looks like an inner engine blew on the boostback

@ErnestCalFab

It did. I'm pretty sure it was the off-nominal flip when they separated that caused fuel slosh in an unexpected way and starved some of the engines, starting the problem.

?

Elaborate

I think it flipped in an unexpected direction instead of the "correct" way when they split apart. If so, the fuel and O2 may have sloshed around in unexpected ways, starving the engines of one or the other. The ragged restart is another indication of this. All of the engines should have lit off at once, instead it was hit and miss and the sequence also seems to indicate that some were starved of fuel or O2 while others weren't.

The propellant can’t slosh that much during boosterbsck because they’re taking it from header tanks I believe

I think V3’s boostback profile I different than V2’s on the regard. I could be wrong of course, but even if they don’t use the header tanks for boostback I lm pretty sure the force of the firing engines keeps enough prop on the base of the intakes even with the slosh

Maybe. I think we're all just guessing at this point. However, if slosh isn't the case, then there was some other fuel delivery issue. The way the engines lit off make it look like that was the problem. (partial, only one side, etc.)

They all seemed to go fairly well until the explosion. I do find it odd that three engines went out on the same side though

Put a dozen dogs in a cage and someone's getting bit.

Yeah something happened

huh maybe engine shielding woulda helped…

engine problem 💥@elonmusk @SpaceX

@ufotinik

The Ship engines threw it off its nominal profile?

Booster rotated the wrong direction, slosh induced rud

@ErnestCalFab