SpaceX's Starship Exploded in Texas

It appears the rocket SpaceX calls Starship, or at least the prototype, in Texas has exploded. it appears the explosion was due a pressured propellant tank failure. There seems to have been little in the way of fire in the explosion, but the cloud reaches quite, quite high for "just" a catastrophic depressurization. A chunk of the rocket flew into the air and back down.

This is just after the Dragon V2 capsule had a successful ground test fire after the explosion of last year.

The new explosion is another setback, unfortunately, and will cause a significant delay in bringing the Starship to service.

www.thedrive.com...

a reply to: anzha

Man, the top of that sucker got some serious altitude.

a reply to: anzha

Wow. Good that there wasn't anyone near or onboard (just a test), and good further that it was a ground test, and not something that could fall back to 'earth'. Sorry for their loss. I always hope these folks can pull off the impossible, but damn, physics and chemistry can be cruel!!

It's all coded. This happened right when Trump was ALSO in Texas touring Apple. It's all on purpose and has greater meaning.

Looks like they had it filled with liquid nitrogen.

a reply to: anzha

Nobody in the manlift?

a reply to: carsforkids

Didn't look like it, but if there was, it was probably a fatal place to be.

a reply to: anzha

Hard to imagine why it was there and extended?

a reply to: carsforkids

I've seen them used as an easy way to put cameras and whatnot up. Not /too/ weird.

a reply to: carsforkids

Guessing cameras, fast frozen cameras.

a reply to: anzha

Good info!

a reply to: anzha

Anybody notice the leak at the 04 sec mark? Look near the top of the rocket on the left side.

a reply to: Chance321

Appears to have been a pressure test.

www.engadget.com...

Definitely LN2, then.

a reply to: anzha
They were doing pressurization testing today.
This kind of failure was somewhat expected.

It looks like one of the pipe fitments blew open where the raceway runs into the tank that is for oxygen. After this occurred you can see on of the pipes that runs in the raceway sticking out and still billowing gas. This makes me think that there was a weakness at the edge where the top of the "dome" of the tank is. What is interesting however is that the body is only a bit crumpled and is mostly still standing.

The outside of this has a thin almost veneer like layer and directly underneath that is the actual tank. This bodes well for the construction of the shell itself, just not for the attachment method for the hemispherical ends.

edit: adding link to a tweet that has an image of the portion I am talking about
twitter.com...
the image is mk 2 (the second iteration that was being made in parallel) at coca beach FL.

twitter.com...

Elon Musk said that they are just going to write it off as a test article (which it was) and start building a 3rd one that is more refined.

Everyday Astronaut ‏ @Erdayastronaut 5h5 hours ago Starship MK-1 appears to have blown its top off during a pressure test today. My guess... this will be a good time for @spacex to move onto their next, more refined and higher quality versions (MK-2/3) instead of reparing MK-1. @elonmusk, any chance you’ll just move onto MK-3?

to which Elon replied

Elon Musk ‏Verified account @elonmusk Replying to @Erdayastronaut @SpaceX Absolutely, but to move to Mk3 design. This had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different. 1:54 PM - 20 Nov 2019

Furthermore Elon apparently said this one was never going to be a launch article, and they were going to test it to the limits. So it is likely they were pushing the pressure as hard as they could to find weaknesses. Which is something SpaceX tends to do.

a reply to: anzha

They really need to find a better method of launching Man and machine into low earth orbit other than the Wile e Coyote method.

Then again that's just wishful thinking really.

Rockets are what we have, and given the fact of how they operate, there apt to be accidents.

Hopefully, they can learn from the failure, as that how it works or so I'm lead to believe.

Expensive learning curve all the same.

originally posted by: FlukeSkywalker
It's all coded. This happened right when Trump was ALSO in Texas touring Apple. It's all on purpose and has greater meaning.

Eh?

a reply to: FlukeSkywalker

I could be doing with an explanation also, to be honest.

What code?

And where, when, how?

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Looks like they had it filled with liquid nitrogen.

That would make the most sense. Your not going to get a high order detonation. You pressurize a tank like say and airliner and you have a ton of energy being held back

Mythbusters did this with a water heater