“A huge setback for the Starship program”; huge explosion at Starbase, no injuries

SpaceX’s Starship 36 suffered a catastrophic explosion at 11 p.m. CT Wednesday night while grounded on its launch mount on Boca Chica Beach in Starbase, Texas. The rocket was being prepared for an engine test ahead of what was planned to be the tenth flight from the SpaceX Starbase facility in the Rio Grande Valley, for which no date had yet been announced.

The space industry news portal Space Flight Now described the rocket as being "ripped apart in a giant fireball as liquid methane and liquid oxygen were being loaded for an expected test firing of the vehicle’s six Raptor rocket engines."

SpaceX said that a safety area was maintained during the operation and all personnel were accounted for. No injuries have been reported.

"Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," said SpaceX in a statement.

A small amount of fire could still be seen at 3:00 a.m. CT on an independent live video feed of the facility on YouTube.

"There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue," said SpaceX.

Cameron County Constable for Precinct 1 said in a public statement that emergency protocols were quickly enacted after the incident and that an investigation was being carried out. KRGV news reported that Brownsville Fire Department crews were responding to the incident.

The South Texas Environmental Justice Network (SOTXEJN), an environmental justice advocacy group based in the Rio Grande Valley, warned about the possibility of explosions at Starbase as recently as last month in a public statement. 

The group said it was concerned about the proximity of several industrial projects located in a 6-mile radius adjacent to the Laguna Madre. These include Rio Grande LNG, a liquified natural gas plant that is not yet operational. 

Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder at SOTXEJN, expressed the group's concerns about explosions at Starbase on a phone call in May.

"We've been speaking up about the explosion risk since the LNG terminals were first proposed," said Hinojosa. "We've been sending letters since 2015 and we've never gotten a real safety study from any of the regulatory agencies."

Josette Angelique Hinojosa, another co-founder at SOTXEJNT, said the group also last filed a public comment with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) about the risks earlier this year.

"We’ve had to sue FERC twice for failing to address the environmental and public health impacts these LNG projects will have on our impoverished community," said the second Hinojosa. "FERC is still failing us with this latest review process that didn’t provide a public hearing for the community and didn’t address the explosion risks of LNG and SpaceX rocket launches next door to Laguna Madre and Brownsville homes."

In early May the Federal Aviation Administration approved a request from SpaceX to increase its yearly launching schedule from five rockets per year to 25 at the Boca Chica Beach site.

Jack Beyer, content manager for the YouTube channel NSF - NASASpaceflight.com, which has no relationship with NASA, was on location remotely narrating a live feed of the test on Wednesday night. The NSF live video was among the most-viewed during the explosion and its clip of the incident was widely shared across social media.

"Oh my god," Beyer said slowly following a few moments of silence after witnessing the largest grounded explosion at Starbase since the facility began operating. "Ship 36 just blew up."

Sawyer Rosenstein, an author at NSF who was also providing coverage on the live feed remotely, commented that future Starship launch dates may be affected at Starbase.

"So about those launch dates," said Rosenstein. "I think that may delay a bit, as we have just experienced a RUD of ship 36 prior to a planned static fire test."

In SpaceX jargon, RUD stands for "rapid unscheduled disassembly".

"This is not going well for the starship program," said Beyer. "And, I mean, of course, SpaceX will pick up the pieces and figure out what went wrong. But very clearly, a huge, hugely catastrophic anomaly, a huge setback for the starship program. This is so not good."

In 2019, Business Insider linked to a now-deleted transcript of a 2018 SpaceX press conference and quoted CEO Elon Musk at the event saying, “We’ve got a lot of land with nobody around. And so if it blows up, it’s cool.”

This is a developing story.

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