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.
For those who are interested in watching....the next Starship flight test is scheduled for this Sunday evening at 6:30pm Central Time https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/Starship_Flight_Test_10
looking forward to it. I visited Starbase last sunday hoping to catch a view of the ship stacked on the pad. Its crazy how close the tanks and launchpad are to the roadside. Definitely worth catching a few selfies before they Space Center Houston the area
Holy crap did they stress test the ship upon reentry. At one point they almost had the ship completely vertical during reentry. They also blew out a hole in the skirt of the ship (where they more than likely intentionally didn't install a heat shield tile) and still got the engines to relight for a landing burn. Very impressive.
It was a great flight. Everything went well. I was happy to see the simulators deploy with no issue. Hopefully soon we will see payloads deploy into orbit. Up next - catching the starship
The tower catch along with proving they can refuel in space are definitely the next major milestones, It will be interesting to see what direction they go in next since the next flight will be the last of the block 2 starships and boosters. Do they try to replicate this test flight or do they go for actual orbit (which would only require about an additional 30 seconds of burn time from starship after separation from the booster) and more than likely another splashdown next time? After test flight 11 Spacex will be switching to block three ships and boosters which will come with another round of major upgrades in itself as well as the debut of their new raptor 3 engines. I will wager if they get two successful flights out of this ship they will go for their first tower catch for starship itself.
That's pretty incredible. My Dad would have got a kick out of that latest launch and soft landing. In college, I had to write a program in a more advanced programming class that simulated a UFO like saucer with multiple engines hovering. The program basically had to keep level flight by compensating thrust with the correct engines to keep it level. I don't think I got it working quite right. It probably worked sloppily. It wasn't visual. I think it was a batch app with inputs/outputs written in COBOL in an IBM AS400 environment. So, I did this before Tesla did!
