‘Major Anomaly’ Behind Latest SpaceX Starship Explosion
https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-starship-explosion-major-anomaly/
‘Major Anomaly’ Behind Latest SpaceX Starship Explosion
https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-starship-explosion-major-anomaly/
38 Comments
The explosion occurred as SpaceX finished up loading super-cold methane and liquid oxygen propellants into Starship in preparation for the static fire test. The company said the area around the test site was evacuated of all personnel, and everyone was safe and accounted for after the incident. Firefighters from the Brownsville Fire Department were dispatched to the scene.
“Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials,” SpaceX posted on X. “There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue.”
In a separate post on X, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, wrote that preliminary data suggests a high-pressure nitrogen tank failed inside Starship’s payload bay. Many rockets have such tanks, or composite overwrapped pressure vessels, containing high-pressure gases used for purging and pressurizing different compartments inside the vehicle. These tanks, or COPVs, can be finicky. SpaceX engineers blamed hardware associated with COPVs for the only two catastrophic failures of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015 and 2016
Read more: [https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-starship-explosion-major-anomaly/](https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-starship-explosion-major-anomaly/)
elon having a huge massive downward spiral and that shit aint stopping. AND IM HERE FOR IT LMFAOOOOO, up yours, elon.
Was the massive fireball the thing that tipped them off to this “anomaly”?
You mean they didn’t intend for it to blow up on the landing pad? That was anomalous?
Curious what percentage of over pressure the stress test of the offending cylinder was subjected to. 1.5 x the max operating pressure? Any engineers care to share insight?
Now they know one way to go about not conducting a safe static fire test, so in the Elon Musk world this is a success 😎
Is it an anomaly if this is the what third or fourth in a row?
As I’ve seen said before, and honestly I agree, there is likely a serious design flaw with the V2 starship. V1 got super close to a successful test flight just for so much backsliding on progress to occur. While we may never really know the true issue at play, it’s clear something fundamental is clearly broken
Engineers: “Whatever you do, do NOT press the red button!”
Elon proceeds to press the red button…
-Anomaly solved-
Well, the front’s not supposed to fall off for a start.
I’m surprised that no one is suggesting industrial sabotage. After a man single-handedly took away so much from so many people so quickly, it’s a consideration that someone was pissed off enough with the right access to the right people at the right places to make this happen.
That’s not a very nice way to talk about Elon
Trump got tight at his tweet and sabotages that thang mang
I am not a rocket scientist but I agree; that looks like a major anomaly.
If NASA had done this the whole agency would be shut by now.
I’m going to say something a little controversial.
Someone commented down threat a little bit how successful without even really trying the first version of starship was. That’s got me thinking, especially since we haven’t had a single flight of the current version of starship that has come even close to the accidental success: is it possible That version two of starship is intentionally being under designed in order for money to continue to flow into SpaceX?
I honestly don’t believe that’s true. I believe this is a bit badly designed spaceship from the beginning, but it is a thought that is suddenly in my mind.
Surprised hes not leaning into the MAGAts sabotage theory. For the record, I dont even care if it was sabotage, it was awesome! Thank you!
Fire coming out of somewhere besides the arse end is, indeed, an anomaly.
“It wasn’t our poor planning, it was an SCP! See it! Right there, in the flames you can see Richard Gear, it’s Buddha that’s causing this!!”
Guys, I am a believer in the paranormal and spooky thing but there’s three pretty obvious truths.
Bigfoot(s) is just a guy(s) who rejected society, Ouija boards should be considered the unmarked Ford vans of spiritual tools and finally this was careless corner cutting and incompetence on the people running the show and not some god wrecking stuff.
They have had enough failures lately to suggest they need to spend more time on quality control. I understand, move fast and break things, but there have been three or four explosions lately, that would not be acceptable in other regulated industries.
It was just a rapid unplanned deconstruction, nothing out of the ordinary
Was it a management decision to put the storage tank that was close to the rocket test stand unprotected. Now you considered the cost of rebuilding the storage tanks vs a protected wall.
Oh the Major up to his old tricks again. This may cause Major Anomaly his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel Anolomy.
Probably the AI generated nonsense they’ve been using to help build code and make it look like they know what they’re doing. They’ve almost got a 50% success rate, and us taxpayers still footing the bill.
I’m not saying it’s Aliens but… it’s Aliens
Is this them trying to foment speculation that some lone sniper shot the ship from a roof 10 miles away like they claimed a few years ago?
And we’re going to trust this company with a Mars mission?
Elon did you use the same second hand carbon fiber to wrap the nitrogen bottles that the submersible Titan used? Turned that COPV into COPE.
You’re supposed to load the billionaires *before* loading the liquid O2. It’s amateur hour over there.
My initial thought was arson, so this makes sense to me.
Another failure from Musk. Maybe he should shut up, stay home, and let the professionals do the work.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[BFR](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myufyrp “Last usage”)|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)|
| |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you’re not the first to notice|
|[COPV](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myups67 “Last usage”)|[Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_overwrapped_pressure_vessel)|
|[IM](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myuafyc “Last usage”)|Initial Mass deliverable to a given orbit, without accounting for fuel|
|[MEOP](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myuctkj “Last usage”)|Maximum Expected Operating Pressure|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myupl84 “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1lg8wxx/stub/myuk2mp “Last usage”)|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^(6 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1lf1lqg)^( has 47 acronyms.)
^([Thread #11467 for this sub, first seen 20th Jun 2025, 18:01])
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Obviously everything they plan should be grounded for now and stay that way until we stop funding traitors like Musk. The company could have some hope if he’s fired and deported.
It’s some kind of… SpaceX anomaly
We could try reconfiguring the forward deflector to a subspace variance of 2.483?
Do it, Ensign Kim.
Check decimal point. Very often it’s the decimal point misplaced
Well the front wasn’t supposed to fall of for starters.
I think major anomaly doesn’t quite capture the essence of “everything was blown to absolute hell”.
Major anamoly usually translates to human error. Just…more mysterious sounding so most people don’t think about how much a person F***ed up.
No doubt in my mind that aerospace level workmanship is a problem for SpaceX. They should not have suffered all these different kinds of explosions.