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SpaceX has started the engines on its latest Starship prototype for the third time on Thursday evening (November 12), but the test was bumpy.
The Starship SN8 vehicle performed its third short “static fire” – a test in which engines are ignited while a rocket remains anchored to the ground – at the SpaceX facility in south Texas on Thursday near the village of Boca Chica.
Shortly after the test, which several external organizations broadcast live via the web, it was possible to see some material dripping from the base of SN8. This sounded strange and the founder and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk soon confirmed that something non-nominal had happened.
Related: Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX’s Mars colonizing vehicles in pictures
“We have lost the vehicle’s pneumatics. Reason unknown at the moment. The pressure of the liquid oxygen tank is increasing. Hopefully it will trigger the rupture disk to relieve the pressure, otherwise it will pop the cap.”, Musk he said via Twitter Thursday evening. (Burst discs are single-use devices that, like valves, seal different sections or systems of a vehicle. They relieve pressure when they open, as Musk noted.)
The cause of the problem is unknown at the moment, Musk said another tweet on Thursday: “Maybe an engine pre-burner or hot gas manifold melted. Whatever it is, it caused the pneumatic leak. We need to design this problem.”
This is the bad news. The good news is that the burst disk has done its job and the SN8 is still whole.
“The rupture disk has worked, so the vehicle appears to be fine. We will need to replace at least one of the engines,” Musk said in another tweet.
The burst disk worked so the vehicle appears to be fine. We will have to replace at least one of the engines.November 13, 2020
The SN8 (“Serial Number 8”) has three Raptors, SpaceX’s powerful next-generation engine that runs on liquid methane and liquid oxygen. No previous spaceship prototype had more than one Raptor.
The static fires of SN8: the first two occurred on October 20 and November 10 – are set to pave the way for a 15-kilometer-high test flight in the near future. It would be much taller than what its predecessors did. The squat Starhopper and the SN5 and SN6 prototypes reached a maximum altitude of around 150 meters during their flights, which took place in the summer of 2019 and last August and September respectively. (The SN8 also sports a bow cone and stabilizer fins to help it handle the more ambitious oncoming flight.)
The setback on Thursday night will delay SN8’s big leap, but by how long we’ll have to wait and see.
The Starship system consists of a 50-meter high vehicle called Starship and a huge rocket known as Super Heavy, both of which are fully and quickly reusable. The latest spacecraft will have six Raptors and Super Heavy will be powered by around 30 engines.
SpaceX sees Starship as the pioneering transportation system that will make colonization of Mars – Musk’s long-held ambition – economically viable. If all goes according to plan, Starship will also handle all of SpaceX’s other flight needs, from launching satellites to cleaning up space junk to transporting passengers on super-fast “point-to-point” travel around the world.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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