If you go back a couple hours in the linked live feed you can find the event pretty easily. Look for the big plume in the preview when you hover over the progress bar. About 1:50 ago at this working writing. I guess it would have been around 1540 EST.
SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
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Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#12And that's why they are testing it.
They are supposed to begin personal cross continental flights on this thing in just a few years for a bit more than the cost of an economy coach plane ticket.
A bit before that it is supposed to do a manned moon flyby in 2023.
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#13Is the Starship Mk1 more structurally sound than it looks? From a first glance and having no knowledge of its design, it looks like an empty soda can that would deform at the slightest disturbance. And the way it crumpled in the video doesn't seem far off from what I would expect.
Rockets are actually pretty easy to poke holes in. They're meant to keep stuff in, not out. A dropped torque wrench blew up a Titan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_...
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#14If you go back a couple hours in the linked live feed you can find the event pretty easily. Look for the big plume in the preview when you hover over the progress bar. About 1:50 ago at this working writing. I guess it would have been around 1540 EST.
Looks like the welds holding the bulkhead on failed.
For those who aren't keeping up with this the failure was on the Mk1 prototype. Mk2 has been build nearly in parallel with Mk1 and will take over early flight testing (20km hop). Elon has tweeted that this team will jump to Mk3 instead of trying to repair Mk1.
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#15And that's why they are testing it.
This twitter reply sums it up well:
“SUCCESS! We now now max pressure the tank can hold and the damage a rupture might do.”
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#16I don’t know the specifics of this particular setup, but aren’t pressure vessels usually tested hydrostatically.
Water, for example, can be pressurised without actually compressing, and therefore doesn’t undergo rapid expansion when a failure occurs.
There may be reason that precluded pressure testing with a fluid tough.
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#17Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
This twitter reply sums it up well: “SUCCESS! We now now max pressure the tank can hold and the damage a rupture might do.”
Ah so this wasn't an accident? They needed to know the pressure limits so they purposely blew the bulkhead?
Unlikely.
But they have learned to be more careful with the welds going forward. Though, admittedly, they only used panel welding on the first prototype and have already switched it up for the second one.
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#19I don’t know the specifics of this particular setup, but aren’t pressure vessels usually tested hydrostatically. Water, for example, can be pressurised without actually compressing, and therefore doesn’t undergo rapid expansion when a failure occurs. There may be reason that precluded pressure testing with a fluid tough.
Compared to the fuels that the vessel is designed to carry, water might as well be liquid lead. It would easily crush the structure before you got enough in there to do hydro testing.
Edit: correction, looks like they're using methane/LOX. Methane is 422g/L and LOX is 1141g/L (compared to water at 1000g/L). If it was the LOX tank then they could have probably hydro tested it. Not so much with the CH4 which is probably the upper tank? It also bears mentioning that they would want to test at the appropriate temperatures. Water isn't great for hydro testing at LOX/liquid CH4 temps.
Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident
#20And that's why they are testing it.
This twitter reply sums it up well: “SUCCESS! We now now max pressure the tank can hold and the damage a rupture might do.”
Well, we know max pressure THAT PARTICULAR TANK could hold.
Don't get too excited about the damage, in space it does not matter much, the crew is screwed anyway.