The prototype of the SN10 starship arrives for a landing.
SpaceX
The latest prototype spacecraft SpaceX, called SN11, found an explosive end last week, like its three predecessors. But the conditions surrounding the great boom were uniquely mysterious, as dense fog and defective cameras obscured the details of their final destination.
Now, the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has some details about what happened in the final moments of SN11. On Twitter Monday morning, Musk attributed the explosion to a fuel leak.
“A (relatively) small leak of CH4 caused a fire in engine 2 and fried part of the avionics, causing a difficult start in the attempted landing on the CH4 turbo bomb,” he wrote.
The climb phase, the transition to the horizontal and the control during the free fall were good.
A (relatively) small CH4 leak led to a fire in engine 2 and fried the avionics part, causing a difficult start in the attempt to land a burn in the CH4 turbo pump.
This is being corrected in 6 ways until Sunday.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2021
SN11 was launched from the company’s starship development center in Texas on March 30 with zero visibility on the ground. Everything went well while the vehicle – final versions of which Musk hopes to send to the Moon and Mars in the years to come – rose to about 10 kilometers and then fell back to Earth. After making its trademark flip maneuver in preparation for a landing burn and smooth touchdown, the onboard cameras froze during the SpaceX live broadcast.
Other remotely operated live broadcast cameras aimed at the nearby airstrip captured an orange glow in the fog followed by a hellish storm of debris raining in the exclusion zone around the runway.
Two previous prototypes, SN8 and SN9, exploded on impact thanks to a forced landing. SN10 crashed the threshold, but then exploded on the landing pad a few minutes later. SN11 appears to be the first to explode just before it hits the ground.
So now we have seen a good sample of the ways in which one of these prototypes can end up during the landing phase. There are reasons for optimism that the next attempt will be better.
See this:
SpaceX starship explosion: why this huge rocket …
8:55 am
SpaceX will jump to the SN15, which reportedly incorporates a series of updates. Musk is excited enough that he has chosen to essentially discard SN12, SN13 and SN14.
SN15 is already assembled and being prepared for testing before its debut. The hope is that one of the next prototypes will not only survive the landing, but will allow the company to proceed to try the first orbital flight for the Starship as early as June.
Musk says he certainly does not expect a repeat of the critical leak that led to the splintering anomaly seen last week.
“This is being fixed in six ways by Sunday,” he tweeted.
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