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Good point. I'm not familiar with what maneuvers were planned when, and didn't mean to claim that the vehicle was rolling right at the time when the failure occurred. My point was just that there are visible protrusions, and you can follow them as they move into the shadow. It looked like...

Looking at the video with LOX tank buckling in mind, I've noticed a couple more things that seem to fit this scenario. Right before the failure, the visible ring of vapor condensation around the Dragon seems to go asymmetric. A sort of bump appears on one side of the Dragon, as if the upper...

As I think about it and imagine scenarios that fit all the data convincingly, I've come full circle now back to my first comment, and think this could have been just a structural failure of the LOX tank, possibly related or possibly unrelated to the rumored liner issues. I don't think there's a...

I agree that keeping silence makes sense. I am not making any kind of a moral judgment regarding their silence. My point is that some people seem to be assuming that there is no relevant data in the telemetry prior to the final milliseconds that were being reconstructed, otherwise SpaceX would...

Much of the data in the telemetry might be subtle, and would not necessarily be obvious in real time. There is TONS of data, and it's not possible to analyze it all in real time. And the public affairs narrator would only announce what's totally obvious or what he's already overheard on the...

We don't have any information regarding the time from the overpressure starting to the time of the observed failure, so how can you say that a particular model matches what was observed? I assume SpaceX has this information, but they're not sharing it. All we know is when the O2 cloud...

It is! Although I think some of the other suggestions, such as He bottle explosion or engine LOX plumbing breakage are also reasonably likely. Vent valve is just my best guess. I suppose the public data release will depend on whether the information is perceived as a net marketing plus or...

I'll stick my neck out and make my prediction for the root cause of the failure. The LOX tank pressure relief vent valve gets stuck closed, and then as the engine chilldown proceeds (plus declining external atmospheric pressure and tank heating), LOX tank gauge pressure gradually rises until...

I'm not at all surprised. SpaceX is mouthy about their successes. But in the past, SpaceX has been very close mouthed and cagey about failures, releasing very little information to the public. The exception is R&D type failures, such as 1st stage recovery, in which failure is expected and the...

I don't find it particularly strange that Flight Safety didn't destruct the vehicle in the 10 seconds or so during which the vehicle was leaking LOX and beginning to disintegrate, as it would not be immediately clear to someone watching all the video and telemetry in real time that the vehicle...

In case people hadn't already read elsewhere, the destruct command was sent as a standard procedure by flight safety, but only 70 seconds after the failure. I think possibly the final explosive disintegration is from the vehicle's auto destruct based on its own internal algorithm. Flight...

My comment was certainly not a "rant" or intended to criticize Shotwell. I was referring to her as a PR person only in the context of this particular event, the news conference. She did not have any technical details to share apart from what Musk had tweeted regarding 2nd stage LOX...

Destruct I'm not convinced. That SpaceX COO is obviously just a PR person who doesn't know any technical details, and is simply doing her best to put a positive spin on everything for future marketing purposes. I used to be the Range Coordinator for a launch contractor, and I can tell you...