LATEST MUSK SPACEX ROCKET BLAST BLAMED ON PLUMBING

The United States should not look kindly at the four successive failures of the Starship prototypes that Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent aloft and it would take more than the deployment of a safety officer from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure that, for once, his Starship could be launched safely and land safely as well.

Mike Wall of Space.com noted that Musk himself had to admit that the last stainless steel vehicle, known as Serial No. 11 (SN 11), exploded on March 30 after it tried to land in Boca Chica, Texas.

SN11 soared to a maximum altitude of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) as planned, and the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) craft checked a number of boxes on the way down as well. But SN11 didn't stick its landing and instead exploded in a massive fireball — because of a plumbing problem, Musk admitted.

"Ascent phase, transition to horizontal & control during free fall were good. A (relatively) small CH4 leak led to fire on engine 2 & fried part of avionics, causing hard start attempting landing burn in CH4 turbopump. This is getting fixed 6 ways to Sunday," Musk said.

CH4 is methane, the propellant for SpaceX's powerful, next-generation Raptor engine. And a "hard start" refers to ignition when there's too much fuel in the combustion chamber and the pressure is therefore too high — not a good thing for any engine, Wall explained.

The FAA earlier admonished for the successive failures and made it mandatory that a safety officer based in Cape Canaveral fly to Texas to oversee SpaceX launches. NASA is particularly keen on safety since the Challenger space shuttle also exploded due to a missing O ring. SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations.

The transportation system consists of two elements, both of which will be fully reusable: the Starship spacecraft and a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy, Wall reported for Live Science.

Both Starship and Super Heavy will be powered by Raptors — six for the final Starship and about 30 for the huge booster, Musk has said. SN11 sported three Raptors, as did each of its three predecessors, SN8, SN9 and SN10, which launched on 6-mile-high test flights in December, February and early March, respectively.

Meanwhile, it would be better for Musk and SpaceX not to brag about their successful launches of four vehicles that exploded. It is as good as the boast that the windows of Tesla’s truck were unbreakable. Musk witnessed how the truck's windows were smashed during the launch of the truck that he hosted.

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