SpaceX Woes

Close Up Photo Shows SpaceX Starship Booster After Mysterious Blast

"Base of the vehicle seems ok by flashlight."
Frank Landymore Avatar
SpaceX’s Booster 7 rocket prototype ignited in a massive fireball on Monday, stunning onlookers. A new photograph provides a closer look at the damage.
03 September 2020, Brandenburg, Grünheide: Elon Musk, head of Tesla, stands on the construction site of the Tesla Gigafactory. In Grünheide near Berlin, a maximum of 500,000 vehicles per year are to roll off the assembly line starting in July 2021. According to the plans of the car manufacturer, the maximum is to be reached as quickly as possible. Photo: Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB (Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images) Image: Getty Images

Up In Flames

SpaceX’s Booster 7 rocket prototype ignited in a massive fireball on Monday, stunning onlookers.

“Yeah, actually not good,” wrote SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Twitter, in a reversal after seemingly implying that the explosion was planned.

Not good is right. The explosion’s blast was strong enough to rock a nearby camera livestreaming the test.

While we’re still waiting for a definitive explanation, a photo provided by NASASpaceFlight photojournalist Nic Ansuini provided an up-close look at the damage.

Rocket Science

Looking on the bright side, it doesn’t appear that anything was completely blown off by the explosion. But any lurking damage to the integrity of the booster’s structure remains to be seen.

“A good view of the business end of Booster 7 the morning after Monday’s test anomaly. Seems like it could be much worse,” tweeted Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger in reaction to the image.

More optimistically, NASASpaceFlight managing editor Chris Bergin tweeted that a “lot of the Raptor 2 gang on Booster 7 might be OK!”

Puzzling

In the aftermath, Musk initially hypothesized in a tweet that an oxygen rich environment may have been the cause of the explosion: “Cryogenic fuel is an added challenge, as it evaporates to create fuel-air explosion risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth. That said, we have a lot of sensors to detect this. More later.”

Later that night, he provided a tentative assessment of the damage.

“Base of the vehicle seems ok by flashlight,” Musk tweeted. “I was just out there about an hour ago. We shut down the pad for the night for safety. Will know more in the morning.”

The booster is intended to power SpaceX’s Starship, the space company’s flagship Mars-bound spacecraft. NASA selected Starship for future lunar missions in its Artemis program, but with setbacks like these, it might be a while before this thing is headed anywhere off-world. After all, it’s yet to complete its first orbital test flight.

More on SpaceX: Area Residents Express Dismay As SpaceX Looks Poised To Downgrade “Starbase” R&D Facility

Frank Landymore Avatar

Frank Landymore

Contributing Writer

I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.