They seem to have Structural Steel on-site in Boca for a building and I expect to see one. Leveraging Girth and Seam Welders as you go higher Weather impacting fabrication days which is a big deal given the desired cadence ITSM that the process we've seen to date, while certainly superior from the perspective of current requirements, is somewhat cumbersome at the point of creating production fidelity Starship and Superheavy hulls. The sprung structures Elon is fond of seems a cheap and easy solution for putting together sub-assemblies at that level of cleanliness, in preparation for being installed into the "ships". After opening the door and driving a truck in and unloading equipment (in our case, the IRT that flew on Spacelab 2), the janitors came in that night and mopped the floor it was still called a "clean room", just a class 10,000 or 100,000 room. I remember visiting such a building (with giant doors for opening) at MSFC around 1980. The hack of turning the spaceship upside down and all around to shake out debris (as has been done for Apollo/LEM, and I expect Dragon etc) isn't feasible for spaceships of this size.Īs in a house (or a ship), the frame/hull goes together quickly, but it takes a lot more time to do everything else (as we've been seeing in BC).Īt most, we're may to see a big hangar like building for the initial construction phase, for assembling some of the larger objects to be installed via cranes into the hull. In particular, most equipment destined for the living spaces need to be kept as clean as easily feasible just to keep the particulate problem under control for zero-G. The engines and interior equipment are a different story: they will continue to be built in a "clean-room" environment. Much easier to just plan to build almost everything of the exterior of the rockets outside from the get-go once you get the outer structure together, you have an interior you can clean up to extremely clean standards for the fit-up of the interior. And then you get to build a yet bigger building you want to make the next generation/yet larger rocket. Once the exterior structure is together, it will be "launched" by moving it to a place where the interior fit-up can continue without obstructing the more expensive scaffolding/cranes of the yard.Įlse one has to build a huge building something at least half the height of the VAB, but probably much wider (since there will be quite a number of SS/BFR's under construction at any time). We may see large cranes and other facilities for lifting components into place, as in a regular shipyard. So I expect we'll see a "yard", where the shell and tanks of SS/BFR gets put together vertically, and then scaffolding outside and inside when needed for the fit-up phase. Putting the shell/tanks together is the fast part of the job, but there will be a long period of installation of avionics, life support, etc, once that is done. And for Starship, particularly the crewed version, there is going to be a long period of fit-up.
I think we've just seen the reappearance of ship-yards in this case, rocket ship yards.
There seems to be a presumption after the current flurry of activity that construction will go indoors into conventional factories again.
Everyone seems to be thinking that what is going on at Boca Chica fabricating Starship is a one-off.
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