The reality today. The booster's bottom with the booster quick disconnect (BQD) to the right. It's where all the fueling, electrical and data lines connect to the booster. When the rocket launches, the QD unplugs and quickly retreats into its armored housing and the steel door seen above the BQD swings down and seals off the front to protect the innards from the withering rocket blast.
This photo shows why I love Starbase so much. The weird mixture of small-time regular-people's enthusiasm and super high tech futurism. There's nowhere else on the planet where they come together and juxtapose like this. Where regular people can just walk right up close to huge interplanetary spaceships like nothing else in human history. Where the best way to follow these extraordinary events is on the alternative space-enthusiast media. Elon actually favors the alternative media and gives them access that mainstream media like CNN would never get. Despite his being the (self-made) world's richest man, there's a down-to-earth quality to Elon. (Ironic, isn't it? When his goal in life is to get humanity off earth and out into the solar system.) He can be off-putting to others, but it's his brilliance and intensity, not his hauteur. There's little of that in Elon.
YazataMar 26, 2022 03:27 AM (This post was last modified: Mar 26, 2022 03:31 AM by Yazata.)
A depressing piece of news: The FAA's preliminary environmental review is supposedly necessary before it can issue an orbital launch license for Starship launches from Boca Chica. The review was originally supposed to be complete Dec 31, 2021, then the end of February, then the end of this month (March). But today we hear that it's been pushed back until the end of April.
The Biden administration doesn't like Elon because he dissed both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ("Senator Karen") and because both Tesla and SpaceX are non-union. So it really looks like the FAA is deliberately slow-walking the approvals, perhaps to ensure that SLS flies before Starship.
[sarcasm]Washington bureaucracy at its finest![/sarcasm]
My worry is that once the review is complete, the FAA will prescribe so many environmental mitigation measures (no worms or insects can be inconvenienced in any way!) that launches will be near impossible. The only hope then is that NASA and the Space Force can exert some pressure the other direction. They both need SpaceX in the worst way, now that Russian space cooperation is down the tubes. (The Ukraine war has suddenly focused a lot of minds.) Right now, SpaceX is the only way the US has of putting humans in orbit. It's hopefully starting to dawn on them that they need Elon.
YazataApr 26, 2022 09:47 PM (This post was last modified: Apr 27, 2022 04:47 AM by Yazata.)
All of the new Starships and Superheavy boosters will have production Raptor 2 engines, not the developmental Raptor 1's. But to this date, all that have been seen being delivered at Starbase have been two engines.
Turns out that there are more on hand than that. (Photo below by Elon). Elon says that each of these babies can put out 230 tons of force.
These are all sea-level Raptors, not the big-bell vacuum Raptors. The first orbital flight will need 33 sea-level Raptors for the Booster plus 3 more sea-level Raptors for the Starship. 36 of these total. So they are still going to need more. Sadly, all the engines on the first orbital flight will be lost since the vehicles won't be recovered.
I assume that these are all test-fired at McGregor before they make their way to Starbase. There have been many reports of Raptor 2 testing at McGregor. (McGregor should be manufacturing them soon. The new factory is about complete, I think.)
And Elon has tired of his Giant Tents at Starbase. (He'll never tire of cranes.) He's going to conventional factory buildings here at Starbase as well as at Cape Canaveral.
Here's a photo from Twitter by Mauricio of RGV Aerial Photography showing the foundation for the first of the new buildings. It's expected that some of the functions of the existing Giant Tents will be moved to the new building and the Tents will be removed and replaced one by one.
(Mar 26, 2022 03:27 AM)Yazata Wrote: A depressing piece of news: The FAA's preliminary environmental review is supposedly necessary before it can issue an orbital launch license for Starship launches from Boca Chica. The review was originally supposed to be complete Dec 31, 2021, then the end of February, then the end of this month (March). But today we hear that it's been pushed back until the end of April.
And now it's been pushed back until the end of May. (Assuming it isn't delayed again.)
Quote:The Biden administration doesn't like Elon because he dissed both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ("Senator Karen") and because both Tesla and SpaceX are non-union. So it really looks like the FAA is deliberately slow-walking the approvals, perhaps to ensure that SLS flies before Starship.
And now Elon's gone and bought Twitter, which hasn't won him any friends in the current regime. So the federal bureaucracy getting its revenge on SpaceX isn't entirely unexpected.
YazataMay 4, 2022 07:06 AM (This post was last modified: May 4, 2022 07:12 AM by Yazata.)
While we are in indefinite FAA-induced waiting mode at Starbase, Booster 7 appears to have suffered an unfortunate accident during testing last week. It appears that a large pressure differential was allowed to build up between the pressure inside the LOX header tank and the pressure inside the liquid methane downcomer that passes throught the header. This crushed the downcomer flat, like stepping on a cardboard tube. My guess that this was probably the result of a test configuration error, not a failure of the rocket design.
(What surprises me is that SpaceX appears to be trying to repair Booster 7, which would appear to me to be almost impossible.)
Zack Golden, a Chicago engineer who is very observant and a very likeable guy, has started a youtube channel and here's his first video. It's very good too. It's mostly about the accident but there's other stuff about events at both Cape Canaveral and Starbase too.
YazataMay 7, 2022 09:18 PM (This post was last modified: May 7, 2022 09:44 PM by Yazata.)
Evidence that SpaceX thinks that they will likely receive FAA approval to launch from Boca Chica sometime in the next six months. It's an application to the FCC for temporary radio license for Starship orbital test. Dates given are May 21, 2022 through 11-21-22. (Maybe they can only apply for them in six month increments.)
YazataMay 14, 2022 10:59 PM (This post was last modified: May 15, 2022 03:23 AM by Yazata.)
Here's something Extraordinary - Part 1 of another of Tim Dodd's Starbase tours, guided again by the ultimate tour guide Elon Musk. This one spends most of its time inside the High Bay where Ship 24 is being assembled and Elon verifies that it is the ship intended for the first orbital attempt. Conversation ranges all over, from the ullage thrusters (how they work and what the motivation is for using them) to booster grid fins (suboptimal in their current form and subject to lots of internal SpaceX discussion) through corresponding forward fins on the ship (Elon doesn't like their current position and size, but says that they will work for first orbital try. These fins are also subjects of intense discussion within SpaceX.) They talk about the chines/strakes on the side of the booster (and their aerodynamic effects. Elon called them "wind-chines"!) and about the ship's heat shield tiles (they should expand when heated which will close the gaps between them and modeling suggests hot gasses won't go in the gaps at anticipated angles of attack). They talk about payloads on first orbital attempts (Starlinks in sort of an electrically-driven "pez-dispenser" rack that ejects them through a small door in the ship's hull.) They look inside the High-Bay and the Mega-Bay. Elon talks about the new factory building under construction. But Elon suggests that they don't film inside Ship 24 (perhaps for ITAR reasons.)
Loaded with information available nowhere else. All kinds of stuff. Subsequent videos will examine the Raptor 2 engines and ascend the OLIT tower, all with Elon's commentary.
This is the kind of scoop that conventional media would love to get, but Elon (being Elon) gives it to to an alternative media guy like Tim Dodd. I have to love that. Elon might be the world's richest man but I can still see him as a college roommate, drinking beers with him around the kitchen table, talking about cool stuff. (Except that Elon puts his imagination into practice in a way the world has never seen.) There's an every-man aspect to Elon that's engaging. The reason he chose Tim to show around is that Elon loves talking about spaceships and who else to do it with than another guy who loves spaceships too? And Tim Dodd's youtube channel has 1.24 million worldwide subscribers, all of whom are space-nuts. (Why else would anyone subscribe to Tim's channel?) So by talking to Tim, Elon is addressing the kind of people that he wants to talk to.
Feb 14, 2022 03:51 AM
(This post was last modified: Feb 14, 2022 05:01 AM by Yazata.)
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