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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
Elon Musk had recently announced that Starship's fourth flight test could be just days away.
[...] SpaceX has yet to provide an update on the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities in southern Texas. The footage shows SpaceX's engine test pad going up in flame.
The footage started a little after 4:12 pm local time. Roughly 14 seconds after ignition, the Raptor engine shut off. As the vapor surrounding the test tower dissipated, a fire appeared to start underneath the engine. These flames traveled upwards, causing a second explosion to engulf the entire tower.
In a tweet accompanying a clip from the footage, NASASpaceflight wrote, "The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly a few moments ago. The vapors from the anomaly caused a secondary explosion on the test stand."
A short video is here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Friday May 24 2024, @08:19PM (2 children)
It was a big whatever it was. Video here: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1793758052128354564 [twitter.com] The orange smoke surprises me. These engines are methane/oxygen, which make white or grey smoke. Orange smoke indicates NOx, which I'd expect from engines using a nitrogen based oxidizer, e.g. the SuperDracos and dinitrogen tetroxide.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 24 2024, @08:52PM
I was thinking if the tanks were full, turned into swiss cheese by a turbopump tossing its blades, and it mixed and then ignited, there would just be a flash and a giant empty crater. Everything's mostly present afterwards implying it was basically a huge bonfire, not an explosion. I don't see substantial "chunks" raining back to earth, for example.
However, what if the fire mostly happened after the tanks were empty; that would explain the relative lack of obvious visible destruction even if the tanks got swiss-cheesed, AND it could fit your insight about smoke if we're mostly seeing incinerated paints and burned up insulation and lube oils and just random stuff that was lying around like golf cart tires and test leads and test equipment etc.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Saturday May 25 2024, @01:06AM
That's really bad fuel air mixture leading to poor combustion. The black can just be soot from that. Other smoke may be paint/wire insulation, hoses burning...