SpaceX Starship upper stage explodes during ramp-up to expected engine test firing
Source: CBS news
By June 19, 2025 / 3:05 AM EDT
A SpaceX Starship upper stage exploded in a spectacular conflagration during ramp-up to an expected engine test firing at the company's Starbase manufacturing facility on the Texas Gulf Coast late Wednesday, destroying the rocket in what appears to be a major setback for the Super Heavy-Starship vehicle Elon Musk says is critical to the company's future.
Video from LabPadre, a company that monitors SpaceX activities at Starbase, showed the Starship suddenly exploding in a huge fireball just after 11 p.m. CDT, 10 to 15 minutes before the anticipated engine test firing, sending flaming debris shooting away into the overnight sky from a churning fireball that engulfed the test stand.
The video showed what appeared to be two major explosions, the first near the rocket's nose followed a moment later by a second eruption of flame and debris on the left side of the spacecraft. The test stand disappeared in a billowing fireball that rose into the overnight sky like a bomb blast.
The Starship was being filled with a full load of liquid oxygen and a partial load of high-energy methane fuel when the detonations occurred. Ninety minutes after the initial blast, fires appeared to still be burning out of control at what is known as the Massey test site, where cryogenic testing and hotfire tests are typically conducted.....................
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-starship-upper-stage-explosion-expected-engine-test-firing/
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mahatmakanejeeves
(65,559 posts)You can buy more rockets.
riversedge
(76,552 posts)travelingthrulife
(2,862 posts)How much environmental damage is enough. How much wasted money is enough.
Martin68
(26,146 posts)If China and/or Russia achieve dominance in space we are totally fucked.
taxi
(2,393 posts)riversedge
(76,552 posts)boonecreek
(1,130 posts)Or as they used to say on SCTV's Farm Film Report, "It blowed up real good!"
speak easy
(11,947 posts)spare the sextalk

sop
(15,159 posts)hueymahl
(2,815 posts)I do wonder if the funding directed at private space companies would have allowed NASA to advance its technology at a similar or even faster rate.
Gore1FL
(22,547 posts)Have you reviewed NASA missions in the past decades?
NASA is spectacular.
Wicked Blue
(8,117 posts)Martin68
(26,146 posts)3825-87867
(1,470 posts)aren't the only incompetents at Musk Industries.
It's almost like a bunch of kids playing with fireworks (and probably getting paid well), screwing up things and their dad says, "Here's another 10 bucks, try again. Now don't bother me and any of your mothers."
groundloop
(13,112 posts)My son is an aerospace engineer, he tells me that it's common knowledge that SpaceX engineers are underpaid and work crazy long hours. They only stay long enough to gain experience before getting a better job.
Canada Kid
(257 posts)Too bad the asshole wasn't inside! Great to see another setback for this creep. Maybe if he gets enough disappointments in his life he'll take up skydiving without a parachute.
AZLD4Candidate
(6,673 posts)rocket into space without it exploding.
And the Chinese and Musk are supposed to be light years ahead of us on everything????
LiberalArkie
(18,581 posts)mdbl
(6,907 posts)Or is it all private money. I tend to think it's probably govt money involved since Eloon has been on the govt teet for a long time now.
Paladin
(31,013 posts)Elon seems to be getting a lot of use out of his thesaurus, collecting new terms for "fuckups."
Archae
(47,245 posts)The astronauts watching one rocket failure after another.
Failures will happen.
Rockets are incredibly complex machines, and far too often, a minor problem becomes an explosion or whatnot.
So give them a break, they really are working on the problems.
jmowreader
(52,527 posts)There are three points I'd like to make.
Point 1: SpaceX seems to operate under the assumption no one's ever built a rocket before. They're making mistakes that were solved in the 1950s.
Point 2: The standard SpaceX development system is "blow up three rockets and examine the shrapnel." This is blown-up Starship number ten.
Point 3: This explosion didn't even have the common courtesy to wait until they launched the rocket to happen. This happened on a test stand before the test firing.
At some point in time one of two things needs to happen: SpaceX figures out how to make this rocket work like Right Now, or the FAA orders Elon's passion project to end because at this point it's hazardous to the planet.
I have heard that the problem they're having is related to the methane fuel this rocket uses. ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket is fueled with methane; they have launched two and both worked fine. The advantage ULA has is the Vulcan first stage is an evolution of the extremely reliable Atlas V.
Zorro
(17,664 posts)Marthe48
(21,214 posts)n/t
Intractable
(1,143 posts)Thanks to Elon, I no longer want the human race to go to Mars.
Ocelot II
(125,909 posts)Cheezoholic
(3,095 posts)One of the biggest issues with very large rockets is "POGO", a harmonic vibration issue that rips very large rockets apart under acceleration. NASA pretty much solved (though not 100%) this issue 60 years ago with the way the different stages were attached to each other (ripping off a Russian design on the original Soyuz. SpaceX thought they were smarter but guess what, hey are now implementing those design characteristics.
Another is "sloshing" of the massive amounts of fuel in the tanks during acceleration, deceleration and maneuvering. If a powerful rocket engine which pumps 1k's of pounds of fuel per second into its ignition chamber is deprived of either the oxidizer and/or the fuel being burned for even a millisecond because the fuel is "sloshing" around in the pressurized tanks it will melt and explode. NASA solved this problem 60 years ago including doing something called "hot staging" that allows the second stage to ignite while the first stage is still accelerating bot at an ever decreasing rate. SpaceX lost 2 boosters due to this now they are "hot staging".
This "ship" has a new version of their very impressive Raptor engine however they are tackling issues with fuel leaks and transport to these engines. These engines are some of the most powerful and efficient rocket engines yet designed but without being too nerdy there are some lessons once again from the Apollo F1 they could learn from and possibly prevent the issues they
are having with leaks etc. (Btw, the engineers during the Gemini/Apollo program were dealing with Hydrogen to mix with O2 and burn in their engines, a fuel that is 1000 times more complex to work with that the Methane SpaceX uses. Should be a hint right there of how good they were back then)
There are several other things from the 60's SpaceX has ignored as "old thinking" , "just a bunch of nerds with slide rules and pocket protector" rocket scientists and engineers when in fact they should've taken the engineering prowess from that period and used it as a foundation instead of shrugging it off. It's one of the reasons SpaceX's legendary engine designer Tom Mueller left the company many years ago. There was too much resistance by Musk mainly to apply what Musk thought was ancient technology.
I will confess I have been a rocket/space nerd all my life and am fairly well versed in a lot of aspects (rocket scientist I am not lol) and I love what SpaceX is trying to achieve. Not so much the Mars colony fantasy in 5 years ( we have to go back to the moon first period) but they are the ones pushing the envelope in rocket design and efficiency. Contrary to what people may think the engineers and for that matter everyone who works for SpaceX are not a bunch of Eloon fanboys. I personally know a couple. These are very smart young people with vision and drive to do the undoable in their minds. The same vision and drive of the "slide rule" folks back in the 50's and 60's. The sad part is our government space and engineering program has been thrown onto the trash heap so these kids have nowhere to go but someplace like SpaceX. The asshole literally has all the money in the world to throw at this so it's where these bright minds land. There's a reason Eloon doesn't "run" the company. There's actually a contract that keeps him from totally wrecking it, which he would if he had free-range.
And I think, from what I'm hearing and seeing, they are cracking open some notebooks from the 60's because they've already changed many facets of their design using the knowledge from some amazing engineers 60 years ago. They are "hot staging" now, they've incorporated water suppression and flame trench's on the pad, they've re-designed pad fueling connecters to nearly Apollo specs, and tons of other things. They're a year or 2 away still from getting this thing flight ready so expect more "RUD's". They could be 5 years ahead from where they are now if they'd have done that in the first place IMHO.
Martin68
(26,146 posts)Cheezoholic
(3,095 posts)The initial design of the BFR completely ignored the issues themselves. I mean they spent 2 years trying to get the thing up off of a concrete pad, no trench no nothing. The 3 then 6 then 33 engines blew it to smithereens. I never said they had to copy 60 year old technology. But you dont just toss a working concept out the window because, hey, thats old shit. Our cars, airplanes, even computers all still run on the same basic successful working foundations they were originally designed on. Every one of those things went through testing to failure to come up with solid designs based on mathematical and physical principles that came out the other side as solid working foundations. Thats engineering. The old you can't re-invent the wheel, just make a better one principle. Thats how I was taught in engineering school anyway. Thats all I'm saying.
electric_blue68
(22,337 posts)Is there any relationship to like when troops are marching over a bridge they break their cadence bc under certain conditions their cadences' vibrations can break a bridge apart.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(125,876 posts)Jilly_in_VA
(12,409 posts)You just can't do anything right, can you?
dweller
(26,832 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 19, 2025, 02:00 PM - Edit history (1)
Wonder what he’s planned for July 4th ?
🤔
Oh … https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220413645
✌🏻
Martin68
(26,146 posts)of any of Musk's endeavors. I don't think he is stable enough to depend on for National Security. I would like to see him prohibited from decision-making in all his companies.
LetMyPeopleVote
(166,212 posts)LudwigPastorius
(12,920 posts)
Mysterian
(5,766 posts)Sure nuff.
RussBLib
(9,952 posts)....they've been green lighting EVERYTHING at Boca Chica, most likely because they have been taken over by Muskrats and Trumpets.
https://russblib.blogspot.com