Musk wrote that the nitrogen COPV appears to fail below the proven pressure without damage to the tank. “If further investigation confirms that this is what happened, it’s the first time this design has been done,” Musk added.
Pick up the fragments
Earlier Wednesday, hours before Starbucks’ late night explosion, a consultation released by the Federal Aviation Administration showed that SpaceX had set June 29 as the tentative launch date for the next Starship test flight. This won’t happen now, and there are speculations about when SpaceX will be ready to fly.
Messi’s test site, named after the gun range that once occupied the property, is located on the curve of the Rio Grande River, just a few hundred feet from the Mexican border. Currently, the test site is the only place SpaceX can announce the firearms ready to fly through proof tests and static fire tests.
The extent of damage to ground equipment by Massey’s is not clear, so now it’s said how long the test site will be outdated. However, for now, the explosion left SpaceX without facilities to support pre-flight testing on the plane.
The video embedded below comes from nasaspaceflight.com and Labpadre, showing multiple angles of the explosion of the starship.
The explosion of Massey reminded SpaceX’s rocky road, allowing Starship to reach this point in its development. In 2020 and 2021, SpaceX lost several Starship prototypes during ground and flight testing. In 2016, the visual effects of the No. 36 ship returned to its previous explosion in a 2016 Falcon 9 rocket destruction.
SpaceX has now launched nine full-scale Starship rockets since April 2023, and before the explosion, the company hopes to launch its 10th test flight later this month. Starship’s track record has been terrifying so far this year, with the Rockets’ last three test flights ending prematurely. These setbacks come after 2024, 2024 victory, when SpaceX made significant progress on every continuous Starship suborbital test flight, eventually in the first catch of the Rocket’s huge super heavy booster, on the launch pad tower, the giant robot arm.
The super heavy boost stage and the interstellar spacecraft are 400 feet tall and 400 feet tall, creating the largest rocket ever. SpaceX has already flew the reused super booster, and the company designed the Starship itself can also be restored and reused.
After last year’s achievements, SpaceX appears to be in orbit of full orbit, trying to capture and restore the starship itself and the important space refueling demonstrations to be carried out in 2025. The refueling demonstration has officially dropped to 2026, and it is questionable whether SpaceX will make enough progress in the coming months to try to restore the ship’s progress by the end of the year.
Ambitions fit reality
SpaceX made its debut on its upgraded Starship design, called the 2 or Block 2 version, on its test flight in January. Since then, it has been setbacks after setbacks.
The new Starship design is slightly higher than the Starship versions that SpaceX flew in 2023 and 2024. It has an improved heat shield that can better withstand the extreme heat of atmospheric reentry. SpaceX also installed a new fuel feed line system to route methane fuel to the Raptor engine on board and improved propulsion avionics modules that control vehicle valves and reading sensors.
