Elon did say in the recent Everyday Astronaut video that the 2nd tower would have a flame trench.  

I was glad to hear him say that.

I understand the thought process behind getting the thing to fly from as simple a structure as possible. But at the same time a lot of good arguments can be made for doing things the old fashioned way. Especially where the world's largest booster is concerned.

I don't understand why development of it has ceased. The technology is there to design and build a heave compensated stabilized launch vessel hull, with an additional hc upper launch deck. 16-1k hp z-drive gps thruster units would hold it on location within 6" and a solid heading. Launch pad erosion becomes a non issue as it could be ported out the sides of the hull. Yes it would cost about a billion, but you'd have none of these issues they currently do with noise. Could even lease a designated block of water with no potential future oil development to operate it in.

I wonder what their hurricane prep looks like, good chance that the hurricane's winds will impact the site if not hit it directly if it stays on its current path.

would be nice to have emergency launch/landing pads on the east coast, just launch/land everything and once it passes fly them back home  

It's because they are irrelevant currently. They just aren't ready to use them and there are a lot of engineering issues that need to be resolved first.
For example: Stage Zero is, per Elon, the most complex part of the Starship system. The launch towers are still evolving. Now imagine putting all of that on a boat.
Now consider that if you're using a floating rig, it might stay in position but it's going to sway back and forth some in the waves. If at the waterline it's tilting back and forth a few degrees, what does that translate to at 150' above the water where the chopsticks are?
You think the damage might be bad if you blow up a Booster when you're trying to catch it on land, you're going to sink your converted oil-rig.
Considering that you might sink your oil-rig/landing pad with thousands of gallons of diesel fuel on-board (for the generators that will be needed to run everything) do you think the EPA would be cool with you parking it just off-shore? And don't think you can just haul it 12 miles out into international waters, either. The Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from shore. The .gov still gets to have a say in what's happening there that can impact fisheries and other resources.
And if you have to haul it 201 miles from the coast, how are you going to get the 1 million pounds of propellant and oxidizer to fuel a stack? You're going to need to have your own LNG carrier, or two (probably don't want to carry O2 and methane on the same boat, that would be way worse than just a methane/atmospheric oxygen explosion). Or you can tow the rig back in to port to load it, then haul it back out to sea 200 miles. What is the surface speed of a fully laden oil-rig/launch pad? I bet it's less than the airspeed of an unladen African Swallow (which are non-migratory).
And speaking of hauling it around, you are going to have to bring it into port to put the booster/ship stack on it in the first place, so there's that.

In 5-10 years, when the system has proven itself and we're doing regular quick turn-around launches from land based towers, then the off-shore launch sites make sense. Right now, there's no reason to expend resources. Eventually, but not yet.

You make some good points, and yes it would be incredibly costly to design such an offshore launch facility.

the fuel issue would be an easy one to solve, don't store it onboard period. All the thrusters, hydraulic power units, and any monitoring can be electrical, with power supplied from a separate vessel connected via umbilical cable. Something goes wrong, quick release the cable at the connection point.

For the height of the starship, you would need a purpose built vessel, not a repurposed floating oil rig hull as well, they lack the width and stability controls that would be needed for a structure as tall as the starship fully loaded. The stability is very doable though, just look at the drill ships that stay on location for 6 months in deep water, their drill derrick is very tall and has a lot of mass, yet they keep them straight as an arrow with heave compensation systems. Sway/drift is easily mitigated with modern thruster systems as well. I spent the last 12 years working a control room on a DP3 vessel, it's amazing what they can do.

fueling would likely be the biggest issue, but still doable, via a smaller converted LNG tanker. Don't bring the launchpad inshore, transport the ships/boosters horizontal from land on a transport barge, then upright them once moored to the launch pad.

It's fun to think through the possibilities if you had the funding possible to do it. Yeah it's not necessary at the moment, just a fun thought exercise.

Your propellent weight is low by almost a factor of 10. Also don't forget about transporting payloads out to the floating platform. Musk has already said they will need many more ships than boosters, so this platform would need to be big enough to able to hold multiple ships to allow for payload integration while a launch is occurring.
None of these are insurmountable, but the cost would be way more than $1B and would require resources to be diverted from other infrastructure and development that will pay dividends much sooner.

wrong thread

Yeah. I fat fingered the propellant weight. Missed the 0. I was thinking about them having to build a whole new platform. Because how do you ballast something that one moment will be supporting 10 million pounds, give or take. Then the next will be being pushed down by more than 10 million pounds, give or take, and then in another moment, will be carrying relatively no weight at all. It's going to bounce out of the water like a cork being held down.
Absolutely. Now I'm imagining a launch rig shooting 100' out of the water as the rocket lifts off.

Nah, we dropped 3500 tons in the water all at once from the big crane offshore once, the bigger the mass the slower it moves. Not saying it won't gain freeboard, but you'd need a lot more weight than that for it to matter much.

That would be fun as hell to watch though!

This doesn't look good.

Attached File

Even if the track shifts North it'll be wet and breezy.  It'll be fine.

Fixed.

I know you guys have moved on from this but ya, it's absolutely a NASA KSC problem to sort out. They have declared KSC is a multi user space port or whatever. But who knows they may have gone to NASA already and been told to chill because starship isn't impacting their ops yet so they are now trying to see who'll listen.

Not to defend what they are doing but there has been valid concerns with hazardous operations going on without notifications in the past. When that crew capsule exploded on the test stand emergency services was unaware that was even going on.

It wasn't called into emergency services by the guys on console doing the test either. ES had no idea they were even doing that test let alone anyone else working in the immediate area. It was called in by someone 2 pads away that heard the explosion and saw the hypergolic cloud rolling by at their perimeter fence.

Had the winds been blowing on shore (like they normally do) that day, the cloud (of a few thousand pounds of hyper propellant) would have reached the visitors center.

Most likely changes were made after that event. Concessions need to be made by everyone.

Jesus, sounds like a mad scientists convention. I know there's a few new companies that are investing in facilities in the Cape like Stoke and Relativity and a few others whoes names I can't remember but I really hope that none of the new guys are fucking around with hypergolics. Even the Russians are moving away from that stuff.

The Chinese are still dropping hypergolic fueled stages on their own people though.

That was a wild video

Starting to shift north. We don't want it to keep shifting too far north or it could end up with my address.

Attached File

It is supposed to be a tropical storm by then.

Starbase Tower 2 Module 1 is staged and awaiting stacking.

7/3/24 pic.twitter.com/AnLTVPGEPm

Starship Gazer  (@StarshipGazer) July 3, 2024

Yeah. Same.

The outlying (less likely, IOW) spaghetti model has it running straight up the TX/LA line.

Gonna test those highbays.

The first launch was driven by launching on marijuana day/stupidity.

That was one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life, Ship 24 and Booster 7. Smoked on 4/20. I am of the view that there is a degree of rituial to how Elon has handled Starship development and yes, he probably pushed really hard to get all that to line up.

I would say it was worth it. But clearly it would be a bit silly to have a reusable rocket with a disposable launch site.

You say stupid I say hilarious.

What drives launching dates at Boeing and Blue Origin?

Cost plus.

nailed it

Now, that's what qualifies as stupid.

Meanwhile, Spacex launches first, biggest, and more frequently while gd bitches about 4/20 even though the first attempted launch was prior to that. I know, we were across the bay from the launch site for the scrub and stayed for the launch.

Boeing is part of ULA and I have seen nothing obvious.

Blue Origin has not launched an orbital rocket yet.

So 4/20/24 was the best and soonest launch date, not stupidity and far superior to anything the competition apparently doesn't commit to.

Any other rocket company can launch on that the 20th of April if they have the proper permission, launch window and a rocket ready to fly.

Flight 5 in 4 weeks https://t.co/K7pfdujrqx

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) July 6, 2024

The point is that SpaceX has single handedly restored American space to dominance.  And they did it from scratch.

Old space completely abandoned commercial space and even abandoned rocket engine production choosing Russian engines for a large portion of launch vehicles.

SpaceX has made reuse the standard and lowered costs to the levels the government and old space promised but never delivered.

Meanwhile the focus of the GD infantile brigade is absurd criticism on things like wrinkled test bucks and oddly motivational things like obscure dates.

SpaceX exists for one reason:  Elon Musk.

I've worked for self satisfied leadership who lack self made achievement. These people typically achieve status not through achievement qualification but through blood line or bought pedigrees.

That's the management that destroys. It's everywhere.

I would like GD to grow up and recognize creative and achievement based management.

It's important.

It is important, but asking for GD to grow up is usually too much to ask. Unless we are talking about something like a longtime member or their wife dying of cancer.

As for the US military-industrial complex using Russian rocket engines. That is one of the most miserable things I've ever seen. It was the near abandonment of a vital technology, something needed to launch surveillance sattelites and for many years, Russian engines were doing the heavy lifting.

Because it's cheaper to do it that way. Same argument for making an RBMK Reactor. The "management that destroys" will kill our entire civilization if we let it. As long as they get their tranches of cash into their offshore bank accounts then everything else can burn.



Things are different now. There's a lot of work going into new rocket engines and it's hard to argue that a lot of this work is not related to Musk shaking things up and proving that reusability can be done in a cost effective way. Its kinda funny to hear that there are people high up the chain of command at outfits like Arianespace who still think that reusability is a gimmick... In 2024.

Well well well. China's commercial space launch sector is already bursting with companies, but here's another anyway. ????/Cosmoleap, founded earlier this year. You'll love the image/concept. https://t.co/GCf58RwDmD pic.twitter.com/ifMwlssgoG

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) July 8, 2024

lol

If nothing else it should make for some entertaining videos

I hope it's put in the middle of one of their largest cities.

Interesting wire catch concept on the chinese knockoff...

So, how about this concept? pic.twitter.com/xv72ZE8o1m

Shanliren  (@wlmphi) July 8, 2024

Shit at least they're trying to copy the innovator.

That's their standard practice.

Be nice if ULA would do that

ULA has to worry about patents and claims of industrial espionage.

Industrial espionage is just another part of business in China.

Aviation advancement through technology transfer.

LOL.  Silicon Valley continues to predict real life....




"New SpaceX"