SpaceX provides update on Starship explosion while fueling for static fire engine test
SpaceX has now posted an update outlining its preliminary conclusions as to the cause of the Starship explosion as the spacecraft was being fueled prior to a static fire engine test on June 18, 2025.
Engineering teams are actively investigating the incident and will follow established procedures to determine root cause. Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing. There is no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets.
It remains unclear how long it will take to get that test stand back up and running.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX has now posted an update outlining its preliminary conclusions as to the cause of the Starship explosion as the spacecraft was being fueled prior to a static fire engine test on June 18, 2025.
Engineering teams are actively investigating the incident and will follow established procedures to determine root cause. Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing. There is no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets.
It remains unclear how long it will take to get that test stand back up and running.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This new material needs to be used for COPVs:
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-nanofibers-yield-stronger-tougher-carbon.html
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-nanoparticles-polymers-toy-blocks-simple.html
Some good news
https://x.com/kerballistic07/status/1935559963574747268
A lot of shade has been cast against my neighbors at Marshall.
But now, the truth comes out:
https://x.com/MorganWKhan/status/1922148207242666266
I find him credible.
I don’t object to Marshall. I object to Marshall developing any more launch vehicles.
Instead, consider what Jared Isaacman was hoping to do with it as administrator:
https://spacenews.com/isaacman-interested-in-privately-funded-science-missions/
P.S. I should get ahead of the obvious objection on my last comment by conceding that the PBR for NASA completely zeroed out NEP research. The OMB explained this by offering it’s sense that such “efforts are costly investments, would take many years to develop, and have not been identified as the propulsion mode for deep space missions.”
Obviously, Isaacman does not agree with that, and had he actually become administrator, that could have posed a challenge for him in his plans. Assuming Congress did not restore it (I have not heard what will happen there) he may have hoped that he could use his first year on the job building up the case to get the White House to bring it back in the FY2027 PBR.
Myself, I appreciate Russ Vought’s zeal for cutting the fat, but honestly, if we are going to be throwing millions at Marshall, I would far, far prefer that it be for research on NEP than building ginormous unaffordable white elephant rockets. This actually is the sort of thing private industry *isn’t* in a position to pursue right now.
On the contrary–it is good to fund a professional outfit that doesn’t have a tent city mindset–over time –that’s what is unsustainable in terms of capability.
Jared has as much business telling Marshall what to do as I have telling Warren Buffett what to invest in.
Keep your lane Jared.
Jeff Wright,
Good material science stuff as always. Thanx.
Anent “MorganWyattKhan” – or whoever he actually is – I’m sure you do find him credible because what he has to say feeds your confirmation bias. He would be a lot more credible if any of this bowb about COPVs had appeared prior to the explosion of Ship 36 but it all seems to be ex post facto with one apparent exception.
I don’t use X because I find the user interface illogical and opaque. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about X than I can tell me whether or not it’s possible to edit one’s own posts long after they are originally made. If so, then there is no way to trust any seeming timeline for X posts.
Based on what I’ve read of “Mr. Khan” on X he seems to fancy himself someone special – that business about having supposedly died and been revived at age five, for example. He also seems to be prickly toward other people who don’t share his exalted view of himself – which, at Starbase, was, I suspect, pretty much everyone.
Hence all of the scorn for “locals” and “tent era workers.” He also doesn’t seem to have worked at Starbase for very long before washing out. Being a recently arrived white guy with an attitude and much of the Starbase workforce being notably brown one also has to note how much the unsubstantiated allegations about various forms of FOD in the vehicles rhymes with stuff one used to hear from southern whites back in the Jim Crow days about the alleged deficiencies of black workers – especially that bit about “human waste.”
I’m not a psychologist but I’ve had co-workers in the past with a lot of the same affect. They’re surprisingly common. I think what we have here is a garden-variety disgruntled ex-employee who is also, most likely, a borderline personality.
Anent Jared, he is not, of course, trying to “tell Marshall what to do,” but, had he actually become NASA Administrator, he very much would have had the standing to do exactly that. MSFC’s work was not mandated by God’s Own Prophet on stone tablets brought down from some mountain, never to be messed with by mere mortals again. It also doesn’t get to decide, on its own, what it will or won’t do.
Jared intended, it seems clear, to try keeping the Marshall band together by giving them some new music to play instead of just closing down the whole bandstand. Marshall manifestly was – and is – not doing anything actually useful so I think Jared was being quite magnanimous in looking for a way to salvage it. Had the planning been in my hands, the fate of Marshall would have been Carthage 2.0. Don’t be overly surprised if whoever eventually gets the Administrator job winds up being more of my persuasion than of Jared’s.
Your fetishization of Marshall seems very much of a piece with your nostalgist ruminations over space-related ancient history of various sorts. The Marshall of today is manifestly not the Marshall of the Space Race glory days. It’s far closer, now, to being The Portrait of Dorian Gray or Miss Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations.