Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "Business Insider" channel.

  1. It has definitely evolved! SpaceX' Starship does things a lot differently (and better). There is no need to drive uphill to the launch pad and downhill afterwards, for example. The reason why they do that at LC-39A is that rockets need flame trenches and big rockets need big flame trenches. You can't really dig down into the mud/water there and build yourself a viable flame trench, but you can build on top of it and keep the bottom of your flame trench at about normal ground level. SpaceX just has a big round thing on (thick!) stilts that they put the rocket on top of. That means they can drive up close to it with a standard oversize load vehicle... and then they lift the empty rocket op with a crane. They also don't need to stack the rocket in an extremely tall building -- they can do the stacking out on the launch site. They don't need a special mobile launch tower and launch pad -- because the rocket isn't transported in its stacked form and because they designed the rocket better so it is easier to hook it up to pumps for fuel, purging gas, helium (if necessary), and electricity. They can test the whole thing with nothing but a Liebherr mobile crane (which weren't nearly as big or as good back in the 60's!) and an oversize load truck. They have a fixed tower that they use for carrying the "Quick Connect"-arm (which supplies liquids and electricity right up to the launch). They also put a combined crane and "catcher" on it. The crane can lift the rocket stages for stacking and unstacking... and it can catch them when they return to the launch site from space. The tower itself is built from 1) mostly identical elements that can be stacked and 2) each element is built from a number of large tubes. That means the tower itself is quick and (relatively) cheap to build, compared to the NASA launch towers. The crawlers are beautiful brute-force solutions to a problem that no longer exists...
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