I assume that by now, everyone has heard about Starship 36's RUD late last night at Starbase (11:02 PM CDT), resulting in total loss of the ship and damages to the test stand at the Massey's Test Site that still remain hard to document. There are dozens of good videos on YouTube, and gathered by NASASpaceflight, Lab Padre, and others. Ars Technica uses a couple of good videos in their early morning article on the subject, revised as the day progressed. This is screen grab of two replays of the explosion as it was happening, from Ars Technica's coverage. NASASpaceflight top and Lab Padre bottom,
Considering we're around three hours short of 24 hours since the event, it's not surprising there's virtually no additional information. One source I checked had a Tweet from Elon Musk saying it appears to be a component that failed to meet the pressure handling specifications it was sold to. From YouTube channel Ellie in Space:
Where a COPV is a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vehicle. This appears to be referring to the small auxiliary tanks above the larger fuel tanks in the Starship.
It's hard to not feel the concern in the press and "fan channels" that this yet another failure of a Starship and the overall trend in Starship test flights really seems to have gone desperately bad in a very short amount of time. Starship has yet to make orbit and despite memorable accomplish-ments like the capture of the returning booster with the chopsticks back in last October, they have not completed the recent test flights.
Be interesting to see if the failed component was bought from another supplier. If so, I wonder how quickly SpaceX will be making their own component?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I see testing of sub-components like the COPV before installation to occur.
If it is a 'bought from other supplier' component, I wonder if it was deliberate sabotage or just a freak accident? If it was an accidental failure, why didn't the manufacturer catch the pressure issue before it went boom in a Starship?
I assume, from what I remember about my brief engineering college education (before my brain locked up hard,) that standard testing of products like the COPV that are exposed to pressure usually require testing to pressures reasonably way above the working pressure without failure.
Really be interesting to why it failed. Made not to spec? Sabotage? Old tank and the composite bonding deteriorates over time and stress (which, come to think of it, is why SpaceX/Musk ditched a composite Starship and went with special stainless steel, after buying some of the biggest composite winders and kilns that the industry could provide.
Getting metals that meet spec is difficult these days; between recycling and fraud, almost nothing is exactly what it's supposed to be.
DeleteWhen your specs are high end, that becomes a BIG problem.
A decade ago I investigated two serious accidents (one was a fatality) that were both traced to a combination of poor design and substandard material.
Jonathan