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| We loved this sculpture! But couldn't figure out which one was Elon!! |
Wednesday afternoon we drove into Boca Chica, TX, home of Elon Musks Starbase where they are developing, assembling, and testing the next generation of rockets and spaceships. Mars is the ultimate objective! Dave has been following Space X closely since its beginning with Falcon rockets which now send satellites and people to earth orbit. At Boca Chica, there are no falcons, just much larger boosters and spaceships, called Starships. We were lucky to get there right after they finished cryogenic pressure testing of the fuel tanks. When we returned the next morning they were releasing the pressure which almost sounded like the ship was taking off.
As you can see from the pictures, the booster and starships are HUMONGOUS!! They will be the largest and most powerful heavy-lift rockets ever created.
We didn't see this "For Sale" sign until we were in the hotel looking back over our pictures. We thought of several captions! We tried to buy them, but they wouldn't fit in Ruby!
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| When this is completed... |
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It will look like this!!
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The first picture we took and the second is from a website. We saw them putting heat tiles on the upper rocket. One side has heat tiles to resist re-entry heat while the top side remains uncovered.
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| Note the black heat tiles and silver stainless steel top side |
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These are prototypes, one flew, the others did not they will be scrapped or preserved for posterity.
Dave is taking a picture on the other side of the road. |
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| Note the engines underneath, they are Raptor ver. 1.0, which have been outdated by the new Raptor ver. 2.0 and will probably join the others in the "boneyard". Note the scale of the people standing to the left. |
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This is a close-up of the arms, called chopsticks, attached to the tower. The plan is to catch the booster in mid-air as it returns for a landing. Note the launch pad below and to the left of the arms.
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This rocket is the first prototype built to test the concept and new Raptor engine.
It took off and landed successfully. |
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David in the boneyard We couldn't believe how close we could get.
But note the sheriff's car on the far right!
We have been surprised at how FEW Teslas we have seen. There were perhaps a dozen or more at Starbase. We were followed and waved at in the Airstream Village. We think they thought we were "management" (That's our story and we're sticking to it!).
Back in town, we stayed at South Padre Island. Deb was not expecting a Miami-style resort with major hotels, especially after driving about 50 miles or more through an estuary that almost looked like a desert! We ate seafood by the water (and talked to the Wassums) and toured a sandcastle display.
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