Free Wi-Fi for Africa in flames as rocket explodes

As they say: “Man proposes, God disposes.” Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was shown on the Internet jogging in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, a few days ago, visited Africa to talk up his global Internet access project – to supply free Wi-Fi to Africa, Middle East, and Europe. The project has the name Internet.org. The […]

As they say: “Man proposes, God disposes.” Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was shown on the Internet jogging in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, a few days ago, visited Africa to talk up his global Internet access project – to supply free Wi-Fi to Africa, Middle East, and Europe. The project has the name Internet.org. The satellite to accomplish this task was already loaded on board the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and scheduled to be launched by the rocket two days ago at Cape Canaveral, FL, USA. However, the rocket exploded last week, Thursday, while stationary and being fueled in the Launch complex, destroying Facebook’s satellite and temporarily (I hope) crippling Facebook’s Internet.org. All these happened while Zuckerberg was still in Africa talking up the same satellite project! Obviously there is some bad coincidence here.
Zuckerberg expressed deep disappointment at the rocket launch fiasco, posting while still in Africa: “I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite. The satellite would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.” He also mentioned that he had other technologies to help connect people: “We will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided.” You’ll observe that lately Zuckerberg has been showing himself, not only as a tech guru, but also as a global political leader – of some sort, with good heart and a deep agenda for Facebook’s social responsibility. A few weeks ago, he was in Beijing, and was shown on the Internet jogging in Tiananmen Square. This is kind of refreshing and is a sure welcome break from one of the strangest presidential election campaigns in American history.
The science behind rocket propulsion is conceptually simple. For the case of chemical propulsion – which is the oldest and most mature way to deploy rockets – a fuel such as hydrogen reacts with an oxidant (for example, oxygen), leading to combustion (or “fire”) that generates a great amount of heat. (The flame from the combustion is usually visible as a huge plume or jet of “fire” that exhausts from the rear end of a rocket at take-off.) The temperature associated with this heat could go as high as 3000 degrees Centigrade. This represents a huge amount of energy which provides the force required to accelerate the resulting gases through the nozzle – which is the bell-shaped duct at the rear of a standard rocket. The motion of the rocket is the reaction to the exhausting of the hot gases through the nozzle. (Just imagine pricking a hole into an inflated balloon; the balloon will eject air and itself will move in an opposite direction to the direction of the ejected air.)
While the engineering design of rocket engines is somewhat simpler than that of turbojet engines that power your everyday commercial airliners like Boeing 777, it is nevertheless quite complicated. One main difference between the two kinds of engines is that a rocket carries its own oxidant that is needed to react with a fuel to lead to combustion, while turbojet engines are air-breathing, meaning that they take oxygen from the air outside. Both carry their fuels.
The explosion of SpaceX rocket ,last week, was linked to a two-foot-long, an inch-thick strut that snapped in a liquid oxygen tank. The strut (or a load-bearing structural member) probably gave way because it was loaded way beyond the yield strength of the material of the strut. For me, that this event happened before launch – that is, under stationary conditions – is quite unfortunate, sounding like something that could have been prevented. Moreover, this is beginning to sound like the problem that caused the explosion of another SpaceX rocket on June 28, 2015. In that incident, the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, was quoted as saying that a strut was designed to handle 10,000 pounds of force, but failed at just 2,000 pounds. This sounds like a goof-up in a very basic material response analysis in mechanical engineering, but perhaps, as is sometimes the case, the devil might be in the details.
The explosion of last week will have global implications. The Facebook satellite on board was built by the Israeli company Space Communication Ltd. However, this company is said to be in the process of being sold to the Chinese company Beijing Xinwei Group unit for $285m – according to a report on 24 August 2016 Tel Aviv (Israel) stock market. The reported condition for the sale to go forward was that the deployment of the satellite on Falcon last week be successful!
In perspective, SpaceX has done well on average, having completed 27 successful flights since its debut in 2010. Also, all of these setbacks can only make the technology better – as per leveraging on lessons learned. Fortunately, there were no human lives involved in the accident, and I am sure Zuckerberg will find a way around this temporary setback. After all, he’s got the dough!