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nomilk parent
This was a entire ship (not just an engine), and nobody was hurt or killed. Is this a major or minor setback for SpaceX? Rapid unscheduled disassemblies may look spectacularly bad but may be par for the course during testing (in order to push things to their limits to learn where they break) - curious to learn how bad this one is.
Ekaros
In normally run project, it would be pretty big. As you would need to do proper analysis just what failed and how. And then decide, design and implement needed fixes. With SpaceX engineering culture who knows...
m4rtink
In "normal" project a serious misshap of this kind often ends the project - see how the DC-X VTVL rocket testbed fell over due to one landing leg not extending, ending the whole project. Nothing related to what was being tested or developed and it ended the whole project.

As a result we got booster landings delayed by 20 years - and SpaceX would also not get there with Falcon 9 if they would call it quit after spcetacular failures (see Falcon 9R test bed).

peterfirefly
They were incredibly crazy to use the RL-10 hydrogen engine for the supposedly cheap prototype flights.
m4rtink
I think those were available off the shelf at thet time ? Not sure what else would be suitable in early 90s, provided you did not build your own like basically all modern rocket companies since then.
peterfirefly
Armadillo Aerospace (and many others, a decade or two ago) showed that rocket engines could be developed and built quickly and cheaply. The cost is in the optimization.

Choosing a hydrogen engine (which only really makes sense for upper stages) also means you need a hydrogen tank... a cryogenic hydrogen tank. They chose to make such a tank with a weird shape that fit the unnecessarily weird shape of their prototype. I think the major cost of getting their craft repaired (or more realistically, having a new one built) was to build a new custom hydrogen tank.

Crazy, when they didn't need anything optimized/complicated for testing launch and landing.

Also wild that they went with an F/A-18 accelerometer/gyro package. The first commercial mass market MEMS accelerometer was introduced in 1991 and was in volume production in 1993. I mean, they had to pick something and the ADXL50 wasn't ready yet (and they would still have had to design a 3-axis solution around it if it were), so I don't blame them for that (expensive) decision.

https://qringtech.com/TryMe/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Histo... https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/obso...

I do very much blame them for the choice of the RL-10, though. And for going immediately to such a large size -- that's the same thing as saying "we plan on not making any mistakes".

m4rtink
I agree, but still - what could they have used that was not "build your own engine" ? They seemed to have preferred (or maybe were forced to ?) use off the shelf hardware, even if sub-optimal.

The only engines that were not hypergolic & used kerolox were those used on the Atlas rockets or on the Deltas. Not sure if they had the necessary throttling range and other characteristics. I guess now I need to find some sort of a biography from someone working on the DC-X project. :D

As for Armadillo Aerospace - their efforts were admirably and I really enjoyed watching their progress. And they did manage to get a working engine. :)

tsimionescu
It's a gigantic setback. Most directly, it will delay their launches for a good time while they repair and rebuild the site. But it also shows some kind of severe design flaws if this can happen even with no engines running.
riffraff
I think you're extrapolating too much.

This could be a "simple" production error (think "cracked pipe") which can be fixed with more effective monitoring of the construction, and not a major design flaw.

It might be someone forgot a wrench somewhere for what we know.

fabian2k
A simple error like that should be caught before you fill the rocket with methane and liquid oxygen. If a simple error gets through to this point your procedures are bad, which is a big problem for a complex rocket with many parts that could have simple errors.
riffraff
that's why I put "simple" in quotes.

Obviously it's not trivial, since they already flew a few spaceships and rockets, but it could be an edge case not considered until now which can still be fixed, rather than a "well, it turned out to be impossible to fly a rocket with this design".

radu_floricica
The error itself is probably easily fixed. Usually the bigger the effects, easier to fix.

The real problem is the damaged infrastructure. They don't have several launch towers in the pipeline like they have Starships. This is a "pause and rebuild" scenario, with the wait time much harder to parallelize with something else. Whatever time they spend until they have the second launch tower functional, I'd bet about half of it will be an overall addition to the whole project.

peterfirefly
> They don't have several launch towers in the pipeline like they have Starships.

They didn't lose a launch tower. It happened at a site only used for static fire tests.

(And they kinda do have several launch towers in the pipeline...)

jmaestrooper
The test site is severely damaged, and they don't have another one. It took what ,6 months to rebuild the launch tower after IFT-1? And it wasn't destroyed, just damaged, on the test site the tanks and pipes and all the rest are right near the vehicle so I see a lot of destruction.

So what, 6 to 9 months while they repair/build new test site(s)?

Might as well cut the losses and scrap Block 2 altogether, and move on to Block 3.

sam_bristow
Beyond whatever design or production issues caused this particular anomaly there will also be the delays due to the fact they just blew up a lot of ground support equipment.
XorNot
I worry that the current "favorable" FAA environment is leading to a regression in their engineering quality honestly.

There's a simple fault, and then there's the question of why did it happen anyway?

KaiserPro
> This could be a "simple" production error (think "cracked pipe") which can be fixed with more effective monitoring of the construction, and not a major design flaw.

Good luck trying to get launch insurance for that without a full root cause and proof in double triplicate that this has been fixed.

Are you going to put you payload on one of those, a payload that will take 3 years to rebuild, and might end the company?

mr_toad
Starship has never carried a real payload, so insurance is irrelevant. Nobody will be putting billion dollar satellites on it until (if) it has been flight proven.
aredox
If your space program has "simple" errors, then you are incompetent. These have to be stomped out beforehand. Is this amateur hour?
mulmen
Starship is not yet operational. It is in development. This is “before hand”.
madaxe_again
Falcon 9 seems pretty competently run.
Balgair
So then we'd have to assume that the error was not a 'simple' one. Which is a lot harder to find and fix, almost by definition.

I mean, look, this isn't a good sign for spacex. Whatever problem there is, clearly it's hard to find and fix. Could be some alloy, could be some pressure sensor, could be the whole management chain. Who knows yet.

But we very much do know this isn't a good sign.

3 More Comments →
jmaestrooper
Might actually not be a design flaw, just a leak due to rushed production. But these should be caught BEFORE the thing blows up and causes X million worth of damage.
somenameforme
It's going to be a relatively minor setback. Biggest issue will be pad repair time. Starships is still in development and has been going boom pretty regularly, though not before launch usually! The investigation of the cause will be interesting. Given the current political context it's probably going to be AMOS-6 ramped up exponentially.

AMOS-6 was a pretty similar situation where a rocket exploded prior to a static-fire, and in fact is the reason that static fires are done without payloads, though Starship would not yet have a payload. The difficult to explain nature of the explosion, alongside some quite compelling circumstantial evidence, caused a theory of sabotage (sniping an exact segment of the rocket) to become widespread. Of course the cause here could be more straight forward to pin down - we'll know a lot more in a few days!

perihelions
> "is the reason that static fires are done without payloads"

And also (IIRC) the reason Starship abandoned helium COPV tanks and switched to autogenous pressurization.

perihelions
Hey, what do you know, it was a COPV again!

https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1lf8huf/preli... ("Preliminary data suggests that a nitrogen COPV in the payload bay failed below its proof pressure...")

m4rtink
It’s not COPV

There’s no way it’s COPV

It was COPV

(Adapted from https://www.cyberciti.biz/humour/a-haiku-about-dns/)

roer
In terms of losing a ship, probably not too bad. The ground equipment might take a bit longer to replace, and they will probably want to understand what happened here before continuing. Or, as you suggest, this was a more stressing test than usual, but I doubt they'd do that with a complete ship like this.
aqme28
The fact that they didn't even make it to the test seems really bad. It's one thing for a test to fail. It seems downright dangerous if it fails before the test even started.
af78
Plus the rocket is reusable, right? No reason to freak out. /s

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