Hello, we are TheSpaceXFans and welcome to TheSpaceXShow, the place where you can stay
up to date with everything SpaceX.
Starting today, we were expecting Starlink-17 to launch multiple times over the last week,
but SpaceX stood down on Monday due to bad weather in the recovery area.
Looking at TheSpaceXFans website, the launch of Starlink-17 was delayed from today once
again until tomorrow.
However, you will notice that Starlink-18 will launch first.
Tomorrow we can expect not only Starlink-18 but just around 4 hours later, also Starlink-17
to liftoff.
SpaceX also posted a tweet about this.
They said “Now targeting two Falcon 9 launches of Starlink satellites on Thursday, February
4, pending range acceptance and recovery weather conditions.
First Falcon 9 launch at 1:19 a.m. EST from SLC-40, followed by another Falcon 9 launch
~4 hours later at 5:36 a.m. EST from LC-39A.”
Turns out that since recording this video, there is an update to this plan.
Emre Kelly tweeted that based on hazard zones, it seems that Starlink-17 has now slipped
to Friday.
Tom Mueller, one of the first people to work at SpaceX recently left the company and somebody
made a video about him.
Musk responded to their tweet and said “Tom is great & was instrumental in developing
early versions of Merlin & Kestrel, but not later versions of Merlin or Starship/Raptor.”
In response, Everyday Astronaut tweeted about Mueller’s love for methane with “I know
Tom was a big fan of a methane Merlin.”
Then musk responded and said “He became a big fan of methane, but was not pushing
it initially.
That came from me reading about Soviet methane engine tests that got over 380 Isp.
At that Isp, a subcooled methane stage gets slightly better delta-V than a hydrogen stage.”
He also added “Tom has some great stories about experimenting with premixed O2/CH4 before
SpaceX.
That is not recommended.”
There was an exciting tweet posted by SpaceX about an upcoming crewed Dragon mission.
They said “Announcing the first commercial astronaut mission to orbit Earth aboard Dragon.”
This mission is called Inspiration4.
They then responded to that with “This mission enables access for everyday people who dream
of going to space.”
In another tweet they quoted something said by the commander of this mission who is Jared
Isaacman.
He said “While a historic journey awaits us in space, I hope this mission reinforces
how far inspiration can take us and the extraordinary achievements it leads to here on Earth.”
We have some unfortunate news, not only have SpaceX recently lost Tom Mueller, Hans Koenigsmann,
another of the original employees is retiring.
He has apparently begun transitioning his role of leading the reliability team to a
former top NASA official.
As we’ve seen a lot of recently, construction work continues with the orbital launch pad
area.
At the old gas well lot, work is continuing with their new Liquid Oxygen distiller.
Taking a look at some more tweets, somebody called Sawyer Merritt quoted something from
Elon Musk recently.
He said “We will get to mars in about 5 1/2 years.”
Also, in another tweet he posted, Musk said “It takes 6 months to get to Mars.
We can potentially get that down to 1 month.”
Joey Roulette has tweeted something related to the HLS bidding where SpaceX is proposing
the Starship lunar lander variant.
It says “NASA told bidding companies SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics last week it’ll
need to delay awarding moon lander contracts by two months - as expected after getting
short funding from Congress.”
Additionally he tweeted “The timing of this extension is designed to allow NASA to complete
the Option A evaluation, selection and award process and to preserve the ability to seamlessly
transition from the base period contracts to the Option A contracts.”
Looking at Starship pieces, a new nosecone was spotted in the tent.
Also spotted in a tent is a new ring stack being worked on by the robotic welders.
On Monday, in the run up to the SN9 flight, Christian Davenport posted a tweet with FAA
information.
He said “Now hearing the FAA could approve the SpaceX modification to its license for
SN9 as early as today, possibly "within the next couple of hours."
Could see Starship fly as soon as tomorrow.”
Then on Tuesday he tweeted “Confirmed: The FAA late last night granted SpaceX its launch
license modification for the SN9 Starship flight.
It appears from reports on the ground that they are proceeding with a launch attempt
today.”
He also posted a tweet with information from the FAA on why the SN9 approval took so long
to complete.
The first tweet says ”Before SN8 flight, "SpaceX sought a waiver to exceed the maximum
public risk allowed by federal safety regulations.
After the FAA denied the request, SpaceX proceeded with the flight.
As a result of this non-compliance, the FAA required SpaceX to investigate.”
Then he added a response of “All testing that could affect public safety at the Boca
Chica, Texas, launch site was suspended until the investigation was completed and the FAA
approved the company’s corrective actions to protect public safety."
Those actions are in the SN9 license granted late yesterday.”
Then finally, after such a long time waiting, we saw the flight of
Starship SN9 happen yesterday, Tuesday 2nd.
It then landed, kind of.
The reason for this Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly looked to be due to a Raptor not relighting
during the landing flip.
If you look here there was just 1 engine lit and so SN9 didn’t really have a chance to
land, but the engine tried so hard to save it.
Marcia Smith posted a tweet with a statement from the FAA.
She said “The FAA has issued further information about the SN8 issue (see attached snip).
Separately it said it will ‘oversee the investigation’ of today's SN9 ‘landing
mishap’ to identify root cause and possible opps ‘to further enhance safety as the program
develops.’”
The FAA seems to fail to understand how likely these explosions are just due to their nature
of being test flights.
Last episode we saw SN10 rolled out and for the first time, 2 Starships side by side on
pads.
Earlier in the week, Tankzilla was moved on the landing pad as SN10 was also seen venting
for the first time.
A new Raptor engine for SN10 was also spotted at the launch area.
The nosecone barrel section for Starship SN16 has been spotted.
Super Heavy Booster Number 1’s common bulkhead stack was rolled outside for stacking.
Before stacking though, it was hooked up to a crane and flipped.
Jack Beyer posted a cool shot of the Super Heavy booster number 1 progress in the high
bay with the prototype now about half constructed.
As always, a thank you to the one and only Mary, or BocaChicaGal, out there everyday
filming this awesome Starship stuff for us fans.
Also thank you to the NASASpaceflight team working hard behind the scenes to provide
great videos, livestreams and other space content.
Just a little promo, for those of you who may not be aware, we have a Discord server
with a bunch of like-minded space fans.
Feel free to come along and join, there’s a link in the description.
Also, we have a shop with some cool, SpaceX themed stickers if you want some, there’s
a link to that in the description too.
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