We're Going To See A Lot More Starships Once Gigabay Comes Online! [7:10]

Transcript

While SpaceX continues to get ready for Flight 14, preparations are underway to accelerate the production and testing of Starships. But red tape keeps getting in the way. So, let’s take a look and see what’s happening in this week’s Avid Space Update.

This week at Starbase saw major progress with the first bridge crane in Gigabay. The left and right side end ties, which are used to keep the box girders joined and square, were lifted into place. The crane’s electrical cabinets were installed next. These boxes house the crane’s computers and the high voltage power systems that drive the crane’s motors.

A preassembled catwalk was installed next. The catwalk segment runs the full length of the crane’s main beam. After the catwalks were in place, the safety rails were thermite welded together.

On Wednesday afternoon, the first of the short doors for the back side of Gigabay was delivered to the build site and positioned at the rear of the building ahead of installation. While they’ll protect the building from the elements, they’ll also make it harder to see what’s going on in the mega bays and ringard. One of the door guides was later removed from the Gigabay’s right side door.

While the panels for the new door were being raised, the bridge crane trolley was brought over from Sanchez for installation between the main bridge crane girders. The trolley rides the bridge crane girders to move loads from side to side.

Fabrication Updates

Moving on to our fabrication updates. Manufacturing work on Starship 43 is entering the home stretch. The ship’s aft end was moved into Mega Bay 2, then lifted with a ground level crane and placed on the welding turntable. And just a few hours later, the first of the ship’s flaps was lifted into place. The penultimate section of booster 23, its forward dome, was brought out of Starfactory and taken to Mega Bay for assembly.

With Flight 14 delayed due to ongoing administrative work, SpaceX is making use of the time for additional checkouts and testing at the launch site. Ship 42 was connected to the chopsticks and raised to the top of the tower, then lowered down to the ship quick disconnect height. The quick disconnect was connected and disconnected several times, proving that the ship can be connected to ground systems after being caught by the chopsticks.

Following the initial test, the quick disconnect arm was swung out and the ship and chopsticks were run through a wider range of motions before resetting. This test was repeated a second time, but with the addition of a flap retraction on the ship. Test crews decided they were done gathering data after that, and Ship 42 was lowered back down on the transport stand and sent back to the production site. While pad 2 was being tested, a major milestone was reached at pad 1 as pump trucks began placing the concrete for the flame trench floor.

Three pump trucks were set up for the pour and the first concrete trucks began rolling in about an hour later. The trucks would keep arriving through the night with the last of the pump trucks finally departing at 5:00 the next morning. Later that afternoon, cladding for the upper level of the tower was lifted and staged on the roof. Once it’s needed, crews will lower the panels down the side of the tower for fitting.

Over at pad 2, the actuators continue to be a source of trouble for the chopstick systems. The arms were swung out over the launch mount and crews later removed the port side actuator with the replacement being lifted and installed in its place. Two days later, a couple of days after the actuator was replaced, crews tested the chopstick side to side movement to make sure everything was in good working order.

An unusual piece of equipment was lifted inside the launch ring at pad 2, then taken out of the launch table an hour later. The thin curved steel panels, which are mounted on a square frame, may be a sensor system of some type. Additional pre-cast concrete panels were installed on the second level of the air separation unit cooling tower as work continues to bring commodities production capacity to Starbase.

Amid the buildout of extra unloading capacity, the PAD operations team found themselves with an excess of offload station skids, which were loaded onto a trailer and taken out of the launch complex Friday afternoon.

Over at Massy’s, the outpost testing site continues being upgraded with new test equipment. A new frame was added to the structural test cage. It’s not yet clear what they’re doing there yet, so if you have an idea, make sure you let us know what you think in the comments. A slew of new vaporizers were installed at the site’s tank farm this week.

Six new vaporizer towers were brought in and installed in total, one after the other to support faster operations and shorter turnarounds. The farm was activated the next day, likely to test the new installed equipment to make sure everything’s working. Deluge tests were also performed at pad 2 this week with the run of the full deluge system, followed up by a smaller scale test run of the top deck water deluge and flame bucket, which was perhaps a landing simulation.

Logistics Updates

On the logistics side of site operations, a lift test was performed on the new service structure that was built for the Block 3 launch pads while the Buckner crane was being laid down. The booster thrust simulator was brought back to Masses along with the ship’s static fire stand.

In other news around Starbase this week, there was an overnight convoy to the launch site on Wednesday morning with one of the older ship transport stands that had a single ring segment mounted on top. It’s not clear what this is for, so if you got some ideas, let us know what you think this is for. Starlink satellites, presumably for Flight 14, arrived at the build site later that morning. Hazard stickers for argon and lithium-ion batteries indicated the presence of primary shipping hazards of the satellites.

On Friday, the barge of Starship hardware we saw depart from Cape Canaveral last week was spotted being towed up the shipping channel to the port of Brownsville. The hardware being delivered includes a Gigabay workstand, a section of the water-cooled top deck of a launch mount likely for pad 1, and a horizontal ship transport frame which will be used when barging vehicles from Texas to Florida.

Notices to airmen were sent out ahead of Flight 14 with an initial date between the 18th and 28th of September for Mexico, Easter Island, and the Gulf. The flight has since been delayed to no earlier than the 28th and potentially into October as the FAA works through the re-entry certification procedures.

Flight 14’s plan covers a range of abort and early return scenarios as contingency plans for the ship. The range of possible landing sites includes Easter Island, Alaska, Hawaii, the Indian Ocean, South America, and other areas that involve Starship crossing over land, making for complex certification procedures for acceptable risk factors and other hazardous calculations.

Over in Cape Canaveral, the Starship tower at launch complex 39A could be seen venting from the cryoconditioning lines. The padded LC39A appears to be complete and only needs a ship and booster to complete commissioning and set SpaceX up to kick off the testing campaign for the first Starship launch from the Cape.

And there you have it, another Starship and Starbase update brought to you by Avid Space. Make sure you tune in to our upcoming spaceflight industry update in the next few days and make sure you hit those buttons that keep you updated with all our new content. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next video.

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