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SpaceX Starship Mk. 1 fails during cryogenic loading test
SpaceX's first full-scale Starship prototype – [Mark 1 (Mk. 1)] – has experienced a major failure at its Boca Chica test site in southern Texas. The failure occurred late in the afternoon on Wednesday, midway through a test of the vehicle's propellant tanks.
The Mk. 1 Starship – which was shown off to the world in September as part of SpaceX's and Elon Musk's presentation of the design changes to the Starship system was to fly the first 20 km test flight of the program in the coming weeks.
The main event of today, the Mk. 1 Starship's first cryogenic loading test, involved filling the methane and oxygen tanks with a cryogenic liquid.
During the test, the top bulkhead of the vehicle ruptured and was ejected away from the site, followed by a large cloud of vapors and cryogenic liquid from the tank.
There will be no attempt to salvage Starship Mk1, with focus instead shifting to Mk3 (in Texas) and Mk2 (in Florida):
Minutes after the anomaly was broadcast on several unofficial livestreams of SpaceX's Boca Chica facilities, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Starship Mk1's failure in a tweet, telegraphing a general lack of worry. Of note, Musk indicated that Mk1 was valuable mainly as a manufacturing pathfinder, entirely believable but also partially contradicting his September 2019 presentation, in which he pretty clearly stated that Mk1 would soon be launched to ~20 km to demonstrate Starship's exotic new skydiver landing strategy.
Musk says that instead of repairing Starship Mk1, SpaceX's Boca Chica team will move directly to Starship Mk3, a significantly more advanced design that has benefitted from the numerous lessons learned from building and flying Starhopper and fabricating Starship Mk1. The first Starship Mk3 ring appears to have already been prepared, but SpaceX's South Texas focus has clearly been almost entirely on preparing Starship Mk1 for wet dress rehearsal, static fire, and flight tests. After today's failure, it sounds like Mk1 will most likely be retired early and replaced as soon as possible by Mk3.
Above all else, the most important takeaway from today's Starship Mk1 anomaly is that the vehicle was a very early prototype and SpaceX likely wants to have vehicle failures occur on the ground or in-flight. As long as no humans are at risk, pushing Starship to failure (or suffering unplanned failures like today's) can only serve to benefit and improve the vehicle's design, especially when the failed hardware can be recovered intact (ish) and carefully analyzed.
Video of the rupture is available on NASASpaceFlight's forums. Start with this forum post and continue down the page for other pictures and videos.
Previously: SpaceX Provides Update on Starship with Assembled Prototype as the Backdrop
Related: The SpaceX Starship Pushback: NASA Administrator's Scolding and More
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:50AM (3 children)
There are two types of tests. There are tests like these where you're genuinely not entirely sure how it's going to turn out and you expect it to break a reasonable chunk of the time. And then there are public tests. Those are the tests that are done after lots of tests like this where you claim it's a test, but you're already extensively tested your system inside out and this is just a demonstration of your results.
This was the former test, unannounced and caught out only due to the fact that SpaceX is building and testing their ship in plane view of anybody with a camera. And indeed there are lots of cameras pointed right at it 24/7; there are even live streams.
The first trips to Mars, especially to colonize, will almost certainly be one-way trips, one way or the other. And Musk has also made no secret of that. That doesn't have much of anything to do with stuff like this. Aside from that though the reason you want fit and qualified people on the early tests is because they aren't just passive passengers counting the stars. Building up a colony is going to be a ton of work. Those guys aren't being sent to go lounge around on Mars or to act as human guinea pigs (though that is de facto part of their role), they're being sent to go work their asses off so some decades from now the type of folks you mention can go retire and live a passive life of leisure on Mars.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:55AM
Oh, wasn't that-other-what's-his-name with launching rockets from planes? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 21 2019, @11:04AM (1 child)
Note to self: Remember to put snark/Poe's law tags on pretty much everything I post. Otherwise, bad things happen.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 22 2019, @01:16AM