We know that with their Starship super heavy vehicle, SpaceX has made a rocket
unlike anything we have seen before, and in order to make Starship possible,
SpaceX has also had to design and build a launchpad unlike anything we have seen
before. The star bas launch site is an engineering marvel on par with the
giant rocket that lifts off from it. A genuine first principles approach to getting
the world's most powerful flying machine off the ground and on its way to outer
space, the Moon, Mars and beyond. This is how SpaceX reinvented the
launchpad. Let's quickly touch on what a traditional rocket launch pad looks like so
that we can identify the areas where SpaceX has diverted with their new Star based
design. Let's use the Falcon nine as our primary example of a traditional rocket
launch procedure. So the first thing that they're going to do is wheel the
fully integrated rocket out of the z Embly building. This has everything loaded up
and ready for flight. It's going to be transported horizontally to the launch pad,
where the rocket is then offloaded onto the launch tower. Once the rocket
is attached to the tower, a mechanism is going to slowly lift the rig
into a vertical launch position. Once the rocket is set in position, abilical
connections are routed into the first and second stage for propellant loading. Seconds before
the launch, the water deluge system is going to activate and massive streams of
water will get dumped under the base of the rocket. This is partially for
a cooling effect, but more importantly, the water is going to absorb the
powerful acoustic energy from the rocket engines, and then at engine ignition, all
of the flame exhaust gas and steam from vaporizing water is going to get pushed
below the surface of the launchpad into a trench. The angles of the concrete
down there are going to divert all of this energy and matter out to the
side, away from the rocket. Sounds pretty simple, and that's because it
kind of is. The goal here is just to contain the energy and gas
from the launch and move it as far away from the rocket as possible.
This is the way that pretty much all rockets have been launched since the late
nineteen fifties. Not much has changed until now. The ground system responsible for
launching the Starship is an incredibly complex collection of infrastructure. This launch complex is
often referred to as Stage zero, which is to imply that the ground infrastructure
is just as much a part of the starship rocket as the booster and the
orbiter. For our purpose here, we are going to break stage zero up
into the key components and then tackle each one individually. There are now four
pillars to the Starship launch process, the tank farm, the flame diverter,
the launch mount, and the launch tower. Each one serves a vital purpose
in getting the Starship super Heavy fully integrated, launch prepped, and into the
air. The tank farm is pretty self explanatory. It's a collection of large
tanks that just sits a few meters away from the launch tower. The original
idea here was to build Starship's external tanks in the same way that SpaceX built
the internal tanks, by vertically stacking nine meter diameter rings of stainless steel maximum
efficiency, and then, because the tank farm needs to hold cryogenic liquid for
long durations of time, each stainless steel stack was covered over by an insulating
sheath. This ground system allows SpaceX to rapidly tank and detank the Starship and
super Heavy for everything from cryoproofing and static fire testing to full orbital launch.
Again, if we are looking for efficiency, then we want to find it
the shortest path between two points, and it doesn't get much shorter than this.
Many people said that SpaceX was crazy for placing these giant, vertical standing
tanks right next to the most powerful rocket ever made, and many people were
correct on that one. SpaceX quickly realized that using vertical methane tanks was wildly
unsafe, so those were long ago converted to the narrow horizontal cylinders that we
see today. The remaining vertical tanks are used to hold liquid oxygen, liquid
nitrogen, and water, but they will soon be replaced by horizontal tanks as
well. We've seen the exterior shields of the tank farm battered and crumpled by
the force of each Starship launch, even when they weren't getting chunks of concrete
thrown at them. So the tank farm is not moving any further away,
but it will be redesigned to become a lot less prone to damage. Speaking
of damage, we get to the most exciting innovation at Starbase, the brand
new flame diverter system and blast surface. When it came time to build the
launch pad at Starbase many years ago, SpaceX decided they were going to hold
true to one of Elon's most famous mantras, the best part is no part.
So therefore, instead of building the water deluge system and flame diverting trench
that we saw earlier, SpaceX built none of those things. Did this make
their launchpad better? No, But what it did do was I SpaceX a
lot more time to develop a better flame diverter system. The deal here is
that Elon and crew were gambling that a reinforced concrete pad would be sturdy enough
to get them through starship development, suborbital testing, booster static fires, and
even the first orbital launch attempt. But it was never meant to be a
permanent solution, and Elon was mostly right. As usual, The concrete was
good enough for everything right up until the moment of liftoff on April twentieth,
twenty twenty three, at which time the thirty functioning raptor engines on Booster seven
throttled up and shattered the blast surface, which then allowed something like twelve million
pounds of force to get under the ground and emerge spectacularly as a tornado of
rock, dust, concrete, and twisted metal. As bad as that looked,
SpaceX was already way ahead on developing the solution to the problem before it
even happened. Enter the showerhead, a water cooled steel sandwich that functions as
a flame diverter, shock absorb and blast surface all in one. With the
launchpad area now freshly excavated via rocket engines, SpaceX set to work on their
ultimate solution. Seeing the full power of the super heavy booster in action was
obviously a humbling experience, so no chances were taken with the construction of the
new launch surface. The first thing engineers did was place nine four foot diameter
concrete rebar columns directly underneath the booster engines. They were planted thirty five meters
deep into the ground. These are called piles. They are going to transfer
the energy from the surface deep into the ground. Then around the immediate perimeter
of the launchpad there are another twelve secondary piles, and outside of that are
eleven more tertiary piles. This will evenly distribute and dissipate the energy into the
mass of the Earth. On top of the piles is another structure called the
pile cap. This begins with a massive network of rebar The mesh of steel
is used to tie all of the vertical columns together, so the thirty two
piles and six legs of the launch mount are all brought together as one massive
support system. On the top of the rebar structure, SpaceX welds steel integration
plates that will be used to attach the shower head into the support system,
and then they fill the pile cap with concrete. The base layer takes one
hundred and thirty two mixer trucks and eleven hours to lay one thousand cubic meters
of concrete. This creates a slab one point eight meters thick. On top
of that goes another eight hundred and fifty cubic meters of material for an upper
layer that's two point two meters thick. Next, SpaceX attaches their water supply
manifolds into the pile cap. These will distribute high pressure water into the shower
head. Water comes into the system through a pair of four foot diameter pipes.
The pile cap is topped off with the steel sandwich. This is two
plates of high strength steel between one point five and two inches thick. The
top plate is perforated to create water jets, and in between the two are
vertical steel beams with holes cut into them to allow water flow. Obviously,
you're not going to get one continuous sheet of steel that size, so the
core of the top plate is cut into a hexagon shape and it's surrounded by
trapezoid shapes on all sides. We can see from the operation of this system
that the water isn't distributed equally across the plate. The flow is concentrated in
the center and directly underneath each of the booster's engine nozzles. We can also
see that these central waterjets are firing outwards at a shallow angle of around thirty
degrees, while the outer jets are pointed at a steeper angle of around sixty
degrees. The point of this water flow is not to cancel out the downward
momentum of the exhaust gas, but to simply help in quickly redirecting the gas
outwards to release pressure. The water jets transfer their momentum into the exhaust plume,
and the energy released by converting water into steam is going to help accelerate
that exhaust away from the blast surface. The remaining water that is driven down
to the surface of the plate will form an insulating layer of liquid and steam
to absorb the thermal energy. Of the engine flame and keep the plate at
a manageable temperature. Because there are so many holes in the top plate,
it would be virtually impossible for steam to get trapped inside the shower head and
therefore cause a pressure explosion. All of the energy hitting that steel plate is
being transferred into the bile cap and distributed evenly down through the piles into the
earth, so none of the concrete is going to crack and break. The
water for the flame diverter is coming from a collection of seven horizontal water tanks
that sit just behind the launch tower. The high pressure flow of water is
created by injecting nitrogen gas into the top of the water and tank, forcing
the liquid out through the bottom. SpaceX uses seventy six nitrogen gas canisters that
each contain somewhere between three and six thousand psi of pressure. The combined volume
of this water is one point four million liters, and that provides eight second
of maximum water flow, just enough time for Starship to throttle up and clear
the launch mount. Let's move upwards from the blast surface to the orbital launch
mount. This is yet another incredibly complex machine. When a super heavy booster
is lowered onto the launch mount. The structure is held in place by a
series of twenty clamps all around the circumference. These are mechanical units that can
fold in and out as needed, and they are able to hold down the
massive rocket for days at a time as tests and prep work is performed.
Alongside each clamp is another mechanism that will connect and interface with each of the
twenty outer ring engines on the booster. These are miniature quickness connect arms that
are used to spin, start, and ignite the outer ring of booster engines.
This is essentially taking equipment out of the rocket and moving it into the
launch mount, thereby making each booster cheaper and easier to manufacture. The orbital
launch mount is absolutely loaded with an intricate network of plumbing that we can't even
begin to properly explain here. But some other key functions of the ground system
are pre chilling the raptor engine so that they don't experience thermal shock from the
cryogenic propellant, and pressurizing the tanks that are hidden underneath the aerodynamic chines of
the booster. There are pressurized nitrogen tanks for restarting the booster engines after stage
separation and pressurized co two tanks for fire suppression in the engine bay. Then
on top of the launch mount is one singular umbilical arm that is responsible for
sending liquid oxygen and liquid methane into the booster's tanks. At the moment of
lift off, all of these different connection systems will instantly retract from the booster
and snap back behind plates of steel armor to protect them from the world's largest
blow torch as it ascends into the sky, moving up again, way up
to the towering steel structure that is known around Starbase as the Mechazilla. At
one hundred and forty five meters in height, this is by far the most
intense launch tower ever constructed, and it has to be because this one doesn't
just hold the rocket steady as it prepares for launch. The Mechazilla is a
machine in itself that can lift both the booster and ship from the ground and
stack them on the launch mount. One key characteristic of Starship is that the
rocket needs to be kept vertical at all times. If you tipped it over
on one side, the body would crumble under its own weight. So in
the past this meant that a crane had to accompany each ship and booster to
the launch mount for every stack and d stack event. This can get very
tricky when the Gulf Coast winds pick up, because you don't want a gigantic
rocket swinging like a pendulum on a steel wire. Instead, the mechanized arms
of the launch tower lift the rocket stages off of their transport vehicles and can
hold them securely in any reasonable weather condition. These chopstick like arms are powered
by a hydraulic drawwork system that SpaceX took off off of an oil rig.
The company purchased two decommissioned oil drilling platforms with the idea of converting them into
spaceports. That's not going to happen, but at least they gained something useful
from the deal. The chopsticks have motorized capture rails on the inside of each
arm. These interface with steel pins on the bodies of the rockets. This
allows ground crews to fine tune the rotation and front to back movement of each
rocket to ensure precise integration. The launch tower has its own quick disconnect arm.
This is the umbilical connection that provides fuel and pressurized gas to the upper
stage of the rocket during launch. Prep. Eventually, someday in the not
so distant future, these chopstick arms will also be called into service for an
unprecedented maneuver. The thing about Starship and Super Heavy is that they are so
incredibly large and massive that trying to integrate landing legs into the design that would
be sturdy enough to support them would be totally impractical. The landing gear would
introduce so much extra complexity and weight to the rocket that it just wouldn't be
able to serve the purpose it is intended for. Landing the ship stage on
a place like the Moon or Mars is more practical because we are talking about
significantly lower gravity environments than the Earth, so legs are not as much of
an issue there. But when it comes to landing on the Earth, SpaceX
needs a better way. This is where we get to the catch maneuver.
Just like SpaceX offloaded the engine, plumbing and start systems into the launch mount,
they have also offloaded the landing gear into the tower. So when the
ship and booster return from flight, they are coming straight back to the launch
site. Now before they get anywhere close to the ground, the engine's landing
burn is going to shelve off the majority of the air speed, so they're
not coming in hot. The rocket is coming down relatively slowly and will gently
settle into a hover, right within reach of the mechazilla, at which point
the chopsticks close, The pins on the rocket, hit the catch rails on
the arms, and shock absorbers cradle the remaining momentum and bring the rocket to
a halt. In theory, this is genius, but in practice we will
just have to wait and see. One thing's for sure, excitement will be guaranteed.