Following our “On a Lighter Note” story that the “smoking gun” cause of the Falcon 9 on-pad failure might really have been a smoking gun, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has accepted the possibility of such an event – even if it is not probable.
Space News has a transcript of Elon Musk making a presentation to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), in which he identifies the possibility of a sniper’s bullet strike causing the explosion: “We can exactly replicate what happened on the launch pad if someone shoots the rocket. We don’t think that is likely this time around, but we are definitely going to have to take precautions against that in the future. We looked at who would want to blow up a SpaceX rocket. That turned out to be a long list.”
Elon’s list might have been taken from our On a lighter Note story in which we went through the potential suspects. As Elon says, it is a long list!
