BFR Developments

[Yazata]

First Elon tweeted that there was a good chance that they would try again today.

Then a parade of cars drove down to the pad as the sheriff's roadblock stayed up. A blue  boom-lift was seen reaching up under SN5's skirt (quiet down CC!). I can imagine a mechanic emerging, wiping his hands on his overalls and saying, "It's a bad spin-valve. It isn't going to be cheap." And Elon saying "Go ahead and replace the spin-valve, I can afford it."

Spin-valves are used to introduce high-pressure gas from a COPV to spin up the turbopumps prior to igniting the preburners that turns them into little jet engines.)

Then the boom lift came down and the parade of cars left the pad again. Looks like they are repressurizing the vehicle so they appear to be having another go.

Edit: 6:43 PM CDT fueling underway

Edit 2: 6:50 - Siren sounding!

Edit 3: 7:00 - SN5 JUST FLEW!

Screenshot from the NSF stream. Notice how it's flying crooked. That was expected, since the single engine is slightly off-center and is thrusting through the entire vehicle's center of mass.

[Image: 1960819.jpg]

Flight looked good. No visible damage. The huge thing is now sitting over at the landing pad, leaning slightly. The Leaning Tower of Boca Chica! Perhaps one day more famous than the one in Pisa, at least to Martians, since it's the beginning of their history.

The SpaceX workers were watching and cheering. Imagine the hours of work that they put into making these things. They must feel good to see it finally succeed. Mary photographed some of them high on a large boom lift to get a better view.

Watch the video clip below (by Mary naturally) in full-screen with the sound up, not only to hear the rocket's roar, but also the reaction of the gathered SpaceX workers. It's very good, Elon retweeted it and is featuring it on his twitter page.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...7882431488

Here's Tim Dodd and SPadreIsle's very good video, featuring Tim freaking out. This one shows the landing less obscured by smoke and dust, so that you can see the rather cryptic landing legs.

https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/statu...6665084928

Edit: 7:38 - Road is still closed. Vehicle is being safed. Since there are no ground support connections at the landing pad, speculation is that the remaining fuel is being allowed to boil off.

Nomadd in Boca Chica reports that it was louder than Hoppy. His porch was shaking. Imagine what a Super Heavy will sound like with ~30 engines! (The Mother of All Rockets

[Yazata]

It's been a very good three days for Elon. On Sunday the very successful conclusion to Bob and Doug's excellent adventure. And on Tuesday, a successful vertical takeoff and landing test of a partial Starship prototype, designed to eventually take people to Mars and points beyond.

Elon summed up the vision driving it at the Bob and Doug welcome event in Houston -

https://twitter.com/RealLifeStarman/stat...6013412352

[C C]

Hurray. Finally. Still can't get over how that looks like the flame of a cutting torch.

[confused2]

I'd given up hope and missed it. Wowowowowowowowwow.

[Yazata]

Hurray. Finally. Still can't get over how that looks like the flame of a cutting torch.

It's the liquid methane fuel. It burns very clean.

Liquid hydrogen engines are even cleaner and have almost invisible flame plumes.

It's dirty-burning kerosene rocket fuel (like the Falcon 9 uses) that burn bright, because there's lots of combustion products in the plume that get incandescent.

The brightest rocket engine flames are the solid rocket boosters.

---

I'd given up hope and missed it.

After all the prototypes that popped, crushed and blew up, and after the last two aborts, I was a little down too. Yesterday, I was super-excited. This morning I was excited but not so much. This afternoon I was interested but feeling a little cynical. But when the engine lit and the thing came off the test stand, I realized it was show-time, and all the excitement came flooding back. Seeing that huge silver cylinder rise above the cloud of dust electrified me. Then the tension of seeing if they could land it in one piece. It was over in less than a minute.

The beauty of it is that next up are Starships with three engines, pointy noses and fins. Finally an 'SN' prototype that looks like a space ship! They will be flying them to 20 kilometers (about 60,000 feet), cutting the engines and letting them fall sideways with fins outstretched like a skydiver. At relatively low altitude they will restart the engines, do a radical 90 degree pitch-up maneuver, and complete the landing propulsively. (I expect them to lose some very spectacularly. We have more failures in store.)

Then flying them above the Karman line into space, and returning them like Falcon 9 boosters.

By that time they will be test flying Super Heavy boosters with ~30 engines, which will be a sight to see (and hear). Some short hops, some Falcon 9 style recoveries from space.

Then finally placing a Starship atop a Superheavy to form the largest rocket ever to launch and boosting it into orbit. And it will face a new set of challenges re-entering the atmosphere from orbital velocity with Space Shuttle style thermal tiles. They might lose a few more.

So today is just the beginning of a whole process that's going to provide progressively new spectacles every few months. And once the long series of test flights is nearing completion, with cargo, tanker and passenger Starships proven, we will be seeing Moon and then Mars landings, outposts, bases and colonies.

It isn't going to stop. Lots to look forward to.

Wowowowowowowowwow.

It's the future, C2.

I never received my flying car. (All I got was a stupid cell-phone.)

So I'm very happy to see somebody (Elon) finally getting serious about building spaceships!

Like somebody said on the NSF stream, if Werner von Braun saw SN5, what would he say?

'About time! We landed on the Moon 50 years ago!'

[Yazata]

SpaceX has released their own video of the SN5 flight, featuring views from their drone, from onboard cameras inside the skirt showing the engine, the little landing legs deploying, and including some remarks by the controllers on their comm net.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/s1HA9LlFNM0

[Yazata]

LabPadre reports that as of 11:20 PM CDT on Wednesday, SN5 is still sitting, slightly tilted, on its lovely landing pad. Nobody is at the launch site and the roadblock is still up complete with sheriffs cars with flashing lights.

The speculation is that when it landed it still had some small amount of fuel in it. Since there isn't any ground support equipment at the landing pad to detank it, they are just waiting for the last of the fuel to boil off. (It's liquid methane after all.)

LabPadre was going to do a flyover video in a chartered Cessna this morning, but the pilot told him that the temporary flight restriction was still up for today so Boca Chica is still a no-fly zone.

There's more speculation about what will become of SN5. Will it be a one-shot wonder like Hoppy? Or will they bring in a crane and a crawler, haul it back to the test stand, and prepare it to fly again? Nobody (except Elon) knows.

My own guess is that they won't fly SN5 any more, they might skip over beautifully constructed SN6 and go directly to SN8, which will have three engines, fins, a nose and all the spaceshipey stuff that SN5 lacks. (SN7 was a pressure test tank that was tested to destruction.)

In other news, they are back at work on the new High(er) Bay.

One of the new robots (they give Elon his orders) was photographed by Mary and Nomadd in one of the giant tents with the words Heat Shield printed on it, busily welding thousands of small steel pegs onto steel ring barrels. (Deadly boring for humans, just the job for robots whose minds never wander.) Elon's thermal tiles won't just be glued on like the Shuttle's tiles, they will be attached to pegs welded to the ship. Hence less danger of losing tiles which constantly threatened Shuttle flights. It's telling that the heat shield will only be necessary for orbital Starships, so are they already building one? Or do they simply want to observe what aerodynamic effects the tiles might have during shorter and less ambitious flights?

[Yazata]

The road is open and crews are back at the launch site. A nitrogen tanker is pulled up next to SN5, presumably to purge its tanks of residual methane gas with inflammable nitrogen.

Grover, one of the massive yellow mobile cranes, has appeared along with the blue roll lift crawler. Presumably they plan to pick up SN5 and transport it somewhere. It can't stay on the landing pad forever. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

They have begun construction of the third level of the Higher(er) Bay. This already takes it taller than the Mid Bay (the former 'high bay'). It's anticipated that the new High Bay will have four levels.

[Yazata]

"Texas Tank Watchers" is the name that everyone who watches the NSF Boca Chica livestreams have given themselves.

I think that it started when one of the people watching one of the streams said that his wife had come into the room and asked, "Are you watching that tank show again?" So one of the NSF host-nerds put on his best Southern accent and said, "On the next episode of Texas Tank Watchers..."

It stuck. Now there are 'Texas Tank Watchers' t-shirts, hats and hoodies for all the people that spend endless hours inexplicably watching Texas tanks.

This is by Jesse Speer. I like it. If you watch a Texas tank long enough, it might suddenly move.

https://twitter.com/JesseTylerSpeer/stat...0114295809

[Image: Ee2FsSuXoAcEzZF?format=jpg&name=large]

Chris Bergin posted a video clip (by Mary) of SpaceX workers pushing on SN5 (which was suspended by Grover the crane) with comments about how big SN5 is.

Elon replied "It will look crazy tall with booster & fairing at 122m / 394 ft"

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...8209803264

[C C]

If you watch a Texas tank long enough, it might suddenly move.

Texas moonshine stills really go to the Moon.