One month after SpaceX stacked Starship’s South Texas ‘launch tower’ to its full height, the company has installed the first arm on what amounts to the backbone of ‘Mechazilla.’
At the end of July, after less than four months of work, a team of SpaceX workers and contractors installed the final prefabricated section of a 145 meter (around 475 feet) tall tower meant to support orbital Starship launches.
Above all else, SpaceX’s first custom-built ‘launch tower’ is a sort of backbone or anchor point for several massive, mechanical arms that will accomplish the actual tasks of servicing – and, perhaps, catching – Starships and Super Heavy boosters.
Work on all three of the arms expected to make up what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has described as “Mechazilla” has been visibly underway since the last week of June as a small army of welders carefully assembled dozens of sections of heavy-duty steel pipe into house-sized frames.
Almost exactly two months later, SpaceX installed the first of those three arms on the exterior of Starship’s skyscraper-sized launch tower.
Known as the tower’s Quick-Disconnect or QD swing arm, the standalone structure is reportedly designed to accomplish a few different tasks.
First, as its unofficial name might suggest, the QD arm will hold a quick-disconnect umbilical connector that will temporarily attach to the base of Starships to load them with fuel, oxidizer, and other consumables and link them to ground power and networking.
For years, it appeared that SpaceX planned to fuel Starship upper stages through their Super Heavy boosters, which will themselves be connected to umbilical panels on a table-like launch mount that sits beside the tower.
However, once work began on Starship SN20, the first potentially space-capable prototype, it was clear that SpaceX had foregone the umbilical plate normally installed at the base of Starship skirts and moved that connection to the ship’s lower back.
Musk later confirmed as much in interviews and tweets, revealing that long-standing plans to dock Starships aft to aft for in-space refueling were also up in the air.
As of late, aside from reiterating that the launch pad itself is even more complex and difficult than Starship or Super Heavy,
SpaceX’s CEO has also repeatedly stated a desire to offload as many systems as possible onto the launch pad – seemingly regardless of the complexity of the alternative.
On different news, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared a photo of the under-development space rocket.
It’s perhaps the most ambitious ongoing project for SpaceX, as it plans to use the Starship to send the first humans to Mars and beyond.
Dorsey’s photo shows a prototype model ahead of the planned first orbital flight, representing a major milestone in the project’s development.
The photo shows the rocket’s impressive heat tiles ahead of the launch.
These heat tiles are designed to protect the rocket during atmospheric entry.
The ship will enter Mars’ atmosphere at speeds of around 16,777 miles per hour.
It will slow itself down using a belly-flop maneuver, similar to a skydiver.
They will have to withstand some high temperatures.
The air hitting the space shuttle during re-entry reached around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it compressed against the surface.
Perseverance, NASA’s Mars latest rover, reached similarly toasty temperatures of around 2,400 degrees when it entered the planet’s atmosphere in February.
SpaceX chose stainless steel for the Starship to better protect against those high temperatures.
In a January 2019 interview with Popular Mechanics, Musk explained that aluminum and carbon fiber operate in a steady-state up to around 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Stainless steel, on the other hand, can reach up to 1,600 degrees.
That’s an improvement, but it means the steel will need some help to endure a landing.
SpaceX has completed several full-size Starship prototypes during the rocket’s development, unveiling the first in September 2019.
But with the planned orbital launch, fans have finally seen how the ship will look with heat tiles.
The first orbital flight, according to FCC documents, will take off from Texas.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the ship will fly to orbit and land around 60 miles off the coast of Hawaii.
It will be a small step forward, but one that could send humanity farther than ever.
Next up we will be discussing “How will SpaceX Catch the SuperHeavy Booster?”
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