BFR Developments

[Yazata]

This afternoon Jack Beyer caught poor 'you've been replaced' Raptor #44 with its hair a mess, and snapped a 93 megapixel closeup of it.

https://twitter.com/thejackbeyer/status/...3492026371

It's in the link below in all of its glory. Just put your cursor over any desired part of the picture and blow it up. You can zoom in so close you can actually read some of the labels on all of the Medusa-hair tubing and cabling. It's things like this that make the engineers fall out of their chairs. Believe me, there are people out there who spend their spare time trying to figure out what everything is and what connects to what, so that they can draw up schematics, flow charts and stuff. They've already noted what looks like a color-coding scheme on the labels and some exciting (to engineers) specifications of the pressures in some of the lines (hundreds of bar).

https://www.easyzoom.com/imageaccess/0e7...fafc253772

Makes me wonder if SpaceX is happy with their intellectual property leaking out like this. There are probably ITAR considerations. (Rocket engines are controlled defense technology.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese engineers aren't taking careful notes.(Of course they probably already have all the SpaceX engineering drawings and specifications from the computers in SpaceX Hawthorne. China second to none in industrial espionage.)

[C C]

[...] I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese engineers aren't taking careful notes.(Of course they probably already have all the SpaceX engineering drawings and specifications from the computers in SpaceX Hawthorne. China second to none in industrial espionage.)

Marxist China is technologically like the Borg. Impressive, intimidating -- but everything is stolen from other cultures. Can't innovate for itself.

[Yazata]

Here's the current state-of-play in the constantly evolving Boca Chica situation.

A second Raptor engine has been removed and replaced. And this time the engines transported back and forth were covered by tarps. There's speculation that the two replacement engines were selflessly contributed by the already completed Sn10 in the High Bay.

There are tfrs for Monday through Thursday of this coming week.

Monday's is an odd one, from the surface up to 7,200 feet mean sea level. There was already a tfr in place for up to 1800 feet. It's a mystery what the new one is about. If anything is planned for tomorrow, it would presumably just be a static fire of the new engines. But 7,200 feet??

Then there are tfrs for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 8 AM to 6 PM each day, all for surface up to "unlimited". These look like flight tfrs.

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr2/list.html

Edit: The Monday 7,200 foot tfr has been extended through Thursday around the clock, 24 hours each day. Still mysterious what's happening and why they feel they need the 7,200 foot tfr.

[Yazata]

Mary has received the familiar "over-pressure" warning notice. It's believed that another static fire is on for tomorrow to test out the two new engines and their installation. If that succeeds (not a sure thing given recent events) Sn9's flight is expected on Tuesday, or more likely Wednesday or Thursday.

https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/...8963673090

[Image: Er-oNzlXUAAPo9m?format=jpg&name=large]

[Yazata]

There wasn't any static fire today.

But Mary has received another warning notice for tomorrow.

And Jack has been conducting more espionage. While he's stuck in South Padre waiting for Sn9's flight and being an engineering geek, he's been poking around the Port of Brownsville. And he discovered this not-so-little gem: It's an out-of-service oil drilling platform that has recently been renamed Deimos (one of the moons of Mars).

https://twitter.com/thejackbeyer/status/...8084661252

Until recently it had the more prosaic name of Ensco 8500.

Well, Deimos is equipped with Seatrax S90s cranes, and it just so happens that SpaceX has had a job advertisement for crane operators and besides the big crawler cranes we have seen at Boca, they also want operators familiar with Seatrax 90 series cranes.

It's already known that SpaceX was looking at the possibility of launching Superheavys from repurposed offshore oil platforms because of the danger inherent in a fully fueled Starship exploding like Sn4 and the tremendous noise the Superheavy's will make during launch with something like 28 Raptor engines. (To say nothing of getting environmental approvals from the new federal bureaucracy.) The plan is still to conduct test flights from Boca Chica but if the launch cadence rises to several Superheavy launches a day as Elon hopes it eventually will when his Mars schemes are underway, that might become impossible to do from Boca.

And given the economic impacts of covid and the hostility of the new crowd in Washington to fossil fuels, many oil platforms are out of service and can currently be purchased for scrap metal prices.

All of which make people suspect that Elon's fingerprints may be all over Deimos. Get a giant offshore platform for almost nothing from an oil company which just wants somebody to take it off their hands, remove the oil derrick, build a launch platform, install cryogenic propellant hookups... the geeks also note that the Gulf of Mexico has a shallow spot about 20 miles off Boca Chica that's only about 50 feet deep. A platform could easily be anchored in a place like that, fixed to piles or jacked up on legs or however they do it.

More things that make you go 'hummm...'

And in more news, it's becoming clearer what's being constructed near the old gas well site just west of the build area. In the last few days a "cold box" for a cryogenic gas separation unit was installed. This is the heart of a facility that extracts nitrogen and oxygen from air in the form of liquid nitrogen and LOX.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation

Seeing as how Boca uses large quantities of LOX and liquid nitrogen, both of which are trucked in by a parade of tanker trucks by industrial gas suppliers with their own air separation facilities, producing the liquified gases on site is a natural evolutionary step. Boca uses liquid methane too, and there happen to be two natural gas wells on the property. If they plan to make LCH4 too, there will need to be refinery steps to remove the heavier hydrocarbons from the natural gas.

[Yazata]

It's being reported that SpaceX has indeed purchased two oil drilling platforms, which they have named Phobos and Deimos for the two moons of Mars. They were previously Ensco 8500 and Ensco 8501 and are almost identical.

And there's this: The two platforms are reported below to have been purchased by an unknown buyer for $3.5 million each from offshore energy contractor Valaris. Ensco changed its corporate name to Valaris in 2019 as the result of a merger.

http://www.energyglobalnews.com/valaris-...C500%2C000

This banner from the Ensco company website appears to show a platform very similar to 8500/Deimos and 8501/Phobos.

[Image: banner-sl-3.jpg]

[Yazata]

Here's lots more more about Phobos and Deimos.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/01/...paceports/

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-buildin...os-deimos/

https://pubs.spe.org/en/jpt/jpt-article-.../?art=8062

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/am...-starship/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/spacex-b...hpads.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanoca...5156f117b2

Energyvoice.com reports that Deimos originally cost $312 million and Phobos cost $338 million when they were built in 2008-9. SpaceX picked them up for scrap metal price of $3.5 million each. (The government would have spent at least a billion each for custom platforms that would have taken years and gone way over budget.)

Ensco photo of one of the 8500 series deep sea oil platforms. There's even a helicopter pad. The tower probably has to go since it's above the "moon pool" hole in the platform that might make a nice flame duct for rocket exhaust. There's probably no need for big fuel tanks, since speculation is that they will use a modified liquified natural gas tanker that will pull up alongside the platform and fuel up the rocket from its tanks. These tankers are already designed to carry cryogenic fluids. They might have to install a much bigger pedestal crane to hoist and stack Superheavys and Starships. Then crew would have to evacuate to a safe distance for launches.

[Image: 106826349-1611077100209-ensco_8500_serie...=740&h=416]

[Yazata]

Unlike Deimos, Phobos was in Houston rather than Brownsville TX. Phobos has been towed to Pascagoula MS for Spaceport conversion by a contractor.

Watch its arrival here. Very dramatic approach out of the fog!

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/BZ_qX5PFlyg

[Yazata]

Oops! I just accidently deleted a post that I was trying to edit... (It was a wonderful post too.)

It announced what appeared to be a successful static fire and included a link to Lab Padre's video from multiple cameras, ending with the "depress" vent that releases pressure in the propellant tanks afterwards.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-mgqCzUl26s

Anyway, here's the edit:

The remaining static fire tfrs have been canceled and based on the flight tfrs (the ones clearing air space to unlimited altitude) it now looks like Eileen will fly as early as Monday!!

And Elon verifies it.

"Hopefully, early next week"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1353001518232784898

[C C]

[...] Check out the birds going "What the hell was that?? I'm outta here!!" Video ends with the depress vent as pressure in the propellant tanks is released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mgqCzUl26s

 

Just to deter eco-extinction rebel cults from protesting on property boundaries someday, maybe they should get a booming sound-cannon from a pecan tree orchard (squirrels) and see if it'll also scare birds away seconds before actual lift-off. Switch it from random activation pattern to a set time or use manual remote control.