21–30 of 51 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, its so hard to get a sense of scale, our brains just don't have a reference
To note, there is a human standing in every picture except for one as far as I could see. While it isn't too good of a reference since the size difference is so big, it's at least something.
Anyone know an estimated static fire/launch date? I'm open to a meetup (and cold beverages under a canopy) within visual distance of the pad.
I suppose hot-phase testing after that
Anyone know an estimated static fire/launch date? I'm open to a meetup (and cold beverages under a canopy) within visual distance of the pad.
The chief just said should take 2 weeks for the next 4 major steps: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1423670139615014917 I suppose hot-phase testing after that
And unstacked ! It was surprising to see that it only took them about an hour to unstack (I didn't catch the stacking but I think I heard it was around the same amount of time ?). I'm still very perplex about the "catching" mechanism they are designing, Musk mentioned in the Everyday Astronaut interview [1] that it was a very hard problem and I'm very curious to see if/how they can solve it. [1] : https://www.youtube…
I'm sure you've seen this rendering and Elon's response, but I thought I would post it for other's who have not: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1422603106035118085
It's pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. No fancy VAB or custom scaffolding. No different than the latest cookie cutter "luxury apartment building".
That’s core to their strategy. They also assembled a lot of the rocket in tents on a beach in Texas. Originally they hired a company that normally builds water towers to construct it. The idea is that the rocket needs to be a commodity, not something built in a clean room by specialists.
It's pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. No fancy VAB or custom scaffolding. No different than the latest cookie cutter "luxury apartment building".
It's pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. No fancy VAB or custom scaffolding. No different than the latest cookie cutter "luxury apartment building".
> It's pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. This crane is neither boring, nor old. It's an engineering marvel itself. It's a Liebherr LR 11350 [1], one of the most powerful mobile cranes available worldwide, modified by SpaceX for their own use case [2]. [1]: https://www.liebherr.com/en/int/products/mobile-and-crawler-... [2]: https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/LR11350
Looks small.
This is from a live feed just after the stacking point. Humans in monsterously tall cherry picker for scale: https://youtu.be/4B2_dfvRZ4M?t=4945
It looks like one side of the Starship is coated in some black material.
Is it some form of thermal plating or just kind of "no-scratch" thing just for stacking?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's pretty amusing that they assembled it with a boring old construction crane. This crane is neither boring, nor old. It's an engineering marvel itself. It's a Liebherr LR 11350 [1], one of the most powerful mobile cranes available worldwide, modified by SpaceX for their own use case [2]. [1]: https://www.liebherr.com/en/int/products/mobile-and-crawler-... [2]: https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/LR11350
Right, but to SpaceX it's just a commercially available off the shelf component. I'm sure they payed a pretty penny for it, but compared to the cost of building a custom building for integration, a penny is probably a pretty accurate estimate of the cost.
If you deal in Javascript all day a tube frame and keeping your bearings from corroding sounds hard but all this stuff is trivially solve-able. Big complex machines like this are the equivalent of a tall stack of software. No one part is complex. It's basically a given that it will work. Whether it scales is somewhat up in the air.
The most impressive thing about it is that it can be economically viable to operate while complying with the litany of relevant regulations across multiple jurisdictions. If you just need to stack rockets it's not hard to come up with a cheaper and better one trick pony that only lifts rockets. You see examples of such one trick ponies in every shipyard.
But SpaceX is constrained to some degree by engineering man hours so they were glad to just write a check for an expensive generalist piece of equipment. Cranes like this didn't exist in the 1960s so NASA built a bunch of traditional gantry cranes into a building. SpaceX can skip that sort of fiddling around and just write a check, so they do.