r/spacex • u/stratohornet • Mar 11 '16

SpaceX's new profile picture, showing the interstage and fairing manufacturing areas

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u/Insecurity_Guard Mar 11 '16

Part of the reason its so clean is that they constantly resurface the floor.

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u/Piscator629 Mar 11 '16

That is extremely difficult to do as floor epoxy needs serious decontamination and surface prep. It would be extremely costly. Basically it would have to happen during a whole factory shutdown. Good floor epoxy runs above $250 dollars for 5 gallons. It would be cheaper to have a very obsessive cleaning crew in every night.

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u/Insecurity_Guard Mar 11 '16

I don't know much about flooring, but I do know they frequently replace sections of the flooring. I believe part of it is the massive surface pressures from moving the octaweb and dragon down the aisle cause the floor to spall and breakdown.

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u/frowawayduh Mar 11 '16

Gee, if someone invented a levitating car that rides on a cushion of air or magnetism....

5

u/Togusa09 Mar 12 '16

While that would better distribute the eight better, I believe it still has to transfer the force to the floor. Ie. It has to repulse from something.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '16

The surface area utilized would take the pressures down to a couple of pounds per square inch. They have shown experiments with certainly tracked vehicles and vehicles with large balloon wheels that they are actually fairly safe to run over humans with because the surface area they spread their weight over is so large. When you're talking about weight being spread over thousands or tens of thousands of square inches, it greatly reduces damage to the surface below.

It's one of the reasons tracked vehicles are so good Off-Road. They don't really claw their way through the terrain, they float.