Tim, this totally sucks.

It looks like the fracture occurred near the end of the bay, right?

I'm wondering since the total pounds of pressure (since the surface area is high on that diameter) caused the failure. If so, my guess is there were fractures or fatigue at this point from repeated pyro. Moving the bay back an inch, clothing over that section maybe 6 inches with glass on the interior I think could prevent this from happening again. Keep me posted, new design ideas lead to innovation and mods.

it's not an AV bay. It's just the NC coupler to payload. The AV bay is below payload about The NC fractured instead of popping shear pins. But I tend to agree with you that it may have been fatigue. It is thin wall FG & occurred right where the NC transition begins to decrease in diameter. See attached photo

esotericdude on 2017-11-14 13:23:12Z wrote:

Tim, this totally sucks.

It looks like the fracture occurred near the end of the bay, right?

I'm wondering since the total pounds of pressure (since the surface area is high on that diameter) caused the failure. If so, my guess is there were fractures or fatigue at this point from repeated pyro. Moving the bay back an inch, clothing over that section maybe 6 inches with glass on the interior I think could prevent this from happening again. Keep me posted, new design ideas lead to innovation and mods.