BFR Developments

[Yazata]

Proky's annotated aerial photos (by Mauricio from his Cessna) with everything labeled

The Massey's test site maybe 1.5 or 2 miles to the west of the build site, inside an 'oxbow' lake. The river on the top left is the Rio Grande with a sliver of Mexico visible on the other side.

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Sanchez, the former and now capped-off Sanchez gas-well site, but the name stuck. Now it's a giant SpaceX work area. The center of Sanchez is currently occupied with fitting out the sections of the new launch tower (OLIT-B). When that's finally completed, some expect the Rocket Garden will move there, since they will need a lot of space to park space ships that the factory continually churns out, when they aren't flying. (Elon hopes the factory can build 2 ships/week, so there are going to be lots of them, in many different variants.)

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The Build Site immediately east of Sanchez with the giant Starfactory building and the three vertical bays, plus a new 5 story office building.

Boca Chica village, formerly one street but now several streets with many newly constructed homes (and countless Airstreams and tiny homes for contractors and SpaceX employees in for temporary assignments) is immediately to the east of the build site.

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And inevitably, the Launch Area about a mile east by the beach. The current tower and Starship pad are in the right half, along with the tank farm. The old vertical tanks are all gone and they have gone to more conventional horizontal "hotdog" tanks.

The left half of the site is where the new tower and launch mount will be. For the time being, both pads will be fed with propellants from the existing tank farm, though they will almost certainly add a second tank farm at some point when launch cadence picks up.

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[Yazata]

All the sections of the second tower are now at Starbase (having arrived from Florida). And stacking has begun:

The Two Towers

(Photo by Austin Bernard)

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[Yazata]

Over the last couple of days, pieces of the first of the new Version.2 Starships have been emerging from the factory, headed into the vertical assembly bays. These included a new cargo bay barrel with a new Starlink pez-dispenser door, a new design engine skirt and a new nosecone. Each sports features that mark it as something new and more evolved, as they learn from actual flight experience.

Here's comparison photos of the V.1 and V.2 nosecones. (Photos from Lab Padre's Rover-1 livestream camera)

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Readily apparent changes are different-shaped forward-flaps and relocated flap hinges, moved both leeward out of the direct reentry airstream, and forward towards the tip of the nose. Tiling appears to be different. There are probably lots of internal changes as well that we can't see with header tanks, plumbing, flap actuators etc. We can see what appears to be a small dent, where two of what might be new roll thrusters are visible.

This particular V.2 nosecone looks to me to be a manufacturing and integration pathfinder, not a flight article.

[Yazata]

Full duration static fire of B12, the flight 5 booster, this morning. (And no, it didn't accidently launch itself.)

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1812922275035029887

SpaceX photo:

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[C C]

Full duration static fire of B12, the flight 5 booster, this morning. (And no, it didn't accidently launch itself.)

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1812922275035029887

All sorts of subtle but vital concerns that get missed when Chinese companies short-cut and rip-off a scheme from the other side of the globe, without having invested in the trial-and-error research themselves over the course of years.

[Yazata]

The second tower continues to grow. The second tower segment is being stacked.

Photo from Nasaspaceflight.com livestream camera

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[Yazata]

They just stacked the third tower segment!! Only two days after the second!

(Photo by Carlos Nunez @cnunezimages)

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Photo by Carlos showing how the sections of the second tower already have plumbing preinstalled.

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[Yazata]

They may be completing retiling Ship 30 (the flight 5 ship) with improved heat shield tiles. Scaffolding is coming off.

(Photo by Lab Padre)

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The carriage that will carry the arms up and down the second tower have arrived by barge from Florida

(Photo by Jason Kirton for Base Camp Zero)

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[Yazata]

Ship 30 (the Flight 5 ship) with its beautiful new tile job is preparing to make a dramatic exit from MB-2 in a scene straight out of a science fiction movie!

Jax from the Ringwatchers has written an excellent article explaining everything that's known about the Flight-5 thermal tile upgrades:

https://ringwatchers.com/article/s30-tps

(Photo by Starship Gazer)

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[Yazata]

Yesterday (Thursday July 26) they stacked the fourth segment of the second tower. Then last night they rolled the fifth segment from Sanchez where it was being prepped, a mile down the road to the launch area.

Photo by Shaun Gisler

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Then today (Friday) they conducted a static fire of Ship 30 (the flight 5 ship) at the new test stand at Masseys, about a mile and a half from the build area in the other direction.

Photo by Fabian Ramirez

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