So, you wanna work on a real rocket ship?
Incredible highlight video of all the activity going on yesterday at the SpaceX launch site in BocaChica, Tx… thanks to Mary (@BocaChicaGal). For the first time, a real Starship got its lower tank/engine section mated with the nosecone… plus an engine change/overhaul(?).
How many of the myriad jobs shown, could you, or would you, do… given the chance? Not many for me… most of the more glamorous jobs didn’t seem to be anywhere close to the ground 
Crane operator looks fun. No pressure!
Cement trucks, fork lifts, semis, cranes, hard-hats along with a bullet shaped section that looks to be from an old Flash Gordon movie? They make preparing for travel to unknown places seem like such a ‘normal’ everyday activity. I LOVE it! 
I wish Ovaltine hadn’t changed so much, IMO not for the better. Otherwise I’d break out my 60+ year old childhood Captain Midnight Ovaltine mug and have a cup while watching. 
I’m sure you’re being tongue-in-cheek… but it’s truly amazing the control he has to have (after hours of what must be sheer boredom) over that huge crane when doing the final positioning of the nosecone over the lower section. Much like a surgeon with a “scalpel” or an artist with a brush… 
I have a lot of respect for crane operators. I imagine it is an extremely skilled profession.
But I really want to solve the problem of planning and controlling a crane with robotics. I am especially interested in a cooperative autonomy where the software handles a lot of the collision avoidance, speed controls and removed the outside disturbances, but let’s the operator manage a lot of the high level decisions. On a rig that costs that much, the incremental cost of computers and sensors are basically free. I bet heirachical planners/control would solve the problem beautifully.
Yea, that’s the stuff they’ll need on Mars. “Hey robots, build a road from here to here, figure out the best way.” Or “Hey robots, 3d print a hab over here after you finish the road”.
Instead of using a crane, they could launch the top half into suborbital flight and put the bottom half on a ship out in the Atlantic and then simply land the one on top of the other.
Who’s in charge of the grub screws? Bueller? Bueller?
Sounds neat… but way over my head. Is that something akin to the way the Shaper Origin hand-held CNC machine works?
Sort of. But not really.
The software needs to have good “localization”. It can detect where it is, and how fast it is moving. It would update that measurement more than 100 times per second (for example). It has a target for what position and speed it is targeting. This low level controller is really focused just on meeting those commands. This controller doesn’t think about outside disturbances like wind as wind. It just knows it is not where ut needs to be and it adjusts its movements to compensate.
Above that controller, you have another planner. A mid level controller. This one’s job is to decide what position and speed it should be going, and it decides that from analyzing the path, what has been done, the measurements, and the physical model of the system. This controller is less focused on the tiny details, but needs to have a good model of the whole system. But it’s not making any real decisions. This cycles more like 10 times per second. Maybe even only 5. This would be considering things like where the containers are it has to avoid, or what the wind was doing.
Above that, is another controller. This one doesn’t know about the model as much. It is just about making good decisions about where to go. What path and goals should that mid level controller be trying to achieve. This might be the path from pickup to drop off.
The human might be replacing the higher planner. In that case, they would still have a joystick, telling the crane where to move containers, but they wouldn’t have to think about lifting a container high enough to clear a stack, or the wind, or the exact angle or speed while setting a box down. These would be handled by the software.
Or, the human might be doing even less. They might be at a computer screen, moving containers around with a mouse, dragging and dropping boxes in a model of the yard. This doesn’t sound like it is as interesting of a product to me.
The shaper has a lot of the same tech. It is localizing and doing a low level control. But it is sort of a weird because there is a human as an actuator. The shaper can’t move on it’s own, it is just adjusting the position and giving direction to the poor human who has to be the motor. It is like if you had a cruise control on a bicycle, but it only has a weak e-assist.
That reminds me, I should start a new Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri campaign.
After what seemed an eternity – though mind-bogglingly fast in the rocket development world – SpaceX’s prototype starship SN8 finally took to the sky for its test flight to about 12.5 km. It was an incredible first test flight for a brand new vehicle (built out in the open among the sand dunes!) and new engine design… and did virtually everything except land as softly as hoped. Belly flop and return to landing pad were almost flawless… should have had 2 engines for landing burn but one failed, so landing was a tad rough… but spectacular!
Overall, a very successful first test flight that went as well or better as anyone could have possibly expected. A few issues to iron out but they should have learned a ton from this test. SN9 is already stacked and waiting in the High Bay… ready to move to the launch pad for testing and another test flight in the near future! Fantastic stuff!
– David
Pretty incredible, and it looked pretty close. That is a hell of a first shot.
There seemed to be an awful lot of stuff catching fire through the flight though. At least to my untrained eye.
But it was pretty entertaining, to say the least.
Yeah… obviously the engine bay on an early rocket prototype is a very hostile, and relatively cluttered, environment/space, with limited attention to pretty and more attention to function, as I imagine they’re looking primarily/initially for an “It’s alive!” moment. I figure it’s not unlike one of our (at least, my) new/experimental machine builds… with virtually no cable management and only half the hardware holding it together, being motion tested for the first time . One expert/commentator noted that small fires in the engine compartment are mostly due to trapped gases associated with an engine shutdown and/or change event… and these are, after all, a brand new engine design being clustered and flown for the first time. But it usually burns off rapidly and is pretty normal. During one of the static engine firing tests, they also had some unexpected concrete shards/debris shoot straight back up into the engine compartment and sever a cable… which they repaired and put in armored conduit. So they’re figuring it all out and making incredible progress.
This is what I find so fascinating/refreshing about SpaceX’s approach to rocket development… they’ve literally created an assembly line of ready test vehicles and are doing real-world testing. Successive refinement, a growing mountain of lessons learned, and progress at an unprecedented rate… from zero to manned space flights and reusable rockets in about 20 years. And… they’re letting us watch!
Opinion: I know SpaceX has the advantage of being relatively small and private and is therefore extremely agile and relatively unencumbered, compared to the traditional top players in the space game. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s headed up by a true visionary, with an engineer/physicist mentality, who’s shown what’s possible when obsessively-driven to literally “reach for the stars.” You can love him or hate him… but there’s no denying Elon Musk and SpaceX has truly disrupted an industry and created a challenging “model” to follow. Whether the traditional players can survive, adapt, and find a way to compete and/or change roles, or there’s a changing of the guard to private industry… that, of course, remains to be seen. But WRT space flight/exploration… these are truly exciting times we live in.
– David
“an industy”…shoot most big industries! That dude is on another level. I can see how some would like, some would not, but Paypal, Solar City (I think this has yet to show it’s true awesomeness), Tesla, Heck the Boring company (ever sit in traffic and dream about winning the lottery and drilling a hole straight to your house…dude did it).
Space X though…Is so different I really feel like I don’t understand it yet. Where the heck is all the money coming from? I know money is not the goal here (right?) but it has to operate. So shooting satellites up, and Ubering astronauts is paying for all this rapid innovation?
I feel like this guy wakes up just the rest of us with something that needs to get done…“I need to go deposit this check ASAP”. We bitch and moan all the way to the bank, he cracks open a Mt Dew and codes up online banking. Runs the A/C to long and gets a huge bill, we do some overtime, he starts a power company.
Different level, disruptive in the best way.
So how can I/we apply this to our lives and change the world? Imagine if there were even 10 or even 100 Elons running around the planet. We would be living in a present that looked like the future from movies and comic books 
Always go back to first principles and focus on the fundamental problem. Don’t get distracted by the apparent problem that is a byproduct of an old solution.
I am betting that the new roadster will have some sort of vacuum system to suck the car down on the road (actively, not just with airfoils etc.). If the power to weight ratio exceeds what gravity and friction can support (and it does) then you need something else to break that barrier. And after that there is no comparison, it’s not even close. It will be in a class all by itself.
@jeffeb3 A lot of the fire was the engines shutting down, there’s still unburnt fuel in the bells, which boils off and out the nozzle then swirls around inside the compartment. Caught the mylar on fire when it finely caught fire from the remaining engine firing.
@vicious1
Most of the original money came from Elon’s bank account. Now it’s the commercial sat launches and government contracts. Eventually it will be from starlink subscriptions.
Oh yeah forgot about that one…Starlink. That is going to be huuuuuuuge.