Elon Musk suspects that Falcon 9 rocket was blown up by sniper

At dawn on September 1, 2016, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an Amos-6 satellite exploded at SpaceX's launch pad in Florida. It was the second disaster in a little over a year, and it called into question the company's financial stability and its ability to deliver NASA astronauts into orbit. Immediately after the incident, SpaceX was unable to find out why the helium tank in the second stage had ruptured. Among the hundreds of hypotheses, one seemed particularly convincing to Elon Musk: the unidentified shooter allegedly hit the rocket from the roof of the building rented by the main competitor, United Launch Alliance.

Ars Technica writes about it.

Everything we know about the "sniper" theory

Engineers even fired at helium tanks in Texas to see if a bullet could cause a similar explosion, and site manager Ricky Lim tried to get on that roof but was flatly denied.

For more than a month, SpaceX provided federal authorities with its own video and audio data that allegedly pointed to sabotage. On October 13, 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officially informed SpaceX lawyer Tim Hughes that the FBI had conducted the investigation and found no evidence of sabotage or criminal investigation, and the case was closed. This letter, the copy of which the journalist received under the FOIA request only last week, was made public for the first time.

The disaster was the culmination of the intense confrontation with ULA, which at the time performed about 15 launches annually compared to SpaceX's five and owned the lion's share of military and scientific missions. The "sniper" story stirred up competition but proved to be false: the internal investigation found that the hasty injection of ultra-cold fuel and rapid heating of the cylinder caused it to deform and collapse.

For NASA, which was preparing for Crew Dragon manned flights, the explosion increased concerns. The agency had to convince skeptics that SpaceX's unusual scheme of putting the crew in the capsule before refuelling (load-and-go) was safe, even though it was the overly rapid refuelling that led to the accident. But after a few painful months, the Falcon 9 returned to flight, and in 2017, it made a record 18 launches, outperforming ULA.

Today, when SpaceX performs nine dozen launches a year, the story of the "mercenary on the roof" looks more like an episode of high drama than a real-life scenario. The Amos-6 explosion was the worst moment for the company, but, without playing a decisive role, it only hardened it before the next take-off, without firing a single shot.

As a reminder, on April 1, a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (NASA) and launched the Fram2 mission into polar orbit. The purpose of the mission is to study the Earth's poles.

We also wrote that SpaceX conducted the eighth test launch of the Starship rocket from Starbase in Texas. Seven minutes after the launch, the super-powerful Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the launch pad and was caught by special "mechanical sticks" of the launch tower. At the same time, the second stage — the Starship itself — failed to complete the mission as successfully.