<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'> I think that's a little harsh. SpaceX may very well fail, but to say it's just a fiasco and they are amateurs is unfair. NASA has had plenty of failures in its time and people weren't running in to declare them all amateurs. <br />Posted by tanstaafl76</DIV></p><p>They did not look very professional today. The failure is probably the obvious thing, but I was a bit concerned with the rapidity with which they reset after the abort. When there is an abort one normally takes the time, a lot more than 15 minutes, to understand the reason in complete detail before going back to a ready status. That probably had nothing to do with the failure after more than 2 minutes of flight, but it is indicative of a troublesome attitude on the part of the technical people involved.</p><p>They have not yet said whether the rocket blew up or not (I assume that it did). But even then there are 3 distinct reasons and they depend strongly on the failure mode:</p><p>1) It could have blown up internally due to something not involving the flight termination system</p><p>2) I tcould have been destroyed by the flight termination system under automatic control because of something that was sensed on board. Most systems, for instance, have break wires to sense a breakup of the structure and initiate the destruct ordnance.</p><p>3) There may have been a command destruct, i.e. a destruct signal issued by launch control. That is done most commonly if the rocket deviates significantly from the flight path and is threatening people or property (or shipping) outside of the flight corridor.</p><p>It will be interesting to hear what the basic cause of the anomaly was. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>