The LOX is at -340 F, rather than the -300F of atmospheric. The RP-1
is at 20 F rather than 70F, which presents sealing issues.
The whole thing is a great demo of why it would be necessary to have
your manufacturing facility near your launch facility to make an
expendable rocket really cheap.
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is planning to evacuate the entire
base, except for launch essential personnel and security, because they
expect the first stage to come back but don't trust it to go well.
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 11:26 PM, Henry Vanderbilt
<hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Developing your cryo ops at a low-humidity site can lead to surprises when
you try to fly out of a high-humidity place, yes. (I'd assume that loading
sub-cooled LOX involves significant changes in hardware and procedures from
the normal 1-atmosphere boiling-point flavor, so they'd be doing this at the
Cape for the first time.)
On 12/17/2015 7:42 PM, Anthony Graziani wrote:
In case any of you guys are following the SpaceX RTF launch, I'd like to
start an update thread. It's scheduled to launch Saturday at 8:25 pm
EST. Last I heard they were having problems loading propellants for the
static fire. Part of Elons latest tweet - "Deep cryo liquid oxygen
presenting some challenges." Theory is that the humidity at CC is
causing more problems than anticipated.
I'm on my way down to CC right now so fingers crossed...
Anthony