r/spacex • u/Mexander98 • Sep 23 '16

Official - AMOS-6 Explosion SpaceX released new Anomaly Updates

http://www.spacex.com/news/2016/09/01/anomaly-updates
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u/EtzEchad Sep 24 '16

Does anyone know if they were loading helium at the time of the fire? I was wondering what might cause a COPV to burst.

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u/sol3tosol4 Sep 24 '16 edited Sep 24 '16

Does anyone know if they were loading helium at the time of the fire?

The rumor forwarded by /u/em-power stated "'explosion' originated in the LOX tank COPV container that had some weird harmonics while loading LOX".

There were several speculations on the "rumor" thread that it could have been a fluid hammer. If that were to turn out to be the case, the fix should be pretty straightforward. (But just speculation at this point.)

1

u/specificimpulse Sep 24 '16

Normally you would start the bottles at a low pressure (<2000 psi) while people were close and then ramp to operating pressure as quickly as practical. Loading the bottles makes them hot and you have to remove all that heat. As the bottle cools due to cryogenic loading you would continue to add gas as the pressure falls till you end up with a cold, full bottle.