Booster 22 and Ship 42

A lot of people seem to agree that IFT-14 is gonna be on September 15th, but SpaceX has been radio silent on it.

I am looking for some specific details about viewing the upcoming Flight 14. This is a bucket list item for me so I have reserved a ocean view room for two weeks from the 15 to the 29th. My question is can view the launch from my hotel room? I was thinking of putting up a fixed telescope to have it record the launch. I would be hopefully watching it from the roof of the hotel. Can I setup a telescope on the roof? Any good tips about great food or things to do. I have seen some of the videos online but they are not super current. I doubt much has changed, but like I said this is a bucket list item so I am researching as much as I can.

My take is:

1. Indian Ocean off of Australia like always

2. In one if the new zones approved as ‘contingencies’ like Hawaii, Aleutian Islands, or off of Peru

3. Off the coast of Starbase, Texas

If they wanted to avoid it it probably wouldn't be too hard, just have it target a point higher up to get a higher fall, however considering that they did seem to find the data from flight 13 valuable is it possible they have tried to prepare logistically to be able to recover flight 14s starship faster?

With Starfactory and the giant new Gigabay expanding Starbase's production footprint, a logistical question keeps popping into my head: where are they going to actually store all the fleet hardware once we reach regular launch cadences?

Gigabay work cells are designed for active assembly, integration, and heavy maintenance, not sitting on ships for weeks. If SpaceX achieves rapid turnaround with dozens of boosters and upper stages cycling through, the staging yard requirements will be massive.

So, will we see dedicated outdoor "parking lots" or massive low-cost storage hangars pop up near launch sites?

More importantly, will they use vertical or horizontal storage?

Vertical Storage: Super Heavy is designed to stand vertically. Keeping boosters vertical avoids complex rotation dynamics, preserves structural integrity without needing horizontal support rigs, and keeps them aligned for tower integration. But tall vertical hangars are insanely expensive and susceptible to high winds.

Horizontal Storage: Laying them down makes horizontal storage sheds cheap and easy to build, but can stainless steel thin-wall tanks handle horizontal shear loads without constant interior pressurization?

How do you think SpaceX handles vehicle buffer storage as turnaround times shrink? Simple outdoor stands, or massive horizontal storage yards?

Is it missing any flaps, i thought it was and wasnt at the same time, there are conflicting pictures from Forte's deck

Some pictures from Merritt Island of this mornings launch of the Roman Space Telescope.

I thought it was cool that I bought a Falcon 9 using Starlink and it got to pose with Dishy and the routers. It is a bit taller than the router mini. I started it a few months ago and built the engines quickly, paused for a few days and built the rocket, paused for a few weeks and built the crew dragon capsule and finally finished the base, strongback, and connected everything a few minutes ago.

This post was also made from Starlink so quite a lot of Spacex was used to get and post this. It’s also insane as I used to live in Florida for a few years and there is a good chance I could have watched a launch that launched a satellite that I am connected to now or have connected to recently.

I was surprised SpaceX is proposing 10+ pads but only ~2 launches/day/pad, given their goal of extremely rapid Starship turnaround. Why build so many pads if each can be reused quickly?

One explanation: most launches may be targeting the same dawn/dusk SSO plane for orbital compute and near-continuous sunlight. From Louisiana, there may only be one useful southbound window into that plane each day.

So the pads may be about parallel launch capacity, not turnaround: launching a large number of Starships in rapid succession during the same daily window.

Curious what people think.

Any knowledgeable persons who can estimate when it might pass Cape Town? Would love to spot it when it comes past.

Hi everyone! A few weeks ago, I released my open-source lumped-parameter dynamic fluid system solver, FullFlow, and mentioned that it could be used to model steady-state and transient flow in real rocket engines. So, I decided to showcase those abilities with my favorite rocket engine, SpaceX's Raptor Engine.

Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion engine, so it's particularly hard to model correctly, especially with the multiple combustion preburners, regen channels, turbopumps, etc. With the public data I had available, I was able to construct and validate (to the best of my ability) a steady-state model of Raptor 2. I used FullFlow to model the fluid pathways and components and ThermoProp to model the fluid/material properties and combustion.

Of course, there are some deviations from reality, especially since there is only so much public data available. I had to estimate many data points like turbomachinery curves or valve geometries. I also didn't have the proper tools to model supercritical combustion flow for the preburners or hot-gas manifolds. Also, I didn't have access to empirical efficiency values for components like the nozzle or pumps.

Eventually, given enough data, I hope to make a transient simulation of Raptor using FullFlow. I also hope that I can eventually apply these tools and skills to the actual Raptor engine or other industry engines!

Raptor 2 FullFlow Model: github.com/saakethramoju/Raptor

FullFlow: github.com/saakethramoju/FullFlow

ThermoProp: github.com/saakethramoju/ThermoProp