Seeing the new pictures of the pad left me with a few questions.



For some strange reason I had thought previously that the new test stand would actually test the rocket horizontally like the SRBs are. From the new photo it is obvious that the stages will be vertical and then the flame deflected into the trench. Has anyone seen how they plan to raise the stages onto the stand? With three cores together I can't see them crane lifting them as a unit for FH testing so they will either have to lift them one at a time and vertically integrate them together or have some sort of transporter/erector on site to move the cores horizontally to the stand and then lift up.



Also, I wonder what happened to all the spoil from the flame trench. It costs money to have dirt halled away. I would have expected them to just re-purpose it for either a slightly raised burn around the trench or maybe have a slightly raised mount to provide a little more vertical distance before the flame deflects. From the photos it doesn't appear anything was kept on site.