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SpaceX wants to launch Starships into orbit on July 1st!
But how are they going to make this ambitious timeline happen?
What’s still missing and what’s the progress on the Super Heavy booster and the Sea Launch Platform?
Let’s find out!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?
And as always, there’s been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let ’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
SpaceX is getting ready for orbital flights.
As strange as it might sound, seeing Starships crash or explode on every flight,
but that’s exactly what’s happening in Boca Chica Texas right now.
What you’re looking at here is the SpaceX South Texas launch site.
Arguably the largest spaceflight development program since the Apollo days.
As seen here through Mary’s lens for Nasa Spaceflight dot com, SpaceX is working full steam ahead on the next generation launch vehicle Starship.
I say next generation, as it doesn’t have much in common with a traditional rocket.
Built in a very simple but effective way, with a completely new engine concept and 100% reusable, it has firsts all over the design.
To be able to support such a radically new rocket concept a lot of brand new infrastructure is needed.
Those suborbital test pads we’re so used to from every cryo proof test, static fire and launch right now won’t cut it for higher flights.
SpaceX needs an orbital launch mount infrastructure for the largest rocket ever built.
And as much as the Starship concept itself is different in many ways, the same goes for the orbital launch facility.
It just doesn’t look like a traditional launch complex at all.
Looking at Pad 39B for example, which right now is being upgraded to support SLS launches in the future shows that familiar picture.
This is what a launch complex looks like.
This is, what it’s always looked like at Cape Canaveral.
Wide open spaces. A large roughly circular complex with a concrete hump in the middle.
All the infrastructure connected to the middle in a star like shape.
Centralized around one single purpose.
To launch the rocket.
Texas does things differently.
Everyone who’s been there before knows that.
The lone star state always had its own plans.
That seems to be the same with SpaceX’s facility.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, sorry, rocket engineer to see the differences.
It’s as if SpaceX’s launch facility would do exactly the same as the Starship development itself.
This is one of the reasons, why I am constantly telling you to become a flight supporter at RGV aerial photography’s Patreon.
These are pictures taken by Mauricio from May 2018 to a few days ago.
Priceless. Documenting history in an incredible way.
These pictures will be looked at, when we open up the first bar on Mars.
And it couldn’t be much more unconventional.
The site changed so much over time.
Constantly adapting to the current needs of the Starship prototypes.
Evolving in the same way as the Starship prototypes did.
And there’s always something new.
Something that surprises us and something we can’t quite figure out.
This for example. Everyone who follows me on Twitter knows already that it’s kept me quite busy for the last few days.
Here is the construction right before SpaceX started the assembly.
I talked about it on the last episode and said that this would be something special.
Maybe a part for the orbital launch mount.
And together with the twitter community I wondered, what this could be in the end.
Maybe like this?
Or that?
TJ from I need more Space suggested a milk stool.
It’s what NASA used to t4est Saturn 1B on a pad that was meant for Saturn 5 rockets to adjust the height.
Starships will be shorter than the whole stack including Super Heavy boosters.
Is it an adapter for the orbital launch mount?
A very strong maybe from TJ here!
Or is it indoor skydiving? Who knows!
Thank you for the very interesting and fun discussion!
Nick has been busy for the WAI family and made some just slightly better mockups than I could with my Twitter pictures.
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These are all the parts involved in the construction.
We have the six armed and massive steel stand.
A smaller ring, the 6 poles and 18 triangular plates with girders attached to one side.
This is the stand with the poles attached.
This is the construction if we put the triangular plates on top of the stand.
They would fit perfectly. But why?
To give you an idea of the size, this is the construction with a 9 meter Starship ring segment on top.
The size fits perfectly. This no doubt has the right size for a prototype to sit on top.
This is the Stand with the girders on top attached to the poles.
SpaceX has already done this.
And this finally is the construction with everything, and some cross beams attached as well.
Since the poles already have angled attachment points it’s very likely that this will happen in some form.
So there you go. My lead theories right now?
Either it’s a part of the orbital launch mount.
Maybe it will be connected to the possible launch table somehow.
But how and why in the first place?
Here’s another valid theory. Could this be connected to the large commodity storage tanks SpaceX is building at the Sanchez site for Methane and Oxygen production.
So called gas holders are a common site when wanting to store large amounts of natural gas aka methane.
They follow the quantity of stored gas by reducing or increasing their volume with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap on top.
They’re usually needed to balance pressure in a pipe system so that it can operate within a safe pressure range at all times.
Or maybe it’s some sort of adapter to be able to use a thrust simulator on the first super heavy booster number 1.
Here you can see SN5 for example with the thrust simulator under it.
These hydraulic rams were used to simulate thrust from firing raptor engines while cryogenic tests were conducted.
Super Heavy number 1 could likely go the same route again in the beginning.
The pole structure might be used to stabilize the booster while it’s sitting on the test pad.
It’s going to be 70 meters tall and when empty and not protected by a high bay it might fall over in heavy winds.
And while pressure testing it SpaceX might want to hold it down so that it doesn’t fly too far off in case of a pop.
That’s Starship enthusiast slang for a pressure vessel failure.
What do you think? What is this mystery construction for?
As always, give us your thoughts in the comments!
Here you can see SN4 on its cryogenic proof test.
It went up quite a bit and it’s only less than half the height of a Super Heavy booster.
Equipment of this kind for a Super Heavy booster test campaign would be needed rather soon as well.
What you’re looking at here is LabPadre’s view of the construction site on March 17th.
This footage of course is sped up.
It took the SpaceX crew more than 20 minutes to erect the freshly upgraded large white Liebherr crane dubbed Tankzilla by the community.
It’s the crane that has been responsible for lifting Starship prototypes on top of the suborbital test pads for a while now and now SpaceX has
upgraded it with some extra pieces to be able to reach up higher and be able to stack the two Super Heavy #1 stacks inside the high bay.
This is a video taken by Mary showing the extra pieces before they got added to the crane.
These large construction cranes are highly modular to be able to adapt to all sorts of different tasks.
The height can be changed, the reach, the counterweights can be adapted to be able to lift heavier weights.
What ever is needed for the current job.
And this is the current job!
Super Heavy Booster number 1. SpaceX has achieved the stack.
Everyone was wondering, what that hole in the roof of the high bay was left open for.
Here’s your reason. Tankzilla reached down through the hole and made the seemingly impossible happen at the typical SpaceX speed.
It’s a quick and dirty workaround for SpaceX before the bridge crane is installed.
That bridge crane is already on site.
180 tons max capacity. That’ll do.
BN1 won’t fly. Musk confirmed what was thought to be the case for a while now.
This is a pathfinder teaching the SpaceX crew how to build and transport a 70-meter-tall booster stage.
Booster 2 will fly and booster three is already supposed to do much more than that.
How high and how quick you ask?
To orbit and really quick if it goes by Elon Musk’s plan.
Orbital flights by July 1st. That’s the current internal goal.
Of course, this has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Everyone who knows a bit about the Starship program knows the term Elon Time.
But everyone who knows more about the program also knows that the speed SpaceX is showing here is mind blowing.
High altitude test flights two years after a radically new rocket development project has been started.
Where else can you find this. Even if there are no orbital flights by July 1st,
I am more confident than ever that there is the possibility for orbital flights at least this year, which is just another 9 months.
SpaceX is attempting something no one has ever done before and in a fraction of the time, other launch providers would need to do this.
There are a few more puzzle pieces missing for those first orbital flights though.
Landings would be good for example.
Philip Bottin was on site again as well, taking some pictures of something rare in Boca Chica.
This is not a delivery. This is a shipment leaving the site.
Those are the dreaded v0.9 legs.
Not really suited for the task of helping a Starship land after a high-altitude flight test.
Too small. The stance not wide enough and recently even unreliable when being deployed for a landing.
At least two of them failed to lock into position before SN10 touched down.
Not that it would have changed the situation.
The landing was so hard, the legs would have just been crushed, but still.
Far from perfect.
So, these legs have been sent away.
Without even being attached to a prototype.
Is this a sign for SpaceX finally updating the construction?
Another missing puzzle piece for orbital flights would be the Starship heat shield or thermal protection system.
After all what good is a landing capability if the prototype is being roasted before it could even attempt it.
This is, where John Randolph can help us out!
He filmed something in detail, that’s not been reported like this before.
Here you can see SpaceX workers attach a thermal insulation blanket to the side of an unknown prototypes hull.
This fiber mat is the layer sitting between the stainless steel of the hull and the black heat protection tiles.
And again, SpaceX seems to be searching for the simplest way possible.
They’re just ramming it through the attachment pins welded to the hull.
Later then heat tiles are attached to the pins.
Three for each tile. That’s it.
Exactly the opposite of what NASA did on the Space Shuttle.
Here for example you can see Astronaut Steve Robinson ride the Canadarm and remove some loose fillers between heat tiles after the first shuttle
flight following the Columbia disaster.
At this point NASA had gotten very careful and rightfully so.
Heat protection is absolutely essential when reentering the atmosphere.
Nothing should go wrong here ever.
It will be very interesting to see, what SpaceX comes up with.
Last but not least we have an update on the Sea Launch Platforms.
In February Musk stated on Twitter that one of them may be in limited operation by the end of the year.
Big Boat Driver aka Herbo has taken some pictures for team space recently.
This is Pascagoula, Mississippi and what you’re looking at is Phobos.
SpaceX’s second oil rig to be transformed into a Starship Sea Launch Platform and… work has begun!
Where Deimos is stil laying dormant at the Brownsville harbor there definitely can be seen first major changes on Phobos in Mississippi!
Workers have attached a large harbor crane to the large drilling tower in the center of the platform.
And removed the top! Then they attached the crane again likely to remove the whole rest of the tower as well.
Half the Heli Pad is gone as well, and everywhere else demolition work can be seen.
It looks exactly like what everyone expected.
The platform is being stripped down in a first step to make room for all the new infrastructure needed to support SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy
launches in the end and possibly by the end of this year.
This is SpaceX. Always faster than expected and always in a different way too.
Out of the box thinking for an out of the box goal.
To make human kind a multi planetary species.
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