YouTube user Thunderf00t, a scientist who also happens to make videos about a wide variety of subjects, has spent quite a bit of time in the week following the Falcon 9 explosion studying the event in detail and formulating his own ideas as to why the vehicle exploded – more accurately, describing the variables that go into rocketry that may have lead up to this explosion.
In this 20 minute video, he covers the basics behind rocketry, touches on some possible failure modes of such vehicles that could have been the cause of this explosion, and lastly takes a somewhat critical look at the efforts of SpaceX in general and their vehicle recovery and reuse program, a project which helps to dictate the general design of the Falcon 9 vehicle, and also a program which, if recover is intended, does somewhat limit the payload capacity of the booster.
Needless to say, Thunderf00t shares his honest opinons here while also providing good information in a very easy to understand form. If you wanted more details on the basics of rocketry in relation to this explosion, this is quite the fine video for that, as well as some additional info and commentary in general.
Enjoy. I do plan on sharing more of his videos in the future, but if you like what he did in this video, check out his others. They are quite worth it.