Better than I feared. It seemed pretty clear based on the amount of work in FL that SpaceX was going to be doing launches there. This at least lets them do test work. They'll have to launch around sea turtle nesting seasons. 5 different species nest in TX so I assume that is a long season. I would guess all spring and summer will be out but I don't know.
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I just read/ searched through the 75 items and SpaceX is not precluded from launching during the nesting/ hatching period (March 15- October 1). Only restriction is that, after the second launch in nesting season per year, they need extra review.
The rest is lighting impact mitigation and trash removal.
Ughhhh, I choose Sept 2022 for the Charity bet #3: first Starship in orbit (redux), turtle nesting season.
With the newly issued FONSI saying that SpaceX is permitted only 5 orbital launches/year at BC, my speculation is that location will be for testing and development with a goal of making stage zero work reliably and safely while improving and refining SH and Starship designs. Though the construction of the new Starship factory building at BC leads me to believe that vehicle production will take place there for years to come.
Surely NASA wants to ensure safe operations before it allows Starship launches and recoveries at the stage zero currently being built close to KSC 39A, since that pad is critical for ISS operations. I have read online speculation that SpaceX may try to convince NASA to let it modify SLC-40 to allow for Crew Dragon launches from that pad.
Surely NASA wants to ensure safe operations before it allows Starship launches and recoveries at the stage zero currently being built close to KSC 39A, since that pad is critical for ISS operations. I have read online speculation that SpaceX may try to convince NASA to let it modify SLC-40 to allow for Crew Dragon launches from that pad.
Ben W
Chess Grandmaster (Supervised)
Could they simply fly the BC-manufactured boosters and Starships to the Cape? It's about 1700km, which is somewhat farther than the furthest Falcon 9 booster recovery attempts so far (e.g. 1293km downrange for the Falcon Heavy center core on STP-2) but likely still achievable with minimal payload, if the partially overland trajectory (coming in over Florida) wouldn't cause problems. Would be amazing to see Booster and Starship coming in for a landing in parallel, to dual catch towers! Or even just the booster itself, with a temporary nosecone.
That has been discussed before, I believe in this thread, and extensively discussed on the nasaspaceflight.com forum. I don’t believe it is a practical approach. The suborbital landing approach in Florida would be over land, so likely not allowed. And barging the vehicles is not difficult.
Ben W
Chess Grandmaster (Supervised)
A payload-less Starship (or Starship-less booster with nosecone) should have more than enough delta-V to be able to fly over Florida at >100km altitude, then boost back, reenter over the ocean, and land at the Cape. And/or dog-leg around the southern tip of Florida, staying over water the entire way. Barging is "not difficult", but if Elon gets Starship to the reliability and economy of scale he envisions (hundreds of new ships/boosters and thousands of launches per year), the gap would narrow considerably, and perhaps flying would then become the better option than maintaining a large fleet of barges. But agreed this is unlikely to be the case in the short term.
Three days ago Elon tweeted this cool photo of S24 in the High Bay. I don’t recall seeing such a clear view of the nose tiles before. I cropped the image to enlarge the nose area. Still need to attach quite a few more tiles.
Whenever you see high bay pictures from a NASA funded project, it looks like a sci fi movie set. The SpaceX pictures look like a junkyard in comparison 
Will they complete tiling after removing the remaining nose cone lifting rings?
Whenever you see high bay pictures from a NASA funded project, it looks like a sci fi movie set. The SpaceX pictures look like a junkyard in comparison
Think of a NASA-SpaceX mission.
The broadcast team are NASA Communications staff and pretty young SpaceX engineers. And sometimes John Insprucker
I assume so. I think the rings are just for use in the high bays during production. After moving a Starship to the base of the launch tower on an SMPT, the chopsticks are capable of lifting it up and then on top of a booster.
Whenever you see high bay pictures from a NASA funded project, it looks like a sci fi movie set. The SpaceX pictures look like a junkyard in comparison
You're thinking cleanrooms where the payloads are built and tested and integrated onto rockets. Rocket final assembly buildings like the highbays at Starbase are all pretty similar with stuff more seemingly strewn about and a generally less kept feel. Except that nobody beside SX has a boardroom at the top of their highbay.
What IS different at Starbase is the rocket production facilities. For instance, Blue's Merritt island facility is a testament to top down engineering a beautiful, spotless machine that builds the machine before actually building the machine. Starbase is the polar opposite--the work is focused on bottoms-up iterating the machine, and concurrently developing in parallel the machine-that-builds-the-machine concepts/processes/equipment...and the environment looks and feels accordingly--step over this, climb over that, perpetual yelling because of the perpetual wind buffeting the tents-on-a-beach, etc.
New downcomer pipe with more, beefier, rings .
(Upon further thought, I'm in camp crush resistance).
(Upon further thought, I'm in camp crush resistance).
B7 has been moved back to the OLT and the chopstick arms are positioned ready for lifting. I assume B7 will be lifted onto the launch mount today.
The new chines on B7 are very interesting. It appears there are four of them, in two pairs; a larger pair and a smaller pair. They are not at 90 degrees from each other. It looks like each pair is slightly “inside” the wider gaps between the pairs of fins.
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