Setbacks don't come much bigger and louder than this. Every projected Starship timeline blew up right along with Super Heavy Booster 36. The optics here are catastrophic and will dwarf the technical issues, which I'm sure SpaceX will figure out fairly quickly. Hopefully no one was injured or killed.
They were preparing for a static fire when it blew. It was still loading fuel when the tank ruptured blew the top off the ship and exploded. There was no one remotely near it. It wasn't the booster. It was Ship 36 itself. Flight 10 Super Heavy Booster 16 was already successfully static fired on June 6th. That said they should just shutter the block 2 version of the ship as they did with some of the earlier block 1 ships they built (this was ship 36 and I believe 37 and 38 are already built as is booster 17 the last of the block 2 boosters...booster 18 will be the first block 3 booster) and move on to block 3 (ship 39) which is currently being stacked. The block 2 is just cursed. This also isn't the first time this has happened. Starship SN4 exploded during its fifth static fire test similar to this. The only slowdown I would expect to see is how long it will take them to repair the massey test site where they do most of their preliminary testing where this explosion occurred.
That is . .. . disturbing Yet Fascinating and spectacular . . . ..I hope they bounce back and glad no one is hurt Still I think we should be more focused on NASA Rocket River
Thanks for these details, and agree it won't especially slow them down. A damaging accident would be one with significant casualties, or that would mirror the past.
