A SpaceX Morning

Never let it be said that it is too late to begin blogging about our travels. We left for our summer of 2021 travels on May 9 and here it is Saturday May 15, Sunday May 16 and I am just getting around to writing about the trip so far. I don't think that should classify as a Bad Bob, more like a Tardy Bob. We did not RV very much during 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but we did travel over to an RV park in Brownsville a number of times. I'm sure most people who know the area would be saying, "Why did you go to Brownsville instead of South Padre Island?"

The answer is a man who was born in South Africa, emigrated to Canada, and is now living in America named Elon Musk. Sometime in the next 10 or so years you will likely be driving an electric vehicle and someday your grandchildren could be vacationing on Mars. All this is because Elon Musk dreams impossible dreams, asks Why Not, then makes them come true. If I were a teenager again I would be doing everything possible to get the education I needed to work for one of his companies. Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. Especially Starlink, because RVers who spend significant time on the road and want to always be connected to the Internet will probably be a customer of Starlink. We certainly will be.

Boca Chica, Texas is where SpaceX is building their rocket factory and spaceship launch complex. In keeping with the promise of the future, Elon wants to incorporate it as Starbase, Texas. When we were down there today the new name was becoming a reality as the letters were being installed on one of the walls in front of the facility.

A common sight are cranes as there is building going on everywhere. This crane is one of five at the first area of the complex you pass. It is known as the Sanchez site and is where a plant is being erected to produce liquid oxygen, methane which are used by the rockets.

Mockup of the nosecone section of the Starship moon lander.

Starship SN16 in the highbay. The MaxQ nosecone test rig is to the left and GSE tank 3 is to the right.

The above from another angle. The rockets are all built onsite. 

A mile to the east is the launch site. Linda always has to take a photo from near this point. That is SN15 on test stand 2.

She wasn't happy with where I stopped for above photo, so I was directed stop closer to launch complex. It is difficult to comprehend the size of a Starship which is 30 feet in diameter and 164 feet high. Starship is made of thin stainless steel and with its fore and aft flaps, plus it falls back to the ground on its belly before turning upright and landing. It looks like something out of a 1950s science fiction movie or TV show rather than a modern rocket. It's a case of looks can be deceiving. All the old space company experts said it would never work. That's why they're known as "Old Space Companies" and are being left behind by the advances in rocketry pioneered by SpaceX.

The large crane is used to lift the starship from the mobile carrier up onto the launch stand. The difference between SpaceX and the old space companies in doing something like this is like night and day. Old space uses custom-built mobile carriers that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, SpaceX uses mobile carriers commonly used in the oil gas and chemical industries, fabricating a special base to mount the rocket on. Think of old space as a vacuum designed to suck up as many of our tax dollars as they can.

It is one thing to launch a rocket, but an entirely different thing to land that rocket. Sometimes they come down in one piece and other times they come down in many pieces.

Earth barrier to deflect the blast of the rocket. That is Highway 4  in the foreground.

We are so lucky to live as close as we do to such a history making complex.

The orbital launch tower is starting to go up and you can see the tops of the base of the orbital launch pad at the far left. A fully staffed starship will be nearly 400 feet high, higher than the Saturn five moon rockets. Currently they are planning to have the first orbital launch sometime this summer. But since that is what is known as "Elon Time" it's likely to prove a little optimistic.

Part of the GSE at the orbital launch site. GSE stands for Ground Support Equipment. Think of what is there other than the rocket.

It is amazing how close to the road all this is.

A gigantic, and I do mean gigantic, crane being assembled in the orbital launch area. In the foreground you can see one of the SpaceX security personnel. They take security on the site very very seriously.

You have to love a company with a sense of humor. The rocket engines in the starship are called raptors. When they say no trespassing they mean it.

Every time we visit Boca Chica I always wear one of my appropriate T-shirts. This one has Elon on it and his famous saying "Why Not". I think one of the things people in old industries are finally starting to understand is, never tell Elon that what he wants to do can't be done, since the result will be a total upheaval of the old way of doing things. Such things as, People will never buy electric cars, You can never land rockets and use them again, Satellite internet will always be to slow.

Dumpster filled with small pieces of debris from SN11 which exploded in the air scattering itself over a wide area. Linda said I should climb up and see what was inside. The security people really didn't like it. Bad Linda. (Bob only got yelled at by the security guard saying "SIR" when his head popped up above the edge of the dumpster.)