Comment by consumer451
1 day ago
Given the huge spread of the debris, it must have been a decent sized boom, no? I mean that's got to be 10's of miles wide in this video.
1 day ago
Given the huge spread of the debris, it must have been a decent sized boom, no? I mean that's got to be 10's of miles wide in this video.
do we know when this video was taken? this could just be ship breaking up during re-entry because it lost altitude control. not necessarily the moment of the primary failure.
the flight termination system is sort of a shaped charge that's designed to rupture the oxidizer and fuel tanks. Even if only a few % fuel remains, it'll be a big boom.
For context, The lower stage reportedly has 150 tons of propellant on board when it lands.
The whole thing (booster et al) is around 1/3 as tall as the Eiffel tower... for context
1 reply →
It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643
That doesn't explicitly say that it wasn't FTS. Activation of the FTS is never scheduled and it results in rapid disassembly. There's speculation that it flew for a significant time after losing telemetry. FTS is designed to activate if it goes off course (if it's still on course, it's better to keep flying).
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Oh interesting, maybe that's why the debris looked so interesting