Nicholas D’Alessandro
7 April 2021
Ignition and removal of Starship test items is normally clearly visible from this LabPadre live feed, but for the Starship SN11 flight, the dense morning mist only produced a terrible glow. Credit: Louis Balderas Jr. / @ LabPadre
The latest SpaceX Starship prototype, Starship SN11, suffered a fiery downfall last week, as did the three iterations before it. However, hopes were high that it would be the one to survive a landing attempt that was long enough for eventual reuse after SN10 almost did, albeit not for a slightly hard landing.
The flight of Starship SN11 eventually deteriorated as it was the first one of the entire program to explode in the air, immediately after it started lighting its three Raptor engines for the landing flip procedure.
A view of Starship SN11 a day before its test flight on March 30. Credit: Nicholas D’Alessandro / Spaceflight Insider
The dense fog in the Boca Chica, Texas, area that added a bit of mystery to the situation made no visual assessment of the launch and failed landing impossible.
After the cameras aboard SpaceX’s livestream suddenly froze, the only cameras in the area that captured the ensuing events were cameras on the perimeter of the launch site, which captured the orange glow of the explosion, followed by a heavy shower of broken stainless steel. debris.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, recently clarified the situation on Twitter, as he usually does openly after these incidents.
According to Musk in a report early Monday, it was a “relatively small” methane leak that led to a fire on the Raptor engine no. 2, which again destroyed part of the aviation business and created a hard start in the methane turbo pump.
In rocket science, a ‘hard start’ is a term for an overpressure event inside the combustion chambers, caused by an excess of propellants in the ignition of the engine, which can lead to an unobstructed explosion.
Musk ends with the sentiment that the problem will be solved in every possible way for the next flight.
Starship SN15, the next prototype in the series, is now aiming for the first healthy landing of the 10-kilometer high-hop program with a slew of new design upgrades, many of which address directly the problems of the failed landing of earlier flights.
SpaceX was so confident in these reviews that SN12-SN14 was scrapped by recently donating their existing sections to a new structure of the nose cone test standard and even made into ground support equipment tanks for the fast-germinating Super Heavy booster launch complex.
The implementation and testing of Starship SN15 will begin this coming Thursday with Highway 4 road closures now taking place for Thursday and Friday, as well as the following Monday and Tuesday.
The final frame of a camera on SpaceX’s Starship SN11 during the company’s live stream of the event. Credit: SpaceX
Tagged: Boca Chica Elon Musk Lead Stories SpaceX Starship Starship SN11
Nicholas D’Alessandro
Nicholas D’Alessandro was born and bred in Southwest Florida. The seeds of his interest in Space Exploration were planted when the sonic surge of the Shuttle with its return through his orphanage would resonate even throughout the country; knowing that an actual spaceship could pass overhead and have its effect was fascinating to him. A field trip to the Kennedy Space Center boosted the fascination, and with an added interest in the thriving edge of car technology and Teslas, it was the story of Elon Musk’s journey to Cape Canaveral with SpaceX that finally made Nicholas move to the Space Coast and, after joining Spaceflight Insider in 2020, begin documenting the advent of commercial spaceflight.