It can be hard to keep up with exactly what's going on at Starbase Boca Chica - and that's even though they're much more open about what they're doing than any other launch service provider. Last night, while the company's efforts appeared to be focused on the Crew 8 launch to the ISS, Starbase was focused on achieving a full wet dress rehearsal on the stack of Booster 10 and Ship 28. This is the stack that's going to be used for the next Integrated Flight Test, IFT-3.
Overnight WDRs produce some dramatic imagery.
Image from SpaceX on X. The photo posted on X loses its time tag in the process so I can't
tell exactly when it was taken. Elon Musk tweeted the same four pictures
a few minutes later.
Many will remember from last Monday (Feb. 26) that the FAA closed its investigation of November's IFT-2 and I guessed that IFT-3 could launch in the second half of March, between the 17th and 31st (coincidentally: St. Patrick's Day and Easter).
"SpaceX identified, and the FAA accepts, the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s mishap report," the federal agency said in a statement issued Monday. "Prior to the next launch, SpaceX must implement all corrective actions and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements."
SpaceX must still submit additional information to the FAA, which is responsible for the safety of people and property on the ground, before the agency completes its review of an application to launch Starship for a third time. The administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, Kelvin Coleman, said last week that early to mid-March is a reasonable timeline for the regulatory process to conclude.
I heard or read somewhere that the last flight was three weeks after the equivalent approval for that one, so we can figure two weeks later for this one. Which is how the two week window I mentioned at the top was derived.
"SpaceX has implemented hardware changes on upcoming Starship vehicles to improve leak reduction, fire protection, and refined operations associated with the propellant vent to increase reliability," SpaceX wrote in its statement. "The previously planned move from a hydraulic steering system for the vehicle's Raptor engines to an entirely electric system also removes potential sources of flammability."
I'd really like to see the launch as soon as they're ready, but I'm not really optimistic we'll see IFT-3 before the end of the month. They're still waiting on the FAA to grant a launch license. Nothing will enhance the chances of getting the next launch license quicker than successfully completing the test flight.
Musk is known for saying, "the best part is no part and the best manufacturing process is not to manufacture". I'm completely onboard with those statements. It's just that spending another week of preparation on the ground wouldn't be bad, IFF (math speak for If and Only If) that gets the test flight to complete successfully. Because that means no time spent in things like the investigation that just sucked up three months. Spending time to increase the chance of success would be a positive use of time. It's just not really possible to know until after the test, pass or fail.
Fingers crossed here....
ReplyDeleteIt seems that SpaceX's mantra of 'de-complexity' is a winning one for them. Wonder how far Starliner would be if Boeing had the same philosophy, or Vulcan or New Glenn, or SLS?
ReplyDeleteWe have Yet Another NET Date for the Starliner crewed test flight. April twenty-something. Even if they make it, that just means they're not quite four years behind. I'm sure you know the old saying about "a day late and a dollar short." AFAIK, this is four years late and a billion dollars short. Since it was a fixed price contract, they're paying the billion$.
DeleteMy gut answer is they'd all be farther ahead than they are but I can't ignore the possibility that without the cost-plus contracts they would have never even tried to play the game. Maybe New Glenn would have, but Vulcan and SLS? I've got to wonder.
Looking forward to the next test. Fingers crossed - but I'm betting he hits orbit.
ReplyDeleteWho was the head engineer at Chevrolet whose motto was no part was a good part? Which I think really showed in the 70-80's and then the 88-95 chevy pickups, you open the hoods and you see less is more engineering style, like the HEI everything in the distributer ignitions, then the TBI injection system, it really kept things neat tidy and manufacturing wise very lean, though that "lean manufacturing," term was not in play so much in the era.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly said it SG, that great less is more engineering mind set, its definitely a major factor why SpaceX is been so successful, no doubt about it.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder who, or may be what, is really the driving force behind the Elon front man image.
Some one('s?) decided something had to change in the aerospace business model and particularly the manufacturing process and procedure end of things.
They thru the entire FOD culture into the trash barrel, that i know first hand, while FOD was an issue worthy of proper mind set, always will be, yet like many things it grew into a creeping corporate monster of sorts on the manufacturing floor side. Because here is Soace building these gargantuan rockets right out in the open basically, wind blown debris, wire feed weldments everywhere, if your around welding processes you know how spatter, arc strikes, cat whiskers and residue from smoke during the spray arc process, it flies everywhere gets into every corner and cubby. Then you see welders down in the bottom of the fuel tanks working on those incredibly complex fuel feed tubing and pipe, down there with hand grinders and such going at it. The chances for Foreign Object Damage during flight is simply extremely high, unless they came up with FOD mitigation techniques, i mean how do you clean up, run millions of gallons of liquid nitrogen thru the whole system to flush everything clean? Thats the only way I can think of to obtain a more or less FOD free rocket assembly. Flush the ever loving heck out of it? They do seem to do a lot of LN testing, maybe its an all inclusive kind of quality control, kill a couple problems at once. Like that great axiom of if you have one problem you have a problem but if you have multiple problems sometimes you can get them to solve themselves. You think thats what they are doing SG? Only thing I can see as the viable way and manufacturing-engineering mentality/process. Because they realky thru the aerospace manufacturing book out the window. If Lockheed ever saw that style used on their parts if you where a vendor they would pit the forever ban on you and you could not buy a job from anyone. At least it was that way last half the 90's and up to 2007.
It's tough to answer any of this. It's mostly insider information, and I have absolutely no connections to SpaceX. The rest is opinion.
Delete"I often wonder who, or may be what, is really the driving force behind the Elon front man image." IMO, Elon is Elon and nobody is driving him. He strongly believes in expanding human presence into the solar system and is driven by wanting to settle Mars. Everything he's doing reflects that. He has estimates of what it will take, how many millions of tons of cargo that will have to transferred, how many Starship equivalents will have to be launched every day to do it and more details like that. What I think of Musk most often is that I've worked with engineers like him many times over the years. Brash, confident he's right even when he's not (because he's right the vast majority of the time) and with a silly sense of humor.
As for the emphasis on FOD, remember that one of things they concluded was a cause of the IFT-2 booster blowing up was debris in the filter screens going to the engines. I don't remember if it was just the LOX or the methane or both, but you can call that FOD. When they do a WDR, they fill the tanks and empty them back into the holding tanks. That means if they wash stuff out of the booster's tanks, they flush it into the tanks they're refilling from. Maybe they already filter crap out, or maybe they need to use a little of the old knowledge on that. Musk often compares rockets to air transport jets and wants to be thought of like a routine flight; how do they manage debris in the fuel system of a transoceanic jet?