BFR Developments

[Yazata]

Here's the video that everyone has been waiting for -- truly a thing of beauty!

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/csyR_NMD5Ms

[Syne]

Very nice video. I especially enjoyed the triumphal music.

[Yazata]

Zack just released another one of his deep-dive investigations, this one is about how well the water deluge system performed during booster static fires. Zack's a mechanical engineer (from the petrochemical industry) and pressures, flow rates, sensors and noise in the control systems are his things. So he watches the tests and examines the closeup photographs with an expert's eye.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ASVpnu4ltkA

[Yazata]

There's still nothing definitive about Flight 14 from authoritative American sources.

But CADENA, the air traffic data exchange for the Americas, has put out this:

And given the little green logo and the reference to the David J Hurley Air Traffic Control System Command Center, it appears that the information came from the FAA and CADENA is just passing it on to air traffic control in the Caribbean.

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[Yazata]

Forty-two is the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"

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Ship 42 is the Flight 15 ship, intended to be the first ship caught by the tower. It was at Massey's test site for the last couple of days for what is believed to have been load tests on its catch pins, and now is at the launch site for chopstick tests. It appears that they are using the time ahead of Flight 14 to prepare for Flight 15 and its anticipated catch.

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[Yazata]

It's not just CADENA. The FAA has put out its advisory to American air traffic control.

https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_spt

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[Yazata]

A great photo by Carlos Nunez of a big titanium (!) sculpture of Prometheus being constructed in an empty lot at Starbase by a crew of Frenchmen from Atelier Missor. Unknown where it will finally end up, but I hope that SpaceX can find a place of honor for it somewhere. Prometheus is kind of the spiritual personification of what SpaceX is trying to do. Aptly, Carlos' photo captures booster B22 (the Flight 15 booster) in the distance at the Massey's test site where it is undergoing its cryogenic proof tests.

https://www.ateliermissor.com/

Atelier Missor says,

"We once had a dream — of a beautiful future.
But somewhere along the way, we forgot it.
It’s time to dream again.
It’s time to build the future we dreamed of."

That captures what SpaceX is, human dreams and striving being given tangible, material form. It's why I find it so moving.

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[Yazata]

There are several large and rather mysterious construction projects underway at Starbase. They are visibly large, seemingly industrial in nature, but nobody knows yet what they are or what their function will be.

One is at the so-called Huddleston site, next to Starbase's new Ad Astra school. Foundation work is underway for what looks like a single very large industrial building. Speculation includes a big inventory warehouse and a Starlink/Starmind payload preparation building. But those are just guesses, nobody outside SpaceX really knows.

The other new construction site just appeared suddenly. SpaceX attorneys appeared at the Brownsville city council and asked Brownsville to un-annex and transfer to SpaceX some 444 acres (7/10ths of a square mile) at the rapidly expanding industrial area at the Port of Brownsville. SpaceX offered Brownsville a $200 million upgrade to their water treatment and waste treatment facilities in exchange. When Brownsville very reasonably asked what SpaceX wanted to do there, the answer was flowery but uninformative lawyer-speak about humanity's future and the Moon and Mars. The lawyers were pretty obviously stonewalling. In reply to direct questions, they did say that there would be no rocket testing or launching on the new property. Nothing to disturb local residents. And the property is in an industrial area near a huge LNG export terminal and a future major shipyard development. So Brownsville said yes.

And immediately an army of graders and excavators descended on the property and went to work on it. And the property is huge, a rectangle more than a mile long. Whatever SpaceX proposes to do there, it will be BIG. There are indications that part of what will go on the property might be an electrical generating plant. Starbase has been chronically short of electrical power and perhaps they plan to generate their own.

Mauricio of RGV Aerial flew his drone over the port site yesterday and captured this:

https://x.com/RGVaerialphotos/status/209...3145425310

[Yazata]

The date of Flight 14 is already slipping. A new FAA advisory has moved it from Friday Sept 18 to Tuesday September 22.

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https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_spt

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And here's a Youtube short video that Mauricio made documenting the huge new 444 acre site at the Port of Brownsville. As soon as Brownsville approved it, graders and excavators were swarming all over it. Nobody knows what it will be, not even Brownsville, but whatever it is it will be BIG. Given the natural gas pipeline leading to it, the powerplant speculations sound reasonable. And I have to say I'm starting to suspect the possibility of a SpaceXAI artificial intelligence data center. The controversy surrounding data centers might explain the lawyers reluctance to say what SpaceX will be doing there. Next to Starlink, the SpaceXAI data centers in the Memphis area are the company's biggest revenue generator, much of it from renting out excess computing capacity to companies like Anthropic for billions a month. So they might be motivated to expand on that.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kfoZU2L5lHU

[Yazata]

Just a few hours ago SpaceX released another one of their extraordinary half hour documentaries on X. This one is about reusability and features some newly released footage from the early days showing the Falcon Grasshopper hop tests at McGregor and the first successful landing of a Falcon 9. It shows scenes of the Bakery, where thousands of heat shield tiles are manufactured.

The video features a number SpaceX's central people like Shana Diez. I was very happy to see that it gave a leading role to Lars Blackmore, who basically narrates the whole thing. He's the engineer that designed Falcon 9's and Starship's landing algorithms.

And much of the video is devoted to Ship 40. It shows the reaction in the Starbase control room when it landed. (Elon says let's go get it.) It shows the first unsuccessful attempts to tow it back to the Australian mainland. Then when the current was taking it past Australia's distant Christmas Island territory, the successful move there. It shows the SpaceX crews swarming it. (One technician says they asked him if he had a passport. When he said yes, they said you're going to Australia.) There are heat-shield engineers removing tiles for analysis. There are naval architects figuring out how Forte would recover it. There are scuba divers under it.

Great video, check it out!

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2100334792646549729