Orbital Tank Farm Tank Scrapped | SpaceX Boca Chica
The quick disconnect for the Ship static fire stand at Massey's was lifted into position, work on Ship 29's TPS tiles continued, and scrapping of another vertical tank in the Orbital Tank Farm began.
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🎥 Video from Mary (@BocaChicaGal), Sean (@SeanKD_Photos), and Starbase Live.
✂️ Edited by Thomas (@_thomashayden).
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Timestamps:
0:00 Ship 30 in the New High Bay
0:31 Crane Mats Placed Down
1:16 SPMT Heads Aways
2:07 Work on the Tank Farm Continues
2:22 LR 11000 Moved to the Tank Farm
3:00 Ship QD Lifted at Massey’s
3:11 Chopsticks Moved
3:28 Lift Going to GSEC-6
4:14 Crane Lift Point Prepared
4:38 Delivery at the Tank Farm
5:02 Tower Sections Eight and Nine
5:16 The Production Site
5:32 Ship 29’s Tile Work Continues
6:11 Starfactory
6:55 Ground Work for the Second Tower
7:08 BQD Hose Removed
7:25 GSEC-6 Hooked to Crane
8:03 Crews Begin Scrapping GSEC-6
11:59 Concrete Wall Poured
12:37 GSEC-6 Removed
It amazes me how everything here is still so interesting after watching every single day for what four years now?
The cinematography doesn’t hurt.
Happy birthday IFT 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't believe that it was 1 year now already but it is what it is so happy birthday IFT 1🎉
SpaceX is fricking EPIC
Thanks! The extended view of the tank removal was great; not easy, but made it look easy. Real pros. All the best
They gave that tank a Mullet cut. 😂
Great videos Mary, Sean & NSF, Thank you !!! Happy 1-year anniversery on IFT-1!!!!
Can't believe it's already been a year. Next one is gonna be great now that they're actually launching and figuring out all the things they need to fine tune/change
always love your content! the vids with astronauts and science types are great edutainment. any chance of a series with welders, iron workers, crane operators, and such picking apart what what we see in starbase updates?
Thanks for the great camera work!
that was amazing to watch thank you so much for sharing with us
1:56 Stop! It's not night yet, I don't want to count wheels to fall asleep 😂😂😂
Fancy new matting! 👍
Happy 420 everyone! 🎉
Smoke if ya got em
Very cool watch. Thanks. 👍
Thanks NSF team, it sometimes looks as if humans are tiny ants swarming on a object for scale. I'm hoping the paper work for next launch is being worked on in the same way.🤞.
Wow so intriguing
12:45 The long "tuxedo tail" on the lifted tank provides a counterweight to the heavy vertical reinforcements.
Wow, thanks NSF for the front row seat. It’s amazing that we can get these views of history in the making!
you know this isn't NSF don't you
@@littlenudge693I thought it was.
@@littlenudge693 *looks at channel* Yup, it's NSF alright!
I need jack's smooth "Jack voice" to carry me through the video. Without that silky smooth tone im just lost 😮
Nice shot of the Puppy Dog, with a floppy ear. 💫
The whole tank thing is confusing they just spent money reinforcing that tank and now its being scrapped I'm guessing the rest are to go as well
Indeed they will. These guys are all about try and remove, im pretty sure every square foot of concrete on this entire site has been torn out and replaced at least twice now. Some places many more then that.. The idea behind these tanks really had some decent points to support it, the volume needed on site is massive and these could hold so much more then almost any commercial tank ever made and were super cheap and easy for them to build since the materials and method was exactly the same as the ships which they make tons of, about 1/5 of those being scrapped before they do anything of use. Granted the location of these tanks was always wrong lol. But the reasoning behind them was pretty solid.
Every single Starship costs hundreds of millions of dollars (maybe more), what they spent on that tank is nothing.
Yep 5-6 supervisers on the mat laying job. 1 operator.
Gigantic, I love USA and SpaceX 👍👍👍
USA is currently a banana country being run by corrupt politicians. SpaceX is Elon Musk territory. If leadership in the country changes perhaps things can get to a level of normal
You know a lot is going on at a facility when giant cranes are kept busy, day after day, for years at a time.
Bravooo SpaceX
Good.
The SMPTs need names of their own. They're so cool!
Happy IFT 1 remembrance day!
Cool
that would be liquid gas, daddy-o.
Welp. 1 year later. 3 launches, now getting ready for a catch this year!
Fingers crossed. I dont even mind if a tower gets wiped out in the process, next year when they have a second one operational lol It would be one hell of a show...
@@Vatsyayana87 A failed catch wouldn't even do major damage! By the time tower 2 comes online, we may have even gotten to see a ship catch
Cheers guys love ya work as always from 🇳🇿
They have recalled all the hub caps on the Cyber Truck because they wear into the tires, wonder if the ones in the video of Ship 30 at the beginning are the replacements.
Wow, it’s already been a year since IFT 1!
Man, that Tank Farm was a costly blunder.
Alot prep work that's for sure
I wonder why they cut the tank apart like that, instead of cutting right around the base and lifting it off like the previous scrapped tanks, was the crane not high enough this time maybe?
Weight distribution. They did the math to see where the extra reinforcements will equal the naked side so when they lift it, it will be stable and level.
@@Vatsyayana87 ahhh that makes sense, cheers!
@@karlwest437 No worries, it always helps to have a second set of eyes.
With the revelations of Starship V. 2 and V. 3, they are going to need taller towers.
Maybe, The one connection on the ship to the tower will only move a couple meters which means just moving the ship QD those few meters. Unless of course there is an issue with the lifting point of the ship being lowered but i wouldnt think so, the center of mass is probably going to stay low enough that the arms wont have to go any higher for stacking, but i cant say that with any certainty.
Hi. Does anyone know why there are no more StarLink launches planned after May?
They haven't been scheduled yet
@@bryanillenberg Exactly, they have so many more to go.
👀🚀🚧👍
If the smaller one of the three bay buildings is called the High Bay, why does the new building get called 2nd high bay if it’s as big as the mega bay?!?
Basically they're all high bays but with different nicknames. The smallest one just got called the High Bay, then the second one got called the Mega Bay, but SpaceX hasn't given any name to the new one yet (or rather, hasn't said what the name is). They have lifts and whatnot for each of the bays so we should hopefully see a label with the name on it at some point, but for now I'm just sticking with a generic high bay term
👋👍
i do wish there was a more effective way of tiling the heat shield, it seems an awful lot of work goes into hundreds of tiles that need to be replaced. why not make the steel heat resistant to begin with, or find some way to spray the stuff on direct? i'm sure they've tried everything but it just seems so labour and time intensive.
I think its more like 15-20 thousand tiles and yes I, we and Im certain Spacex very much agree with the sentiment.. The steel is quite resistant obviously but since it will be coming in at minimum of low orbital speeds, anything cost effective just cant handle it. They havent tried anything other than this method, but they have certainly thought it through a whole lot. Originally it was going to be attempted to be just that simple. A super high buff on the steel to make it mirror like so it reflects enough infrared to survive entries. Honestly i wish they would at least try that to get real world data before going straight to a much more complex and heavy option but i guess the numbers said it wasnt even worth trying.. Next they decided to have a super thin second skin on the forward side which would have methane flowing though it and coming out of likely millions of tiny holes, making a cool gas barrier that just happens to have a high heat retention (being a major green house gas) which would then immediately be removed from the air flow taking the heat with it. Ultimately they decided on this method instead, for reasons.. lol Any sort of single piece like spray on is impossible due to thermal expansion/contraction from both sides, -200 degrees on the inside then suddenly 1500-3000 degrees on the outside. We just dont have a material which can handle that, yet. As a reference, i dont recall the exact number but i think they said the entire vehicle actually shrinks by like 6 feet when its fueled du to thermal contraction across such a large area, which is just absurd to think about. Since the vehicle will be getting much longer, this will be even more pronounced.
@@Vatsyayana87 its nowhere near 6 feet, maybe 6 inches
@@bryanillenberg I looked into the thermal expansion/contraction of stainless steel at cryo temps starting at 150 meters, it says just over 3 feet. I dont know if 304L does more or less then generic stainless but i can confirm its in feet, not inches.
@@Vatsyayana87 the ship is 50 M currently, and maybe 2/3 of that is tanks (its less than this, but this is so the result is skewed towards your answer). 50m/150m*2/3*36 in= 8 inches
@@bryanillenberg Thats a fair point, the subject is specifically on the TPS and so the ship alone, excluding the booster completely. I suppose i sometimes cant see past the big picture and focus on the actual point of reference at times. I appreciate the focus check though my point is still completely valid, i just used the entire vehicle to give a stronger idea of how much change there is in a vehicle under such conditions which prevents a single shell TPS. At lets say, 40 meters of tank section it comes to 10.4 inches. which is still far beyond any material we can make which would allow such a use as a single piece TPS. The math says the tank will likely even grow into the payload bay area when it grows but if we kept the same idea of 10 meters of payload bay and 60 meters of fuel it will be 13.7 inches, just for the ship. Either way, the ship will shrink and then the shell will be expanded on top of that during entries. Thats why we can not do single piece TPS on such massive vehicles.
How can spmts drive on HW-4 without a license plate?
Classed as an appliance not a vehicle, very low speed and special permits.
I assume it is classified under something that doesnt require one. But now you have me curious about that.
Texas has a section in their vehicle code for "farm" vehicles 😆
@@jeffwxyz I know here in 'Straya we have separate allowances in vehicle codes for roadworking machines and fire appliances and things like that which for many years had no proper registration but in recent years I have noticed registration plates on them so I guess the rules have all changed....Again.
Hi
Hi!
why would they cut it off like this? weird
Weight distribution. They did the math to see where the extra reinforcements will equal the naked side so when they lift it, it will be stable and level.
I wonder if Boca Chica will be dismantled once Florida is up and running ?
i think the intention is to have as many ships launching per day as possible. mind you if they double space everything it may just collapse before reaching mars.
Highly doubt it, certainly not for many years. Remember they aim to create a fleet of 1000 ships in orbit, each taking several launches to refuel while in orbit, every 26 months! in order to colonize Mars at the rate they think will make it a successful endeavor. One launch site with two towers wont have a chance of coming close to that goal. They will need several launch sites and this one is obviously the one having the best backing to keep. Also this it THE test site, testing will likely go on for likely at least another decade as they refine this into the beast capable of seeing their goals. Other sites will use versions that have been proven here first. I can still honestly see them coming to the conclusion one day that they need to revive the original idea of 18 meter wide versions of this vehicle and the entire process will start all over again after a year of refitting the entire site to support it.. Such a vehicle will be much more mass efficient due to the square cubed law and so much more capable overall. With the benefit of having perfected engines already in mass production.
@@Vatsyayana87 18 meter will never happen
@@bryanillenberg Saying never to Spacex is almost always a foolish endeavor.
@@Vatsyayana87 Let's see: "SpaceX will build a catch tower" NOPE "SpaceX needs a flame diverter" Also NOPE
Knew that vertical Tank farm was as dumb an Idea as the Non flame trench OLM.... Its been luck they haven't blowing the whole thing into a smoking crater yet with the stupid OLM design of allowing blast debris to go in every direction.
It was a great idea, just a stupid location. But the reasoning behind the home made vertical tanks was absolutely sound. And the OLM has worked perfect since they put the water system in, so you are comparing it to working perfectly?
@@Vatsyayana87 yes everything worked perfectly yet damage keeps happening from blasting 33 raptors in every direction! And anything sticking up above ground level will get blown away from it until it is clear of the tower. And then have to be repaired and replaced and repainted after every static fire because of not having a flame trench to protect everything from the blast....
@@Shivaho But you are stating that the entire idea of the vertical tank farm was dumb, i cant agree. They have a limited footprint to accomplish a massive undertaking, being vertical was a useful solution. Also being vertical gives some gravity assistance to the massive job of pumping millions of gallons in less then an hour. It was a fine idea. Placing it directly in the blast of the biggest rocket in history was dumb. But not the farm itself. Secondly, they have not needed repairs or repainted after every static fire lol. I have a second pc and monitor that i use solely to watch this site every waking moment for the last 4 years, i have seen every repair and paint job done in the sites history. Yes, they needed repairs after two of the three launches, but thats basically it. They do repaint them and other things on site once a while but thats largely just normal maintenance of things sitting ocean side for years. I feel you are again blaming something that i dont think is the problem, in this case the lack of a trench. There is only one problem with all of the issues in my opinion, the location of those tanks. It was stupid on paper and became so in reality, nothing else has really been a problem with the tank farm or the lack of a trench. Well, other than the original water tank, that was garbage lol
I dont understand,why they reinforced those 2 tanks and some months later scrap them?
So that they would survive IFT-3
Maybe to make sure they didn't break and become a flying hazard during IFT3 launch.
Because they found a better way. They don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy, if you could come up with a better way to build a fully reusable rocket that's better, cheaper and faster they would scrap the program and build that instead.
@@yujinhikita5611 they had already installed their replacements. They only needed them to survive IFT-3. Anything else was extra
Personally i would have just anchored them with cables, but hey im also not a welder that needed to pay bills. It didnt hurt Spacex or anyone else while making a few families better off, so i will support their decision even if i would have done it different lol.
So if the tank farm is being scrapped then no further flights for the foreseeable future until a new farm is constructed
They've been putting in horizontal tanks for years now, and are likely only removing the vertical tanks once their capacity has been replaced. Building their own vertical tanks was an experiment that didn't really work out, starting with the water tank issues and the methane tanks not meeting the requirements for methane storage.
Its already in place..
👍❤️❤️❤️💥💥💥
MyJesusNumberIsARK
First reinforcing those tanks and now scraping them? What a waste of money! :-(
A waste for who? Those men got paid good money for several days work. Personally, I wouldnt call a distribution of wealth a waste of money.
Bom dia bom dia bom dia família linda 🌞🌾♾🕊😅😁🤗💚💛💙🤍🇧🇷
I wonder if Tesla might be working on an electrical Self-Propelled Mobile Transport?
Acetylene 👨🏭🧑🏭👩🏭
These guys have Propellantless Drive technology that may get Starship to Mars or the Moon WITHOUT REFILLING THE TANK 10 TIMES. "Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Inc."
No, they sure as hell dont lol No drive tech has proven anything what so ever to date. I look into that plenty and there has been zero conclusive results from any of the dozens of claims, not a single one.
Such a huge waste of time, money & effort. Someone must have been asleep when all this was designed. Whose idea was it to place volatile products this close to the launch site any way? Did anyone at SpaceX do any kind of simulation to see how a huge rocket would affect all this equipment? JustSaying.
Well you are wrong, but im getting tired of explaining over and over to ignorant people how so. Just because you dont understand something doesnt mean you have any right to go on a public area to insult people who are doing nothing less then kicking ass in their field. Dont be here if you dont support this stuff or at least try to understand it, just saying..
First
to think, when pharoah made the egyptians build their tank farms it was all done by hand by slaves.
what a huge waste of money, and material. put it in tear it out, theyv rebuilt this place about 12 times now. makes you wonder who the ADHD person is in charge of site planning.
I get why it could feel that way but they had really sound reasoning behind attempting things such as these tanks which have been removed later. The location was stupid from day one lol, but the idea behind these was very well founded. You can have your opinion but i will argue that its wrong, nothing here has been a waste, Its the foundation of the biggest step in human history done cheaper then any one in the world could have done it. When you are doing something nobody has ever even attempted, there will be tons of scraps and material waste (even though the vast majority of it just gets recycled and brought right back to the site) while learning how to do it right. This is just the nature of projects so big that you have to build your own tools just to make it happen because they dont exist yet since nobody has ever tried such things.
@brianbranson2306 And let me guess, you think NASA would be doing it better? SLS: basically a shuttle with an adapter, stretched SRBs, engines integrated into the external tank, and no shuttle. Starship: new engine cycle, new propellant, full reuse, largest rocket ever... the list goes on. Guess which one has cost an order of magnitude more to develop, has only flown once, and has taken twice as long to develop. Hint, its the one that uses the RS-25.
@@bryanillenberg You make it sound like getting to the moon is so easy, but notice how SLS/Orion is the first rocket to send a vehicle capable of carrying humans to the moon and back in 50 years and doing it with an almost nominal flight. This is cutting edge technology and Space X and NASA have entirely different development models for rockets and different goals. The armchair folk like you who criticize what these entities do to build rockets is well beyond their understanding or vision of what is possible.
@@michaeldeierhoi4096 "You make it sound like getting to the moon is so easy" How do my comments make it sound easy? Cause its not. "but notice how SLS/Orion is the first rocket to send a vehicle capable of carrying humans to the moon and back in 50 years and doing it with an almost nominal flight" While also being 50 years out of date, and completely unaffordable. "This is cutting edge technology and Space X and NASA have entirely different development models for rockets and different goals." And one of the models has proven to be better than the other.
@@bryanillenberg My point is that getting to the moon is really hard especially with a vehicle capable of carrying people. NASA did it 50 years ago and Russia was the only other country that had a chance to do it, but couldn't. Now 50 years later NASA did it again and nobody else is close. Space X will need another couple years to get to the moon. What NASA does is always dependent on the whims of Congress. Space X does not, but it still remains to be seen if they can meet their obligations with NASA getting to the moon.
thats a delivery? How much is wasted then??
Not a drop is wasted. Ill be happy to expand if you care to have a discussion about it.
@@Vatsyayana87 please...
Why the tanks are removed? Is it because they were damaged during launch? Wached them come to life ring by ring🥲