Starship prototype SN10 comes in for a landing.
SpaceX
The latest SpaceX Starship prototype, called SN11, has reached an explosive end last week like his three predecessors. But the circumstances surrounding the great upsurge were uniquely mysterious, as dense fog and faulty cameras obscured the details of its eventual fate.
The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, now has details on what happened in SN11’s last moments. Musk attributed the blast to Twitter on Monday morning to a fuel leak.
“A (Relatively) small CH4 leak caused a fire on engine 2 and roasted part of the aviation, causing a hard start of landing in CH4 turbo pump,” he wrote.
Rise phase, transition to horizontal and control during free fall were good.
A (relatively) small CH4 leak caused fire on engine 2 and a fried part of the aviation, causing a hard start of the burn in CH4 turbo pump.
This is corrected six ways until Sunday.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 5 April 2021
SN11 was launched on March 30 from the Starship Development Center in Texas without being visible on the ground. Everything went smoothly when the vehicle – final versions of which Musk hopes to send to the moon and Mars in the coming years – rose to about 10 kilometers and then fell back to earth. After launching its brand in preparation for a landing and soft touch, the cameras on board froze during the SpaceX live stream.
Other live-stream cameras remotely operated to the landing strip up close followed an orange glow in the mist, followed by a hellish storm of debris raining down on the exclusion zone around the road.
Two earlier prototypes, SN8 and SN9, both exploded due to a hard landing. SN10 captured the landing but then exploded a few minutes later on the runway. SN11 appears to be the first to explode just before it hit the ground.
We have now seen a good example of the ways in which one of these prototypes can end up during the landing phase. There is reason for optimism that the next attempt will go better.
Look at this:
SpaceX’s Exploding Starship: Why This Massive Rocket …
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SpaceX will jump ahead to SN15, which reportedly contains a bunch of upgrades, which Musk is excited about having chosen to throw out SN12, SN13 and SN14.
SN15 has already been put together and is ready to test before its debut. The hope is that one of the upcoming prototypes will not only survive the landing, but will also enable the company to embark on the first runway for Starship as soon as possible in June.
Musk says he certainly does not expect a repeat of the critical leak that led to the shrapnel-scattering deviation seen last week.
“It will be corrected six ways until Sunday,” he tweeted.
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