pigeonberry

Huh, the tweet seems to be visible even without a login? If not, the underlying image is https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0zTpR6XwAAnVvl?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

The tweet says

Chris Bergin - NSF @NASASpaceflight 9:09 PM - Jul 11, 2023

Say hello to S24.2 at Starbase. You're interesting!

Photo by Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer) for NSF.

I think the naming convention of Snumber.number or Bnumber.number is for a test tank or other test subassembly.

One suggestion is that it's a test of the lunar Human Landing System. S normally means it's on Starship, and maybe the reinforced holes at the top of the tank are the landing thrusters, or the openings for the thrusters.

There's also the suggestion that it's a hot staging ring, but it was objected elsewhere that that would be on top of a booster, not in a Starship.

Another suggestion is that it's a "Frankenbarrel", combining two tests.

By STEPHEN CLARK - 7/10/2023, 11:59 AM. 15 launches used to be the limit for the Falcon 9 first stage, but they just went to 16 with B1058 on Sunday.

This is Falcon 9’s second booster life extension

Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, said in May that engineers were in the process of certifying Falcon 9 boosters for up to 20 flights for Starlink missions. Launches with customer satellites may be limited to rockets with lower flight counts. NASA has only certified reused Falcon 9 boosters with five or fewer flights for the agency’s astronaut missions going to the International Space Station....

SpaceX’s latest iteration of the Falcon 9 rocket design—called the Block 5—flew for the first time in 2018. At that time, SpaceX had the goal of launching each Falcon 9 Block 5 booster 10 times.... [Aviation Leak] reported that SpaceX put booster components through vibration testing to four times the fatigue life of what they would experience over 15 flights, giving engineers confidence that the rockets will continue to fly successfully.

Tweets from Elon Musk @elonmusk.

7:51 PM - Jul 9, 2023: "3 more engines for the meaning of life." Meaning 42 Raptor engines total for Super Heavy and Starship together. It's with an upskirt photo of a Starship, though with 6 engines. I can't quickly find an authoritative statement of the configuration, but since 2021, it seems that people have been stating 3 sea-level gimballing engines in the center, and 6 Rvacs (vacuum Raptors) inside the circumference (so one added between each existing pair of RVacs for a hex array). Everyday Astronaut tweeted a reply at 8:57 PM - Jul 9, 2023, "So 33 on booster, 9 on ship. Which will be the first 6 X Vac ship?", so he seems to be thinking 6 RVacs.

The Ringwatchers @Ringwatchers have a 10-tweet thread (via threadreaderapp) analyzing it. They see a Hydraulic Power Unit: they say that, since S26 on and B9 on have the electric Thrust Vector Control system, this has to be a picture of S25. The engine shielding has been removed -- for inspections? for redesign? The COPVs have been removed too. There are other details, like the interior camera, the static firing stiffeners on the RVac (vacuum Raptor) engine bells to prevent damage from sea-level flow separation, et cetera.

Two Elon tweets in sequence:

• 12:35 AM - Jul 10, 2023 "Looks like we can increase Raptor thrust by ~20% to reach 9000 tons (20 million lbs) of force at sea level"
• 12:43 AM - Jul 10, 2023 "And deliver over 200 tons of payload to a useful orbit with full & rapid reusability. 50 rockets flying every 3 days on average enables over a megaton of payload to orbit per year – enough to build a self-sustaining city on Mars."

Edit for the record: Zack Golden @CSI_Starbase tweet on Jul 9 this picture. It showed Starship's config as mentioned above. But the 3 center gimballing sea-level engines are lined up with 3 of the 6 RVacs on the rim, which I think would slightly reduce their range of motion.

Musk replied 10:29 PM - Jul 9, 2023

Inner engine gimbal angle is limited in some directions, due to impacting outer engine nozzle, but probably ok

"SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket ever built. Its impact is still felt in this Texas community", a CNN article dated Friday, 7 July 2023.

Musk has repeatedly said he’d like to try to launch Starship again as soon as this summer, but the FAA said in a statement to CNN that SpaceX has yet to take public safety actions or submit a mishap report with corrective actions for FAA review and approval.

Much lifting and lowering and all sorts of craney stuff, but it's believed that all the manifolds are in place by now. A nice Imgur picture of a manifold being craned.

Unrolled tweet thread at threadreaderapp.com by Ryan Hansen Space @RyanHansenSpace. It's a look at the details of the steel plate parts and assembly under the Orbital Launch Mount.

I'm not following it in detail, but all the manifold plates are now at the Orbital Launch Mount. The manifold plates are, I gather, the distribution system to take one big input water pipe each and split the water into lots and lots of smaller pipes to form the showerhead.

Nice picture of the central plate before it was lowered. These look to me like two manifold plates being transported: Chris Bergin - NSF tweet; or just the picture.

Anyone know about the reputation of TheSpaceEngineer @mcrs987? They have a Twitter thread about progress so far. The first tweet has a render of the overall system. They say this is the current status: center plate installed, two manifold plates at the launch complex, three non-manifold plates (no big water pipe coming in) at the launch complete, one manifold plate back at the Sanchez site.

When I deleted a comment, it showed to me as something like [deleted], so you might try.

There's a more fundamental problem that there's no context to the comment, and I can't think of a good way to provide it. I think it might all be infeasible.

More pour info, this time from tweets from Zack Golden @CSI_Starbase. The truck counts basically match those from @[email protected]'s post earlier.

SpaceX has received their final load of concrete for today's Orbital Launch Mount foundation work. Here are the totals after the 15.3 hour marathon:

June 25th - 132 Truck loads

July 3rd - 171 Truck loads

Total Volume = 2,302 m^3 = 3030 yd^3

Total Weight = 5,411 Tons

For reference, a Fully loaded Starship ~ 5,000 Tons

Note: There were 4 additional trucks that showed up but were turned back around without offloading.

Shoutout to agents @VickiCocks15 and @SpmtTracker for keeping track of all these.

4:11 PM · Jul 3, 2023

and

Obviously this number is significantly greater than we predicted. For those who asked, that previous number was not considering the area in yellow, which were also completed today. This area is technically outside of the true foundation of the OLM

with a picture by RGV Aerial Photography.

Christian Schiffer - schiffer-soft @schiffer_soft tweeted a diagram of Super Heavy and Starship. It's for something for @Senkrechtstart3; "Senkrechtstarter is the biggest german YouTube-Channel about spaceflight, rockets and newspace." They asked for corrections. Errors have been noted: "Why did you keep the CH4 header tank on the common dome?", and the shapes of the header tanks. But it looks like a good start.

there doesn’t seem to be an alternative to the Starship development thread

Well, Starship Development Thread #46B seems to be the closest we have at the moment, and is intended to echo it. Two of us are posting the important updates there.