SpaceX Texas launch site Discussion and Updates - Thread 12

[StuffOfInterest]

What's up with the gaps?

Hopefully just a sign of "version 1" panels.  It would be easy enough to have a flange on one side to cover the vertical gap.  The openings at the top and bottom are needed for connecting the bolts but could have their own covers.

Of course, they may leave the gaps.  Although some of the openings provide yet more places for birds to come in, having air flow through can prevent pressure differentials between inside and outside of the tower during launches.  The panels will still deflect most hot gas and all of the debris that may get kicked against the tower.

Once they test fit a few panels, it will be interesting to see how fast the rest of the tower gets covered.  I've seen this with windows on some high-rise construction in my area.  A few windows go in to test the design, things appear to go nowhere for weeks, and then the rest of the building gets covered quickly.

[EL_DIABLO]

What's up with the gaps?

Mechzilla carriage clearance henceangle metal. metal.

I'm obviously referring to these gaps.

[Nevyn72]

What's up with the gaps?

Mechzilla carriage clearance henceangle metal. metal.

I'm obviously referring to these gaps.

Expansion gaps?

[InterestedEngineer]

Well NASA and the SLS team have a couple of years to fix it. 

Just shows you the power of these heavy boosters - Even with all the planning you can still get it wrong. As you say at least SpaceX is seeing the damge as they go, learning, fixing and going again.

It's a bit difficult(!) to test SRBs incrementally on the launch pad. The SRBs provide about 75% of the liftoff thrust for SLS. We are seeing a secondary benefit of the decision to build a fully-reusable system.

Iteration is so valuable that it should preclude non-reusable or hard to replicate expensive components from a design, such as SRBs.

Which is a main concern about the tower/OLM.   It's the one place in Starship development that violates this rule.

Hopefully small iterations are enough to cover this.

The tower isn’t that expensive, tho. Cheap enough they’re basically building a spare as far as we can tell. Probably costs less than a complete Starship/SuperHeavy stack.

SpaceX can reliably make a booster every 2 months and a Starship every month.

I'd say a new tower is on the order of 6-9 months, and Elon acknowledged in a tweet he was trying to avoid on-pad RUDs since it would delay the program.

I'm glad they are building one in Florida.  They need about 3 or 4 to iterate as fast as they can build boosters.

[russianhalo117]

What's up with the gaps?

Mechzilla carriage clearance henceangle metal. metal.

What's up with the gaps?

Mechzilla carriage clearance henceangle metal. metal.

I'm obviously referring to these gaps.

More likely they will weld or bolt them together. On the back side like some of the earlier panels.

[Robotbeat]

Well NASA and the SLS team have a couple of years to fix it. 

Just shows you the power of these heavy boosters - Even with all the planning you can still get it wrong. As you say at least SpaceX is seeing the damge as they go, learning, fixing and going again.

It's a bit difficult(!) to test SRBs incrementally on the launch pad. The SRBs provide about 75% of the liftoff thrust for SLS. We are seeing a secondary benefit of the decision to build a fully-reusable system.

Iteration is so valuable that it should preclude non-reusable or hard to replicate expensive components from a design, such as SRBs.

Which is a main concern about the tower/OLM.   It's the one place in Starship development that violates this rule.

Hopefully small iterations are enough to cover this.

The tower isn’t that expensive, tho. Cheap enough they’re basically building a spare as far as we can tell. Probably costs less than a complete Starship/SuperHeavy stack.

SpaceX can reliably make a booster every 2 months and a Starship every month.

I'd say a new tower is on the order of 6-9 months, and Elon acknowledged in a tweet he was trying to avoid on-pad RUDs since it would delay the program.

I'm glad they are building one in Florida.  They need about 3 or 4 to iterate as fast as they can build boosters.

They have at least 2 additional launch pads/towers in planning right now in Florida.

[InterestedEngineer]

They have at least 2 additional launch pads/towers in planning right now in Florida.

In addition to the one under construction, so 3 total in Florida?

[Rossco]

What's up with the gaps?

Mechzilla carriage clearance henceangle metal. metal.

I'm obviously referring to these gaps.

Possibly to allow airflow to limit the cross wind loading on the tower itself?
I'm quite surprised the panels so wide - I was expecting much thinner - like slats.
Unless of course this is just for the lower half of the tower where its under most focused heat, in which expansion joins are probably a fair shout.

[EL_DIABLO]

Yeah I'd imagine it's only for the lower portion of the tower. Also material wise is it powder coated steel or something else?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1594035087212937217

Mystery objects at Sanchez possibly flame diverters @Thomaseo01

What do you all think they are for?

Discussion happening now!
Link:  youtu.be/aMYweAPdAJo

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1594058474341556225

Concrete under the OLM being torn out.
Watch the discussion here live: youtu.be/aMYweAPdAJo

[Nomadd]

 No beach today. The deputy says the road is 2 feet underwater.

[DanClemmensen]

No beach today. The deputy says the road is 2 feet underwater.

How often does this happen? Which seasons?

[CorvusCorax]

Noted for flame trench AND proper water deluge concerner, spoiler: it wouldn't necessarily save the facilities
https://twitter.com/DutchSatellites/status/1593520419872641024?t=DThCON3HLtbMfLUiyT0Icg&s=19

Unlike SLS ofc, SpaceX is most likely planning to conduct 33 engine static fire(s) before launch, meaning they will get most of the real-world data on how the launch site will be performing. And with higher cadence, they're needing it sooner rather than later

They already had similar issues after the Ares 1 test. These beefed up SRBs are vicious. Not only do they have massive thrust, the exhaust itself is nasty and contains solid bits of burning propellant ( basically burning metal ) at high supersonic velocities, alongside corrosive gasses. You can see that great in the launchpad slowmos.

If Super Heavy is like getting hit.in the face by an explosion shockwave, then those SRBs are like an IED with added rusty nails and napalm for extra fun.

Building lasting blast shields for those must be a tough job.

[russianhalo117]

No beach today. The deputy says the road is 2 feet underwater.

How often does this happen? Which seasons?

Whenever they are inundated with heavy or long lasting rain as the water is trying to find an escape route. High tide exacerbates the results.

[Nomadd]

No beach today. The deputy says the road is 2 feet underwater.

How often does this happen? Which seasons?

Whenever they are inundated with heavy or long lasting rain as the water is trying to find an escape route. High tide exacerbates the results.

Storm surge. The wind brings it in from the Gulf.
 I'll bet the highway at the pad gate is submerged.

[eeergo]

They already had similar issues after the Ares 1 test. These beefed up SRBs are vicious. Not only do they have massive thrust, the exhaust itself is nasty and contains solid bits of burning propellant ( basically burning metal ) at high supersonic velocities, alongside corrosive gasses. You can see that great in the launchpad slowmos.

Interesting they had these issues with the Ares I-X test when that vehicle was carrying a standard STS SRB with a dummy upper fifth segment - i.e. they are not caused by the "vicious beefed-up SRBs", or at least have other dominant contributing causes. Most likely, the standards to which the tower was built (after many delays and reconstructions) should have been more conservative.

[steveleach]

They already had similar issues after the Ares 1 test. These beefed up SRBs are vicious. Not only do they have massive thrust, the exhaust itself is nasty and contains solid bits of burning propellant ( basically burning metal ) at high supersonic velocities, alongside corrosive gasses. You can see that great in the launchpad slowmos.

Interesting they had these issues with the Ares I-X test when that vehicle was carrying a standard STS SRB with a dummy upper fifth segment - i.e. they are not caused by the "vicious beefed-up SRBs", or at least have other dominant contributing causes. Most likely, the standards to which the tower was built (after many delays and reconstructions) should have been more conservative.

It's not a problem, because the rapid iterative development approach allows them to learn from what happened and adjust. Nothing is set in stone and learning from failures is a key part of the process.

Oh, wait. We're not talking about a SpaceX launch site here?

[alugobi]

We can't see the surface below.  I still don't think that that was ice raining down post-fire.

The winds 50 meters from the pad will exceed Mach 1, so the debris may be from within 50-200 meters of the OLM and not the OLM itself.

A virtual cone forms at the base of the OLM so I doubt the bottom is damaged (look up the college junior physics problem "flow perpendicular to surface".  Also, they just parked the OLM lift under the pad, so if there's damage it can't be very much.

Just finished watching the RGV weekly video.  No flyover this week because of rain, so all the pics were from the ground. 

The entire base of concrete directly under the booster is being hammered out and removed.  The hammer looks to be digging out at least half a meter deep.  Over by the berm, there are about a dozen pallets of totes of Fondag RS, an industrial concrete suitable for refactory use.

Views around general area show widespread scattering of pieces/balls of concrete about the size of marbles and golfballs.  These are close in to the OLM, covering the sides of dirt embankment next to the pad and leading out into the fields.  Thousands of pieces it looks like. 

The side wall of the tower is pitted, and the hard edge as it wraps to the back side is rounded off.  The new wall they poured to protect the backside of the tower is pitted and spalled.  The top edge of the berm, the area we can see from Lab Rover Cam 2 between two of the OLM legs is also showing pitting damage. 

Looks to me like they're going to have to armor a lot of surfaces.  They can't simply resurface the tower base like they can repaint the legs, I don't think. 

A full static fire is going to be something to see, both during and after. 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449594678595584

1) Hey #StarshipAddicts, we now have an update on the aftermath from the 14 engine Static Fire Static Fire Test. We discussed this in yesterday's #StarbaseWeekly Livestream but here's a short thread in case you missed it.

🔗youtube.com/watch?v=aMYweA…

https://twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449597174267906

2) First and foremost, the camera that we have requested video from, has been destroyed. We believe the footage was most likely recoverable, but we won't know for sure unless @elonmusk or #SpaceX decides to share it.

twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449599736995841

3) Here is a closeup of the base of the Orbital Launch Integration Tower. On the left side of the yellow line is the new half finished extension, right side is the original concrete base. Left unprotected, the spalling damage will be worse after 33 Engine SF
📸: @RGVaerialphotos

https://twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449601926672386

4) As shown here by @RGVaerialphotos, the concrete underneath the OLM suffered some pretty significant damage. It was severe enough to warrant replacing the entire pad. Exploding concrete was sent flying for several hundred meters during the 14 Engine Static Fire Test

twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449605575737344

5) This will most likely not happen again in the future. SpaceX is upgrading the hexagonal pad underneath the Orbital Launch Mount. They are now using a special concrete additive called Fondag RS. This will replace the original Martyte Blend

📸: @RGVaerialphotos

https://twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449607982911488

5) This is really good news for #StageZero. Here are some key benefits as advertised by Imerys, a Fondag manufacturer.  Exact price of this material is unknown, but I'm sure one of the CSI Agents will provide more details in the comments.
https://www.imerys.com/product-ranges/fondag

twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449610596032512

6) Last but not least, #SpaceX is now employing a new tool for fighting fires. This was originally discovered by @StarshipGazer.  Identified as an ELIDE FIRE extinguishing ball, these are carried by drones and released over the fire.  This one failed 😑

youtube.com/watch?v=D709r6…

https://twitter.com/csi_starbase/status/1594449615226798081

7) Awesome to see how quickly #SpaceX responds to every challenge they come up against. Keep up the great work!