psunavy03 13 hours ago

Aerospace fire suppression is generally Halon, which would purge the cavity with inert gas.

Reply View 0 replies
m4rtink 20 hours ago

Actually the Super Heavy (first stage) already uses heavy CO2 based fire suppression. Hopefully not that necessary in the long term, but should make it possible to get on with the testing in the short term.

Reply View 3 replies
  • Alive-in-2025 12 hours ago

    What is a long term solution for this? Is there something more than "build tanks that don't leak"? I'm sure spaceX has top design and materials experts, now what ;-).

    Reply View 1 reply
    • m4rtink 12 hours ago

      I think its likely not the tanks but rather the plumbing to engines and the engines themselves leaking (sense lines, etc).

      Next engine revision (Raptor 3) should help, as it is much simplified and quite less likely to leak or get damaged during flight.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • raverbashing 19 hours ago

    That's interesting

    However if you see the stream you can see one of the tanks rapidly emptied before loss of signal

    It seems this was not survivable regardless of fire or not

    Reply View 0 replies
spandrew 12 hours ago

It might not even be about fire suppression. Oxygen and different gases can pool oddly in different types of gravity. If oxygen was leaking, it may be as simple as making sure a vacuum de-gases a chamber before going full throttle.

We know nothing, but the test having good data on what went wrong is a great starting point.

Reply View 0 replies
varjag 21 hours ago

If you can displace the oxidizer/air remaining in the volume why not.

Reply View 10 replies
  • littlestymaar 16 hours ago

    The initial tweet says:

    > we had an oxygen/fuel leak

    If that's correct, then you can't just remove air. The only option would be to cool things down so it stops burning.

    Reply View 9 replies
    • shellfishgene 15 hours ago

      If it was really an oxygen/fuel mix burning I don't think you can do much of anything to stop that.

      Reply View 8 replies
      • littlestymaar 14 hours ago

        If you cooled the mixture at low enough temperature, you'd stop it from burning (like when you pour water on top of a camp fire), but it's not clear how you're supposed to do that in a spaceship where you can't carry a few tons of water for your sprinklers.

        Reply View 7 replies
metalman 15 hours ago

just increased venting to keep any vapor concentrations of fuel and oxidiser below that capable of igniting, even simple baffling could suffice as the leaks may be trasitory and flowing out of blowoff valves, so possibly a known risk. Space x is also forgoeing much of the full system vibriatory tests, done on traditiinal 1 shot launches, and failure in presurised systems due to unknown resonance is common. Big question is did it just blow up, or did the automated abort, take it out, likely the latter or there would be a hold on the next launch.

Reply View 1 reply
  • vessenes 14 hours ago

    There’s no way that was anything but the automated abort — it was a comprehensive instantaneous rapid event. Or I guess I’d say, however it started, the automated abort kicked in and worked.

    Reply View 0 replies