- SpaceX test-fired a small rocket ship in Texas on Tuesday night. The test was to set the stage for a bigger “hop-and-hover” launch.
- However, a huge fireball erupted around the vehicle, called Starhopper, a few minutes after the test. Some locals recorded video of the incident during a live broadcast.
- SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company is postponing Starhopper’s launch a week, but noted there was “no major damage” to the vehicle.
- Starhopper is an early prototype of much bigger vehicle called Starship, which SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes to use for sending people to Mars.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
SpaceX filled the South Texas air with the roar of a Raptor engine last night. However, Elon Musk’s rocket company also set off a fireball that briefly engulfed the rocket ship the engine was attached to.
The rocket, called Starhopper, is a squat six-story prototype of a larger interplanetary launch system known as Starship that’s being designed to take people to and from Mars. That system (and its prototypes) will use a new rocket engine called Raptor.
Tuesday’s test-firing was meant to set the stage for Starhopper’s first big and untethered “hop and hover” launch, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday.
“Aiming for hover test next week,” Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
The engine firing started at 11:24 p.m. ET (10:24 p.m. CT) and lasted about five seconds, throwing up a cloud of flames, dust, and fumes in the process. The test seemed to work aside from a couple of lingering flames.
But a few minutes later, a giant fireball erupted and briefly swallowed the vehicle.
A neighbor of SpaceX's rudimentary launch site, which is at the southern tip of Texas, recorded the incident during a live video feed (below).
If you turn on the sound, you can hear one of the announcers say, "Oh my god, it caught fire."
The video shows a fire suppression system - essentially a robotic firehose - starting to douse Starhopper and its launch pad with a stream of water. The system was ostensibly used to put out some flames coming from the rocket's side.
But as soon as the water touched the vehicle, the fireball erupted, shooting flames more than 100 feet into the air. The vehicle is fueled by liquid methane, a main ingredient in natural gas, and turns into a volatile and highly flammable gas when it's exposed to air.
Tim Dodd, who runs the Everyday Astronaut channel on YouTube, was also recording the event on-site. His video, shown below, captures both the test and fireball in ultra-high-resolution, slow-motion video.
What this means for Starhopper's first big launch
In the wake of the fireball, SpaceX postponed the big launch of the Starhopper.
That launch was supposed to send the rocket about 65 feet (20 meters) into the air, where it would hover, move sideways, and then land back on its launchpad, as Musk tweeted last week.
It was initially unclear if the rocket was significantly damaged by the incident, or how much, and SpaceX did not immediately provide details to Business Insider about the incident.
However, Starhopper is made of a rugged steel that's similar to the kind used in pots and pans, and Musk said on Thursday that methane fuel had somehow leaked out yet caused "no major damage."
"[B]ig advantage of being made of high strength stainless steel: not bothered by a little heat!" he added.
People who visited the company's launch site the morning after posted detailed pictures of the vehicle, and the images did not appear to show a relatively undamaged Starhopper and launch site.
SpaceX's re-planned "hop" test next week wouldn't be its first. The company fired up Starhopper in April, but those tests tethered the rocket ship to the pad via bike-chain-like metal ropes on its legs. The company may eventually launch Starhopper to a height of about 3.1 miles (5 kilometers), according to its government license.
A spokesperson for SpaceX previously told Business Insider that the planned Starhopper launch is "one in a series of tests designed to push the limits of the vehicle as quickly as possible to learn all we can, as fast as we safely can."
They added (and prophetically): "As with all development programs, the schedule can be quite dynamic and subject to change."
This story has updated with new information. It was originally published on July 17, 2019.
