Starbase activities (2023-12-12):

• Today’s road closure was revoked, and new closures have been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.
• At the launch site, test stand A appears to be being scrapped. Video of SQD being demolished.
• Some sort of plumbing test involving venting was conducted at suborbital pad B.
• Work on the OLM, chopsticks, and S28 continues.
• Back at the build site, Starfactory is being expanded.
• More horizontal tanks are on their way to Starbase from Florida.

In other Starship news, Kathy Lueders (now general manager of Starbase) states that they are working to shift as much testing as possible from the launch site to Masseys.

Starbase itself is a hotbed of construction activity these days, she said, with a second orbital launch pad on tap as well as a million-square-foot factory, additional employee housing and office space all coming online, she said. The second pad is necessary for SpaceX’s goal of a faster launch cadence, while much of the engine testing is now taking place at SpaceX’s Massey test site on a former gun range west of Starbase, Lueders said.

“That test site is very critical,” she said. “What it allows us to do is keep our test operations … away from the beach. We know that it’s a pain in the butt for everybody when we have to (be) close the beach. And so we’re moving more of our testing over there so that it doesn’t impact operations that are over near the beach.”

She also confirms that the AFTS was triggered on IFT-2:

Lueders said Starship’s anomaly investigation team was still looking into why the Nov. 18 flight’s Automated Flight Termination Systems were activated.