Coverage: SpaceX explosion is a headache for Musk, Zuckerberg

The explosion of an unmanned SpaceX rocket Thursday morning at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station has put a crimp in the business plans of two of the tech industry’s best-known CEOs — Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Samantha Masunaga and Jim Puzzanghera of the Los Angeles Times had the news:

The ensuing fireball delivered a blow to the efforts of two high-profile billionaires: SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

The rocket, scheduled to launch Saturday, was carrying a satellite designed to bring the Internet to remote villages in Africa and help the social media giant expand its global footprint.

Instead, the satellite and rocket were destroyed in several fiery explosions — loud enough to be heard 40 miles away — as wind spread a plume of black smoke so large and thick it showed up on weather radar.

“We heard what sounded like a huge thunder strike,” said Evan Zimny, 23, who works about five miles away in an office building that shuddered from the blast as ceiling tiles fell.

“The building and window shook rapidly and loudly and [that] lasted a couple of seconds,” he said.

There were no reported injuries.

Musk said the explosion took place as the rocket was being fueled for a test ahead of a planned weekend launch. The cause was not immediately known, he said.

Kevin Kelleher of Time magazine examined what the explosion meant for Musk:

SpaceX has come a long way since Musk, 45, founded it in 2002. But Thursday’s explosion of a rocket preparing for launch marks another setback for the company, and for Musk. No one was injured in the incident, which SpaceX said originated in an oxygen tank while the rocket was being fueled a few days ahead of a scheduled launch. But millions of dollars in equipment was destroyed, including a satellite Facebook was hoping would bring Internet access to parts of Africa.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who happened to be in Africa at the time, posted an update saying he was “deeply disappointed” about the loss of the satellite, which could have helped his users there. Zuckerberg’s message seemed carefully worded to remain brusquely indifferent to SpaceX itself, focusing his lament on the damage to Facebook.

When launching rockets, failure is an all-too common and expensive risk. Last year, five of the world’s 86 total rocket launches ended in failure, including a SpaceX Falcon 9 that exploded two minutes after launch. Because of SpaceX’s high profile, its two failed launches in 15 months have drawn lots of media attention, heightening Musk’s reputation as a CEO who moves fast, even if it means breaking things — in spectacular fashion, in SpaceX’s case.

The SpaceX explosion is only the latest in a series of issues, both mechanical and financial, that has plagued SpaceX and Tesla, where Musk serves as CEO, as well as SolarCity, where Musk chairs the board and where his cousins serve as CEO and CTO. All three companies boast ambitious goals. SolarCity brings low-cost clean energy to the masses. Tesla aims to speed the transition to a sustainable-energy economy. SpaceX’s long-term goal is to make humans a multi-planetary species.

Nick Stockton of Wired reported on what the explosion means for SpaceX long-term:

Was SpaceX moving too fast? Will NASA ditch its commercial contracts with the company? What does this mean for other commercial satellite operators? “I’ve been doing this for a while, seen mishaps like this with other companies. The best remedy is not a kneejerk reaction in trying to figure out what it all means the day of,” says Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Foundation, an industry group. He points to the diligent investigations following mishaps like Challenger and Columbia, and how results from those trickled into future space policy.

OK, but this is commercial spaceflight. It’s subject to markets: Spacecom’s stock dropped 9 percent after today’s explosion. Sure, Stallmer says, but even private sector companies tend to bounce back after mishaps. “This isn’t like Brexit. It’ll affect certain companies and stock, but it will certainly rebound if company is worth its salt,” he says. SpaceX’s first three launch failures nearly killed the company, but since its first successful launch in 2008, the company has been a runaway success.

And for the commercial space industry at large? Well, food for thought: SpaceX has been successful, in part, because it offers lower prices than its competitors. “If anything, I think the impact for other launch companies will be to create more business for them,” says Logsdon, because there’s such a huge backlog of people trying to get their stuff into orbit. “Thing is, I don’t know how much slack there is in the business. This is not exactly off-the-shelf capacity, a rocket large enough to carry something into geostationary orbit.”