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SpaceX Rocket Engine Explodes During Test (space.com)
According to The Washington Post, a SpaceX rocket engine exploded Sunday (Nov. 5) at the company's test facility in McGregor, Texas. The explosion reportedly occurred during a "qualification test" of a Merlin engine, the type that powers SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. Space.com reports: SpaceX has suspended engine testing while it investigates what caused the incident, which didn't injure anyone, the Post added. In a statement provided to the Post, SpaceX representatives said they didn't expect the explosion to affect the company's launch schedule. That schedule has been pretty packed this year. SpaceX has already launched 16 missions, all of them successful, in 2017 -- twice as many as its previous high in a calendar year. And all but three of these missions also involved landings of the Falcon 9 first stage, for eventual refurbishment and reuse.
That’s what happens when you cut corners and half ass things to make things cheaper.
The incident in question did not occur during an engine firing. Rather they were performing a "LOX drop" test which basically involves pumping LOX through the engine and checking for leaks. Something went wrong in this process, causing the damage. Until the investigation is completed, there's no way to know whether it was an issue with the engine, the test rig, or the setup. It might be that a tech just dind't tighten something adequately, or a filler hose leaked or whatever. SpaceX won't know until they complete their investigation, and we may never know.
To quote Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame "LOX makes anything flammable. LOX makes something flammable into a high explosive." So even if they just had a sufficiently large leak, and the LOX leaked onto/into asphalt or similar, all it takes is a spark to cause that asphalt to detonate like a bunch of dynamite.
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I'm no Musk fan, but what's why you test?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Obviously failed the test.
That's a 1650-cubic inch V-12.
Most famous British engine in the war. Bit rude of SpaceX to reuse the name.
the nature of test is to find faults
if everything was perfect by design the test people would be flipping burgers or work as perfect-design engineers
4wdloop
it is an EXTERNAL combustion engine is it not?
4wdloop
Goin' to Mars! Any minute, now.
At least this happened with the new Merlin Series 5 redesign, scheduled for flight next year.
Exactly. That's important-- this is the next generation engine, not the one currently flying.
Some alternate sources, some with more information:
https://www.space.com/38712-spacex-rocket-engine-test-explosion.html
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/next-generation-spacex-rocket-engine-goes-flames-texas-test/
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/an-experimental-spacex-rocket-engine-has-exploded-in-texas/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
Considering they LOX drop and test fire each engine, eventually with this many engines you were bound to have one with a flaw. All I can say is, good job.. better on a test stand than on a Falcon 9.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The engine, not so much.
The Rolls Royce "merlin", like other Rolls Royce aero engines of the time, was named after a bird of prey. The bird they named the engine after is a type of falcon which is called a "pigeon hawk" in North America and "merlin" in Europe.
So, did SpaceX name their engine after the bird (and Rolls Royce's engine) or the mythical wizard?
Doing a quick search and there's no clear answer.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You're partly right. If you're being smart economically, or advancing technology, you'll test some things that don't work. If everything you test works, you're a) doing the same boring shit that's been done and b) over-engineering, making things much more expensive than they should be.
Testing is how you find out what works and what doesn't, and how much you need to spend to make things work reliably.
All the fanbois that refer to Musk as a real life Tony Stark seem to be missing in action.
If only Elon could step in a wave his hands and fix it like Tony Stark does.
There is a marvelous history of the development of rocket fuel called, "Ignition!", written by John D. Clark, one of the field's insiders who has an ascerbic wit. The foreword was written by Isaac Asimov, which contains the following fantastic quote:
Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don't mean garden-variety crazy or a mere raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.
There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole.
Explosions are par for the course. Rocket science is hard.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
They were testing an engine, and this particular test failed... That's the whole point of testing, try new things and see if they work.
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Elon immediately held a press conference to say the exploding rocket was actually a fireworks show to commemorate daylight savings time.
Elon Musk"s rocket explodes, reports Jeff Bezos.
Working with LOX is just hard. Everyone that work with high purity oxygen eventually burns up something unexpected.
NASA Oxygen Gleaning Team website
Lox makes almost everything flammable, even the pipes we use to convey it.
LOX Safety Video
Don't do this, common materials become DANGEROUS when exposed to LOX
LOX as a fire starter
Guess - some FOD was inside the engine, perhaps some lint or hair. Proving the cause is going to take work.
If you aren't blowing things up now and then, you aren't on the frontier of exploration. You cannot know where the line designating the frontier is unless you occasionally step over it.
You're so very right. Software developers in particular sometimes test software only with valid, expected inputs. Unexpected inputs then result in a security failure.
Back when software ran locally, we we used to say "garbage in, garbage out". That's no longer acceptable for internet-connected software. With Heartbleed, the garbage that came out was random memory contents, which could include the server's private key.
At least they have an idea now that there's a problem somewhere that needs fixing, and it's not hidden for an actual launch.
Good test. Try and break it.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
I am reasonably new at my current (very small) company. I am the second (and still not fully dedicated) QA person.
I came from 17 years at a multinational Corp with huge QA.
To say I encountered culture shock is an understatement.
I have started implementing things like automated regression tests, and Fuzzers. My Fuzzer based tests break the shit out of things and the devs look at me with the "why would you do that?" look. They still have to go fix the issue though.
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"The devs look at me with the "why would you do that?" look. "
It's not just small companies which suffer that.
Airbus have suffered a number of "why would a pilot do something that stupid?" issues where pilots DO these kinds of things when testing to trying out the aircraft to see how it will react under worst case conditions.
Certain switch/router manufacturer R&D departments have come back with the same question when I've asked them to check certain conditions. They may not ever happen under normal operation, but when someone's trying to break in all bets are off.
Back in High school days my tutors used to criticise me for running tests on every input as a waste of time/memory, but it's a habit which really should be ingrained in coders along with testing every condition which might occur, no matter how unlikely. Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.
I completely concur that tests on all inputs (external to the system) are mandatory.
By external I mean any input from outside the code.
Last big project I worked on there were two "rings" in ring 0 code, one that faced userland and one that only faced ring 0 code. The former validated *everything* the latter, not so much. Embedded system where memory and compute cycles were at a premium.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump