I’d say is almost certainly worse than we think, or at least it’s lot worse than public officials want to pretend it is.
We have a personal stake in this, because Patricia is in CalPERS, for health and pension. Needless to say, we’re not counting on it. And reminder: If California gets a bail out from Uncle Sugar, it should only be on condition that it become a territory, and not be allowed back into the union until it gets its fiscal act together, and not as a single state.
We are close to figuring it out. It might have been formation of solid oxygen in the carbon over-wrap of one of the bottles in the upper stage tanks. If it was liquid it would have been squeezed out but under pressure it could have ignited with the carbon. This is the leading theory right now, but it is subject to confirmation. The other thing we discovered is that 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. I think it is unlikely this time, but it is something we need to recognize as a real possibility in the future.” [Emphasis mine]
I think that the Arocket list had speculated about this early on.
The climate debate has an epistemological problem that proponents of policy to deal with it want to pretend doesn’t exist. I wrote about the flawed precautionary principle years ago.
Good news for our economy, bad news for petrotyrants, in Russan and the Middle East. And once again, my prediction of many years ago, that $100 oil was unsustainable, remains accurate.