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CC Wrote:The original reason for doing without a flame trench never made sense, anyway. Since it wouldn't be the powerful 1st-stage booster blasting off from Mars. And one glaring lack of testing the Starship spacecraft so far is having it land on and lift-off from a dusty, rocky terrain similar to the Martian landscape.

I'm thinking that any serious attempt at building a colony on Mars will assume nothing (and nobody) will be returning for (say) the first hundred years. Landing on unprepared ground is the thing .. taking off not really important.

SpaceX has issued a fairly detailed account of where the HLS lander program stands:

https://www.spacex.com/updates#moon-and-beyond


HLS lunar lander:




They say that they have completed just about all of NASA's milestones prior to flight testing.

Lots of software work. Lunar landing leg design and landing engine throttling. Life support design and ground testing. Complete cabin mockups. Micrometeorite resistance testing of skin and windows. Docking adapter qualification. Flight rules and procedures development. Airlock and elevator development. Communications testing. Development of telemedicine procedures for crew emergencies.

The next milestones involve flight testing. They have already started construction of a flight HLS cabin with functional life support and environmental, power and avionics. The next flight milestones will be a long duration flight test and the in-space propellant transfer test. Both of these are planned for 2026. For orbital rondezvous, HLS will use the same Dragon's Eye system the Dragon capsules use to routinely dock with the ISS.

Tonight showers of sparks are falling from the Pad 1 OLM launch donut as a crew of workers with cutting torches start the big job of cutting it apart. (It seems like just yesterday we were watching it being constructed.)

(Photo by Jordan Guidry for WAI)

While Pad 1 is being demolished, Pad 2 nears completion. The last major item there is installation of the Ship Quick Disconnect arm high up on the tower, which will be a big job. The SpaceX LR 11000 crane behind the tower is having its boom reconfigured, likely in preparation for that demanding job. There will have to be lots of plumbing running up the tower to the SQD, but I think most of that is already in place.

Meanwhile the demolition of Pad 1 continues. Most of the plumbing has already been cut out of it and they have started cutting apart its steel skin.

(Photo of the new Pad 2 by Mauricio of RGV Aerial Photography)

Pad 1 is fighting back against being cut to pieces!

A small fire broke out tonight inside the Pad 1 OLM ring, perhaps ignited by all the cutting torches. It was quickly extinguished, without any known injuries.

https://x.com/_thomashayden/status/1985524310748836217

Ship 39, the first V.3 ship, is being stacked in Megabay-2. The quality of its thermal protection system tile installation looks very good:

(Photo by Carlos Nunez)

Photoshop by Mauricio of RGV Aerial Photography showing what the new Gigabay, currently under construction, will look like next to the factory and the two existing Megabays (one currently for prototype ships and the other for prototype boosters).

Gigabay is designed for assembly-line style production of ships and boosters as pieces from the factory are stacked in a succession of work stations, growing vehicles moving from one to the next by ceiling bridge cranes, until completed spaceships come out the two doors in front. GB will eventually churn out hundreds of ships.

At that point the two smaller bays will either be replaced by a second GB, or else will be put to work refurbishing already flown ships and boosters, payload integration, and jobs like that.

GB looks like the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, though I think that the VAB is a little bigger.

There's a duplicate GB currently under construction at Roberts Road at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, where Starships will eventually be manufactured too.