Improved Renderings of the SpaceX Water Cooled Steel Plate Launch System

Ryan Hansen completely redid all his models related to SpaceX water cooled steel plate launch system. The supply pipes and manifolds have been measured and accurately modeled. He was able to gather enough reference photos to get many of the dimensions for the plates and have sized those accordingly.

11 thoughts on “Improved Renderings of the SpaceX Water Cooled Steel Plate Launch System”

  1. Me thinks there should be a place , a direction the gases should be going . Every time you turn around they are increasing the power of these engines .you can’t make me believe that nothin will happen with the full force of 33 raptors hitting that steel time after time

  2. Seems to me the only thing missing from the design is a high exhaust fan to blow all the steam out in one direction below the structure.

  3. Having a hard time believing that this would be durable and retain function over multiple uses – partially or fully replaced regularly? Sacrificial components? Are we beyond using ceramics?
    The amount of stress at connections, anchorage, and joints under the thermal gradient of the working conditions would be absurd. The thermal movement and loss of ductility would be extreme – unsure of what type of steel. Maintaining flow and pressure for extended periods?

    • I think you’re not understanding the concept here; It’s essentially transpiration cooling.

      You’ve got a water filled plenum, with plenty of holes, pressurized high enough that water will be flowing out the holes even under the pressure of the exhaust.

      So, from one direction you’ve got a flow of water, in the other you’ve got a flow of super hot exhaust. There will be established a temperature gradient between the two.

      Everywhere except at the center, there will be a radial flow of steam blowing the exhaust away from the plate, and in the center the water pressure is higher than the exhaust pressure. The exhaust never touches the plate! It’s only exposed, worst case, to steam.

      All SpaceX has to do is maintain the water flow high enough that the temperature at the steel plate never exceeds maybe 1,000 degrees C, and that the water doesn’t boil until it’s *outside* the plenum, and the plate is good to go. I’m betting in the real world, that plate never sees more than a couple hundred degrees C. It doesn’t matter to the plate how hot the water gets after it’s no longer in contact with the plate, after all.

      And, remember, SpaceX routinely keeps combustion chamber walls directly exposed to much higher temperatures and pressures from melting; They are very experienced at heat flow analysis.

      If there’s any concern here, it’s not that the plate will be damaged by the exhaust, it’s that you’re going to get a lot of turbulence and unstable behavior that might reflect back at the engines. And there’s going to be a pretty impressive wall of steam leaving the launch platform. Not as chunky as flying concrete, but potentially quite damaging anyway.

      • Excellent take on the concept and why it should be workable. Like any SpaceX design it may need iterative improvement in details to get to the concept.

        This approach lets them eventually build a Stage Zero launch machine that’s readily reproducible even on dozens of ocean platforms.

        • For mid-ocean platforms the better approach is to simply have a hole under the rocket, it’s not like they’ll accidentally “break” the ocean. Not workable on dry land, unfortunately.

    • Those steel plates are probably insanely thick ballistic rated steel. They have engineers who can run calculations and determine how thick everything needs to be. That’s what engineers do.

  4. That rendered design doesn’t actually make a lot of sense to me; Why introduce water into the same cavity from two different angles, in close proximity?

    It would actually make a lot more sense if the outer ring of plates were a sandwich with two plenums. The upper plenum feeds the spray nozzles in the outer ring, the lower plenum feeds the inner set of plates, which don’t have direct access to the feed lines around the periphery.

    That way the center, subject to more extreme conditions, (The outer plate actually is protected to a large extent by the steam from the inner plate.) would not face any pressure loss due to the flow from the outer plate nozzles.

    Because the photos he was working from were all from above, this sandwich structure wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

    • Methinks one is the input pipe, and the other is the recycle pipe which reintroduces water into the pump if it is not jetted out of the plate.

  5. Love this design, and I assume they will do a good enough job, on sinking piles to provide enough support.
    I do like this way, without any plugs in the individual holes. Pressure should come from high pressure gas tubes.

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