Hacker News Reader

I think its premature to blame this on Raptor. At least, I couldn't see anything suggesting the static fire was imminent, so my money would be on "anything but the engines" over "the engines". At least with what we know so far.

But SpaceX's brand of rocket development is certainly exciting

View on HN

That's what it seems like to me too. From the slo-mo video, it looks like one of the propellant tanks (likely the methane tank on the top) burst open, spilled a lot of the propellant and then caught fire. Engines are unlikely to be the culprit here. Interestingly, there seems to be a crack or a gap already on the surface, along which the tank bursts open when the accident occurs.

So that's 3 issues in the last 2 flights and one static fire, all different, all with different root causes, all catastrophic. Block 3 will be a different vehicle, should they just skip Block 2 (scrap however many they already built) and move on to Block 3?

I think they requires Raptor 3 engines & they are apparently still finishing their development.

So might as well use up the remaining Starship 2 & Raptor 2 inventory in destructive testing (both intentional and emergent).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com