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Video by Starship Gazer A blue-collar space program by and for hard-hats. NASA was never like this. (Or more accurately, they never let us see it. Somebody built their pads and giant crawlers, the VAB and their rockets.) Elon lets people watch everything.

I'm not sure what they are doing here, but it looks to my layman's eye like a really giant tap-and-die, and they are cutting threads in the holes. Presumably where threaded pipes will screw in.



Wide shot by Mauricio:

Elon's upside-down shower-head was moved down to the OLM tonight. (Apparently SpaceX calls the water-cooled steel-plate the "pancake".)

Mauricio has a new collection of aerial photographs, taken today. The most striking were photos of the work under the OLM. It looks like the 132 concrete trucks that poured the other night just filled the bottom of the huge crater. There's still a large area left that was cut out and filled with dense rebar, that still remains to be filled. That will be hundreds of more concrete trucks. But the showerhead/pancake and all of its associated parts and plumbing have to be installed before it is concreted in.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...2523396099

https://twitter.com/TheRocketFuture/stat...5994261506

Photo by Mauricio. It's intentionally over-exposed so as to be able to image what's in shadow inside the giant tent. Gives a good idea of the size and shape of the 'pancake'. This isn't all of the water-cooled steel-plate, it's just the center piece and three feed manifolds with their own plates will attach to it. The whole assembly will rest on a tremendously stout reinforced concrete structure.

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Zack Golden has just released another one of his deep-dive investigations. This one covers the work being done under the OLM:

A short update video by Mauricio. If you like it, he's producing a longer one that should be out Tuesday.



For the true geeks, the hard-stuff. (They do this every week.)

This afternoon, the Pancake was placed on the new reinforced concrete under the Orbital Launch Mount. (The concrete required more than 300 concrete mixer trucks to pour.) The Pancake isn't exactly small and it's very heavy armor plate, and placing it accurately enough that the pressurized water supply manifolds will mate properly required simultaneous precision action by two large cranes reaching down through the central hole in the OLM. SpaceX has some of the best crane operators in the business.

(Photo leaked by a SpaceX worker.)

Today a couple of the supply manifolds rolled out to the launch site.

(Photo by nic ansuini of nasaspaceflight.com)

The third supply manifold just rolled out to the launch site

Screenshot from LabPadre's Rover-1 livestream cam

Here's a short Twitter thread by 'TheSpaceEngineer' about how it will all fit together.

https://twitter.com/mcrs987/status/1677039030343553025

Lab Padre's latest update video

Wednesday afternoon they performed what is being described as a "purge test" of the high pressure gas system that will push water at high pressure through Elon's booster bidet.

Elon's booster bidet just received its first test! Seemed to work as designed and was pretty impressive.

Video in the Tweet below by nsf

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...6556502016

YT video by Starship Gazer