Starship’s Brutal Booster Failure Exposed New Secrets! 🤯 SpaceX Is Already Moving On!

After last week's tales of destruction and a rapid scrapping of the first version 3 booster since then, never fear, SpaceX doesn't even believe that this will cause an issue with the timeline of the first flight. Well, amazingly, we have already seen the assembly of the next Super Heavy underway so lots to dive into here today. It blows my mind how fast they move and along with that of course, a busy week of launches and updates including a huge mishap with the Baikonur launch site after the MS-28 launch. What happened there? Hey hey, Marcus House with you here and there is just so much to talk about with Starship this week. After the chaos that ended last week with the demise of the first version 3 Super Heavy booster 18, we left you with SpaceX trying to figure out the best way to bring down the now dangerous booster without risk to the team involved or the Massey's test site which has been undergoing the rapid rebuild for months. Indeed, SpaceX needed to safely prepare the vehicle for scrapping. Although it was disappointing to see booster 18 suffer this anomaly during the ambient gas pressure testing, what we've been able to learn about the version 3 design because of this has been incredible. So silver linings right? As we could see from this mind-bending image by Starbase Surfer, this mishap completely tore open the liquid oxygen tank with the eruption looking to originate from one of the strakes. Because of that, theories started to spread about this potentially being another composite over-wrapped pressure vessel or COPV related issue. After all, they do have a bunch of COPV tanks under those strikes. Well, thanks to some very incredible photos from RGV Area Photography taken the day after, we've got a lot to explore. And I tell you, if you really love everything we talk about, supporting what they have been doing over here for years is so awesome of the many So many great insights come from this work and check this out. Just taking a look at some of the photos, this lets us see some of the damage dealt to the vehicle in greater depth. Comparing the two, you'll be able to see one of the strakes is obviously completely missing. Looking at where it should be, alongside the portion of the ring left, some but not all of the COPVs seem to have burst, outlined by the circular cuts in the tank wall. At least three huge holes seem evident here while the opposite side strake shows that there are seven COPVs in total normally within. Here, you may also spot what looks to be half of a COPV sitting in the stairway of the cryo stand. It's possible that when SpaceX refers to a gas system pressure testing anomaly, they might be meaning that the overpressure of the weaker of the COPVs caused the initial event to cascade through the remaining vessels. That would explain the lack of any other intact pressure vessels in the surrounding area. So if this is directly related to a failing COPV, that would be an unfortunate cause given that SpaceX implemented a bunch of corrective actions after ship 36's failure at the same site because that was caused by a failing COPV. We can also see that the unplanned destruction has caused at least some damage to the thrust simulator stand itself with what looks to be hydraulic fluid running away from the structure. Take a look at the vehicle itself though. During the flight, they managed to take a shot right at this incredible angle. Yes, we could literally see right into the bottom of the booster with the light streaming in to allow us to see the massive inner transfer tube and the engine bay plumbing here that would have eventually led to the 33 Raptor 3 engines. Well, not anymore I guess, but we can now see the intricate design network of these lines that run everywhere here. If you look closely, you can even see that whatever caused the incident also managed to rip a rather big hole into that transfer tube. Given that the outer skin of the booster was no longer providing any real support, the transfer tube, even with that hole, was able to give the support needed to keep the entire thing standing which is pretty darn impressive. Now if we compare it to the aft section of the previous generation, Booster 17, it really is quite incredible the differences between these generations. The version 3 has additional plumbing to feed the engine electricals to the tank wall and then of course we have the new radial tank which has individual pipes routed to all the 13 center gimballing engines. At the start of the week, the crew began preparing to remove this from the site. We first saw them tying the open parts of the liquid oxygen tank together to stop it from moving in the wind which it had been doing. With that clear hazard out of the way, next the LR11000 crane was hooked up to the booster to give it more support. Starship Gazer was watching right here when they started cutting out chunks between the oxygen and methane tank and all that slicing was finished later in the evening. The crane lifted the majority of the methane tank together with the hot stage ring up and away placing it on the ground soon after for a more brutal ending. Indeed it would now be safely and easily cut into sections to be moved off site. So with the fractured liquid oxygen tank including the intricate aft section now by itself, the crane was attached to that for the next step. Starbase Surfers view here shows that debris shot through the sides of the booster as well. So yeah, although we still have no detailed confirmation from SpaceX on what caused this, you can quite obviously see here that the centerline of the tank wall hole does seem to be in line with one of the strakes. Looking at the other strakes twisted up in the event, you can clearly see these COPVs packed within. Next up, SpaceX had cut the oxygen tank and lifted out the top half. This was great because we could see much more detail of the inner transfer tube. As most of the common dome was cut away too, we could even see the vortex baffle right at the top. That is installed so that the propellant in the tank doesn't create a huge vortex like you would see if you drain a bathtub or kitchen sink. Just imagine how much damage that could cause with something of this colossal size. These photos also nicely showcase all of the internal stringers due to the weld marks. Added to that, the external stiffeners and on top, the big bellow. That's critical since the liquid methane in here will keep the steel at a very different temperature compared to the main tank wall. The liquid oxygen drains rapidly in flight so this would all be much warmer. Not to mention everything heating up quite a lot during its rapid re-entry. The same goes for propellant loading where the transfer tube is filled first with liquid methane long before the liquid oxygen is fully loaded. Pretty impressive that this transfer tube held up everything above after this anomaly. Sean's images here even show that this sustained several exit holes as well, showcasing just how valuable those stringers on the inside and the extra stiffeners on the outside have been. Thanks for watching along and helping us pick up these views. As you can imagine, it takes a bunch of time, equipment and effort and you give us the ability to go out and pick all this up for you. It's a wild ride every week so we're super grateful to have you subscribed here so we get to keep doing it. Of course, the team was soon cutting into that transfer tube to bring it all down further. After having removed another small piece, the next move was to hook up the crane while the team removed the strike covers and more of the COPVs so that they could easily cut up the remainder of the liquid oxygen tank. Yes, it is a shame to see this brand new booster already scrapped but the Massey's test site here is for such testing after all. Certainly better to find faults now rather than when explosive propellant is loaded. SpaceX posted over the weekend saying they do plan to have the next version 3 Super Heavy stacked in December. They even say here that this would still have them on track with ground system progress and ship testing. They added that flight 12 remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026 so it doesn't seem like the impact will be huge considering they still have plenty of work to do at the launch site and in testing the upper stage. So this activity doesn't stop at the Massey site. Over at pad 1 this week, we can see that all that remains of the orbital launch mount are the tiny stubs near the bottom of the legs where they were cut and split the week before. The larger parts were being cut down into manageable sized parts that could then be hauled away by truck over here. Now with the launch mount gone, that was really the easy part. Once they remove the deluge plate beneath the launch mount, there is a 4 meter concrete and steel reinforced pile cap surrounding the pad that workers will have to chip at and break away beautifully depicted here by Ryan Hansen Space. Below this there are a bunch of piles which go 35 meters deep into the ground. It is possible that SpaceX could try to use those piles or at least some of them in their new foundation but it is probably more likely that they will mostly need to be drilled out and redone which will be no easy task. Looking further up the tower, we left you last week with the left arm having had its catch rail removed and its arm cut short. Well this week both rails have been removed with the second rail sitting over here. The first rail removed had already been cut to its new length as seen in this flyover and just a few days later on Tuesday, workers were back to cut the second arm and that's it. Now we have two chopped sticks. Now if we take a look at the tank farm this week, all of the methane sub coolers and associated pipe work are removed. The three pill tanks and the two vertical water tanks for the detonation suppression system have also left the site. The cryo tanks positioned over here which held methane that was returned from pad 1 into the recondenser system have also been completely disconnected and they should disappear from here soon. Now before we head over to pad 2, I just want to hop over to the air separation unit for a moment because check this out. The concrete foundation for what we believe is the location for the compressor is poured and cured. This is where we saw the piles previously drilled. Now that the pile driller has finished that job, it was simply being deconstructed over here. The next step was now to begin filling it in with the same glass gravel that was used around the rest of the site. With that, they are capping the top in anticipation of the heavy equipment arriving which is currently being stored at the port. Now at the new pad 2, the most anticipated event this week was by far the installation of the ship quick disconnect arm. We've been organizing some new gear so that Shawn can bring in even more views like this. As you can imagine, there's a lot of paperwork involved in doing what we do so that we can get these videos together. All of those sign-offs and approvals can cost a bunch of time. Well, not so much with the help of Odoo, the all-in-one business management platform. They have a range of applications such as Project, Sign, Website, and CRM to help you manage your business easier. For an embarrassingly long period of time, I was just making PDFs and sending them manually to have people sign or scan them and then send them back. With Odoo's Sign application though, you can automate all of that and get necessary documents signed online in just a few clicks. Every signer gets a unique traceable link so everything is compliant and automatically recorded. I can just upload a prepared agreement document like this very official agreement here. 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You can use the Sign app and start sending and signing your documents for free with Odoo's one app free for life offer. Just head over to odoo.com to start using the Sign app for free including unlimited hosting and support. And as your business grows, you can get access to over 70 Odoo apps for just $34.40 per user per month. Thank you Odoo! Okay, so back to the installation of the ship quick disconnect arm. The LR11000 crane was rolled over and before we knew it, the lift had started, soon to be rotated over to its final orientation. They didn't actually begin installing it until the sun rose the next day. The crane disconnected in the afternoon and amazingly, the arm had already begun to move for the first time shortly after. Fast forward another day and we could see that they had installed the main actuator as well. The rotating extension for this has been getting outfitted with all its various manifolds since then. Now down here you should also notice that the back hood for the liquid oxygen booster quick disconnect has been reinstalled since its removal. They've added steel plates to fill that gap that we saw previously so this is looking much better now. Heading up the road to the production site, within the Sanchez area we could see all the work that had been underway to get the second transport stand ready for the version 3 boosters. This now has 13 of its arms installed. Along with that, the first version 3 ship stand to its left has almost appeared out of nowhere. The previous week it was just a pile of steel pieces. This doesn't quite look like the one in the renders provided to us by SpaceX a while back. That sort of resembled a slimmed down booster transport stand with gaps on the outside. This instead is more like a slimmed down version of the ship's static fire stand but you can see here the six mounts for the clamps. Checking out all the work around the gigabay, its 24 separate workstations are becoming much more obvious. You may have noticed the absence of any columns on the far right section in between the workstations. The beams on this side also appear to be a little beefier than those used on the other 18 workstations so it's possible here that the columns combined with the thicker structural beams means that these six stands might get their own dedicated bridge cranes. These could be able to pick up rings from the right side just outside the star factory and then lift them in and onto the turntable. This is obviously speculative for the moment but that would be really neat. The bay could then effectively operate from right to left with the furthest right having six turntables to stack boosters and ships. The six stands to the left of those could then be used for final outfitting once fully stacked and then the other half of the bay with its 12 workstations could then be dedicated to post-testing inspections or post-flight refurbishment. At the time this image was taken only a few of the main beams on the first level were left to go which came shortly after. That meant that the workers could finally begin stacking the second level here on Tuesday. Now as you may recall in Megabay 2 we left you last week with workers rolling out the brand new test tank S39.1 out of the star factory and then stacking it onto the ship cryo stand. Even with all the work going on scrapping booster 18 at Massey's they rolled this out here on Tuesday morning. This test article we believe will be used to validate the design of their new ship thrust structure testing it way beyond the forces that six raptor 3 engines will inflict on it. If that all tests out well they'll know that they have the design nailed before they roll out the first version 3 starship and test that in the same way. At Megabay 1 SpaceX has been busy getting the last remaining pieces of the old booster 17 cut down and removed. Given SpaceX's post about the next version 3 super heavy being stacked in December there is going to be quite the hive of activity right here with that month-long deadline. This will of course be quite incredible to watch as sections roll out considering that booster 18 took a few months to construct. I will say though given that they've already got the design mapped out and the equipment to put them together ready to go this process should move much faster. On that note we have already seen the first section of booster 19's liquid oxygen tank rolling out here in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The next day they had also started the stacking process with the common dome section having rolled into the bay as well. We have a bunch of Falcon 9 action as always. Just as we were getting last week's video exported to go live Starlink group 679 was away from space launch complex 40. So we just missed that one last week in the early hours of Saturday morning. It was only flight 9 for this booster 1090 as they carried this batch of 29 into orbit. A shortfall of gravitas was waiting in the ocean for this touchdown and can you believe this was the 150th Falcon launch of the year. Indeed that kicked off an exciting start of the week for SpaceX. Just under a day later across the country at Vandenberg Space Force Base the next was away with group 1130. The key point of this mission though check out how clean that booster looks. That is because this is a brand new one with booster 1100 lifting off into the sky there for the first time. Now interestingly this was set up with one less Starlink satellite so back to the stack of 28 here. I'm wondering if the group 11 shell may perhaps just need a little more margin maybe. We'll just need to see if the next for group 11 also has 28. Now during the week actually SpaceX announced that Ukraine has become the first European country to make Starlink's direct to sell network available to customers. Indeed Keevstar users in Ukraine with 4G smartphones will be able to stay connected even when the typical mobile network is not available. It is just allowing SMS for now but later voice and data will come too. It's amazing to see this rolling out here and also in the many other areas having this technology all of a sudden becoming a normal thing. Back to the mission it was the drone ship of course I still love you preparing for the first landing and there was the newest booster to the fleet starting off a hopefully nice long career with well over 30 missions to go especially given how many we are seeing on the reuse tally at this point in time. We also had SpaceX shoot another dedicated rideshare mission off into a sun synchronous orbit on Friday morning. Again from Vandenberg Space Force Base up top within the fairings were dozens of small micro satellites and nano satellites for so many customers commercial as well as government. This was the whopping 30th flight for booster 1071 which is of course just one flight behind the record holder so it was still a little nail-biting to see if this one would make it back for its next mission. Stage separation there and a glimpse of the stack of the various payloads crammed on board. These missions are so darn cool. Of course I still love you had returned home after Sunday's mission and was already back out here again for this one. The landing burn looking great there at this time in the daylight and bam the second ever booster to pass the 30 mission mark. Now just after 51 minutes into the mission a tiny extra burst from the second stage there to tweak the orbit for deployment and a few minutes later the many on board started separating away. It is pretty crazy. Exolaunch was here set to deploy a record 58 customer satellites for 30 clients alone. Once again a real mission inception this one. Deployment after deployment for quite some time and after they were done with all those in this orbit the second stage fired up again twice more with both of them very quick adjustments. Blink and you may have missed them. Formosat 8a was deployed here alone and yet another second stage burn was needed for the final show. If you've been keeping count that was second engine cutoff number five. To end the stream NASA's R5-S7 CubeSat was away with the entire mission for SpaceX approaching three hours all executed as smooth as can be. Now Blue Origin has announced this week an agreement with Optimum Technologies to integrate its new Caracal optical payload aboard the first mission of Blue Ring. Now it has been a while since we've seen much about Blue Ring but this is as you may recall Blue Origin's answer to providing multiple mission support for a range of spacecraft on board. Sort of a rideshare platform that can deploy or just host some missions. Blue Ring's first mission is expected to launch in 2026 where it'll be placed into a geostationary transfer orbit. The team has now integrated the primary structure with its core propulsion module so it is coming along nicely. Along with this though we've just seen the first look at the Blue Moon Mark 2 crew cabin mock-up that is currently sitting here at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Over the years we've seen plenty of the 3D models for this so it is nice to finally see something more tangible at this point. The Mark 2 crew and cargo landers will help establish a permanent presence on the moon which is definitely what we want to see. A happy Thanksgiving day on Thursday with NASA astronaut Chris Williams together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Kudzvertkov and Sergei Mikheyev launching to the International Space Station. The launch itself from Baikonur all pretty routine of course but not so for the launch site. After the liftoff the huge maintenance cabin that sits underneath the Soyuz was damaged. Well not so much damaged it appears to have been liberated from its location here and ended up falling into the flame trench. This is a huge problem because until this mess is fixed I don't believe Soyuz will be able to launch any crewed missions. Roscosmos has said they have got all the parts that they need to get it back up and running soon but with the damage still being assessed who knows. In preparation for their arrival the Cygnus XL spacecraft that has been up here for quite some time was simply grabbed by the Canadarm2 and removed from its location. Since then the robotic arm has just been holding on to it and will remain doing so I believe until Monday. This might seem a little strange but this was all done simply to give the appropriate clearance for the arriving Soyuz MS-28. Once Cygnus XL is reattached on Monday it'll remain there until around March when its mission is over. It was a fairly rapid rendezvous with this mission docking on Friday so they were soon to be welcomed on board. For Chris this is his first time in orbit and the new crew will spend about eight months on this mission. During this time NASA have mentioned that Chris will be kicking off scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare the crew for future space missions. Anyway with the new crew rotation the next thing that we will see is the return of the MS-27 Soyuz early in December. Now it has been just two weeks since New Glenn had made that incredible landing in the Pacific and the exciting Escapade spacecraft had begun their journey. One of the spacecraft used its Visions or Visible and Infrared Observation System all developed by Northern Arizona University to capture some self-portrait action. This is an edge-on look at one of the solar arrays in visible light and a glowing thermal view in infrared revealing the warmer and cooler regions across the panel. These images confirm that the cameras are performing as expected and the visible light sensitivity hints at a bonus science potential to capture images of a Martian aurora from orbit. The twin spacecraft also snapped its first images although given it was pointed into deep space the result was all black. So that wraps up yet another exciting week my friends. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did don't forget to hit subscribe so we get to keep making them. If you want to continue with more space goodness check out this video here next if you missed it. Thanks for watching all this way through. I will see you all in the next video.