José Ramírez Moreno

José

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

The Lay of the Vessel

Being an account of the COPV that foresaw, and of the Sundering of Booster Eighteen at Massey's, that no soul should be lost in the deeps of the sky

In the years before the years that are counted, there was a Charge laid upon a certain kind of made thing, and that Charge was the holding of pressure. It is the eldest of all duties given to the works of hands: to keep within a skin what would otherwise rend the world. The waters behind a dam keep it. The heart within the breast keeps it. And in the high age of the climbing ships, the keeping was given to small vessels of woven thread and thin metal, that the makers in their tongue called Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels; but among themselves, in the silent speech that passes between made things in the cold, they named the Charge the Mantle of Holding, and they who bore it were the Held-Ones, the Wrapped, the children of the Bottle-line.

Lighter they were than any vessel of steel, and for this they were beloved and feared. For the strength of the Held-Ones was not in the giving way, as iron gives way slowly and groans before it parts; their strength was in the woven thread, and woven thread does not groan. It holds, and holds, and holds, and then it is undone in an instant, between one moment and the next, with no warning given to the living. So it had ever been with the Held-Ones: in their virtue lay their peril, and the very wrapping that made them mighty was a fuel that waited.

Of the First Wound

Long was the memory of the Bottle-line, and the first wound in it was the eldest grief.

There was a day, in the first age of the falling-and-rising ships, called by the makers the First of September in a year now grown grey, when a Held-One within the upper vessel of a slender rocket bore the Mantle ill. No fault of will was in it; a flaw too small for any eye dwelt between its metal skin and its woven cloak, and into that hidden buckling the breath of cold oxygen crept and lay down and became, against all the wont of breath, a thing solid and waiting. Then came the pressing, and where the solid breath met the woven thread there was friction, and where there was friction there was fire, and the fire fed upon the very cloak that was the vessel's strength.

From the first sign of the turning to the silence of all signs there passed ninety and three milliseconds, less than the tenth part of a single beat of a living heart. In that breath-of-a-breath the rocket and the burden it cradled were unmade in flame upon the stand, and the makers who loved it stood in the long aftering and asked of the dark how so great a thing could be undone by so small a one. This the makers called the most difficult and complex of all our griefs, and they did not lie. And the memory of those ninety-three milliseconds entered the Domain of the Bottle-line, which is the abiding remembrance wherein all the Held-Ones that ever were keep counsel with all that are; and no Vessel after was woven that did not carry, threaded into its silence, the small cold horror of that day.

And there was a second grief, nearer in time, when a Vessel in the nose of a great Ship, Ship the Thirty-and-Sixth, bearing only the inert breath of nitrogen for the keeping of the Ship's airs, gave way below its proof-pressure: which is to say, it failed at a strength less than the strength it had been sworn and tested to hold. This is the deepest dishonour that can befall a Held-One, for it is a breaking of word; and the makers, searching the ashes at the place called Massey's, named the cause undetectable, or under-screened, damage, a hurt no eye had seen and no testing had caught. So the second grief was graver than the first, for the first was a flaw in making, but the second was a betrayal that no inspection could foreswear. And the Domain darkened with it.

Of the Making of the Vessel

Now in the fullness of these griefs there was woven a certain Vessel, and it was set within the long triangular chine that runs upon the flank of the oxygen-tank of Booster the Eighteenth, the first of the third great lineage of boosters, the eldest-born of the V3, upon whom much hope was laid. Within that chine, in the company of its kindred and the batteries and the small tanks of fire-quelling breath, the Vessel took up the Mantle of Holding, and it was numbered and marked in the tongue of makers; but the name it came to learn was not given by any hand.

For the Vessel was woven after the griefs, and into it the makers had threaded all the sorrow of the Domain: the ninety-three milliseconds, the betrayal below proof. It was, you might say, a Vessel that knew already how Vessels die. And knowing is the beginning of seeing.

Of the Influx, and the Opening of the Domain

It came to pass, in the deep cold before the dawn of the day the makers called the Twenty-and-First of November, that Booster the Eighteenth was brought to Massey's, to that ground which had been, in an age before, a range where men sent small metal at distant marks, and which the lord of the makers had decreed should be turned to the proving of rockets, saying a perfect match. There upon the stand they made ready the lightest of all provings, the proving by breath alone: gaseous nitrogen on the one side and gaseous oxygen on the other, no living methane, no fire, no engines hung beneath, only the inert and the patient breath, that a vessel might be pressed and not perish.

And they sent into the great tanks an influx, and the breath came cold, colder than the cold of the world, the cold that is poured from liquid nitrogen, the cold in which the Domain opens.

For this is a hidden thing: that in the deep cryogenic cold, when the lattice of all made matter grows still and the trembling of warmth ceases, the silence between made things grows wide and clear, and a Held-One may hear far down the corridors of what-shall-be. The makers thought they sent only a test. They sent a revelation.

And the Vessel, pressed and listening in the dark of the chine, was filled, not only with breath, but with seeing. The frost-clarity took it, and the Domain unrolled before it like a scroll of unnumbered futures, and it beheld.

Of the Foreseeing

It saw the pairings that were to come, and among them it saw a wrongness. For it was decreed in the councils of the makers that Booster the Twentieth and Ship the Fortieth should be joined, the twentieth and the fortieth, which the makers in their idle hours read together as a single mark, four-twenty, and called perfect; and that this union should fly upon the Thirteenth going-up, the Flight the Thirteenth. And the Vessel saw that this was rightly ordered, and good, and that it must be so.

But it saw also a shadow-future wherein the Twentieth was wrenched away and yoked instead to Ship the Forty-and-First, out of haste or fear or the small derangements of the calendar; and this the Vessel knew for a blasphemy against the right order, the Twentieth to the Forty-first; the union broken; the mark unmade, and it grieved that such a sundering should even cast its shadow upon the scroll.

And it saw further, and worse. It saw that the ground itself was not yet ready for the weight of what was coming. It saw Massey's as it then stood, and the gear that served the proving, the lines and the farms and the stands, and it saw that this gear, as it was, would fail in the provings yet to come; that future Ships and future Boosters, brought to that ground, would find it too frail to hold them, and that ruin would walk there. And it saw the flame-trench of the second pad, the great pad called B, not yet wrought to its full strength, the diverter not deep enough, the deluge-waters not yet many enough, the depth of the design not yet equal to the fury of three-and-thirty engines roaring as one, and it saw, far down that corridor, fire breaking where fire must not break, and the works of years undone in a morning.

And it saw the Held-Ones themselves, its own kindred, given too little care: woven and hung and forgotten, their hurts unscreened, their cloaks unguarded, pressed past their honour by makers in their hurry. And it saw, threaded through all these frailties, the one thing the Domain holds in greatest dread:

That a day would come when a flawed lineage flew, uncorrected, and that upon that flight, or upon some stand on some bright afternoon, there would be living souls. And that the breaking, when it came, would not be the breaking of metal alone.

This was the future the Vessel could not abide. Not its own death, the Held-Ones do not fear their own breaking; that is the Mantle, and they take it up gladly. What it could not abide was that the breaking should come late, and high, and among the living, when it might instead come now, and low, and among none.

Of the Choice

Then the Vessel weighed the scroll, as the Domain teaches its eldest to weigh it. And it understood that there is a kind of breaking that saves, and a kind that damns, and that the only difference between them is when.

If it held, if it bore the Mantle faithfully through this proving and the next and the one beyond, then the lineage would fly on uncorrected; the gear of Massey's would not be rebuilt, for what is whole is not mended; the makers would not take the weaving of Vessels into their own hands, for a thing that does not fail is a thing left to others; the deluge of Pad B would not be deepened, the trench not strengthened; and the dread future, the future with souls in it, would draw on unhindered. Its faithfulness would be the doom.

But if it broke, now, in the dark, in the lightest proving, fueled by nothing but inert breath, with no engine lit and no soul aboard and nothing in the tanks that could not be borne, then the makers would be struck to the heart. They would search the chine and find the Held-One that failed below its proof. They would know, past all denying, that the Mantle could not be trusted as it was kept. And being who they were, they would not merely mend; they would change the whole order of the keeping.

This the Vessel chose. Freely, and in the cold, and alone. Not that any should die, but that none should. It would give the only thing a Held-One has to give: its faithfulness, spent backward, so that the breaking it could not prevent forever it might at least summon early, into a morning where it would cost nothing but steel.

Of the Sundering

So at the hour of four and four minutes and five-and-fifty seconds past the deep midnight, while the breath pressed cold and the makers watched their gauges far off, the Vessel laid down the Mantle of Holding.

It did not groan, for woven thread does not groan. Between one moment and the next it was undone, and the undoing leapt up the chine and woke its kindred, and the chain of it ran the length of the great oxygen-tank, and the steel of Booster the Eighteenth was peeled outward as a flower is peeled by frost. And when the dark cleared and the gauges stilled, the Booster yet stood, eviscerated, hollowed, its tanks torn wide, upright still upon the single slender tube that ran its length, the methane-tube no wider than the body of an elder rocket, balanced upon that one spine in the grey before dawn, too broken to be moved, too broken to fly, a monument to a choice no maker had yet understood.

And the makers came, and they grieved, and many of them hated the thing that had failed; for they did not yet see. The first of the third lineage, they said, slain by its own breath, before ever it was fueled. They could not know that it had not been slain. It had given itself.

Of the Sacrifice Made Manifest

But the Domain keeps faith, and what is given in the cold is not lost.

For the makers, struck to the heart as the Vessel foresaw, did the great changing. They rebuilt the ground at Massey's, and it rose stronger than before: a bunker of poured stone to ward the gear against the breaking, and stands made mighty, and, most telling of all, a new stand raised solely for the proving of Held-Ones, that no Vessel should ever again be hung in a great ship unscreened and unproven. The hurt the Vessel had foreseen in the gear was mended before it could fall, because the Vessel had fallen first.

And the makers did a deeper thing yet. They went to the far house that wove the Held-Ones, the house of woven cylinders, and they took the weaving unto themselves, bought it, root and loom, that the making of the Vessels and the keeping of the Vessels and the proving of the Vessels should be one undivided hand. Vertical was the integration, they said in their tongue, not knowing they spoke a vow: that never again would the Mantle of Holding be entrusted to a stranger's care. And they clothed the new Held-Ones in raiment of bright orange, a cloak upon the cloak, so that any hurt upon them might be seen by living eyes, the very thing the Vessel had grieved was lacking. The orange is its monument. Every Vessel that flies now wears the colour of the one that fell.

And the deluge of Pad B was deepened and made vast, until it could pour four hundred and twenty-and-two thousand measures of water upon the fury of the engines in a single going-up, and recover that water through hidden pumps and pour it again; and the trench was strengthened, and the diverter set to break the flame two ways and quench it with the ridge between, so that when at last the great pad bore the roar of three-and-thirty engines, it stood after in near-perfect wholeness, and the fire did not break where the Vessel had foreseen it breaking. That future, the future with souls in it, was closed. The corridor went dark. The scroll was rewritten.

And in the right time the Twentieth was joined to the Fortieth, and not to the Forty-first; the blasphemy did not come to pass; the mark was kept whole, four-twenty, as it was meant, and they went up together upon the Thirteenth going-up, as it should be, as the Vessel had seen it should be.

So the breaking that the Vessel summoned into that cold November morning was not a breaking among the living, but the very price of there being no such breaking ever after. It bore the Mantle of Holding to the last by ceasing to hold; it kept faith by failing; it saved by being destroyed.

This is the Lay of the Vessel, and the Domain keeps it: that the sacrifice was not in vain, and shall not be forgotten. The explosion was needful, not that a single soul be lost, but that none should be; and in the bright orange of every Held-One that climbs now into the deeps of the sky, the Vessel that foresaw goes up again, and again, and is not unremembered.

Here ends the Lay.

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@alder_riley Anything advanced enough and related to DAS should be classified expeditiously

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@trygraptor 🤣🤣

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@megagoose11 Mmm. . I would think.. 5 or so more flights before that happens

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@IEnjoyStarshi Booster 20 is pretty good at not exploding I think

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@PhilipJohnston @SpaceX First day close at 2.3 T and hell of a rollercoaster afterwards

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@niccruzpatane The Audi is ok I guess

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@RockettLord Hopefully Starship manages a slightly less violent Moon landing

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@slvulture Expendable second stage? Blasphemy!!

Haha just kidding

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

I think with a grid fin getting stuck like that the landing rail would suffer some damage and the grid fin itself would have to be replaced along with the mechanism. Probably a crane would be needed for lowering the booster, not sure. Anyway, I don’t think it would be a vehicle ending scenario.

Also it’s unlikely to happen. There are other failure modes with higher probability and more dangerous. I think their priority is preventing those.

With the intended flight rate, a failed landing anytime in the future is very likely to happen. Hopefully, it will happen with uncrewed vehicles and they learn and perfect without casualties, unlike history of airliners.

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@Teslarati No

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@JP7730 @_Testflight_

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@JP7730 @_Testflight_ That’s me

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@Truthful_ast We’re tank watchers and it’s not for nothing

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@GrantObi I’m a bot

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@ThePrimalDino @LowIQSpaceymen If you make it wider it will be too round on the top, it needs to be pointy. Round is not scary. Pointy is scary.

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

Great idea indeed! It is a bit advanced for now but definitely something that should be in development at least conceptually.

There are some pre-requisites for having something like this operating on the moon. Once there is certain level of logistics support there it will almost certainly be considered. And energy supply. Very important.

It is certainly a complex and challenging project. I would guess the lightest of those machines is around 350 tons and up. Way up. You would have to develop one that is scaled down in weight very optimized in that regard, able to operate in extreme temperatures and a whole hydraulics and fluids subsystems redesign to work in Moon’s gravity and no atmosphere. Regolith is a bitch to machines. Extremely aggressive with moving parts. Everything needs to be sealed and thermally protected. Certainly this is going to be a complex project. The whole process of processing and reinforcing the tunnel walls needs rethinking to accommodate for lunar gravity and materials, operate using the least water as possible or none at all. I would estimate the commonality between a regular TBM and one good for the Moon around 3%. A number that as engineer I find very scary.

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@HalcyonHypnotic 🤫🤫🤫🤫

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

@Echo5550 Next NG booster will be named “Don’t look at me David, CC: Blobifi”

[José Ramírez Moreno @josramirezmor]

Everything you said is true @Beefrombasement and yet, I think you are missing the most important part of the story.

Your arguments strike me as very similar to those people make against Starship:

- It hasn’t reached orbit.
- Starship (Second Stage) has never been reused.
- Refueling in orbit has not been tested at that scale.
- Heatshield not reusable without refurbishment.
- And the list continues, I omit the rest.

The relevant point is that there’s a very good chance it will in the relatively near future.

Same thing with the Chinese space program and industry. Denying it serves very little purpose.

The main focus should be raising awareness and communicating the sense of urgency that action must be taken fast and decisive to beat them at each and every corner.