On the morning of September 1, 2016, SpaceX—a company still relatively unknown to the general public at the time—was preparing to conduct a static firing test of its Falcon 9, the formidable launch vehicle that is now the benchmark throughout the industry. Everything seemed to be going perfectly – until a spectacular explosion abruptly ended the procedure, destroying a precious satellite in the process.
The origin of this incident has been particularly difficult to pin down, leading to the emergence of a particularly intriguing theory that has just resurfaced today in a fascinating article from Ars Technica: the sabotage theory by a sniper hired by a rival company. A look back at this particularly murky affair, worthy of a Hollywood spy film.
A blow to a promising startup
To put things in context, in 2016, SpaceX had little in common with the behemoth we know today. It was a very promising young startup, but still far from dominating an entire sector of the industry as it does today. To enter the big leagues, it still had to prove itself. To achieve this, it was counting heavily on the next mission of its famous Falcon 9: deploying the Amos-6 observation satellite, a $200 million technological gem.
Shortly before launch, SpaceX was preparing to initiate a test firing to verify that the propulsion system was behaving as expected. But this routine check never happened: without warning, the booster exploded with great violence, ejecting the satellite in the process, which crashed to the ground with a crash.
This accident left engineers and observers perplexed, and for Cause: The rocket was largely inert, with no moving parts or heat sources, since the test hadn't even started. There was no obvious reason for the vehicle to spontaneously explode at this point in the procedure. To use Ars Technica's analogy, it's a bit like a stationary car spontaneously deciding to explode in a parking lot.
The Sniper's Trail
In the weeks that followed, the mystery only deepened, as the engineers' initial investigation revealed no plausible explanation. This is where the story took a dramatic turn—not least thanks to the entry of the author of the Ars Technica article: Eric Berger, now considered one of the industry's most knowledgeable and reliable insiders. At the time, he was closely following the evolution of SpaceX, which seemed poised to revolutionize aerospace. Intrigued by this mysterious affair, he decided to investigate and unravel the threads of the story. In his book Reentry, he explains that the lack of concrete evidence led SpaceX – and Musk himself in particular – to focus on a theory as unusual as it is captivating: a sniper who allegedly sabotaged the rocket by firing a high-speed projectile directly into the booster tank.
Several clues have led SpaceX and Elon Musk to pay close attention to this outlandish hypothesis. According to Berger, the Falcon 9 broke up on the southeast side. However, about 1.5 kilometers away in that direction was a building where a video captured a strange flash of light on the roof. The timing of this flash, according to the author's sources, corresponded to the time it would have taken a projectile to reach the rocket at the time of the explosion.
Even more interesting: the building in question belonged to… ULA, the historic aerospace giant that outrageously dominated the industry before SpaceX took the lead. This detail is anything but trivial in this context. Indeed, it is common knowledge that the company was closely monitoring the rise of its young rival, which was then going through a pivotal period. Within two years, SpaceX had begun positioning itself as a future major player, likely to win large contracts that NASA would once have awarded to ULA almost by default.So, could its executives have tried to slow down SpaceX and damage its reputation by orchestrating a particularly image-damaging “accident” at a critical moment for the company’s future? There was no way to say for sure. But that didn’t stop Musk from taking the hypothesis seriously.
With no other concrete leads, SpaceX spent weeks studying the “sniper theory.” The company requested that ULA grant its teams access to the building where the alleged shot was fired—without success. Faced with this refusal, Elon Musk's team deployed significant resources to test this scenario, including firing at helium tanks to replicate the conditions of the incident. Lacking results, SpaceX finally took a drastic measure: according to Berger, it went so far as to submit the case... to the FBI, no less!
A fascinating lead
Unfortunately for the tycoon, none of these independent investigations produced the slightest result. The FAA (the entity responsible for regulating the US aerospace industry) and the FBI have stated that there was “no indication that sabotage or any criminal activity played a role in the September 1 explosion.”
And today, everything indicates that the two federal agencies were right. After months of painstaking investigations and analysis, engineers concluded that the explosion was ultimately caused by a complex and multifactorial problem related to the interactions between the cryogenic fuel and the internal structure of the tank, which SpaceX had attempted to fill too quickly. No sniping or conspiracy, then; simply a rush that's very representative of Musk's philosophy, who has always been a fervent supporter of rapid innovation, even if it means having to pay the price later.
But while this approach had some rather catastrophic consequences in the fall of 2016, it's undeniable that it also played a decisive role in the success of SpaceX. Almost a decade later, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that this strong taste for all-out innovation didn't just leave ULA in the rearview mirror: it was, and remains, a key ingredient in its unchallenged dominance.
Since this approach has proven itself, Elon Musk and his troops will likely continue to follow this path in the future... and it's a safe bet that this will produce new unexpected fireworks like the one on September 1, 2016, with or without sniper.
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