Update on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launchpad improvements at Boca Chica
Link here. The article provides many details about the design improvements and testing that SpaceX is doing at the Boca Chica launchpad prior to the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight, now expected sometime in mid-May.
All the improvements appear designed to allow for quicker reuse of the pad, including protecting it better when both Starship and Superheavy return to be captured by the chopstick towers. For example:
On the tower, work has progressed on the Ship Quick Disconnect (SQD) arm, which connects to the Starship upper stage for propellant loading. This week, technicians added steel reinforcements to the lower side of the arm’s shoulder section. These additions are believed to strengthen the structure while enabling the arm to retract more quickly during launch.
A faster swing-out reduces the risk of damage from the intense exhaust plume of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines at liftoff. This improvement should minimize post-launch refurbishment and contribute to a higher launch cadence. The core work on the SQD arm itself appears largely complete, and scaffolding may soon be removed as final preparations continue.
Other work includes a new tower roof structure to protect it from the rocket’s engine exhaust, and other work on the pad itself to facilitate faster fueling. These additions have been accompanied by testing to make sure they work.
All this work appears intended to make it possible to launch frequently once the next test launch is completed.
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Link here. The article provides many details about the design improvements and testing that SpaceX is doing at the Boca Chica launchpad prior to the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight, now expected sometime in mid-May.
All the improvements appear designed to allow for quicker reuse of the pad, including protecting it better when both Starship and Superheavy return to be captured by the chopstick towers. For example:
On the tower, work has progressed on the Ship Quick Disconnect (SQD) arm, which connects to the Starship upper stage for propellant loading. This week, technicians added steel reinforcements to the lower side of the arm’s shoulder section. These additions are believed to strengthen the structure while enabling the arm to retract more quickly during launch.
A faster swing-out reduces the risk of damage from the intense exhaust plume of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines at liftoff. This improvement should minimize post-launch refurbishment and contribute to a higher launch cadence. The core work on the SQD arm itself appears largely complete, and scaffolding may soon be removed as final preparations continue.
Other work includes a new tower roof structure to protect it from the rocket’s engine exhaust, and other work on the pad itself to facilitate faster fueling. These additions have been accompanied by testing to make sure they work.
All this work appears intended to make it possible to launch frequently once the next test launch is completed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“All this work appears intended to make it possible to launch frequently once the next test launch is completed.”
Just so. Zack Golden’s latest series of YT videos on the new pad design really underlined this. The original pad design they put in place at Pad 1 was really an experiment, to see what would work, something that perhaps could get them through the initial flight test campaign. And they thought they could get through maybe a few dozen launches with it. They quickly figured out that wasn’t going to happen, and that it wasn’t a design that could ever get them to a rapid launch cadence. The “shower head” flame diverter plate apparently was gradually breaking down with each launch. They learned from that, the hard way, and rapidly pivoted to a very different Stage Zero design.
The new design at Pad 2 is a revolutionary change. We will have to see how it fares when it starts doing launches, but it clearly seems a lot sturdier. It at least *seems* like something that could be worked up to a fairly rapid launch cadence platform. They seem to have some confidence in it, given that they’re replicating it now at Pad 1, and at the three new launch pads at the Cape.
The contrast with the fiasco of NASA’s Mobile Launcher 2 could not be more stark.
Richard M,
Agree on all points. Pad 1 was a post-graduate course in GSE engineering out of the School of Hard Knocks and SpaceX flunked some of the exams. Pad 2 should prove to be a much more durable piece of kit. I think a lot of people are going to be startled at how many Starship missions SpaceX is able to get off from Starbase Pad 2 during what remains of 2026 following Flight 12. In 2027, as the Pad 1 rebuild and the builds at LC-39A and SLC-37 complete in their turn, it’s going to be Katie Bar the Door.
Hi Dick,
I still remember all the constant whining three years ago from people ripping Elon for not building Pad 1 with a flame trench in the first place.
Yeah, I think Elon overestimated what he could get by with while doing without one. But a flame trench launch mount would have taken longer to build (delaying the test flight campaign), and wouldn’t have been as good as the one they just built at Pad 2. They learned a lot from those 11 test launches at Pad 1.
One wonders that if NASA was overseeing these improvements how many years and how many billions of dollars would it spend to accomplish these improvements. Space X and all the other private space companies are the strongest argument for getting NAS out of the manned space flights business.
That wasn’t whining…that was people wonder just how seriously Elon was taking things.
Devil-may-care is fine for rockets Falcon size or smaller. That’s one thing.
I had high hopes for Starhopper–that you could just get away with water-tower construction and just knock these things out.
Now, maybe with Beal’s choice of propellants of HTP and kerosene, maybe that could be the case. Less specific impulse might be worth not having to deal with cryogenics.
That’s big boy stuff.
“One wonders that if NASA was overseeing these improvements how many years and how many billions of dollars would it spend to accomplish these improvements.”
That’s the other neat thing about these five Starship launch pads that SpaceX is constructing: the U.S. government is not paying a dime to build them, or maintain them. In fact, it’s getting lease money from SpaceX for the three pads at the Cape!
“Pad 1 was a post-graduate course in GSE engineering out of the School of Hard Knocks and SpaceX flunked some of the exams.”
There’s an Elon aphorism that seems relevant here; “Failure is irrelevant unless it’s catastrophic.”
Richard M,
Good quote.
One is also reminded a bit of a much earlier quote by a fictional character in one of the great movies of all time, Casablanca – “I wouldn’t underestimate American blundering, Major. I was with them in 1918 when they blundered into Berlin.”
Richard M wrote: “I still remember all the constant whining three years ago from people ripping Elon for not building Pad 1 with a flame trench in the first place.”
I was of those whiners, and I was not questioning Musk’s seriousness or intentions. He clearly was seeking improvements that tested the assumptions and even the conclusions of previous engineering. Early rocket tests showed that a flat flame diverter would direct a lot of acoustic power back at the rocket. I and others had expected that the acoustics would heavily damage the booster. The destruction and wide distribution of the concrete was not predicted, and many of the whiners were surprised at the survival of the booster — or that the damage to the booster was not as bad as expected.
SpaceX had already known that the concrete was not holding up to the heat and blast of the 33 engines at their 1/2 thrust test fire. The company had already ordered their upside-down shower-head flame diverter.
I agree that because SpaceX did not know what they did not know, they started with a launch pad (“Stage Zero”) that they knew they would have to eventually replace, just to have a start point to learn from.
___________
Dick Eagleson wrote: “Pad 1 was a post-graduate course in GSE engineering out of the School of Hard Knocks and SpaceX flunked some of the exams.”
Those flunked exams are some painful lessons, but the education sticks with us long after graduation. Part of the cost of those flunked exams was delays in the next development test.
___________
Chris Lumley wrote: “One wonders that if NASA was overseeing these improvements how many years and how many billions of dollars would it spend to accomplish these improvements.”
NASA has stopped making such dramatic changes in its rockets and operations that it has needed much development testing. Even with the Saturns and the Space Shuttle they had great confidence of their design while they were still in the layout phase. Starship is radically different from design to manufacturing to launch to operation to landing. NASA’s oversight would have rejected the most important of the Starship improvements.
NASA rejected less revolutionary designs in Dragon, such as the landing legs that would have extended from the heat shield. This was not even radical, as the Space Shuttle used a similar concept for its landing gear.
NASA’s plans for going to Mars have been very expensive, because they have not been willing to innovate less expensive methods. SpaceX is willing to make many test units for each of several versions of rocket in order to find efficiencies that no one else has been willing to spend the time and effort to find. SpaceX is now doing what Marshall Space Flight Center should have been doing for decades. The government has to get out of the way of opportunity.
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Jeff Wright wrote: “I had high hopes for Starhopper–that you could just get away with water-tower construction and just knock these things out.
Water tower construction is very similar to the Starship and Super Heavy manufacturing method. They are built very differently than other rockets, and SpaceX expects to be able to build them fairly rapidly and lightweight. Lightweight being very important for efficiency, because a rocket’s structural weight plays an important role in the rocket equation, which SpaceX is still doing battle with.
Falcon 9 has successfully reused its booster while lifting a significant payload to orbit, reducing the cost per pound by a factor of five over the typical rocket and encouraging a significant increase in the utilization of space.
Starship is intended to also reuse the upper stage while increasing the payload by a factor of ten above Falcon 9 and reducing the cost per pound by another order of magnitude. Increasing specific impulse and reducing structural weight are two of the main ways to increase payload and reduce the cost per pound. Cryogenics in general are not the problem, handling cryogenic hydrogen is.
The upgrades on *everything* are enormous: consider this photographic comparison of the business end of Booster 4 (a version 1 Starship) and Booster 19 (a version 3 Starship). It’s not hard to believe that the launch pad would require a radical redesign, too — and not just for the sake of rapid reuse.
https://x.com/i/status/2043078591114596407