Starship Flight 10: Ship 36 explodes during static fire attempt

SpaceX’s Starship program has hit another setback as what was expected to be its next flight-ready Starship second stage exploded on the test stand prior to an engine test. The cause of the explosion is unknown, and as of this writing, no injuries have been reported.

Ship 36, the next expected flight-ready Starship second stage, also known just as “The Ship” or more confusingly “The Starship,” was rolled over to the Massy’s test site over the weekend for testing. In what was believed to be a static fire attempt of its Raptor engines, the rocket exploded into a massive fireball, lighting up the Texas night sky.

Elon Musk suggests that the root cause of the explosion was the failure of a COPV, composite overwrapped pressure vessel, which held liquid nitrogen. These tanks can hold immense pressure and when they fail, like what we saw last night or back in 2016 with the Falcon 9 AMOS-6 incident, it can release a lot of energy.

No details were given by SpaceX or Musk about whether a redesign of the COPV will be required and how long that could take.

While the loss of the flight hardware is a big blow to SpaceX’s potential Flight 10 timeline, it may be a bigger blow if Massy’s test site sustained major damage to its ground equipment.

SpaceX purchased the Massey Gun Range to become its new spot for cryogenic and engine testing for both the ship and boosters. It can support everything but a booster static fire, all of which can be done without closing the public road that passes through Starbase.

The site has been entirely cleared of what was its own gun range infrastructure and has been transformed into a small launch pad, complete with its own propellant system and a flame trench.

If serious damage is caused to the test site’s ground equipment, that could put the site out of commission for an unknown amount of time.

For Ship 36, the vehicle is a total loss and will require Ship 37 to likely take its place. Ship 37 is still receiving engine and flap installation and has yet to have all of its heat shield tiles installed.

With Starship still being a development program, failures like this shouldn’t be unexpected. However, this is yet another blow for the program after its previous three vehicles failed to complete their entire missions during flight. Now it has lost another vehicle and discovered a new potential failure point that needs to be resolved.