Starship Explodes on Test Stand as COPV Strikes Again
Fired Worker Warned About Rough Handling of Components in May
A Starship booster scheduled for launch later this month exploded on a test stand last Wednesday evening in the fourth failure of the SpaceX rocket in five months. The explosion was another setback for the troubled Starship program, which has lost three Starship boosters in flight this year.
In an update posted on its SpaceX’s website, the company said engineers had identified a likely 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.
The Starship second stage was being prepared for the 10th flight test of its development program. A Super Heavy booster is the first stage. SpaceX had tentatively set June 29 as a possible launch date.
Last month, a former SpaceX employee Morgan Wyatt Khan who claimed he was fired for raising safety concerns went public with concerns about how COPVs were being handled.
A lot of "tent era" workers that say this is how it's always been done as they laugh and then slam COPV bottles into the newly retrofitted brackets in payload....
I was assigned work on Issue Ticket operations to fix and identify the extent of damage to the COPV bottles with the only other certified COPV inspector on site.
I brought this up and then was not allowed to touch or be inside payload for 2 vehicles lmfao like wtf are they smoking?
We had to stop the show and wait for new undamaged COPV bottles to arrive because of the "Tent Era" negligence and tomfoolery taking place that is unacceptable behavior.
NASA has awarded SpaceX contracts worth $4 billion to develop a Starship-derived lander to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon as part of the space agency’s Artemis program. SpaceX has not even attempted to put Starship into a complete orbit of Earth orbit in nine flight tests.
COPVs of a different design played roles in two failures of smaller Falcon 9 rockets. In 2015, a burst COPV caused an oxygen tank to over pressurize and explode 139 seconds after a Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida. SpaceX blamed the failure of a strut holding the COPV inside the tank. A cargo Drago spacecraft was lost in the accident.
In 2016, a Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad while it was being fueled for a pre-flight engine test. SpaceX said an investigation found the accident was “likely due to the accumulation of oxygen between the COPV liner and overwrap in a void or a buckle in the liner, leading to ignition and the subsequent failure of the COPV.” The AMOS-6 satellite owned by Spacecom was lost in the explosion.