Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow, the place where you can stay
up to date with everything SpaceX.
Today’s episode, we will start with the upcoming Starlink-7 launch and a few other
things.
Although, most of the episode will be Boca Chica and Starship, with SN4, SN5, SN6 and
SN7.
Let’s head straight in and get up to date…
Firstly, we have Starlink-7 which is expected to launch tomorrow, Thursday June 4th at 1:25am
UTC or today Wednesday June 3rd at 9:25pm EDT.
Just a little promo, this website is something I have built and has a bunch of cool info
including a live countdown.
Go and check it out at https://thespacex.fans or click the link in the description.
There’s currently a 70% chance of good weather for the launch window.
However, as mentioned many times in the Demo 2 stream, it’s the start of hurricane season,
and so weather viability could fluctuate quite a bit.
Something notable I would like to point out about this launch is that SpaceX will make
history yet again.
You can see here the landings for booster B1049.
It has currently landed 4 times, but when it returns from Starlink-7 it should land
for the fifth time.
This will be the first time in history an orbital class rocket booster has landed 5
times.
An interesting article that I’ve found is a blog post from a website called Micky.
The article talks about how the same person who designed the SpaceX spacesuit also designed
many Hollywood costumes.
Jose Fernandez apparently designed many DC and Marvel costumes and also worked alongside
Elon Musk to create the spacesuit too.
Another thing I will show you is Demo 2 related and is the booster B1058.1 as you can see
here.
It has returned to port and look how cool it is to see the NASA logo covered in scars.
The first booster to launch astronauts to the International Space Station and then return
itself to Earth and land on a barge.
Over to the launch area now, where unfortunately, Starship SN4 recently suffered a Rapid Unscheduled
Disassembly, but more info on that in a bit.
Here is the latest view of the damaged launch mount and it really looks quite bad.
Engineers have already started working on it, but I’m not entirely sure if they will
scrap it or fix it.
You can see here though that they’ve been removing the beams so it’s possible they
could be scrapping it.
A piece of the launch mount got blown off and it appears to be the cover for the fuel
lines.
You can see that they’ve also been working to deconstruct this section as well.
When SN4 exploded, a piece of it went flying into the roof of a nearby building.
Workers were also spotted removing that piece too.
Another thing at the launch area that was recently worked on is the new launch mount.
It looks like they may need this up and running quicker than originally anticipated.
Teslarati recently produced an article about the SN4 RUD.
The problem was not the vehicle itself but instead was a problem with the ground support
equipment.
Musk said after the Demo 2 post-launch briefing “what we thought was going to be a minor
test of a quick disconnect ended up being a big problem”.
As we saw earlier, SN4 has been scrapped and moved from the launch mount area already.
So now we can move onto SN5 which is near enough in the same place it was last episode.
You can see here that further work has been happening with SN5’s nose cone.
They appear to have covered the thruster holes at the top.
Maybe they aren’t planning to use those now, which could explain the new holes.
In a tent at the construction area, a new nose cone for SN6 was spotted.
I can’t see any thrusters on this, but then again, we can only see one side, although
those new holes at the top have been integrated.
This nose is also still a bit small and so maybe one of these tapered sections is for
the bottom of it.
SN6’s upper bulkhead for the Liquid Oxygen tank was also moved outside from a tent.
So turns out the dome we saw last episode must have been for SN7.
It was obviously moved outside to be stacked with the rest of the tank.
Then, of course, that’s what happened next and so SN6 is growing very rapidly.
We now have an almost fully stacked SN6 tank section, which is crazy.
SpaceX are not holding back and are pushing full steam ahead with these prototypes.
Here is the latest SN6 build diagram from Rafael Adamy and all that’s needed for the
tank stacking is now just the thrust section.
Finally onto SN7 which again, isn’t slowing down whatsoever.
Here you can see the upper bulkhead was recently moved outside from a tent.
This is obviously so it could then be placed onto the sleeving mount for the next process
of hooking it up to the rings.
The ring stack was then also moved outside from the same tent.
Then the final step, they sleeved it to form the upper section of the SN7 tank.
So we have a full SN5 tank in the high bay, and alongside it is a mostly built SN6 tank
section.
Plus we have SN7 already starting to be put together and I’d imagine there is also SN8
in the works somewhere in a tent.
As always in my videos, I like to reserve the final part to say a huge thank you to
Mary, BocaChicaGal and the whole NSF team for their amazing work.
That’s it for this episode of TheSpaceXShow, I hope you enjoyed the video, if you did,
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Thanks for watching and have a great day!