thursday September 01, 2016 @02:36PM
(#12407753)
Mocking a six ton payload is actually fairly expensive, to get the cg, vibration etc. right. A lot more difficult than payload = mock(satellite);
NASA did it for the Hubble but so the ground crew could practice operations and not drop the billion dollar space observatory, not to try and save some money if something blew up during testing.
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Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
by xwvvvvwx on Thursday September 01, 2016 @02:48PM
(#12407860)
Surely still much cheaper than a two hundred million dollar satellite?
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
by mandevil on Thursday September 01, 2016 @03:30PM
(#12408183)
And at what frequency would it save the payload? In 85-95% of cases, payload is safely delivered to space, so the dummy just slows things down. In most of the remaining cases the payload is lost on it's actual ride into space (e.g. the last time SpaceX had a problem, CRS-7) where a dummy can't help. There have been a handful of pad accidents involving loss of payload, but they are very much the exception to the rule about the exception to the rule.