NASA/Joel Kowsky(NEW YORK) — Almost exactly two years before Orbital Sciences’ rocket exploded Tuesday during a launch in Virginia, SpaceX founder Elon Musk mocked his competitor, calling its rocket design a “joke.”
Orbital Sciences Corp., headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, made the Antares rocket for NASA to supply the International Space Station. Investigators are now trying to determine what went wrong with the launch before a safety officer sent a self-destruct command Tuesday evening.
While discussing a possible SpaceX mission to Mars, Musk discussed the failings of large aerospace firms with Wired Magazine. These included an aversion to risk as well as the overuse of “legacy components.”
“The results are pretty crazy,” Musk said in the 2012 interview. “One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s — I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”
Musk, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences did not respond to requests for comment from ABC News.
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