Elon Musk releases rocket booster blooper reel of ‘epic explosions’

Mankind’s quest to conquer the cosmos has not come without mishaps, and a humorous new video posted by SpaceX Chief Elon Musk demonstrates just how hard the journey to space can be.

Titled “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster,” the two-minute clip features a litany of the company’s spectacular failures, all set to the beat of John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell,” aka, the theme song to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

“We messed up a lot before it finally worked, but there’s some epic explosion footage…” tweeted Musk in August when he announced SpaceX was putting together the blooper reel.

Epic explosions, indeed.

The 15-story Falcon 9 boosters separate after liftoff and then fly back to a designated landing zone where they are supposed to touch down. But the early attempts did not always go as planned

There are 11 separate disasters on the video, beginning in September 2013 with the avionics making a hard landing on water and bursting into a fireball right as cymbals in the aforementioned song clash.

“Rocket is fine? Just a scratch,” reads the caption on an August 2014 clip in which Musk is seen surveying the smoking debris after a rocket booster’s engine sensor fails and the avionics explode in midair.

“Well, technically it did land, just not in one piece,” reads another caption after a January 2015 test flight crash. The booster ran out of hydraulic fluid.

“That’s not an ‘explosion’,” reads another caption of an April 2015 failure as the rocket disintegrates in huge ball of flames and smoke after hitting the landing site. “It’s just a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” reads another caption after an engine burn failure.

“#$@&%*?!^*&^%^$!,” said it all in a yet another misstep in which the rocket, which ran out of propellant, hit the landing deck and burst into flames before falling over and blowing up.

The last two clips on the reel are not so dire, in fact they show two successful landings that took place in December 2015 on land at Cape Canaveral and another on water in April 2016 on the company’s floating droneship

“You are my everything,” reads the last caption.

Musk explained in a Thursday tweet that it’s a “long road to reusability,” but once the equipment can be retrieved and reused, costs will drop by a factor of 100.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the company has now successfully landed 16 of the first-stage boosters.

So far, the video has almost 2 million views.

619-293-1710

debbi.baker@sduniontribune.com

twitter.com/Debbi_Baker