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That’s going to get aimless all hot and bothered.

It is neither small nor flightless

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NSF's team recently flew over McGregor and caught an interesting piece of hardware that could be a new design of the OLM hold down arms.
Unfortunately none of the images taken are public yet but I've decided to model it for you !

Comparaison between the old and new design: pic.twitter.com/3hB2cNRnd3

— Greg (@Greg_sbf) July 14, 2024

Cool work, Greg! Let's show it for context!

Via Gary Blair for NSF McGregor: https://t.co/sA450ZUadq pic.twitter.com/YvqAbChiV9

Chris Bergin - NSF  (@NASASpaceflight) July 14, 2024

STATIC FIRE! Booster 12 fires up ahead of Flight 5. The current expectation is this booster will be the first to return to the launch site for a catch by the Mechazilla Chopsticks.

??https://t.co/vPiORO053d pic.twitter.com/lBehKAcJN5

Chris Bergin - NSF  (@NASASpaceflight) July 15, 2024

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Full duration static fire of Flight 5 Super Heavy booster pic.twitter.com/8rF9KUdMUD

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 15, 2024

Photos from static fire pic.twitter.com/WZMVwklWtO

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 15, 2024

More than double the power of the Saturn V moon rocket!
pic.twitter.com/0e5I4zrJQj

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024

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Someone catch me up.

I would say Boca Chica has gone from crawling to walking to almost a full run. If they succeed with catching the booster on the next flight which will probably be sometime in August then Starship will probably be ready to carry payloads to orbit on the following flight.

After another year of work we might have tankers ready to gas up a lunar lander. If the Chinese get even more ambitious than they currently are we might just have us an olde fashioned space race.

Or maybe their entire country will disintergrate into a stomach churning horror of political violence and rival warlords after Comrade Xi keels over and we won't need to go to the moon or anywhere in space?

It would be nice if they could whip up a lunar lander mockup at Boca Chica. But the way they do things there I wouldn't be surprised if they went for making the real deal on their first go around.

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Groovy

The balls on that guy.

I think Elon either is himself or has reality warping entities on his payroll. Starship has been the kind of program that in the very recent past would only be attempted by the most ambitious and powerful of nation states and it has proceeded far faster and smoother than anything else like it. No parallel program has been as ambitious. Not Ariane 6, Vulcan, New Glenn or anything the Chinese or Russians have been able to cobble together. The Space Shuttle is probably our nearest analog and we all know how that turned out.

And yet as insanely ambitious as it is. He and others proceed because they know, it's necessary. So Elon is going to keep going until something stops him.

Damn, engine no. 391.

By way of comparison, if NASA bought that many SLS engines from Rocketdyne—they have a comparable thrust—it would cost approximately $40 billion. https://t.co/IIDgFmtm7T

Eric Berger  (@SciGuySpace) July 23, 2024

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Pretty soon there will will be a Tower Segment factory, right on the water - somewhere.

Full duration static fire of Flight 5 Starship pic.twitter.com/09Dz9iCsGc

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 27, 2024

STATIC FIRE! Ship 30 fires up at Masseys ahead of Flight 5 of Starship.https://t.co/e3xbqPnwZ5 pic.twitter.com/CKKErVVAUa

Chris Bergin - NSF  (@NASASpaceflight) July 26, 2024

The next Starship to launch into space, Ship 30, fired up its engines at Massey's today. This shot is 120fps played back at 30fps, watch for the shockwaves in the exhaust plume! @NASASpaceflight

Rewatch the static fire test on this week's Flame Trench > https://t.co/vUQj4dyWML pic.twitter.com/HdC87mn6pT

Jack Beyer  (@thejackbeyer) July 27, 2024

Slow motion view of Flight 5 Starship’s six Raptor engines during static fire pic.twitter.com/5395Vmq2j4

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 27, 2024

We want to hear from you! The FAA released a draft environmental assessment for @SpaceX's  proposal to increase the number of operations of its Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle in Boca Chica, TX. Submit your comments by August 29 at https://t.co/nqmmKrVMcB pic.twitter.com/oPFIh2bHNY

— The FAA ?? (@FAANews) July 29, 2024

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/although-its-not-final-spacex-just-got-good-news-from-the-faa-on-starbase/

SpaceX is in talks with U.S., Australian officials to land and recover Starship boosters off a coast in Australia, a possible first step toward a bigger SpaceX presence in the region as the two countries bolster their security ties, per three sources. https://t.co/Gxo6QiaJEl

Joey Roulette  (@joroulette) July 29, 2024

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-talks-land-recover-starship-rocket-off-australias-coast-2024-07-29/

Ooh, that sounds pretty cool. NZ has been humiliating Australia in the space game for the past few years. Almost entirely because of Rocket Lab. Building a Starship recovery site, perhaps even a launch tower would be a way the Australians could leap ahead. It could be a first step towards a network of launch and recovery sites which would make Starship more viable by landing SHB downrange.

NZ has proven to be a suprisingly good place to launch orbital rockets from. It would be nice if Australia could show that they could support such operations. Real big boy country stuff.

While I like the idea of being able to land and recover boosters in Australia, I don't think it adds much to normal operations.  The trajectory of the booster is not nearly orbital.  I think they are currently turning it around when it is only 60 or so miles out.  I question if it is practical to give it enough speed to be semi-orbital.  Getting the speed would cost more fuel, would require more fuel to slow down, and subject it to more heat (it lacks heat shielding - which weighs).  Now landing Starship itself - sounds great.

I guess the booster and ship sank shortly after splashdown during the last flight. Not shocking considering the ship had a rather large hole burned through it.

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Sonic booms announce the return of rockets and spacecraft built to be reused. With Starship, they’ll signal the arrival of a rapidly reusable future in spaceflight ? https://t.co/25MrsXiVQM pic.twitter.com/ap2MlJ1C0P

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 29, 2024

https://www.spacex.com/updates/#starship-sonic-boom

July 29, 2024
STARSHIP’S SONIC BOOM

With each flight of Starship and the Super Heavy booster, we get closer to our goal of making life multiplanetary. The most important advancement to make this happen is full and rapid reusability of the entire launch system, operating Starship like an airplane which is fully and rapidly reusable after each flight. To do this, we have designed Starship’s upper stage and the Super Heavy booster to be capable of returning to the launch site. The returning vehicles will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the return location.

A sonic boom is a brief, thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other object travels faster than the speed of sound. As a fast-moving object travels through the air, it pushes the air aside and creates a wave of pressure which eventually reaches the ground. The change in air pressure associated with a sonic boom, known as overpressure, increases only a few pounds per square foot. A person could experience a similar pressure change by riding down several floors in an elevator. What makes sonic booms audible is the quick speeds at which the pressure change occurs.

Generally, the only impact to those in the surrounding area of a sonic boom is the brief noise. There are many variables that determine the impact of sonic booms, including the mass, shape and size of the object traveling at high speeds, along with its altitude and flight path. External factors like weather conditions can also affect the intensity of a sonic boom. The strongest effects of the sonic boom’s pressure change are localized to the area directly beneath the vehicle, concentrated under the rocket’s flight path and the landing site.

Sonic booms in spaceflight have typically only been experienced by observers on Earth when encountering vehicles designed to be reused, such as SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets. When the first stage booster of a Falcon rocket returns for landing, its size and speed generate multiple sonic booms heard on the ground as a double clap of thunder. Similar sonic booms were heard during the return and landing of the NASA’s space shuttle. In each case, the sonic boom marks the end of just one in a series of missions for the vehicle returning from flight.

Data gathered from the first ever Super Heavy landing burn and splashdown on Starship’s fourth flight test indicates that while Super Heavy’s sonic boom will be more powerful than those generated by Falcon landings, it does not pose any risk of injury to those in the surrounding areas. The strongest effects will be localized to the area immediately around the Starbase launch pad. This area is cleared well in advance of launch and has been rigorously designed to withstand the environments of launching and returning the most powerful rocket ever flown.

Sonic booms announce the return of rockets and spacecraft built to be reused. With Starship, they’ll signal the arrival of a rapidly reusable future in spaceflight to travel to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Sounds like the problem is ITAR, not the Aussies per se.

And the plan right now is for a single Starship to land near Australia and be barged to land for further study as part of the flight test program.

Peter Beck has said that they have learned far more from recovered Electron boosters than they ever could have learned from instrumentation alone. I would be stunned if the engineers at SpaceX said something different about studying their recovered boosters.

As for this ITAR bullshit. I suppose all I can say there is that Australia is not North Korea.

Sitting hear heavily drugged up this morning, a couple questions made it through the fog.

Could the military be quietly considering an Aussie base for using the Starships they plan to buy?

If it's a Space X launch facility, but not manufacturing facility, could Space X launch or barge boosters and SS's there to be launched to keep the required cadence up? Would that bypass ITAR?

Also, could Space X build a concrete and steel launch structure out into the gulf resembling the Palms in Dubai but not islands?

Ya know, big thick concrete and steel bridge type thing with launch platforms on the left and recovery platforms on the right.

Flame diverters would keep the fire from blasting into the water, it's away from the beach turtles and birds nest, but connected so you could run pipelines out to each platform to fuel and have a bridge wide enough to drive everything out and back.

Or am I just thinking stupid drug thoughts?

Pretty sure ITAR covers removing items from US territory in addition to manufacturing....so mode of transport would have no change.  If it was related to military use, they would just give SpaceX an exception to the ITAR restrictions and SpaceX would figure out the easiest way to get them there.

SpaceX could figure out a way to build an island, or revisit the oil rig conversation but I don't believe that would help them with ITAR restrictions without .gov signoff if that's what you were thinking.

I'm also not an expert on ITAR.

I was thinking they could build the bridge at the site in Texas where they manufacture everything. Build it, put it on a transporter roll on out across the bridge to the series of launch/ recovery platforms, not islands or moveable rigs, just big steel and concrete launch/ recovery platforms out over the water. The water is relatively shallow there.

For non crewed missions you wouldn't need all the other stuff for crewed missions so you could leave the current pads for crewed missions or design the closest of the platforms for crewed missions.

Just pondering shit while lying here.

I have zero doubt that SpaceX could pull that off, assuming they wanted too and were able to get the .gov to sign off on it.  It would have been really cool to see a booster land on a modified oil rig.

Someone in the know tell me, what are those bags hanging from the 4th piece for?

bag o' bolts

That was my thought.

Starbase Crabs heading to the Rave, as featured in:https://t.co/nqKD9T3zFW pic.twitter.com/zxIROf1RNw

Chris Bergin - NSF  (@NASASpaceflight) July 30, 2024

Can we get a static fire, please?

Nothing 'bypasses' ITAR.

ITAR is not just equipment, gear, or technology - it's also information / data / etc.

I have no doubt that could be worked out between US / Australia / SpaceX, but it's not something you avoid.  You tackle it head on and get it settled, or face the wrath of the USG & significant fines in your companies future, and potentially jail time.

Then I guess our .gov not being upset about Chinaisassho stealing everything that isn't nailed down is similar to the FATF going after honest citizens and leaving criminals alone because that's hard.

They do catch Chinese industrial spies now and then. But other than that what are they supposed to do? Arrest rich and powerful foreign nationals? This is current day America. If you're rich with the right political views you're basically above the law.

Noticed that SpaceX apparently is trying to get their launch license increased to 25 launches and 50 landings a year.  Likewise, heard that Musk has pushed the target for the next launch back a month due to needing FAA approval for a change in flight program - the change for attempting the catch.
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Well at least that means I have a month to fix my Jeep for another drive to the beach.  AC is out for about the 4th time in 2 years.

You all see the rendering of the possible flame trench at the new launch tower?

The new long awaited flame trench for the new launch pad at @SpaceX is slowly showing signs of itself with sheet piles being hammered into the ground in a line along the towers face. I have made 3 versions all with various problems and with limited owned land. pic.twitter.com/Mj6ijnobpC

ChromeKiwi  (@AshleyKillip) July 28, 2024

154 page FAA report on:  Draft Tiered Environmental Assessment for SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site

https://www.faa.gov/media/82786

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