Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/08/2017 02:20 pmQuoteElon Musk’s SpaceX suffers a rocket-engine failure during testingBy Christian Davenport November 8 at 10:08 AMSpaceX is investigating why one of its rocket engines exploded during a test fire earlier this week at the company’s facility in Texas, the company confirmed Wednesday.The explosion of the Merlin engine occurred on Sunday during what the company called a “qualification test.” No one was injured [...]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/08/elon-musks-spacex-suffers-a-rocket-engine-failure-during-testing/How many single Merlin testing pods does they have
QuoteElon Musk’s SpaceX suffers a rocket-engine failure during testingBy Christian Davenport November 8 at 10:08 AMSpaceX is investigating why one of its rocket engines exploded during a test fire earlier this week at the company’s facility in Texas, the company confirmed Wednesday.The explosion of the Merlin engine occurred on Sunday during what the company called a “qualification test.” No one was injured [...]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/08/elon-musks-spacex-suffers-a-rocket-engine-failure-during-testing/
Elon Musk’s SpaceX suffers a rocket-engine failure during testingBy Christian Davenport November 8 at 10:08 AMSpaceX is investigating why one of its rocket engines exploded during a test fire earlier this week at the company’s facility in Texas, the company confirmed Wednesday.The explosion of the Merlin engine occurred on Sunday during what the company called a “qualification test.” No one was injured [...]
Quote from: SmallKing on 11/08/2017 02:26 pmQuote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/08/2017 02:20 pmQuoteElon Musk’s SpaceX suffers a rocket-engine failure during testingBy Christian Davenport November 8 at 10:08 AMSpaceX is investigating why one of its rocket engines exploded during a test fire earlier this week at the company’s facility in Texas, the company confirmed Wednesday.The explosion of the Merlin engine occurred on Sunday during what the company called a “qualification test.” No one was injured [...]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/08/elon-musks-spacex-suffers-a-rocket-engine-failure-during-testing/How many single Merlin testing pods does they haveTwo vertical test stands, and they’re barely separate, housed in the same structure.
Sounds like they have a serious problem..
Quote from: SmallKing on 11/08/2017 02:41 pmSounds like they have a serious problem..There is no basis for such an assumption. Merlin engines are built to fail without damaging neighbouring engines in flight.
Quote from: guckyfan on 11/08/2017 02:46 pmQuote from: SmallKing on 11/08/2017 02:41 pmSounds like they have a serious problem..There is no basis for such an assumption. Merlin engines are built to fail without damaging neighbouring engines in flight.You would hope so, but how much of that protection comes from the octoweb structure, and is that protective cell replicated in the single engine test stand.
So is it confirmed that this was a single engine on a stand, and not as part of a full core? The article lacks those details (and I lack L2)
Hopefully this happened while pushing the envelope. If you're not forcing failures, you're not pushing hard enough. Because as tough as this engine is, it's got a hard limit somewhere.
SpaceX engine failure not expected to have any impacts on 2017 or 2018 launches. Test stand repairs will take about 2-4 weeks. NASA, FAA, USAF, etc. all notified of incident.
Sounds like they were testing it outside the normal limits.As it is F9 has trouble doing GTO missions with reuse of the booster and almost needs a third stage on those missions.
I don't think we can/should come to any conclusion. It was a Block 5 qualification unit which means new turbo-pump components and higher thrust. We don't know when the failure occurred in the test sequence. I *hope* this is not a big deal but we have exactly zero clues as to what failed or it significance.Luckily it seems that they are confident to keep flying the Block 4 engines.
Quote from: mme on 11/08/2017 04:55 pmI don't think we can/should come to any conclusion. It was a Block 5 qualification unit which means new turbo-pump components and higher thrust. We don't know when the failure occurred in the test sequence. I *hope* this is not a big deal but we have exactly zero clues as to what failed or it significance.Luckily it seems that they are confident to keep flying the Block 4 engines.The statement includes the 2018 launch cadence not expected to be affected. Which is a pretty solid statement about introducing block 5. Without block 5 they have a problem very early in 2018