The new "Franken crane" doesn't look tall enough to stack the full tower.Will their add more segments to the crane or do something else? It's not too late to bring in a tower crane and mount it next to the tower.
The LR 11350 AKA Frankencrane/Kong can be quickly reconfigured to become over twice as tall as it is right now, either by adding a boom extension or adding a luffing jib, and in either configuration it has more than enough lift capacity to finish the tower. There's thought that this current shorter configuration is optimized around lifting the launch table, which by all estimations weighs significantly more than the tower segments do.
My guess is they're going with the Luffing Jib. And sooner than later. I saw a hinge section and two more heavy boom/jib sections headed to the launch site a little while back on LabPadre's cam.
Not about the crane, but I'm wondering about the concrete that will go in the launch tower tubes. How high will they go before they start pouring concrete inside? How high can they go?
Just noticed that some of the tower sections lying on the ground at the gas well site have holes at the top on one side. Perhaps they will be filled with concrete in increments of 3 or 4?Edit: Actually it looks like the holes are at the bottom of each section, not at the top.
Quote from: chopsticks on 05/28/2021 12:08 amNot about the crane, but I'm wondering about the concrete that will go in the launch tower tubes. How high will they go before they start pouring concrete inside? How high can they go? They pump concrete for 1500 foot skyscrapers all the time.
Quote from: Nomadd on 05/28/2021 02:09 pmQuote from: chopsticks on 05/28/2021 12:08 amNot about the crane, but I'm wondering about the concrete that will go in the launch tower tubes. How high will they go before they start pouring concrete inside? How high can they go? They pump concrete for 1500 foot skyscrapers all the time.Is this usually or always pumped up from the bottom or dropped down from the top? If it's dropped down from the top, that's a long ways for concrete to fall, no?Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don't know a lot about pumping concrete.
Free Fall Height : Different guidelines provide different ranges. In general, it is 3 to 5 feets. Technically, it is advisable as much as possible to avoid free fall of concrete to avoid seggregation.
If they've got holes in the beams to pump the concrete into they'll probably pump it in stages, tower segments by tower segment. Concrete is perfectly happy falling 20 or 30 feet when being placed, and they can always drop placement hoses down the holes if they don't want it to fall too far.I'll bet they don't pump the concrete until the tower is fully complete, as it will almost certainly settle a fair bit (relatively speaking) as the rest of the tower segments are added. Although if they add concrete as they built it and let it get compressed by the steel contracting as more and more weight is added to it the structure might behave like an inside-out post-tensioned structure. It's all a matter of what they want the tower to do and why they're adding the concrete in the first place.
Removing beams from the third tower section that was erected at the propellant production site.
Based on photos from ‘BC-Production Updates’ and most recent daily update video some upper level beams have been removed from the remaining tower section (#4) at the gas well site. No one likes having to pull something apart that was recently put together, so does anyone know what is going on with this operation?
