Edit: Mary reports road is closed and tank appears entirely covered in frost.
Edit 2: Welds around where the top dome meets the upper ring have just failed. Lots of vapor from around edge of the dome, followed by what looks like a pretty spectacular BLEVE. (RIP Bopper 2.0) Now everything depends on what pressure it reached before it blew. Video of its demise here:
Elon tells us that it reached 8.5 bar! That's the 6 bar needed for flight, plus the x1.4 safety factor they want for manned vehicles. So development of the SN-1 Starship seems to have a green light.
There was some concern about Mary, since she likes to get up close and personal with that's happening and she hadn't been heard from since the explosion. but another Boca Chica resident reports she's fine and down at the beach.
Despite the explosion, it looks like a successful test. (I think it was intended as a test-to-failure.) They filled the tank with LN2, while it vented vehemently. Then they closed the relief valves and let the pressure rise until it finally exploded. Elon says that it had reached the desired pressure when it went.
YazataJan 31, 2020 04:38 AM (This post was last modified: Jan 31, 2020 04:49 AM by Yazata.)
Remember the Starship construction plant that SpaceX was going to build at the Port of Los Angeles? It got swept aside when SX decided to concentrate on Texas and Florida.
Well, San Pedro is reportedly back on the table. SpaceX wants to revive the lease that they had signed with the Port of LA, or at least sign a very similar one.
Boca is still happening given the construction efforts there. I'm speculating that Cocoa's too small a site and Roberts Road may have limitations due to its being on NASA land. I still get the feeling that NASA considers Starship to be Elon's crazy folly and don't really believe in it performing as advertised. So NASA may want SX to concentrate on Falcons and Crew Dragons at Cape Canaveral. Which leaves Boca as Starship's test site until they can show NASA that it really works.
So LA might just be the rebirth of Elon's second Starship operation, if it isn't going to be at Cape Canaveral.
Of course the difficulty in LA is that there isn't any nearby launch site right down the road, like at the Cape and Boca. Unless they start launching Starships from Vandenberg, which is still more than 100 miles away. It's conceivable that the new Space Force might be interested in Starship's potential even if NASA is skeptical. (Imagine a point-to-point military transport that can deliver a battalion anywhere on planet Earth in 30 minutes. Imagine what 100 of them could do.)
Things like the pressure tests to destruction might be difficult in a populated area. (There's speculation that they might do things like pressure tests on a barge out in the Pacific. They have in the past.)
Elon's been spotted in Boca Chica's Giant Tent... along with some newly stacked rings and another header tank ball.
In other news, the new BC vertical assembly building is getting much taller, the Second Giant Tent is coming along nicely, and the remains of the test tanks at the launch area are being cut up for scrap. And interestingly, the large bottom fins from the Mk.1 "Poppy" that were being stored at the launch area were loaded onto a flatbed and moved to a grassy field where they now sit, presumably to be scrapped.
Speculation is that the new move to revive San Pedro came after a Boca Chica job fair that SpaceX threw produced underwhelming results. They might be having trouble finding workers with the kind of skills they need in the Brownsville area (or eager to relocate there). Los Angeles is crawling with skilled workers with aerospace experience. (Many of them right up the road at SpaceX Hawthorne, where the Falcon and Dragon design work is winding down as the designs are finalized. So lots of SX design engineers are being reassigned to Starship.) Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup, Scaled Composites, Stratolaunch and many others also have operations in southern California too.
YazataFeb 4, 2020 03:44 AM (This post was last modified: Feb 4, 2020 04:33 AM by Yazata.)
We've seen it before and it may not mean much, but here's an FCC communications application filed today concerning a Starship suborbital launch from Boca in the period from 3-16-20 to 9-16-20.
YazataFeb 4, 2020 09:19 PM (This post was last modified: Feb 4, 2020 09:21 PM by Yazata.)
Here's your opportunity people!!You've all wanted to build spaceships. (Like on some old Amazing Stories cover, or an old 1950's Science-fiction movie...)
Well, here it is... Doing this will change your life.
Elon says that they want to go to around-the-clock, 7 days a week Starship construction in Boca and need more rocket-shipyard workers.
(Feb 4, 2020 09:19 PM)Yazata Wrote: Here's your opportunity people!!You've all wanted to build spaceships. (Like on some old Amazing Stories cover, or an old 1950's Science-fiction movie...)
Well, here it is... Doing this will change your life.
Elon says that they want to go to around-the-clock, 7 days a week Starship construction in Boca and need more rocket-shipyard workers.
It looks like the dome was already on the stand and they were lowering the rings over it.
Here's a video (by Lab Padre) showing a different one being flipped over. This one is three rings and the dome has a hole in it. Once they have the domes all set, they can make the fuel and oxidizer tanks bigger just by adding rings. Thrust structure at the bottom, chines and raceways, plumbing and electrical wiring and you start to have a rocket.
Jan 28, 2020 07:28 AM
(This post was last modified: Jan 28, 2020 08:30 AM by Yazata.)
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