News Changes to the SpaceX BFR rocket.

Thunder Chicken said:
Flames coming out of the body flap hinge is definitely not nominal.
Click to expand...

It could also be plasma from the residual atmosphere forming there, it really isn't an aerodynamic part. It could also be fire.
 
GLS said:
Warning: video contains engineering language
Click to expand...
(y)
Urwumpe said:
It could also be plasma from the residual atmosphere forming there, it really isn't an aerodynamic part. It could also be fire.
Click to expand...
There would be plasma on the other stagnation points as well if that were so. The subsequent RUD rather points to a fire.

I think something rattled the pipes and they had some LOX and CH4 leaking in the StarShip hull. The stable flame coming out of the joint is interesting. At least for a time in certain locations, it was either a fuel rich or lean mixture that stayed outside of detonation limits, until it didn't. That there were interesting flaming and popping things going on inside that hull for a while before it detonated would be my bet.
 
Thunder Chicken said:
(y)

There would be plasma on the other stagnation points as well if that were so. The subsequent RUD rather points to a fire.
Click to expand...

Well, we don't see many of them and this is inside the Mach cone from the nose anyway.
 
Thunder Chicken said:
Isn't the "cavity above the ship engine firewall" the rest of the ship? Sounds like a diplomatic way of saying the ship filled with a combustible fuel/air mix and exploded. Fire coming out of the forward flaps kinda is a big deal.
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It's this:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1880068797589254460

So there's a "floor" enclosing the space from about the top of the Vacuum bells up to the aft dome. The booster was prone to this trapped atmosphere issue too, so they started purging its cavity with CO2 throughout the flight, but the ship never seemed, now confirmed, to get the same treatment. The ship's cavity has a set of vents on the leeward side which curiously were one of the changes with V2: there used to be more of them more spread out around the whole leeward side, of a different size and shape but not concentrated in one spot (old vs new):
1737083154197.png1737083163019.png

Which begs the question, did the venting capacity significantly change such that previous ships could or might have already dealt with it, or is it equivalent and it was just "bad luck" they happened to get a fire on this one, and it could have taken out any other so far.
 
diogom said:
It's this:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1880068797589254460

So there's a "floor" enclosing the space from about the top of the Vacuum bells up to the aft dome. The booster was prone to this trapped atmosphere issue too, so they started purging its cavity with CO2 throughout the flight, but the ship never seemed, now confirmed, to get the same treatment. The ship's cavity has a set of vents on the leeward side which curiously were one of the changes with V2: there used to be more of them more spread out around the whole leeward side, of a different size and shape but not concentrated in one spot (old vs new):
View attachment 41757View attachment 41758

Which begs the question, did the venting capacity significantly change such that previous ships could or might have already dealt with it, or is it equivalent and it was just "bad luck" they happened to get a fire on this one, and it could have taken out any other so far.
Click to expand...
OK, I see what is happening. I misinterpreted the video from the Scott Manley post as being the forward body flap, not the aft flap. This makes more sense.
 
diogom said:
Which begs the question, did the venting capacity significantly change such that previous ships could or might have already dealt with it, or is it equivalent and it was just "bad luck" they happened to get a fire on this one, and it could have taken out any other so far.
Click to expand...

I think its a bad luck event even with massive venting and can't be prevented at all, because the cause is a rupture of both oxygen and fuel pipes, possibly caused of a hard engine shutdown. Even if only a fraction of the propellant leaks out, as soon as it find a helpful ignition source, the volume of the leaked propellant goes up. And worse: This isn't even the root cause. The engine shutdown might be caused be a single pipe failing in flight, making the other fail on resulting emergency shutdown and causing a fluid hammer in the other pipe. Or since its really hard to detect a broken pipe near the engine early enough to trigger the shutdown in time, SpaceX could have had a massive turbine overspeed by a pump running dry, blowing up the whole powerhead of the Raptor engine.

Large Blowout panels might be a solution to prevent the worst, but this costs structural integrity or mass increase, also only less than half of the circumference is available, the rest is covered by the heatshield = Its impossible to isolate engines completely from shrapnel AND provide enough venting capacity without "simply" ejecting the whole engine backwards (against the residual thrust, while staying onboard during lateral maneuvers)
 
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