This is not as crazy as it sounds, and other engineers at SpaceX aside from Musk entertained the possibility, as some circumstantial evidence to support the notion of an outside actor existed. Most notably, the first rupture in the rocket occurred about 200 feet above the ground, on the side of the vehicle facing the southwest. In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX’s main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.
This is not as crazy as it sounds
Are ya sure about that? Because it sounds kinda crazy.
The timing of the flash matches the time interval for a projectile. How could you calculate that without knowing what the projectile or rate of travel would be for said projectile. That’s utter bullshit. It sounds a lot more likely someone interested in rocket launches took a picture and their flash was on.
And it’s about a mile? Many common rifle bullets will be starting to nope-out of supersonic around that distance, so you would need something really beefy, like a .338 Lapua or even a .50 to be accurate. (A bullet will generally start tumbling when it drops sub-sonic.)
Don’t mistake me: many bullets can and do travel past a mile regularly, especially depending on the shot angle. Yeah, they can still kill. I am referring to the uncertainty and inaccuracy at those ranges, especially if a bullet has lost a ton of speed.
My main point is that long range sniper rifles are quite large caliber and generally require long heavy barrels. You aren’t going to swing one of those around without being noticed.
The shot speed approximation is the easy part, believe it or not. Since the bullet must be a large caliber you can guess at about 200-300 grains for a “smaller” large caliber bullet, or between 650-900 grains for a larger one. (Maybe a few more, but I am sticking with a 338 or a 50.) Muzzle velocity is also going to be on the high end at between 2900fps and +3100fps for most all of them. The math is easy to work out with a common ballistics calculator by estimating the ballistic coefficient of available bullets in the category we are talking about. (Bullet speed at the target is the most important number to calculate.)
Still, it’s not perfect math. If you look for a camera flash at an estimated time when a bullet was supposedly fired, you are probably going to find one, especially if you have a second or two of footage across multiple cameras.
It’s a high speed camera for reverse engineering, they likely had the cameras to watch their own and why wouldn’t you watch theirs and use their failures to further your own goals.
As a kid I used to watch space shuttle launches in Florida. You could always see the Russian “fishing” boats that sat in the same spot for days…I’m pretty sure they had cameras taking pics but they never exploded one … And I’m pretty sure the US and Russia had a lot bigger animosity than United launch alliance and SpaceX do…
Are ya sure about that? Because it sounds kinda crazy.
The timing of the flash matches the time interval for a projectile. How could you calculate that without knowing what the projectile or rate of travel would be for said projectile. That’s utter bullshit. It sounds a lot more likely someone interested in rocket launches took a picture and their flash was on.
And it’s about a mile? Many common rifle bullets will be starting to nope-out of supersonic around that distance, so you would need something really beefy, like a .338 Lapua or even a .50 to be accurate. (A bullet will generally start tumbling when it drops sub-sonic.)
Don’t mistake me: many bullets can and do travel past a mile regularly, especially depending on the shot angle. Yeah, they can still kill. I am referring to the uncertainty and inaccuracy at those ranges, especially if a bullet has lost a ton of speed.
My main point is that long range sniper rifles are quite large caliber and generally require long heavy barrels. You aren’t going to swing one of those around without being noticed.
The shot speed approximation is the easy part, believe it or not. Since the bullet must be a large caliber you can guess at about 200-300 grains for a “smaller” large caliber bullet, or between 650-900 grains for a larger one. (Maybe a few more, but I am sticking with a 338 or a 50.) Muzzle velocity is also going to be on the high end at between 2900fps and +3100fps for most all of them. The math is easy to work out with a common ballistics calculator by estimating the ballistic coefficient of available bullets in the category we are talking about. (Bullet speed at the target is the most important number to calculate.)
Still, it’s not perfect math. If you look for a camera flash at an estimated time when a bullet was supposedly fired, you are probably going to find one, especially if you have a second or two of footage across multiple cameras.
Nah man, they probably borrowed the Navy’s “rail gun” that shoots over 8000 fps lol. Remember this is a giant conspiracy
It’s a high speed camera for reverse engineering, they likely had the cameras to watch their own and why wouldn’t you watch theirs and use their failures to further your own goals.
As a kid I used to watch space shuttle launches in Florida. You could always see the Russian “fishing” boats that sat in the same spot for days…I’m pretty sure they had cameras taking pics but they never exploded one … And I’m pretty sure the US and Russia had a lot bigger animosity than United launch alliance and SpaceX do…
There were a lot bigger consequences of fucking around though too. MAD was a real threat for decades.
I still think the sniper thing is bull shit though.
The world loves a sniper conspiracy, i’ll give him that.