YazataDec 11, 2021 05:41 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 11, 2021 06:49 AM by Yazata.)
Latest update - They hope to have Booster 4 on the Orbital Launch Mount before the end of the month for a long series of tests, which will probably include cryo pressure tests and a number of static fires, along with tests of all the new ground support equipment.
But talk is that Booster 4 has issues. So it's increasingly likely that it won't fly. And recently completed Booster 5 has the same issues, whatever they are. So Booster 5 has been moved from the High Bay to the Rocket Garden where it is parked next to flight veteran Sn 15 and never-flown Sn 16. Looks like it's never destined to fly. (Looks cool standing there, though.) Parts had been accumulating for B6 and even B7, but it now appears that these are being repurposed as test articles. Which suggests some sort of major redesign is underway that renders B4, B5 and the parts for 6 and 7 obsolete. Very mysterious.
There are issues not only with the Boosters but also with the Raptors. So they seem to be awaiting modified R2 ones for the orbital flight.
Meaning that right now, everything is up in the air, apparently awaiting a new Booster that hasn't started construction yet and a new improved R2 Raptor engines that have only just appeared at McGregor for testing.
Bottom line is that a January Orbital Test Flight, which was the old plan, looks increasingly unlikely. It's questionable whether the Orbital Flight Test will even fly in 1st quarter 2022. SLS might actually end up beating it to space! (never thought I'd say that)
In other news, Starship Gazer spotted another group of visitors at the Launch Area. They arrived in a SpaceX bus and included three people in blue flight suits with NASA logos and mission patches that enabled the geeks to identify them as NASA astronauts. I recognized one of them as Crew-1 astronaut Victor Glover. The other two astronauts were identified as people involved in NASA lunar and Mars planning. They were accompanied by a group of what looked like engineering and executive types. It was known that NASA wanted to send observers to Starbase but couldn't while Blue's lawsuit was underway. But it's clear that NASA people are now there, including some space celebrities. It seems that Starship has lots of people at NASA excited and delegations are flying in from both Houston and Cape Canaveral.
And speaking of Cape Canaveral, Elon has announced that construction has begun of a second Starship launch complex at historic Pad 39A. This is holy ground to NASA where the Apollo Moon missions launched and later the Shuttles. A big flame diverter had been partly constructed months ago before work there was halted, and it's been cut apart and removed. The plan now seems to be to duplicate the Starbase Orbital Launch Pad (OLP) and the Orbital Launch Integration Tower (OLIT). Work is currently underway to drill piles to support these massive structures.
YazataDec 17, 2021 03:12 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 17, 2021 03:54 AM by Yazata.)
It isn't just the semi-holy Launch Complex 39A (where Apollo and the Shuttle launched from). Word is trickling out of Cape Canaveral that there are much bigger plans than that. Rumors about big things have been swirling for some time, and now NASA has provided verification in the form of them congratulating themselves for their zealous environmental stewardship. They just revealed in passing what the environmental studies are about.
It seems that SpaceX wants to build another launch complex to be called Launch Complex 49, to the north of Pad 39B. (Which is north of 39A and where SLS will launch.) This is said to be explicitly for their Starship/Superheavy launch vehicles. Along with the Starship launch facilities at 39A which have already started construction, a new 49 will give them two Starship launch sites at the Cape. At this point NASA is conducting an environmental study prior to a formal use agreement being signed for the proposed 49.
Another important bit of information let slip in this environmental press release is that the proposed LC 49 won't just be for launching Starships, but for landing them as well. Starships will launch to the east (to take advantage of the Earth's rotation) but will come in for landings from the west. Which would take them over populated parts of Florida. There has been speculation about how willing the FAA will be to allow that. (The Space Shuttles did it, but the shuttles were NASA and not under the jurisdiction of the FAA.) Remains to be seen how that plays out.
So it definitely looks like SpaceX is committing itself in a big way to Cape Canaveral. If there are two Starship launch complexes at the Cape, it can be expected that a second Starship manufacturing plant will probably appear at Kennedy Space Center as well. That may or may not be destined for SpaceX's Roberts Road site on the KSC grounds.
"Each Raptor 1 engine above produces 185 metric tons of force. Raptor 2 just started production & will do 230+ tons or over half a million pounds of force."
YazataDec 20, 2021 06:42 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 20, 2021 07:12 AM by Yazata.)
Recent Elon tweets have provided lots of information.
First, they do intend to fly B4 and S20 (the booster and ship currently at the launch area) on the first orbital test flight, early in the coming year. They are indeed flight articles as opposed to ground-test articles, as recent rumors have been suggesting.
Second, Elon cast some light on the design changes of future Boosters and Ships.
Both Boosters and Ships will switch from Raptor 1's to the new Raptor 2's, which will produce about 20% more thrust per engine. The first of these new engines are currently undergoing static fire testing at McGregor. The first R2's were manufactured at Hawthorne, but a new factory to manufacture them is being fitted out at McGregor.
The new Boosters will move from 29 engines to 33. These will be an outer ring of 20 fixed engines, an inner ring of 10 steering engines with thrust vector control for steering on ascent (up from 8 on B4) and three center engines with TVC that will be used for ascent as well as relit for landing (up from one on B4).
The new Ships will go from six engines to nine. These engines will be the 3 center Sea Level Raptors that will be used for ascent and then relit and used for landing, plus a ring of six big-belled Vacuum Raptors for accelerating while in space (up from three on S20). Elon also said that the fuel tanks on future Ships will be stretched so as to hold additional propellant. Unknown how big that stretch will be.
Video by a Waco TX tornado chaser named Adam Cuker of a Raptor test on a horizontal test stand at McGregor with a duration of maybe 150 seconds. Elon replied to this and said that all the Raptor tests at McGregor going forward will be R2's.
(Dec 11, 2021 05:41 AM)Yazata Wrote: In other news, Starship Gazer spotted another group of visitors at the Launch Area. They arrived in a SpaceX bus and included three people in blue flight suits with NASA logos and mission patches that enabled the geeks to identify them as NASA astronauts. I recognized one of them as Crew-1 astronaut Victor Glover. The other two astronauts were identified as people involved in NASA lunar and Mars planning. They were accompanied by a group of what looked like engineering and executive types. It was known that NASA wanted to send observers to Starbase but couldn't while Blue's lawsuit was underway. But it's clear that NASA people are now there, including some space celebrities. It seems that Starship has lots of people at NASA excited and delegations are flying in from both Houston and Cape Canaveral.
(Dec 11, 2021 05:41 AM)Yazata Wrote: In other news, Starship Gazer spotted another group of visitors at the Launch Area. They arrived in a SpaceX bus and included three people in blue flight suits with NASA logos and mission patches that enabled the geeks to identify them as NASA astronauts. I recognized one of them as Crew-1 astronaut Victor Glover. The other two astronauts were identified as people involved in NASA lunar and Mars planning. They were accompanied by a group of what looked like engineering and executive types. It was known that NASA wanted to send observers to Starbase but couldn't while Blue's lawsuit was underway. But it's clear that NASA people are now there, including some space celebrities. It seems that Starship has lots of people at NASA excited and delegations are flying in from both Houston and Cape Canaveral.
YazataDec 23, 2021 12:27 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 23, 2021 12:39 AM by Yazata.)
I think that the group above might have been a different tour group, from NASA headquarters in Washington DC. Here's the group that we saw on Starship Gazer's livestream. This one included the astronauts and appears to have come from NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville AL
You can't spit at Starbase without hitting somebody from NASA! Big difference from when Blue's lawsuit was underway and they were more or less ordered to stay away. (Though a number of them inexplicably decided to vacation at South Padre Island and visit unofficially on their own time.)
Astronaut Victor Glover second from right and astronaut Randy Bresnik on far left. The third astronaut that we saw in Starship Gazer's stream isn't in this shot. They appear to be looking at Booster 5, which was recently put into storage in the rocket garden with its future unknown. There aren't any engines installed, but we can see all the fittings where they go, hanging like stalactites from the thrust dome. (NASA photo)
YazataDec 28, 2021 12:59 AM (This post was last modified: Dec 28, 2021 01:13 AM by Yazata.)
Presumably you've seen Mauricio's/RGV's Starbase flyover videos. Well, here's something else that he and a few friends from LabPadre did right before Christmas. (I just learned about it today.)
It's an informal discussion of what it was that Mauricio was showing us, illustrated by his photographs. Lots of details of what everything is, what SpaceX seems to be planning (revealed by all the construction materials piled around) and discussions of how the Orbital Tank Farm and Launch Pad and Tower will work.
They also reveal a few SpaceX mistakes and screw-ups.
First, the relatively minor matter that the Starbar atop the High Bay doesn't satisfy Texas fire codes. It requires two different fire exits so two fire protected stairways are going in as we speak, in addition to the elevator.
And the more serious fact that the new methane tanks at the Orbital Tank Farm don't meet Texas laws regarding storage of potentially explosive hydrocarbons. There are several design defects there that make them uncertifiable as things stand. So that not-so-little difficulty is holding up commissioning of the tank farm.SpaceX may or may not be forced to switch to more conventional methane tanks suitable for certification. The two large horizontal tanks there now are stop-gap measures that might have to become permanent. The problem is that they are too small to hold enough fuel for a full-stack Starship + Booster. And if they have to put in more tanks, parts of the new tank farm will have to be torn out and replaced. The discussion speculates that what happened was that SpaceX relied on its own engineers who thought that since they already design spaceship fuel tanks, storage tanks should be a piece of cake. So they plowed ahead in ignorance of tank certification standards that any petroleum industry engineer would have been familiar with. It's how SpaceX rolls.
Another thing they discuss is the little video gif in the tweet below, apparently shot by a SpaceX employee. SpaceX may not be happy about it being made public, but it's out in the world now. It shows the interior of a Starship payload fairing. This is where cargo will go in cargo Starships and where decks and cabins will go in crew Starships. Huge. You can see the nose header tank up in the nose tip and a bunch of copvs.
YazataDec 28, 2021 08:45 PM (This post was last modified: Dec 29, 2021 04:03 AM by Yazata.)
Bad News
Our wonderful friends in the federal government have announced that their decision on the Starbase environmental assessment, a preliminary to SpaceX receiving a launch licence for Starship, has been pushed back from December 31, 2021 to February 28, 2022.
My guess is that the FAA is feeling lots of pressure. From NASA and the Space Force on the pro-Starship side, and from Senator Karen, Senator Bernie, the labor unions (who hate Elon because Tesla and SpaceX are non-union), from all sorts of environmental activists and perhaps from Boeing, Bezos and Blue on the other. Given the current Washington regime, the opposition has a lot of influence.
It's interesting to speculate about what impact this will have on the project. I'm guessing that it means that they won't fly Booster 4 or Ship 20 for the first orbital flight and will give that assignment to newly built follow-on vehicles. It may give SpaceX time to get their Raptor 2 engines through testing at McGregor so that they have a flight-set of 42 (33 for booster and 9 for the ship) of the new improved engines.
Dec 11, 2021 05:41 AM
(This post was last modified: Dec 11, 2021 06:49 AM by Yazata.)
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