Starship's 14th Flight Moved Back To Next Month [8:00]

Transcript

Welcome back to this week’s Avid Space Update. While Starship 40 awaits recovery in the Indian Ocean, Starship 41 has undergone static fire testing ahead of flight 14. But the mission’s plans have changed. So, let’s dig in and see what’s happening this week with Starship.

This week at Starbase, SpaceX made major progress on Starship 43. The ship’s nose cone was brought out of Star Factory after workers finished fabrication, and then it was taken into Mega Bay 2 for assembly work. The forward nose cone came out of the factory fully integrated with a payload bay door section and ready to be joined with a forward methane tank and dome section. The forward dome arrived at the bay a few minutes later and was attached to the nose cone section before being lifted to the turntable. The Starlink dispenser installation jig was brought in shortly afterward, and the door was closed over the bay. A brief opening of the Mega Bay 2 door appeared to show the ship 43 nose cone positioned for the installation of the dispenser inside the ship’s fairing.

Workers finished installing the Starlink dispenser mechanism a day later and lifted the fairing section back up to be installed on the ship’s forward bulkhead. Progress continues to be made on booster 23 inside Mega Bay 1, which is likely to fly with ship 43 when it launches. Two liquid oxygen tank sections were completed in Star Factory and wheeled out to be joined to the booster on Wednesday and Friday. While new ships and boosters are being built in the mega bays, the final structural elements of Gigabay are being installed.

The last two roof trusses were lifted into place this week, leaving just the rooftop spans, roofing materials, and cladding left to go up before the outside of the building is complete. One of the roof span beams was signed by the construction crews before being lifted into place. Major production equipment is continuing to arrive for Gigabay. A center section of one of the central hallway cranes was unloaded at the Sanchez site. An end piece was soon brought in to be joined with the center of the crane’s beam. Assembly also continues on pad 1’s flame deflector at the Sanchez site. The water pipe assemblies that make up the deflector are being installed on a support frame, and once complete, they’ll be trucked over to pad 1 for installation.

Construction work on pad 1’s new launch table continued at the Sanchez site as well, with the remaining second level corner sections being lifted into place. Tower 2 is undergoing further modification and improvement, with changes being made to the liquid oxygen supply lines that fuel Starship at the launch pad. Two sections were removed in all. The tower at pad 1 is also being worked on, with a replacement segment for the chopsticks being lifted into place for welding.

Over at the pumping station, the liquid oxygen pump motor that was previously removed was reinstalled. A trio of new commodities offload skids were delivered to the launch complex. These skids will be the interfaces at three new liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen offload terminals, which will help speed up the restocking of commodities between test and flight operations. The water deluge system is one of the most complex parts of the launch complex, and new segments like these curved elements continue to be added to it.

Over at the air separation plant, multiple concrete wall panels were lifted into place for the unit’s cooling tower, which rejects waste heat during the production of liquefied gases. SpaceX aspires to supply most of Starship’s propellants at this site, which is 78% liquid oxygen by mass. Configuration issues and malfunctions in the ground support equipment can destroy a rocket just as easily as a malfunction in the vehicle, and crews routinely test the systems at Starbase to make sure that each new piece of equipment works well with the existing infrastructure. The Massie Outpost was busy this week with tests both big and small. On the smaller side of things, a booster liquid oxygen landing tank was put through its paces.

The biggest test campaign of the week belongs to Starship 41, which departed Mega Bay 2 for the Massie Outpost on Tuesday night for a series of static fire tests. With a transport as wide as Highway 4 itself and blocking the road to and from Starbase in both directions, the journey from the build site to Massie Outpost took place late at night to limit the effect on traffic. The ship was moved into position at the static fire station, and ground crews began preparing the ship for its first static fire test.

Ahead of each static fire, the ship systems are given a once-over to make sure everything’s good to go. The most visible tests are on the flaps, which are checked across their range of motion. After loading the ship up with propellants, Starship 41 performed a 15-second single engine static fire. The burn simulates the ship’s de-orbit burn, which is critical for bringing Starship back to Earth in a controlled re-entry before the batteries die out. Ship 41 is expected to be the first Starship to reach orbit.

Following the successful single engine test, the ship performed a six-engine static fire the next day. The ship’s engine burned for about a minute, with the vacuum engine shutting down first and the sea level engines following suit a few seconds later, mirroring the engine shutdown procedures during orbital insertion. With booster 21 static fire test on the horizon, pad 2 was put through a series of deluge system tests to make sure everything is ready to go.

New equipment was added to the Massie Outpost this week, set up in a cluster near the other storage tanks. A vertical tank was added first, followed by a GSE skid. A vaporizer was also set up nearby. An unusual piece of hardware labeled booster horizontal aft frame was spotted at the build site while crews did what seemed to be handling checks of the new equipment.

SpaceX is planning to transport a Starship and Superheavy to Florida by barge in the coming weeks. And this device is probably meant to help lay the booster down horizontally for the trip. On the subject of horizontal Starships, SpaceX shared new photos and video of Starship 40, which has been floating in the Indian Ocean since it splashed down at the end of flight 13 almost a month ago. The improvised recovery efforts, rough waves, and saltwater have done a number to the ship. The flaps, heat shield, engines, and payload fairing envelope have all suffered significant damage and corrosion.

But that hasn’t diminished the value of Starship 40 as the first ship to survive re-entry and splash down in one piece. This has given SpaceX engineers an unprecedented chance to examine the state of the ship and its structures to see how well they’ve survived re-entry and landing, with further post-flight inspection and teardown expected once they get the ship back to dry land. SpaceX also appears to have contracted the semi-submersible ship Forte to get ship 40 out of the water and to bring it back to Starbase.

The post-flight inspection may have already borne fruit for future improvements, as Elon Musk has announced that ship 41 will not be caught on flight 14. While the regulatory side seems to be good to go, the hardware is not. Though it’s not clear if the problem lies in the tower or the ships. With the next flight now delayed to mid-September, it’s not unlikely that engineers have found parts of the ship that need to be modified or redesigned.

This week at the Cape, two commodity storage tanks were unloaded at the turnbase. These may belong to SpaceX, although it’s not yet clear which launch pad they’re destined for, or even necessarily which launch provider they belong to. The large crawler crane at 39A has been raised upright again after spending several weeks laying flat. The crane was being reconfigured for its next lift at the complex, which is expected to be the launch tower’s roof. Douch testing is underway at 39A, verifying the performance of the system.

With pad 2 at Starbase as a reference point, the Florida crew will probably have an easier time getting the new launch pad up to speed. And there you have it, another Starship and Starbase update brought to you by Avid Space. In the meantime, make sure you tune in for our upcoming spaceflight news update later on in the week. And if you haven’t already, make sure you hit those buttons that keep you updated with our new content. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week.

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