My answer to What are likely lessons from the SpaceX rocket explosion in September 2016?
Answer by Desmond Last:
The costly failure of SpaceX Rocket must surely raise questions as to how Climate Change is going to impact on vertical take-offs and landings.
The effect of high winds both for take-off and particularly landings is a constant problem and the weather extremes are not getting less.
Global warming in 2015 made weather more extreme and it’s likely to get worse
Whilst you can delay a launch it is not so easy to delay a landing.
SpaceX have a design criteria that includes vertical landings. These will be impossible in high winds.
It is almost if all of NASA’s own warnings about climate change get put into the waste bin when the prospect of making billions from Space Transport is dangled before eager investors.
Why is it that the same far-sighted entrepreneurs seem so short-sighted when it comes to Climate Change?
Can the thrust of a rocket overcome the expected shear speeds of high altitude winds? How can we know when we do not yet have the model that will accurately predict the effects of climate change.
I suspect that in the long-term it will be the Shuttle model of horizontal thrust that is a much more efficient and safer model of launching and landing.
Pity that the same minds that can launch a rocket cannot apply themselves to Climate Change solutions.
What are likely lessons from the SpaceX rocket explosion in September 2016?
Leave a Reply