Eric Ralph, Teslarati:
Six weeks after the spacecraft completed its orbital launch debut, SpaceX’s first flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule suffered a catastrophic explosion seconds before a planned SuperDraco test fire.
And:
The April 20th event is the first time in the known history of SpaceX’s orbital spacecraft program that a vehicle – in this case, the first completed and flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule – has suffered a total failure. Regardless of the accident investigation’s ultimate conclusions, the road ahead of Crew Dragon’s first crewed test flight has become far more arduous.
Here’s video showing the explosion:
https://www.twitter.com/Astronut099/status/1119825093742530560
This is a terrible setback. [H/T Brother Stu]
it’s ok, it’s only designed to transport…people. oh. oh, dear.
The video link is 404. (If that was deleted by OP, I wonder why…)
Will the full results of the investigation be made public?
As Elon has said many times, “This stuff is hard.”, or something like that. This is why they test. No one was hurt. And they’ll probably learn a lot for the next attempt.
Since the twitter link is broken
youtube /watch?v=O2JSohAdesc&feature=youtu.be
Just add what you need
I thought I broke the link up enough, it’ll never post now.
So…
Since Dave’s link is broke a search for SuperDraco test fire failure will bring up the video.
That’s why they call it “Rocket Surgery”.
Troubling this is happening in a flight-tested design. I imagine this may put off manned flights for a while.
I don’t think so. Think of the countless dangers the sea explorers faced centuries ago, yet that didn’t stop them, nor their financiers!
Space exploration is orders of magnitude more costly and more dangerous. But with our advanced technologies and powers of observation I’m sure SpaceX will “figure it out” to find exactly what caused this mishap, and take adequate measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.