Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

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Scary news for SpaceX Cocoa: A potentially major hurricane may be headed for them in a few days.

https://twitter.com/GregScott_photo/stat...5974840320

The SpaceX recovery fleet may be leaving port to escape the hurricane. Either that. or the Octagrabber had better get a good grip.

https://twitter.com/julia_bergeron/statu...6373931009

See this thread in the meteorology forum on the hurricane

https://www.scivillage.com/thread-7538-p...l#pid31358

I have two questions:

1. How quickly can they move the Starships tank and fairing sections into the tall structure? I'm sure that they don't want to move them until they are certain a hurricane is really bearing down on them, and that might not leave them much time.

2. Is the tall structure strong enough to withstand a hurricane?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDE7X9nWwAAC...name=small

(Aug 28, 2019 10:29 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]In the solo water tower dance section that looked like a perfect 10 to me.

Me too. Amazing.

And the Starships and the massive Superheavy will be even more exciting. It will keep scaling up to eventual trips to Mars.

The only flaw was that mysterious black COPV that came flying out of the landing cloud. The COPVs up on top are all painted white and they all seem to be accounted for. So where did this black one come from? Speculation is that it was underneath Hoppy next to the engine, probably containing pressurized nitrogen to power the thrust vector control actuators that move the rocket engine. It seems to have been the landing that liberated it, at which point its job was already done.

Quote:@Yazata - many thanks for sharing your enthusiasm which added a lot to the experience and without which I might have missed it altogether.

Thanks, C2. I'm really excited by all this. I've been a science fiction fan all my life, now I get to actually watch people designing and building interplanetary spaceships in real life. How cool is that?! I just hope to communicate a little of that excitement.

(Aug 28, 2019 07:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Everyone said Elon Musk was crazy to have a bunch of pickup-driving Texas boys building a spaceship out on an open windy beach, with the entire world watching their every move, in what looked like a junkyard.

Here's clips from the pilot for a long-forgotten 1979 TV series called Salvage-1 that today look like an amazingly accurate documentary about Elon Musk and his crazy Boca Chica Texas operation (with Andy Griffith playing Elon Musk). A junkyard operator decides to build himself a spaceship out of junk and fly to the Moon, to recover the stuff the Apollo missions left up there. Of course the government bureaucrats in suits try to stop them but they launch and successfully land on the Moon.

The same dust and dirt and junk-yard feel. The (rocket-ship) construction workers in hard-hats. They even have the SpaceX RV!

http://youtu.be/xHUWlEB6N1s

Quote:
(Aug 28, 2019 07:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Everyone said Elon Musk was crazy to have a bunch of pickup-driving Texas boys building a spaceship out on an open windy beach, with the entire world watching their every move, in what looked like a junkyard.

Here's clips from the pilot for a long-forgotten 1979 TV series called Salvage-1 that today look like an amazingly accurate documentary about Elon Musk and his crazy Boca Chica Texas operation (with Andy Griffith playing Elon Musk). A junkyard operator decides to build himself a spaceship out of junk and fly to the Moon, to recover the stuff the Apollo missions left up there. Of course the government bureaucrats in suits try to stop them but they launch and successfully land on the Moon.

The same dust and dirt and junk-yard feel. The (rocket-ship) construction workers in hard-hats. They even have the SpaceX RV!

http://youtu.be/xHUWlEB6N1s

Good find, Yazata. Big Grin

Discounting his mini-series roles, it's one of among at least five short-lived TV series between the original "Andy Griffith Show" and "Matlock" that I had no idea even existed: Headmaster, The New Andy Griffith Show, Adams of Eagle Lake, Salvage1, and The Yeagers.

MeTV will probably discover it eventually, showing one episode weekly on its "Red Eye Sci-Fi" Saturday night. Only 20 sixty minute episodes were produced (16 broadcast), but that's still enough for them.

Isaac Asimov was the show's scientific advisor? Surely he wasn't on board yet when the pilot film (first two episodes) was made: "The main body of Vulture is composed of a Texaco gasoline semi-trailer tank truck with a cement mixer as the capsule."

But on the other hand:

According to NASA, "escape velocity is the speed needed for an object to break away from the gravitational pull of a planet or moon and leave it without further propulsion." A spacecraft needs to be going 7 miles per second, or nearly 25,000 miles per hour, to leave the earth without falling back to the surface or falling into orbit. Or does it? [...] Escape velocity really refers to the initial speed an object needs – that is, as if it were being shot out of a cannon (which was what Newton was thinking). A rocket acts almost as if it were shot from a cannon since it must expend its fuel in such a short amount of time. This is because the slower it travels the more fuel it has to burn, and the more fuel it has to burn the more it has to carry (step rockets were invented to get around this problem). Getting up to speed as quickly as possible is the most efficient thing to do.

But the last part of the NASA explanation gives a clue to what Andy discovered: if you have a fuel that contains so much energy that it can provide a continuous thrust for a very long time, yet add no more weight to the rocket than ordinary fuels, you can escape into space at much lower speeds. In fact, with the right fuel (albeit an entirely imaginary one), you could travel to the moon at a leisurely 50 miles an hour. In fact, if you had a sidewalk long enough, you could walk to the moon.

Traveling at escape velocity isn’t actually necessary, it’s just energy-efficient. That’s how Andy’s Vulture worked: its fuel was simply so jam-packed with energy the rocket could saunter to the moon at a leisurely rate. (Admittedly, Leonard Wibberley’s wine-powered moon rocket in The Mouse On the Moon, 1962, anticipated this.) --Andy Griffith Knew Something About Space Travel You Probably Don't

(Aug 29, 2019 02:27 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]The SpaceX recovery fleet may be leaving port to escape the hurricane. Either that. or the Octagrabber had better get a good grip.

https://twitter.com/SpaceXFleet/status/1...1510890499

It's verified that the SpaceX recovery ships have traveled up the Florida coast to Jacksonville where they plan to anchor in the St. Johns river south of JAX.

Their positions as of five hours ago.

[Image: EDKWdACW4AEkP4S?format=jpg&name=small]

[Image: EDKWdACW4AEkP4S?format=jpg&name=small]

I'm more and more worried about the fate of the Florida 'Mk2' prototype. Its nearly complete tank section and the lighter fairing sections are still vertical and exposed. And the site is still filled with lots of loose stuff that could become dangerous projectiles in hurricane winds.

Photos taken today don't show any obvious attempts to move things into shelter.

This is the thanks you get...

Hoppy's been emasculated.

[Image: 1580153.jpg]

(Photo taken today by Mary/BocaChicaGal)

It's speculated that SN6 is headed back to its birthplace in Hawthorne to be disassembled and examined. There's talk (that might be all it is) that the engine may have experienced some sort of difficulties right at the end of its run.

(Aug 29, 2019 10:09 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]
Quote:
(Aug 28, 2019 07:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Everyone said Elon Musk was crazy to have a bunch of pickup-driving Texas boys building a spaceship out on an open windy beach, with the entire world watching their every move, in what looked like a junkyard.

Here's clips from the pilot for a long-forgotten 1979 TV series called Salvage-1 that today look like an amazingly accurate documentary about Elon Musk and his crazy Boca Chica Texas operation (with Andy Griffith playing Elon Musk). A junkyard operator decides to build himself a spaceship out of junk and fly to the Moon, to recover the stuff the Apollo missions left up there. Of course the government bureaucrats in suits try to stop them but they launch and successfully land on the Moon.

The same dust and dirt and junk-yard feel. The (rocket-ship) construction workers in hard-hats. They even have the SpaceX RV!

http://youtu.be/xHUWlEB6N1s

Good find, Yazata.

Discounting his mini-series roles, it's one of among at least five short-lived TV series between the original "Andy Griffith Show" and "Matlock" that I had no idea even existed: Headmaster, The New Andy Griffith Show, Adams of Eagle Lake, Salvage1, and The Yeagers.

MeTV will probably discover it eventually, showing one episode weekly on its "Red Eye Sci-Fi" Saturday night. Only 20 sixty minute episodes were produced (16 broadcast), but that's still enough for them.

Isaac Asimov was the show's scientific advisor? Surely he wasn't on board yet when the pilot film (first two episodes) was made: "The main body of Vulture is composed of a Texaco gasoline semi-trailer tank truck with a cement mixer as the capsule."

But on the other hand:

According to NASA, "escape velocity is the speed needed for an object to break away from the gravitational pull of a planet or moon and leave it without further propulsion." A spacecraft needs to be going 7 miles per second, or nearly 25,000 miles per hour, to leave the earth without falling back to the surface or falling into orbit. Or does it? [...] Escape velocity really refers to the initial speed an object needs – that is, as if it were being shot out of a cannon (which was what Newton was thinking). A rocket acts almost as if it were shot from a cannon since it must expend its fuel in such a short amount of time. This is because the slower it travels the more fuel it has to burn, and the more fuel it has to burn the more it has to carry (step rockets were invented to get around this problem). Getting up to speed as quickly as possible is the most efficient thing to do.

But the last part of the NASA explanation gives a clue to what Andy discovered: if you have a fuel that contains so much energy that it can provide a continuous thrust for a very long time, yet add no more weight to the rocket than ordinary fuels, you can escape into space at much lower speeds. In fact, with the right fuel (albeit an entirely imaginary one), you could travel to the moon at a leisurely 50 miles an hour. In fact, if you had a sidewalk long enough, you could walk to the moon.

Traveling at escape velocity isn’t actually necessary, it’s just energy-efficient. That’s how Andy’s Vulture worked: its fuel was simply so jam-packed with energy the rocket could saunter to the moon at a leisurely rate. (Admittedly, Leonard Wibberley’s wine-powered moon rocket in The Mouse On the Moon, 1962, anticipated this.) --Andy Griffith Knew Something About Space Travel You Probably Don't

(Aug 30, 2019 04:35 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]This is the thanks you get...

Hoppy's been emasculated.

(Photo taken today by Mary/BocaChicaGal)

It's speculated that SN6 is headed back to its birthplace in Hawthorne to be disassembled and examined. There's talk (that might be all it is) that the engine may have experienced some sort of difficulties right at the end of its run.

On the plus side, the public shouldn't be too alarmed at Hoppy's loss of stallion status. It may be the first Texas gelding to receive a string of transplant replacements, if it's going to serve as a vertical test stand. Only temporary intervals of being sent out to pasture before being re-stallion-ated, if Elon holds to that promise.

Article on Cape Canaveral's preparations for Hurricane Dorian.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/08/...ne-dorian/

"In a statement to NASASpaceflight, SpaceX said they were taking all necessary precautions to secure the equipment and burgeoning Starship."

But local observers in Cocoa report that as of Friday AM, the Starship prototype segments are still exposed outdoors and haven't been moved into the recently more-or-less completed tall structure.

https://twitter.com/julia_bergeron/statu...0739571713

Julia Bergeron notes that the Cocoa Starship cylindrical tank section is almost as tall as the door to the tall structure, and wonders if the cylinder would fit through the door if it's sitting atop one of those blue Roll-Lift crawlers.

Perhaps not coincidently, photos taken this morning show workers working on the top ring of the cylinder. So, are they removing a ring so that it will fit?

Edit: aerial photos show that it's sitting atop some sort of black base. If it can be removed from that base, it might be short enough to ride in on a crawler.

A tweet from late Friday suggests that the cylinder has been successfully moved into the tall structure.

https://twitter.com/FLAsteve321/status/1...1211904001

Still unconfirmed.

Here's a photograph of the SpaceX oceangoing fleet at anchor near Jacksonville FL.

https://twitter.com/SpaceXFleet/status/1...1318792193

Dorian has been upgraded to Category 4. The barrier islands along the Space Coast, including Cape Canveral, are under mandatory evacation orders. But Cocoa is on the mainland and it isn't (yet). At Cape Canaveral they are busily stowing everything they can. Then all non-essential personnel will evacuate. A few people, some of them military from the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, will remain in designated storm shelters.