Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.

Figure it's going to burn up on entry?

EDIT: made it. I suppose it was meant to blow up on landing in the ocean? It would have been nice to examine the burned components — but perhaps they had not intended to retrieve it that far away anyway.

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dotnet00 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The walls are 3mm thick steel, they're very likely to buckle and tear when it tips over, the residual methane vapor gets out and there are plenty of sources of heat to ignite it.

They don't claim to have any plans of recovering the wreckage, but they have previously fished up wreckage for study, so it's still possible they decide to do that.

	▲	asadotzler 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		generally 4mm for the barrel sections, plus all the stringers that add rigidity to that 4mm.

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BurningFrog 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not meant to perform well after landing in water, is how I would phrase it.

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m4rtink 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe just some part of the construction (possibly even just the strinngers or simply some nook or cranny that is fully eclosed) got presurized or was pressurized for the whole time by just air that could not escape.

That would be fine for the fligt so far - until it started to heat up from re-entry heating. The stainless steel would be still fine if heated to hundreads of degrees, but the expanding gass could maybe make the enclosed volume to rupture ?

Or a mix of methane and oxygen accumulating somwhere and exploding - but that seems less likely to me in a near vacuum environment during re-entry.

	▲	dotnet00 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		IIRC they have pressure vessels in the lower fins with some of the gasses they need. Maybe one of those was damaged and burst. To me it looked like something blew out the bottom of one of the fins (maybe got too hot) and hit the skirt.

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pixl97 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It made it, but there was some toastyness on the bottom of the lower flaps. This said, it is less bad than we've seen on the other 2 landings.

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mrandish 2 days ago | parent [-]

They announced before the flight that they intentionally removed tiles from some areas around the lower flaps specifically to get data on what happens when tiles fail, such as how much burn occurs, how quickly and what type. It appears it was successful in showing varying amounts of burn through and damage in the areas that were intentionally left under-protected.

	▲	rubzah 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The part that burned was damaged from early on, likely at, or right after, separation. So the integrity of that flap was already very compromised. I actually thought the flap would disintegrate on re-entry with that kind of damage. But no, they even put full stress on it, unfolding it while supersonic through the atmosphere, like a champ.

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nuker 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.

The girl in NASASpaceflight video linked at top said maybe one of the three oxygen vents blew up due to some kind of buildup. Location makes sense.

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ls612 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like they removed a few too many heat tiles before launch.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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