[wocanak]

On a recent trip to US, I was able to fit in a short visit to SpaceX Starbase. It is a wonderful experience for folks interested in Aerospace, Rocketry or Space and Astronomy in general. I thought it would be good to share a quick post here.

I will start with a brief introduction to Starbase, those who are already familiar with it can safely skip this section. I will also briefly cover options to reach there and then get into my trip.

SpaceX has a manufacturing and launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, which they flamboyantly call as Starbase. This is where their next generation fully reusable launch system is being built. SpaceX's current work horse is the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which is famous for first stage reuse. Even if you are not into Space/Aerospace, it is very likely you would have seen videos of their first stage landing vertically. SpaceX dominates the global launch market with Falcon 9, but a partially reusable rocket still won't cut it for their ambitious Starlink, Moon and Mars plans. Hence they have been developing their fully reusable Starship system, which consists of Superheavy Booster first stage and Starship second stage (yeah, they have messy names). Both stages will land vertically like the Falcon first stage, but not on ground. They will instead land between two arms which are called chopsticks. The chopsticks move up and down a launch tower, they are also used to lift and place the booster on a launch mount. They also lift the second stage and place it on top of the booster and hold it until launch. After several years of development, they had their first launch in April this year with partial success and are now getting ready for their second launch.

The best time to visit the place is obviously during launch. Generally rocket launches are unpredictable, but Starship is in early stages of development and its launch is even more unpredictable. The next best time is when it is ready for launch, as we can see the fully stacked rocket with the Starship on top of the Booster. The rocket has been stacked, unstacked and again stacked just a few days before my visit.

A unique aspect of this facility is that both the factory and the launch site are very close to the public road, and just extend along the length of the road. They are very much accessible to public viewing, in fact you can even go around and behind the launch site for closer views. Below is a brief humorous welcome note from SpaceX.

Boca Chica is a really small village on the East coast of Texas, near the Mexican border. It has very few houses, most of which have been bought by SpaceX (there are one or two holdouts who are enjoying a ringside view of the activities). Boca Chica is about 22 miles from Brownsville, which is a reasonably sized town with port and airport. But it has only a few regular flights from Dallas and Houston, and maybe few more flights by regional/small airlines. The other option is to drive down from Houston, ~350 miles or from San Antonio which is ~300 miles. I have a cousin in San Antonio, so it made sense for me to drive down from San Antonio. There are also busses from San Antonio to Brownsville. Next to Brownsville there is South Padre beach resort island, that is ~20 miles from Brownsville but in a different direction. All three form a triangle, the map below should give an idea.

When I started to plan the trip, I got to know that a Helicopter ride service has been started from South Padre island. My plan was to drive down on Monday (2nd Oct) morning, so I booked a ride for 5pm. We started from San Antonio at ~11am and reached just in time for the ride. The ride was on a Robinson R44 Helicopter, it seats pilot + 3 passengers, but it was only me and my cousin for the ride. This was my first helicopter ride, and it went much smoother and less scary/exciting than I expected! We were flying at ~500ft, and max speed was ~110 knots/126 mph/200 kmph. Clockwise in below photo: our ride, South Padre Island and our destination.

The SpaceX manufacturing facility is about 12 miles south and took ~10 mins to reach. We had seen quite a lot of videos and photos of the site, but it felt completely new. The site is located in marshy/backwaters and looked almost like an Island. Below left is a wide view of the manufacturing facility and right is a close up of what is called the rocket garden, it has Booster (B4), flat top and Starship (S20) pointy nose. SpaceX builds so many Boosters and starships that they number them, currently they are roughly up to Booster B10 and Starship S30 and beyond. The tall buildings are high bay and mega bays, where they stack and weld segments together.

Unfortunately helicopters cannot fly near the launch site as there is a temporary flight restriction (TFR), surrounding the launch site. Not sure if the TFR is permanently in effect or is there when there is a booster/starship in the launch site. I don't want to get too much into the details of how the rocket is built, but for those interested, there are plenty of resources on the web. You can relate and see every aspect of the process when you visit the site. Our helicopter ride took about 30 minutes and we were dropped back at South Padre island. We immediately planned to drive Starbase and the launch facility before it gets dark, since we cannot cut across the bay, we have to drive almost back to Brownsville and then to Boca Chica, so it comes to ~44 miles and took more than an hour.

On the way to the launch site we saw a long queue of vehicles in the opposite direction. Seemed to be border control, checking for illegal immigrants. Luckily there was no queue or traffic in our direction and we reached the launch site with enough light left. We could see the full stacked rocket with Booster B9 and Starship S25 on the orbital launch mount. The ship is held in place by the chopsticks. There was also another Starship S26 on one of the suborbital launch pads (B). In the photo below you can see it hooked up to a crane for support. The tanks were depressurised with hatches open for people to work inside, so the ship needs to be supported for safety.

The rocket diameter is 9 meters and fully stacked height is about 120 meters, we were seeing it from about the same distance. If it toppled and fell down in our direction, we may just about miss it. There were people working on the launch mount, that gave a sense of scale. Apart from the rocket we could also see the main components of the launch mount and tower, which they call stage zero. We could see the fuel connectors for both the booster and the ship, the tanks for the water deluge system. The nearby horizontal and vertical tanks are fuel tanks, holding mainly liquid oxygen, methane, nitrogen and some amount of helium.

Plenty of YouTubers, journalists and space flight enthusiasts have set up cameras on the road. The typical setup is solar panel and batteries for power, with multiple cameras mounted to watch the facility, some also have CCTV cameras to watch the road, guess it might help if someone tries to steal the equipment. I think, it kind of works on gentlemen's understanding, only SpaceX employees and enthusiasts visit the place and they all watch these channels to follow Starship progress.

There were a few visitors and there was one person who more or less camps there in his truck. He was happy to chat with us and upon knowing this was our first visit, he gave us a small souvenir. The black and white object in the photo below is a piece of the heat tile, the Starship is covered on one side with the heat tiles to protect from the heat during reentry.

Initially the tiles used to fall off frequently and locals could collect them. Subsequently it has improved and they don't fall off as much now. Everything SpaceX does, it keeps iterating and improving. But it remains to be seen if the tiles stick around from launch to rentry, they are a key element for second stage reuse. He also guided us on to a trail which leads to the back of the launch mount for a closer look from a different angle. Below are the shots from different angles, taken in the evening and next day morning.

As it got dark we turned back, and soon hit the border checkpoint. I had my passport and visa handy, since my cousin lives in California, he had his driver's license and real id. They were not satisfied with that, seems Florida and Texas have some rules requiring passport and visa for non citizens. We were let of with a warning and this happened again in another check post on the drive back to San Antonio.

We stayed in Brownsville for the night. The next day morning, we went back for a second look at the launch mount and to spend some time at the production site as well. We caught some tank farm venting action, this happens when the tanks or the rocket is getting filled.

The previous launch notoriously damaged the launch site, strewing chunks of concrete all over the place, there is still a lot of it left, maybe for the fans to collect as souvenirs and clean up!

I have been following Starship development for last 2 to 3 years and this visit put a lot of things in perspective for me. It was my nephew's birthday and I jokingly mentioned to him that I am going to get a piece of the concrete as his gift. He really latched on to it, and now he has a piece with a side blackened by the rocket flames, all excited to talk about it in his school. They say space and astronomy is the gateway drug to pull kids into science and I can see it working.

For those interested in knowing more, there are plenty of resources, below are a few of my favorites. Standard warnings, I am not affiliated with any of them and am not responsible if you end up wasting a lot of time going down this rabbit hole.

NSF SpaceX Starship Program
Marcus House
What about it

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[gauravdgr8]

An extensive writeup. Can you believe I had kept this tab open since the day you had put up the blog. Enjoyed reading every bit of it