I gotta say, I love how emotionless these guys always are. Rocket blows up; not a word is said about it other than "launch teams, be advised: stay at your stations."

Not even a single utterance like "Well, shit."

*related video

Unmanned Rocket CATO (Catastrophic Accident on Take Off) has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

I don't know this for certain, but I think it so likely I'll just make a categorical statement: They have to push a button to transmit. There were probably quite a few literal fucks given before that button was pushed and orders relayed.

Oh, I know there's a lot of swearing that goes on that we never hear, I just love the juxtaposition of the emotionless delivery and the huge flaming clusterfuck.

Dear NASA,
You would've never lasted this long in a free market/competitive environment. Please just stop. You're wasting valuable talent, people, and money.

*fire

Adding video to channels (Fire) - requested by ant.

Did you forget the sarcasm flag? This launch was from a free market private company that NASA had contracted with.

Here's some more info about what a free market company did to cut corners and lower their bids attempting to provide this service to NASA.

http://goo.gl/RBLDy0

Yes, it was a private company contracted by NASA, so its income was theft as well.

If a private company funded voluntarily had people DIE in ANY of their projects, they would no longer be a company. Why give NASA the second (third, fourth, etc.) chance? There are private companies coming into play that have improved technology in the past few years for what took NASA decades.

It's possible to provide services without the State. In fact, it should be preferred, considering the quality of products and service voluntary interactions have provided.

It is incredibly unfortunate that something like this would happen again; it's a good thing it was only carrying supplies. While we could label this an accident, it's tragic that we haven't learned how to avoid accidents like this after this long.

On a different topic, your idea that science & technology could be crowdfunded is extremely naive. Nearly every science & technology company has used state or federal government funds at least at some point in their time, especially the 'private' government contracting companies you're referring to.

I find it disgusting that people allow the government to have excuses and second chances but disallow the same for private sector. Neither should have excuses! It's not like there weren't inherent risks involved that could've been avoided. For example, NASA was fully aware of issues with Apollo I and was even warned by the astronauts themselves. They went ahead with it anyway and it resulted in a fire that killed all 3 astronauts. It wasn't a "sacrifice that needed to be made for science." It was negligence, pure and simple.
One thing I admit is that there was an artificial drive to get the moon -- which resulted in wasted dollars and lives because of negligence and the absence of pricing mechanisms -- that probably wouldn't have occurred in the private sector. So, how does that affect our everyday lives? How does that improve our lives? That's what the private sector works on. Not government. I think it could've been done better by the private sector as proven by parallel public versus private sectors in other markets. But really, there would have to be a desire and an efficient business plan. I don't honestly see what the problem is for not wanting to go to the moon right now.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2014/03/27/are-we-entering-a-golden-era-of-private-science-funding/

I personally encourage your philanthropic interest in privately funding scientific research. As a scientist and engineer, I encourage you to give me all of your money.

Also, pay your taxes. I need that money, too.

Ya know, the use of the term "rocket science" as a euphemism for something really complicated and hard isn't a coincidence. Read up on it sometime; it's not nearly as simple as it seems.

What in the world are you on about? The private sector gets just as many chances as "the government" to f-up and keep moving forward.

Take a look here for some consumer product recalls:
http://www.esopro.com/erp-blog/industry-musings/the-10-most-disastrous-product-recalls-of-all-time

On that list are corporations like Firestone, Tylenol, Graco, Hasbro, Ford and Toyota. Despite their negligence leading to deaths, they seem to be doing just fine. And those corporations killed way more people than NASA ever has.

Is accountability important? Sure, absolutely. In the case of the Apollo mission, the Program Director was fired. I would the same is true for a lot of those product recalls: the highest up person with direct supervision of the project should be fired.

In summary, I don't really see where "the government" gets off easy while the "private sector" is unfairly punished.

Also this week, Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash-landed killing one of the pilots.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/science/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-crashes-during-test-flight.html?_r=0

Privately or publicly funded, this is inherently risky work.