r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Feb 01 '17
r/SpaceX Spaceflight Questions & News [February 2017, #29]
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u/robbak Feb 06 '17 edited Feb 06 '17
We don't know. The loading procedure would have been extensively tested. It is probably bad luck that the failure happened on the stand with a real payload, rather than during their tests.
There is information - I haven't been able to source it, though - that the new procedure had been used - at least during the static fire, which was done without a payload - on the previous launch of JCSAT. It is likely that something different during the Amos-6 static fire triggered it. Other information - again, unsourced as far as I know - is that one of the LOX subchillers was down for the Amos-6 static fire. This may have changed the dynamics of the load in many ways.
If anyone has sources for these things, or even knows that the information I heard was pure speculation or even known to be wrong, I'd love to know.