{"id":164349,"date":"2023-05-21T19:22:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T00:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/spacex-tests-water-cooled-steel-plate-designed-to-fortify-starship-launch-pad-video"},"modified":"2023-05-21T19:22:20","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T00:22:20","slug":"spacex-tests-water-cooled-steel-plate-designed-to-fortify-starship-launch-pad-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/spacex-tests-water-cooled-steel-plate-designed-to-fortify-starship-launch-pad-video","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX Tests Water-Cooled Steel Plate Designed to Fortify Starship Launch Pad [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/spacex-tests-water-cooled-steel-plate-designed-to-fortify-starship-launch-pad-video2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Friday, May 19, SpaceX released a 20-second video demonstrating that it is already conducting tests on technology aimed at fortifying the ground beneath its enormous Starship rocket\u2019s orbital launch pad. The launch pad, situated at SpaceX\u2019s Starbase facility in South Texas, endured significant damage during the inaugural test flight of a fully-integrated Starship vehicle on April 20. During the test flight, the sheer power of the Super Heavy rocket\u2019s 33 Raptor engines created a substantial crater beneath the pad. As a result, chunks of shattered concrete were sent soaring through the air.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX founder Chief Engineer Elon Musk shared that SpaceX is actively developing a solution to mitigate such damage. He said that they plan to build \u201ca massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.\u201d The footage of the test shows a methane-fueled Raptor engine ignited with its beam hitting a steel-plate and a massive stream of water. \u201cOne hell of a plasma beam!\u201d said Musk when he shared the video via Twitter, shown below. A single Raptor V2 engine is capable of generating around 230 tons of thrust. Engineers must build a strong structure that could support such intense power, collectively, all 33 Raptor engines generate over 17 million pounds of thrust!<\/p>\n<p>Regarding launch pad modifications \u2013\u201cWe\u2019re going to put down a lot of steel\u201d under the launch tower before the next Starship flight with a water flame diverter system, Musk said during a Subscriber-only <em>Twitter Spaces<\/em> discussion on April 29. \u201cWe certainly didn\u2019t expect\u201d to destroy the concrete under the launch pad during the flight test, he said (pictured below). He speculates that the crater was caused due to \u201ccompressed the sand underneath the concrete to such a degree that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, May 19, SpaceX released a 20-second video demonstrating that it is already conducting tests on technology aimed at fortifying the ground beneath its enormous Starship rocket\u2019s orbital launch pad. The launch pad, situated at SpaceX\u2019s Starbase facility in South Texas, endured significant damage during the inaugural test flight of a fully-integrated Starship vehicle [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2019,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elon-musk","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}