SpaceX SN3 Starship Destroyed - Liquid Oxygen Tank Crumpled

Another very disappointing end to the week with SpaceX SN3 Starship Destroyed. Looks like the Liquid Oxygen Tank Crumpled. This is quite disappointing as we had huge hopes
for the SN 3 because it looked just so much more robust. The welds were looking really beautiful. The SN 4 is already being built so we can look forward to that which is
going come up rapidly much quicker than most people would realize. A huge
thank you to Boca Chica girl with NASAspaceflight and also LabPadre links to
both of those incredibly awesome channels below.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO

THE NASASPACEFLIGHT TEAM

LABPADRE

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[MIck-M]

I feel that I speak for most Australian Star-ship enthusiasts when I say, "BUGGER!".

[conall]

"We go to the Moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because we asked ourselves; 'How hard can it be?'" - Scott Manley, I think.

[gerritwesterneng]

It looks like middle tank had all valves closed and being cooled by top tank creating a vacuum

[agsystems]

A quick numbers run suggests that the lower tank was barely pressurised. With an upper area of ~60sqm, and overpressure of .5 bar in the lower tank is enough to take the full weight of the methane in the tank, meaning the lower tank steel would be under tension.
It almost certainly was partially pressurised, because of the difference in strength once those wrinkles appear. If it was relying on the steel rather than internal pressure the collapse would not have paused the way it did, as the steel structure would get weaker as the collapse continued making it impossible for the collapse to pause. The small distance drop in the initial collapse suggests that it occurred almost as soon as the load on the steel switched from tensile to compressive.

My guess is that they failed to adequately account for volume change from cooling of the air inside. The bulkhead would be extremely cold, and at the top of the tank, driving powerful convective cooling inside. As it cools the pressure would drop, and so you would need to pump more pressurant in. Underestimate how fast this occurs and you might not be able to pump it up fast enough.

I don't think they are too worried about this. It is a test configuration issue. They don't even seem to worried about building a working rocket at all! This might come back to haunt them, but they seem to think that the production setup is the bottleneck, and this has no bearing on that at all.

It does concern me that a tank pressurisation issue will be mission critical, as that means there is a single point of failure. This is not new, though this demonstrates it to anyone that was not already aware.

[Locedamius]

I am both sad to see it fail and glad to see it fail differently from SN1, so there is definitely some development happening. We will see what the future brings...

[WillArtie]

Looks like heavy top and no pressure in the bottom - can't think of why else that would happen. Thanks Marcus!

[rustyfox]

Back when spacex was new and developing falcon 1, it’s was the 4th attempt that succeeded. So if history repeats then SN4 will be the one.

[RogalloShaolin]

"As an inventor, Edison made 1000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Once a reporter asked... "How did it feel to fail 1, 000 times?" Edison replied..."I didn't fail 1, 000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1, 000 steps."

[The_Bookman]

Yeah, looks to me like more than "loss of pressure" in lower tank. The way it crumples it seems to have had pressure reduced to create a partial vacuum. The collapse itself would have initiated in an imperfection in the tank and then the deformation rapidly caused the rest to collapse. I suspect they failed to do something painfully simple, like just leave a valve open in the empty lower tank, to allow the pressure to equalise as the cryo temps from the upper tank were conducted through the bulkhead and cooled whatever remnant gas or air was left in the mostly empty lower tank thus significantly lowering the pressure in the mostly empty lower tank and making it crumple under the sea level atmospheric pressure and the weight of the upper tank. Ow.

[SofieBrink]

Very quick response time.
Good video!

[wavetrex]

Almost certainly the lower tank lost pressure (due to those faulty valves?) and then the massive weight on top of the filled tank under testing just crushed it.

[kantt]

I remember how many fails they got until finally launch and land a F9

[MrGooseG]

Appreciate how fast you put this video up, Cheers

[sethmclaughlin]

thanks for uploading quickly and still having so much information in your videos keep it up

[lightdark]

It's so cool watching the power of the atmosphere crush a rocket part.

[TheEarthwinders]

I appreciate your dedication to getting this update videos out so quickly. I got to watch your video with additional details shortly after I saw the update on my newsfeed. Impressive turn-around time.

[dalkgamler]

You can actually see the lower tank crumble a bit beforehand. I think there was missing pressure and due to the lower tank not being pressured with LOX the tank was much warmer which means missing stiffness and different expansion rates.

[johnevans]

The first person to open a scrapyard a mile down the road will be worth millions soon.

[JohanDegraeveAanscharius]

I am a constructor of tanks amongst other machines, and since the beginning, I have said: that thing will implode. And it did.

[shouryashrivastava]

After watching the video and reading the Elon's comment I think because of cold pressure in the upper tank it created negative pressure in the middle tank which crushed it, if that was the case I think it won't be a big problem.