Elon Musk horror as SpaceX Mars rocket engulfed by fireball as fuel leak sparks flames

In a tweet, the world’s richest man admitted that the fireball was not intentional, and that the “team is assessing damage”.

He later gave one possible explanation as to why the eruption took place, saying: “Cryogenic fuel is an added challenge, as it evaporates to create fuel-air explosion risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth.

“That said, we have a lot of sensors to detect this. More later.”

Mr Musk then added that one of the things that SpaceX would be doing moving forward is burning off the hydrogen leaks that are caused before the ignition, presumably using small sparks set up under the shuttle’s engine.

He wrote: “This particular issue, however, was specific to the engine spin start test (Raptor has a complex start sequence).

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1641588/elon-musk-horror-spacex-mars-rocket-engulfed-starship-massive-fireball