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STEVE CLARK
Staff Writer
BROWNSVILLE – In the latest sign of activity on the upcoming SpaceX launch site at Boca Chica Beach, a 95,000 gallon liquid oxygen tank was delivered to the site yesterday. 19659004] The massive "LOX" tank, which can hold almost 20 tankers, will be fully installed later this year.
SpaceX spokesman Sean Pitt says the company continues to develop the Boca Chica site. "The delivery of a new liquid oxygen tank, which will be used to support propellant loading operations during launch tests and vehicle tests, represents the last major piece of launching material to be installed on site »
In February, SpaceX's CEO and chief designer Elon Musk said short air flights would likely be planned for Boca Chica, probably next year, aboard the ship Space Big Falcon Rocket
. SpaceX is focusing on developing BFR to bring the first humans to Mars, Musk's ultimate goal, even though it originally planned to develop the smaller Falcon Heavy rockets for this purpose. The BFR rocket probe system will be built in a SpaceX facility at the Port of Los Angeles. Fully assembled, it is expected to be 340 feet tall, according to the Los Angeles Times.
SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, with launch facilities in California and Florida and a rocket engine testing center in McGregor, Texas. 19659004] Last October, Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, described Boca Chica as "the perfect place for BFR". At an official opening of the site in September 2014, Musk said, "It may well be that" Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, commenting on SpaceX's request for Spaceport Trust Fund funding for infrastructure funds -development, said in February that the company's intentions for Boca Chica go "well beyond the original plan."
To date, SpaceX has installed more than 600 kilowatts of solar panels on the site , as well as two 86-ton earth station antennas for monitoring crews. flights to the International Space Station aboard the company's reusable Dragon Spacecraft. The first estimates were launched in 2016, but many delays have pushed it back. SpaceX now expects Boca Chica to be operational by the end of 2018.
In 2008, the company's Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid rocket to reach orbit. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, on its maiden flight in 2010, was the first spacecraft built and operated to be recovered from orbit.
In 2012, a different version of the Dragon became the first spacecraft to dock at the International Space Station. In December 2015, SpaceX achieved another historic first by launching a reusable Falcon 9 rocket into orbit and returning it to the launch site in a controlled vertical landing.
company landed a Falcon 9. on its drone ship, dubbed "Of course, I still love you," off the coast of Florida after launching a robotic Dragon spaceship in orbit . Scientific American has called it a "major technical feat."
Last February, SpaceX celebrated the successful launch of the Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket and the controlled return to Earth of two of its three reusable thrusters. rockets.
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