Author Topic: Cidco Rd. Manufacturing Site in Cocoa, Florida (Read 212174 times)

Zpoxy · « **on:** 05/14/2019 07:50 pm »

I'll reference the thread which first mentions the 850 Cidco Road location:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47825.msg1945454#msg1945454
This is Coastal Steel on Cidco Road in the Cocoa, Florida Industrial Park. I took a trip out there after work this afternoon and low and behold we have a Starship under construction. Beyel brothers is just east of this site. Cocoa is on the west bank of the Indian River across from Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center.

kessdawg · « **Reply #1 on:** 05/14/2019 07:53 pm »

That's clearly a water tower.

Coastal Ron · « **Reply #2 on:** 05/14/2019 07:56 pm »

Quote from: kessdawg on 05/14/2019 07:53 pm

That's clearly a water tower.

That's what everyone thought when the started building the first Starship in Boca Chica. Not that it proves that this one is a SpaceX Starship, just that we may need more information before we rule it out.

Do we have any estimates on what the diameter is?

intelati · « **Reply #3 on:** 05/14/2019 07:58 pm »

Quote from: kessdawg on 05/14/2019 07:53 pm

That's clearly a water tower.

And this thread should probably be in the BFR forum section.

I just got this odd frisson feel in my stomach/head. We have not one, not two, but three BFR prototypes being built.

Quote from: Coastal Ron on 05/14/2019 07:56 pm

That's what everyone thought when the started building the first Starship in Boca Chica. Not that it proves that this one is a SpaceX Starship, just that we may need more information before we rule it out.
Do we have any estimates on what the diameter is?

Woosh?

And from context clues it looks big enough and passes the sniff test to be the StarShip

aero · « **Reply #4 on:** 05/14/2019 08:02 pm »

Are drone cameras prohibited here?

kessdawg · « **Reply #5 on:** 05/14/2019 08:03 pm »

Quote from: Coastal Ron on 05/14/2019 07:56 pm

Quote from: kessdawg on 05/14/2019 07:53 pm
That's clearly a water tower.

That's what everyone thought when the started building the first Starship in Boca Chica. Not that it proves that this one is a SpaceX Starship, just that we may need more information before we rule it out.

Do we have any estimates on what the diameter is?

Sorry. Don't have aerospace experience so my contribution to the discussion was continuing the "is it/ isn't it" water-tower joke from Boca Chica hopper. My hunch is that it is a flying water tower.

rsdavis9 · « **Reply #6 on:** 05/14/2019 08:18 pm »

And how are they going to move that to anyplace useful?

Zpoxy · « **Reply #7 on:** 05/14/2019 08:21 pm »

Quote from: rsdavis9 on 05/14/2019 08:18 pm

And how are they going to move that to anyplace useful?

Well, as I mentioned Beyel Brothers is just east of this site. I'm sure they can work something out. Maybe they could fly it out

.

Arb · « **Reply #8 on:** 05/14/2019 08:53 pm »

Quote from: Zpoxy on 05/14/2019 07:50 pm

...we have a Starship under construction...

There's similar 'jig' in back of the Coastal Steel Inc site. Is it a standard welding thing?

Zpoxy · « **Reply #9 on:** 05/14/2019 09:04 pm »

Quote from: Arb on 05/14/2019 08:53 pm

Quote from: Zpoxy on 05/14/2019 07:50 pm
...we have a Starship under construction...
There's similar 'jig' in back of the Coastal Steel Inc site. Is it a standard welding thing?

I modified my original post. The Starship section is at the Coastal Steel Inc site.

RocketLover0119 · « **Reply #10 on:** 05/14/2019 09:26 pm »

Nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this, incredible they are already constructing 2 at the same time.

Alexphysics · « **Reply #11 on:** 05/14/2019 09:34 pm »

It almost feels like in Contact when they zoom in from a satellite's point of view and then woohoo there's another one! Great to have two being built in parallel, it also speaks a lot about how much they can invest in this program.

Mccrase · « **Reply #12 on:** 05/14/2019 09:47 pm »

I'll have to talk with Nomadd about erecting a pole cam. From my house to the Florida prototype, I'm about 50% further than he is to the orbital prototype and half the distance he is from the Starhopper on the pad in Boca Chica.

niwax · « **Reply #13 on:** 05/14/2019 09:48 pm »

Any chance they're using this to build the booster for now to get to an orbital rocket as fast as possible and then switch to parallel production later on?

intelati · « **Reply #14 on:** 05/14/2019 09:52 pm »

Quote from: niwax on 05/14/2019 09:48 pm

Any chance they're using this to build the booster for now to get to an orbital rocket as fast as possible and then switch to parallel production later on?

Most likely, but I'm expecting only to hear anything along those lines in the presentation (June 20th at the earliest)

Keldor · « **Reply #15 on:** 05/14/2019 11:20 pm »

Quote from: rsdavis9 on 05/14/2019 08:18 pm

And how are they going to move that to anyplace useful?

There's a FedEx Ground station immediately to the south. Maybe they can help?? XP

Anyway, after carefully cross-referencing against Google Maps, the cylinder in in picture does indeed seem to be about the right size for 9 meters, as does the form in Arb's picture (directly below the scaffold - that semi-circular thing.)

Transport out of there looks ugly. It has rail access, and from there all the way to the NASA Causeway before hitting an underpass. There is an unloading area around there, but it's on the wrong side of the rails and they'd have to bring Starship through the airport...

Or they could close about 5 miles of the highway and go that way.

It's feasible, but ugly.

I expect they're just fabricating sections there which they can then take somewhere else to assemble.

ATPTourFan · « **Reply #16 on:** 05/14/2019 11:25 pm »

Yes, can definitely see them manufacturing sections to truck to wherever they need to assemble the Ship.

speedevil · « **Reply #17 on:** 05/14/2019 11:33 pm »

Quote from: Keldor on 05/14/2019 11:20 pm

I expect they're just fabricating sections there which they can then take somewhere else to assemble.

The apparent investment in materials (cost of sheets of SS)/ ... is such that near-full-scale mockups could be for training new assembly teams only.
Or trying out slightly different production methods.
Having the couple of dozen guys you're probably going to use to weld it together weld together a dummy one where mistakes don't matter could make the real one go a lot faster.

Orbiter · « **Reply #18 on:** 05/14/2019 11:41 pm »

Quote from: Alexphysics on 05/14/2019 09:34 pm

It almost feels like in Contact when they zoom in from a satellite's point of view and then woohoo there's another one! Great to have two being built in parallel, it also speaks a lot about how much they can invest in this program.

The first rule of government spending: why have one when you can have two for twice the price?

Avron · « **Reply #19 on:** 05/15/2019 12:03 am »

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1128448308970541056