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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Well, which is it? I'm going to trust NASASpaceflight over this article and go with it was a McGregor. No where near Starbase. And that means it will likely have no effect on IFT4 as this article says.
edit: Adding to this, the author of this article has no idea what they are talking about.
So clearly nothing to do with IFT4, as Ship 29 and Booster 11 are already outfitted with their engines, non of which are Raptor 2s.
IFT3 burned up on reentry, maybe parts of it made it to the ocean, but it was not crashing into the ocean that was the problem. IFT4 does not plan on doing a reentry burn. No one does a reentry burn from orbit. Starship uses a heat shield like every other orbital space craft. They are planning to attempt a landing burn, that is probably what they are talking about.
It waw McGregor. And while the explosion was spectacular, it happened on the test stand, so not much damage was done actually.
Yeah anyone following space YouTube has seen this a dozen times already and knows that it was a deflagration likely due to busted lines and not a detonation. The test stand is likely undamaged (In anysignificant way at least) and it was just an engine test of likely raptor 2 design. This has nothing to do with IFT4 or starbase as far as we can tell.
Indeed. We don't know the conditions of the test. Maybe it was running the engines through a simulated flight. Or they were testing the engine in different failure modes to see if it shuts itself down or takes care of the problem correctly. Or they were doing a deliberate test to failure where a RUD is the expected result.