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Highlighted by a Wednesday filled with milestones, SpaceX appears to be focused on South Texas towards the completion of Starship’s first orbital launch pad.
Boca Chica will be the first time in its history that SpaceX has taken on the challenge of (or has had the opportunity to) build an orbital launch complex from scratch after gaining great expertise in modifying, reactivating and rebuilding two existing platforms in Florida and one in California. SpaceX’s facilities at Boca Chica must also support what will be the most powerful rocket ever built (or tested) and a planned flight speed and rotational capacity that dramatically exceeds anything the company (or anyone,). really) tried.
As a result, the site looks almost nothing like other SpaceX launch facilities. In addition to the already significant hurdles it encountered, SpaceX is also trying to complete its setup from scratch in record time, and work on Starship’s Orbital Launch Site (OLS) didn’t really begin until early in 2021. This aggressive work program began. has clearly borne fruit in recent months and arguably reached a local peak on Wednesday July 28.
A tower is born
Kicking off the next day of a failed attempt on Tuesday, SpaceX began what would turn out to be an extremely busy Wednesday around 5 a.m. (UTC-5) with the installation of the ninth and final pre-fabricated section of the launch tower of the spacecraft, effectively complementing the skeleton of the structure. Unlike all other SpaceX pads except the one-use Dragon and Crew access arm of Pad 39A, Starship’s first orbital launch pad will rely heavily on a massive steel tower.
Obviously, the Starship launch tower will accommodate an elevator-like cart with several large arms on the outside and use those arms to stabilize, stack, power, and maybe even grab Starships and Super Heavy boosters. The tower will be an integral part of the spacecraft’s routine launch operations, in other words.
With the installation of a final steel segment, this tower reached a height of approximately 145m (~ 440ft) and is not expected to rise after adding a 10m / 30ft lightning rod. SpaceX’s pad team can now begin the process of finalizing the tower construction, from adding siding to its rectangular exterior and welding the nine steel sections together to filling its four legs with carbon. concrete.
Tank and Table
Just hours after the start of the installation of Tower Section # 9, a fleet of SpaceX Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) left the construction site with two major pieces of orbital cushion hardware in tow. For the first time in three months, one of those payloads was an OLS propellant storage tank built by SpaceX itself from parts almost identical to those found on Starship. Since the first two Ground Support Equipment (GSE) tanks were quickly installed in April, activity on this front has been oddly stagnant.
Since modifications to these tanks began on-site over the last month or so, the general consensus has been that a fairly minor design flaw or oversight was discovered long after production had started, requiring a major break to rework and redesign critical cushion components. In the meantime, work on the GSE reservoir built by the contractor shells to eventually isolate SpaceX’s thin cryogenic storage tanks has continued unabated, and one water tank and six hulls have already been more or less completed. With any luck, delivery of the GSE # 5 tank to OLS means SpaceX has removed the roadblock (s) and is ready to move on to plumbing and activating the tank farm.
Simultaneously, a much larger part known as the spacecraft’s “launch table” also left SpaceX’s Boca Chica construction site after nearly six months of round-the-clock assembly and equipment. to secure, power, and launch orbital ships, the launch table must be able to support the weight of approximately 5,000 metric tons (approximately 11 million pounds) of a fully powered spaceship, hold Super Heavy in place during fires static and pre-ignitions that could produce around 7,500 tons of thrust and outlast the unspeakable fury of 33 Raptor engines running simultaneously.
Unlike all the other major parts of the spacecraft’s orbital launch pad, the successful and near-total completion of the custom launch stand and table is an absolute necessity for any type of orbital test flight or static firing. Super Heavy full. Only part of the tank farm is really needed, and the vast majority of the tower’s planned tasks can be accomplished with workarounds if none are fully ready. Without launch media, however, testing far beyond what SpaceX has already accomplished is virtually impossible in the short term.
Raptor invasion
Finally, although less urgent, SpaceX also accepted delivery of four Raptor engines in addition to the other three that were delivered to Boca Chica on Tuesday. According to CEO Elon Musk, Starship’s first orbital test flight (s) will take place with a full set of engines installed, meaning SpaceX will need to build, qualify and ship at least 35 new Raptors for a single flight.
SpaceX recently completed assembly of the 100th full-scale Raptor engine at its plant and headquarters in Hawthorne – an encouraging sign that the engines needed for the debut of Starship’s orbital launch will be ready for flight as soon as possible.
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