YazataMar 29, 2020 01:41 AM (This post was last modified: Mar 29, 2020 05:09 AM by Yazata.)
Berry has removed the Cylinder from the highbay. Right now it's suspended by Berry. (I bet that Mary's out there snapping her high-def espionage grade photos and recording video as fast as she can.)
Edit: The crawler is still over by the parabolic dishes and solar panels. It hasn't made any move towards the Cylinder. So maybe they will leave the tank hanging from Berry until sunrise tomorrow or something, instead of moving it at night. It isn't exactly clear what's happening.
Edit 2: The cylinder appears to be sitting atop an M-stand and Berry has disconnected from it.
Berry and the Cylinder. (Screenshot from LabPadre's feed) Check out the guys on the super-high boomlift. (You can't be afraid of heights if you work for SpaceX.)
SpacePadreIsle's video of Big Berry placing the Cylinder on the test mount. The three hydraulic pistons that will push upwards on the thrust dome to simulate rocket thrust are visible.
YazataMar 31, 2020 01:40 AM (This post was last modified: Mar 31, 2020 01:50 AM by Yazata.)
Photo from Elon showing the latest Cylinder on its test stand. The photo helpfully shows the arrangement at the bottom. The three yellow hydraulic rams are visible that will simulate the thrust of three Raptor engines by pushing upwards very hard while the tank is pressurized.
And Big Berry (yellow) along with a colorful assortment of green, blue and orange boomlifts.
If the Cylinder survives the pressure tests, it is expected to receive a nose fairing in fairly short order. Technicians have been photographed (by Mary of course) working on the nose fairing, installing command, telemetry and GPS antennae, along with what may or may not be thrusters. That definitely suggests that they intend to fly this thing, though the absence of control fins and aerodynamic surfaces, along with the hardware mounted on the outer skin will place severe constraints on what kind of flight it will be. The expectation is Hoppy-style hops to prove out the three-Raptor configuration along with general vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of this rather different (from both Hoppy and the F-9's) vehicle.
YazataApr 1, 2020 08:25 PM (This post was last modified: Apr 2, 2020 04:57 AM by Yazata.)
Pressure tests are tentatively scheduled today for 4-5 PM CDT (ambient temperature nitrogen) and then 8-9 PM CDT (cryogenic liquid nitrogen).
Right now, workers and boomlifts are all around the cylinder, so nothing serious has started yet.
The biggest action at the present moment is Berry lifting a new propellant storage tank into position in the launch area tank farm. I expect that Berry will move away to a safe distance before they pressurize the cylinder.
And legs are visible in the photo in the post above, very different than the legs they tried to put on Mk.1. (And Elon has verified that they are in fact legs.) These fold out and telescope. A good render of how they are expected to work is here:
But everything is always changing in Elon-land where they kind of make it all up as they go. Elon has already said that the legs on the next Starship will be further improved (and longer).
Somebody else made a similar render and Elon wrote, "Those are V0.9 legs, so major upgrades coming. need wider span, longer stroke & ability to auto-level for uneven ground or leaning into high winds."
The presence of legs is further evidence that they ultimately hope to fly this. It wouldn't need legs if all that it will be doing is sitting on a test stand.
Edit: 5:10 PM CDT and there are still people at the launch area. One boomlift and some people at the bottom. Berry has left. Road doesn't appear to be closed.
Edit: 5:40 PM CDT the boomlift is gone, but there are still people at the launch area.
Edit: 10:50 PM CDT the boomlift is back and there's a truck and people on the pad. I'm guessing that pressure testing will be deferred to tomorrow, although Elon never sleeps and SpaceX is a round-the-clock operation and have been known to run tests in the wee hours.
YazataApr 2, 2020 06:05 PM (This post was last modified: Apr 3, 2020 06:48 AM by Yazata.)
Ambient temperature gaseous nitrogen pressure test seems to be over.
The Cylinder seemed to lose all of its visible dents and imperfections. Then there was some slight vapor fog seen venting from the side of the Cylinder and the imperfections came back as pressure was (presumably) released. (Botox for rockets!)
Immediately after, a dark Tesla drove up to the Sheriff's roadblock where two deputies stood with a sign planted in the middle of the road. The driver spoke to the deputies who picked up their sign, put it in their County Sheriffs SUV and drove off. The dark Tesla, which has been joined by a couple more, drove off towards the launch area.
Was Elon in the Tesla? Whoever it was, the deputies recognized a honcho. The local Texas workers all drive large pickups. It's the guys from company HQ in California that drive Teslas.
The Cylinder presumably passed this first test. (Mostly a leak test I think.) The next thing on the agenda will be the big cryogenic liquid nitrogen test with the thrust rams at the bottom. Perhaps tonight. The cryo test is where both Mk.1 and Sn.1 failed.
Edit 9:15 CDT: Michael Baylor reports that they have aborted tonight's cryo-test after encountering some kind of difficulty when they were filling the Cylinder with liquid nitrogen. As I write this people are visible around the base and a blue manlift is doing something where the propellant lines connect to the bottom of the Cylinder. I'm guessing that something in the fill-up connections sprung a leak which should be relatively easy to fix. So I expect another try either later tonight or more likely tomorrow.
Edit 10:30 CDT: Elon tweet says, "Some valves leaked at cryo temp. Fixing & will retest soon"
11:05 CDT: Pad seems to be cleared. Workers no longer visible. Unclear if the cryo pressure test is going to happen tonight or if they just headed home for the evening. (Elon never sleeps, so my guess is that they will probably be going tonight. Hours are days in Elon-time.)
11:20 PM CDT: Lots of vapor around the tank farm and under the cylinder. Something is definitely happening.
Midnight CDT: Cylinder started to get frosty around bottom of lower LOX tank, then the frost went away and they seemed to empty it again. Perhaps something went wrong again.
12:45 AM CDT: Some kind of test underway. Top CH4 tank completely full and venting heavily. But bottom LOX tank isn't frosting up or venting a whole lot.
It looks to my layman's eye like yet another failure mode. It wasn't the top bulkhead exploding like Mk.1. It wasn't the bottom thrust bulkhead exploding like Sn.1. This time it was an implosion, a crushing, of the LOX tank. For some as yet unknown reason, it suddenly lost pressure. But... there doesn't seem to have been any explosive release of anything from the bottom (like last time).
The LOX tank never became frosty, so I don't know what it was pressurized with. The assumption is pressurized gaseous ambient temperature nitrogen.
One line of speculation points to the valve problem earlier in the evening. If a valve was leaking sufficiently, or a pressure relief valve got stuck in the open position, that might explain the evident loss of pressure in the LOX tank.
It's becoming painfully obvious that they can't just keep building giant tanks that continually fail like this. Just think of a fully fueled and crewed 1000-ton Starship sitting atop a Superheavy booster (which structurally is just giant tanks). They need to rethink things and make some changes.
ComicfromPlanet9 Wrote:@Geopilot8h
This is what happened to the empty sealed bottom tank as the top tank cooled it.
Sounds like the most plausible I've seen. It did look (to me) like negative pressure in the lower tank. Maybe just starting to put liquid gas into a tank of warm air without opening the sucking relief valve and - foop.
If it was empty and simply collapsed under the weight of the top tank -surely not.
Mar 29, 2020 01:41 AM
(This post was last modified: Mar 29, 2020 05:09 AM by Yazata.)
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