Mary reports that liquid nitrogen tankers are arriving and unloading at the launch area, and there are road closures scheduled for Saturday Jan 25.
https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/...4507403269
So presumably, they are either going to be mating two of their new domes with rings to make a new tank-like pressure vessel similar to Bopper, or else they are going to be pressurizing the LOX header tank ball. And not just with water this time, but with cryogenic liquid nitrogen.
Elon said at Cape Canaveral that they are finding the fuel tank domes challenging. So I'm guessing it won't be the LOX header ball.
There's speculation that pressurization might be inflating and expanding the cylinder differently than the domes, causing the welds along the circumference of the domes to fail. Lots of very technical engineering discussion of that, well above my pay grade.
Welds respond differently at cryogenic cold temperatures. And it's possible to strengthen welds by pressurizing them and then releasing the pressure, and cycling that a few times, so there might be several things that the SpaceX engineers might want to look at. They may be able to improve on their 7.1 bar achieved with the Bopper with some tweaks. Or maybe not. (I'm not an engineer, I don't know.)
But they are going to experimenting again on Saturday.
Elon in Boca, looking at a fuel tank dome (from Lab Padre's stream):
https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/...4507403269
So presumably, they are either going to be mating two of their new domes with rings to make a new tank-like pressure vessel similar to Bopper, or else they are going to be pressurizing the LOX header tank ball. And not just with water this time, but with cryogenic liquid nitrogen.
Elon said at Cape Canaveral that they are finding the fuel tank domes challenging. So I'm guessing it won't be the LOX header ball.
There's speculation that pressurization might be inflating and expanding the cylinder differently than the domes, causing the welds along the circumference of the domes to fail. Lots of very technical engineering discussion of that, well above my pay grade.
Welds respond differently at cryogenic cold temperatures. And it's possible to strengthen welds by pressurizing them and then releasing the pressure, and cycling that a few times, so there might be several things that the SpaceX engineers might want to look at. They may be able to improve on their 7.1 bar achieved with the Bopper with some tweaks. Or maybe not. (I'm not an engineer, I don't know.)
But they are going to experimenting again on Saturday.
Elon in Boca, looking at a fuel tank dome (from Lab Padre's stream):