SpaceX enthusiasts have photos of all of the parts of the steel plates and pipes that will be used to make the water-cooled steel plate. Elon Musk said that SpaceX was working for the past three months to make a water cooled steel plate that will protect the ground and launch site the 33 Raptor engines of the Starship rocket. Thanks to Ryan Hansen, What About It? and all of the others who found the components and determined how they would fit together and rendered the results.
The water-cooled steel plate and water deluge are to prevent the launch pad damage seen in the first test launch.
The steel plate segments and pipes were observed by photos from drone flyovers.
Here is the view from above the steel plates. They fit into a hexagon.
After @elonmusk's tweet about the water-cooled plate, I started looking at the parts visible on-site and was able to figure this much out using accurate dimensions. Some parts are still missing but it's looking like this will be a combined system for deluge and pad cooling. pic.twitter.com/99O8QdQbaE
— Ryan Hansen Space (@RyanHansenSpace) April 25, 2023
@elonmusk confirmed what I have been speculating for the past few days during #Starship Spaces tonight. The water-cooled plate will not only provide a strong surface but also a "showerhead" deluge system. Holes across the surface will release water aiding in sound suppression. pic.twitter.com/J3PRG4yKoV
— Ryan Hansen Space (@RyanHansenSpace) April 30, 2023
There is some support below each of the steel plates.
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Why not develop a trench where you can reuse the power of the rockets I am not saying you could save every energy they spit out but giving al that power just for lift of it is kinda a big waste to see al that energy only being used for the rocket itself.
Good Job and perfect design
Please try Magnet-Levitation-Plate
See you
To me , a complete outsider , this new launch pad seems still be very inadequate to survive many , or only even one , launch of the 30 engine giant rocket . Remembering as well that the previous launch of last week was missing several of the Merlin engines which failed to ignite .
Not several… At the beginning 3, then 3 more switched off..
The Starship has 33 engines , not 30, and they are Raptor II engines not Merlin engines. But what criteria do you use to determine the design is still inadequate. Do you know how many joules of energy must be dissipated, over what time frame, by how many liters of water. I will bet the SpaceX engineers already know this and vastly more in order to have equipment being built.
In my eyes I would prefer a stand twice as tall with a diversion tunnels that has a steel plate and be water cooled.
More like the engines and vectoring hydraulics were struck by pieces of the launchpad while it was strapped down building up thrust.
Did you see the size of those chunks? They shredded the engines and hydraulics before lift off, you can even see some are missing their nozzles as it lifts off.
Their rockets are definitely airworthy (did you see those acrobatics?!) but they need to do a lot more work on sorting out things on the ground.
Since water cooling of some kind appears to be being considered could some kind of dry dock be used?
The idea being before launch flood the dock and let water take the hit from the engines.
Perhaps I’m being silly, I’m no engineer but sometimes simple ideas are the best.
Vaporising large amounts of water in those quantities you need to consider that 1litre of water will expand to 1600 times it’s volume instantly, lm pretty sure that is an explosion in anyone’s book.
It shouldn’t be a problem with a large enough pond.
Then maybe Starship should be put in a tube and just ejected into orbit.
Gonna say spot on, the spacex ‘plate’ is gonna have water in a confined space subject to immense temp and pressure – nothing like a traditional deluge system. First flash vaporising to steam is gonna be an issue but moreover gonna dissociate water to H2 and O under those condition imho – and that ain’t good. Kaboom. Fix it Elon we are all routing for this to work.
Next up flying slag landing hundreds of feet away along with intact sections of “water cooled plate”
If you are going to use steel, think of an above ground steel shoebox open at each end containing a flame diverter and deluge system. The tower does not need to be relocated. This way you don’t need to worry about the water table.
Not good enough. A flat surface will reflect shock waves right back into the engines even better than rapidly eroding concrete. I bet Elon wishes the orbital launch mount was built 50 feet taller to give more space to work with underneath.
The diverter needs to have some angle to it to direct the blast in the least destructive direction ( away from the tank farm)
I also think the diverter plate needs to be portable so that in between the several-a-day launches that SpaceX has planned the diverter system can be swapped out for repairs and another brought in to replace it.
I worry about the legs of the OLM. They need nothing less than thick layers of tungsten sheets to protect them.
I was thinking the very same thing, you will have a feedback loop that will hammer the rocket engine…
Bang on needs a flame trench
If you are going to use steel, think of an above ground steel shoebox open at each end containing a flame diverter and deluge system. The tower does not need to be relocated. This way you don’t need to worry about the water table.
That is one of the reasons I like a big water pond. The water is compliant, it moves out of the way.
I think this is going to be a major issue on the moon at low gravity with very fine dust going everywhere. Forget about water spraying there…
My more recent article discusses landing pads on the moon and Mars. Lower gravity makes a huge difference
SH boosters aren’t going to the Moon or Mars.
This all gets thrown in with the research for landing and launching from the Moon and Mars. To me, that is the great unknown.
Even with landing legs if the shotgun effect during landing and take off blasts has a strong possibility of ripping the landing legs off. Placing rocket motors up high on the side of the landing rocket is not simple and requires much more specialized R&D.
The Apollo LEM was very light weight and was designed only for a very short trip. Landing big heavy equipment is going to make this a much more difficult challenge on a rock/boulder field.
To be fair, the rocket exhaust from a 5,000 ton rocket taking off at 1.3 gs acceleration is a BIT harsher on the ground than a half-empty Starship landing at 1/6g or 1/3g,
Roughly 30 times milder for Mars, and 60 times milder for the Moon.
But it’s probably a good idea if the first landings on Mars try to hit exposed rock, not deep soil.
Assuming the assumptions have been assumed correctly: a flat steel plate, however cooled and sprayed, seems perfect for reflecting exhaust and sound waves back up into the base of the vehicle. There is good reason for other large launch complexes to have angles impingement surfaces and flame trenches.
The hexagonal ledge in the center would seem to be an excellent place for high flows of hot rocket exhaust to “catch” and tear the plate apart.
This is a great idea. Except for one thing. It needs to be at the depth that Super Heavy burned out under the OLM. Sit this plate on top of 3-6 feet of concrete and then throw in a water deluge system on top of them both. Make a trench out towards the hinterlands with more steel and water and they should have no more issues.
This is a design that can be quickly made and assembled that’s suited to ocean platforms as well as land launch sites.
To me the Sovet N1 flame trenches seem a more trustworthy solution. Watch the N1 launch videos on youTube if you want to see something beautiful. (Soviet society was a long shot from perfect, but less inefficient than advertised.)
The water table is right near the surface making flame trenches problematic given tight schedule and budget
This makes no sense to me. The traditional solution would be a flame trench, with a tilted metal plate (water cooled) right below the rocket. That way, the blast is directed away, rather than bouncing back up at the rocket. How is a level plate better than that?
Yes, Saturn V test stands were cooled by that method. Water to the bucket emptied a lake through a 72 inch pipe in about a minute. Six marine Diesel V12 with 1 cubic foot displacement per cylinder did the pumping. The water made a one way trip through eighth inch drill holes in the bucket and vaporized.
I agree with you. I much prefer a system where the flames can be diverted away from the platform.
That’s my reaction, too. You can turn the exhaust through 90 degrees pretty stably, but if it just hits a flat plate square on, that invites random turbulence. And you sure don’t want random directly under your rocket.
I’d expect there to be a hexagonal pyramid section directly under the center, to suppress that.
You can almost feel this unconscious desire to put a bomb under one’s ass.
The concrete would vaporize. Need something that can transfer heat.
What I was thinking. Wont this cause the pressure to bounce back? Is this official?
What if you have way more water flow in the center shooting up, than you have on the sides. Now you have a pumped “virtual” diverter plate based on water pressure flowing up. Like an upside down aerospike, but in this case it’s a flame diverter aerospike. The spike “face” is formed by pressure, flow, differential.
Now that’s a great idea!
The traditional solution would need digging, which the FEA won’t approve since it would reach the water table. In any case, if they can get the pad not to rain concrete on the rocket, it can probably survive the rest (considering the engine bells are at a higher pressure than the reflected material).
They don’t have to dig. The flame trench could be the space between two thick walls built above ground. And then raise the launch tower above those.
Wouldn’t some of the heat/energy bouce off the metal plate and destroy the engines? Or pieces of metal (plate can be destroyed also).
Is this really a good idea?
Yeah I kinda agree with you… Whatever happened to “the best part is no part”? Is Elon even bothering to even show up on site anymore?
just another numbers series on steam from water on that power scale
all booster engines vaporizing ~40m³ of water each second would create a hemisphere expanding from ~370m radius from 1st second to 400, 457, 503, 543m within a 5 seconds (given all engine power efficiently converts water to steam, for a rocket platform being a controlled worst case situation with running engines)
Pad platform height level seem around ~60′ (~20m) (?)
Sound suppression system water flow (several seconds from start) could (did?) reach a peak flow ~3500m³/s on Space Shuttle Orbiter era (for acoustic design requirements <145dB).
How handling Boca Chica village is also an advertising situation for SpaceX (?)
What power and energy amount to expect, comparable mass to thrust?
Energy content of 1st stage booster rocket Super Heavy is ~850t*13.5MWh=~4*10^13Ws (that’s ~50000 Model S, 100kWh, fully charged on 50% efficiency of infrastructure to charger stations) and ~5GW of average power for each Raptor engine (from test flight ~240s, that’s again ~50000 Model S, rated average power 100kW).
Given a low number for a total of all engines of the booster is ~100GW (for 1st stage specific impulse endurance), that’s ~5-15x the power output of Three Gorges Dam (China), depending on season (between dry and rain season) with a hydraulic head necessary therefore at about 5x the original (~500m, Starship&booster ~119m) generating that power. Thrust would be about water flow comparable to above dry season all water flow ~5-6000m3/s (Super Heavy ~7500 Tonne each second). Effects would be comparable to ~3times Niagara Falls daytime water flow and a ~9x the highest fall (57m, height of Super Heavy ~69m) for expressing that power output. Hoover Dam is ~1/20 of electricity production of Three Gorges Dam (~4TWh/a) and would need ~50h for conversion of water to methane through electrolysis and H2_CH4 conversion on ~50% efficiency for one booster enabled Starship lift off.
All booster engines power could vapor ~40m3 to 100°C steam each second. (?)
2018-Q12023 is ~3.8M Tesla cars produced, given a 100kWh battery on average for half fleet, these ~2M cars, fully charged, contain energy equal to maybe ~40-50 filled Super Heavy booster (including infrastructure efficiency losses) (?)
just another numbers series on steam from water on that power scale
all booster engines vaporizing ~40m³ of water each second would create a hemisphere expanding from ~370m radius from 1st second to 400, 457, 503, 543m within a 5 seconds (given all engine power efficiently converts water to steam, for a rocket platform being a controlled worst case situation with running engines)
Pad platform height level seem around ~60′ (~20m) (?)
Sound suppression system water flow (several seconds from start) could (did?) reach a peak flow ~3500m³/s on Space Shuttle Orbiter era (for acoustic design requirements <145dB).
How handling Boca Chica village is also an advertising situation for SpaceX (?)
means “from ~317m radius from 1st second”
means “peak flow ~3500m³/min” or ~60m³/s
Thank you for that…..
Unfortunately, the information-to-brain ratio of the content exceeded available resources. I am now drinking double espresso in a, mostly, monochrome environment.
Most astonishing was that instant power from Super Heavy booster is ‘only’ vaporizing ~40m³ of water each second (with having in mind, that this power for maybe 5min is higher than continuous, average power of a sum of 10 biggest flow of river power plants on this planet or many industrialized countries electricity production, except biggest 3-5 nations, wrt to real power output of all Raptor engines on 60-100(?)% thrust), but seems valid with thermal power for a nuclear power plant being ~3.5-4.xGW_th and producing steam at ~7700t/h-2.45m³/s (~293°C, ~78atm|bar), feed water pumps are capable of ~22m³/s on an EPR reactor.
Thanks for reading, with recommendation for coffee beans from Peru|Honduras|Colombia and an ‘ever green|lime green’ or comparable natural monochrome environment, if suitable
[while considering thermal input to electricity production, instant power output of a Super Heavy booster is still higher than most industrialized countries on this planet, except the highest ranked 15-20]