Starbase Sunday #5

6 Jul

Written By Magnum

Welcome to the 5th edition of Starbase Sunday! This week, teams made preparations to static fire Ship 37 on the OLM, got a step closer to completing Pad B, and celebrated the 4th of July!

June 29th - Sunday

During the night at Pad B, another hold down clamp arm was installed into the OLM, marking the 11th installed out of the 20 needed, along with 3 others available for installation at the launch site… as expected, 2 of them were lifted inside the OLM during the afternoon and late night, though the second one seemed to have issues.

At the launch site, teams are working on modifying SQR3 (the Ship stand) to adapt it on the Orbital Launch Mount for a static fire of Ship 37 in the late July timeframe.

June 30th - Monday

At Pad B, the second clamp arm that had issues was lifted back out early that night, and worked on until the morning when it was lifted back in, marking 13 clamp arms installed.

Later that evening, 2 additional clamp arms were delivered to the launch site, and shortly after 2 more were lifted into the upgraded OLM! That makes 15 installed, with 1 waiting!

In another area of the launch site, a new cross-braced vaporizer was delivered: vaporizers are composed of several resistant tubes and pipes near each other, used to convert liquid nitrogen (LN2 at -196°C) to gaseous nitrogen (GN2 at ambient temperature or slightly above), which is then routed to pumps that pressurize it to several thousand psi! GN2 is then used for ground tank pressurization (maintaining a stable pressure), as well as causing intentional overpressure to push propellants out of the ground tanks. Vaporizers use ambient temperature differences to vaporize LN2, making them useful as they don’t require external energy such as heat or electricity. New vaporizers have 4 cross braces per side, with each one made of 2 perpendicular metal beams; these new reinforcements have been implemented following damage to ground vaporizers after the past flights.

July 1st - Tuesday

At Pad B, 2 more clamp arms were delivered overnight, bringing the total of clamp arms waiting for installation to 3, and with 15 installed that means one last couple is waiting for delivery. The numbers quickly changed though, since mere minutes after the delivery of the latest clamp arm, another one was installed, marking the 16th clamp arm installed, with 2 waiting for installation, and 2 waiting for delivery!

These last 2 arrived at the launch site in the middle of the afternoon, while another was installed in the morning, and one late that night. If you’re confused, it’s understandable, but the bottom line is that 18 have been installed, with only 2 more to go.

At Pad A, late that afternoon, some unusual testing took place: the tank farm was alive, but not in the usual tank conditioning sense: this was a full test, including the pope vent and other important vents. This is not surprising, however, given all the new deliveries and additions to the tank farm over the past few weeks since Flight 9.

July 2nd - Wednesday

Starting at one of the most exciting places, Pad B, teams lifted another clamp arm during the night, with just a final one awaiting for installation. This is just around the corner, a matter of hours for sure, right? But no, SpaceX decided to make us wait and shift their focus to the BQD hood, where a LOX section was lifted early in the afternoon.

Not much noteworthy work continued at Starbase, apart from Massey’s cleanup.

July 3rd - Thursday

Early that night, another section of the LOX BQD hood was lifted to the QD gantry at OLM-2 at Pad B. This section will be responsible for delivering LOX to the next-generation Boosters, which seems to possibly have 2 BQDs.

Finally, the last clamp arm was lifted inside the OLM in the morning, marking the completion of the installation of all 20 clamp arms, bringing Pad B one more step closer to coming online.

Switching our attention to the production site for the first time this week, the Hot Staging Ring (HSR) rolled out of MB1 and back into Starfactory… we had taken the sign that it rolled into MB1 last week as an indication that SpaceX was preparing the Booster for a flight as soon as S37 was ready, but I guess not. There are several reasons why they might’ve rolled the HSR back, from inspections to repairs to just not needing it now.

Returning to the SQR3 modifications, thanks to Zack Golden, we know they’re modifying the legs of the stand to make it attach at the top of the OLM deck, instead of on the hold down clamps; this will prevent damage to the RQDs and reduce both risk and time.

July 4th - Friday

At Massey’s, it looks like the cleanup of debris has been completed, or is at a good point, since a crane started to take apart damaged components from the pump farm, which suffered substantial damage to the motors and pumps themselves; these are crucial to pressurizing the gases, as discussed earlier for the post-vaporizer process.

Meanwhile, down at the beach, fireworks went off for more than 20 minutes at around 9 PM, celebrating Independence Day!

July 5th - Saturday

Most of the day’s activity was focused on Pad B’s tower, where cladding was installed; cladding is composed of metal panels that are welded together to the tower to protect its internals during future static fires, launches, and catches. It is installed at the base of the tower and along the height of the first few modules of the sides impacted by the rocket exhaust.

Raptor testing

June 29th

There were no Raptor tests conducted today.

June 30th

- Raptor vertical - 11:14:20 - 179s / 2m59s

- Raptor south - 13:05:42 - 130s / 2m10s

Total tests: 2

Total fire time: 309s / 5m9s

-Raptor vertical: 179s / 2m59s - 1 test

-Raptor south: 130s / 2m10s - 1 test

July 1st

- Raptor south - 11:36:40 - 37s